Month: September 2013

What a shutdown really means

This is what will change once the Government shuts down: (H/T The American Spectator)

Via Fox News:

A look at how services would or would not be affected if Congress fails to reach an agreement averting a government shutdown at midnight Monday.

AIR TRAVEL

Federal air traffic controllers would remain on the job and airport screeners would keep funneling passengers through security checkpoints. Federal inspectors would continue enforcing safety rules.

INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL

The State Department would continue processing foreign applications for visas and U.S. applications for passports, since fees are collected to finance those services. Embassies and consulates overseas would continue to provide services to American citizens.

BENEFIT PAYMENTS

Social Security and Medicare benefits would keep coming, but there could be delays in processing new disability applications. Unemployment benefits would still go out.

FEDERAL COURTS

Federal courts would continue operating normally for about 10 business days after the start of a shutdown, roughly until the middle of October. If the shutdown continues, the judiciary would have to begin furloughs of employees whose work is not considered essential. But cases would continue to be heard.

MAIL

Deliveries would continue as usual because the U.S. Postal Service receives no tax dollars for day-to-day operations. It relies on income from stamps and other postal fees to keep running.

RECREATION

All national parks would be closed, as would the Smithsonian museums, including the National Zoo in Washington. Visitors using overnight campgrounds or other park facilities would be given 48 hours to make alternate arrangements and leave the park. Among the visitor centers that would be closed: the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in New York, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Alcatraz Island near San Francisco and the Washington Monument.

HEALTH

New patients would not be accepted into clinical research at the National Institutes of Health, but current patients would continue to receive care. Medical research at the NIH would be disrupted and some studies would be delayed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be severely limited in spotting or investigating disease outbreaks, from flu to that mysterious MERS virus from the Middle East.

FOOD SAFETY

The Food and Drug Administration would handle high-risk recalls suspend most routine safety inspections. Federal meat inspections would be expected to proceed as usual.

HEAD START

A small number of Head Start programs, about 20 out of 1,600 nationally, would feel the impact right away. The federal Administration for Children and Families says grants expiring about Oct. 1 would not be renewed. Over time more programs would be affected. Several of the Head Start programs that would immediately feel the pinch are in Florida. It’s unclear if they would continue serving children.

FOOD ASSISTANCE

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, could shut down. The program provides supplemental food, health care referrals and nutrition education for pregnant women, mothers and their children.

School lunches and breakfasts would continue to be served, and food stamps, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, would continue to be distributed. But several smaller feeding programs would not have the money to operate.

TAXES

Americans would still have to pay their taxes and file federal tax returns, but the Internal Revenue Service says it would suspend all audits. Got questions? Sorry, the IRS says taxpayer services, including toll-free help lines, would be shut as well.

LOANS

Many low-to-moderate incomes borrowers and first-time homebuyers seeking government-backed mortgages could face delays during the shutdown. The Federal Housing Administration, which guarantees about 30 percent of home mortgages, wouldn’t underwrite or approve any new loans during the shutdown. Action on government-backed loans to small businesses would be suspended.

SCIENCE

NASA will continue to keep workers at Mission Control in Houston and elsewhere to support the International Space station, where two Americans and four others are deployed. The National Weather Service would keep forecasting weather and issuing warnings and the National Hurricane Center would continue to track storms. The scientific work of the U.S. Geological Survey would be halted.

HOMELAND SECURITY

The majority of the Department of Homeland Security’s employees are expected to stay on the job, including uniformed agents and officers at the country’s borders and ports of entry, members of the Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration officers, Secret Service personnel and other law enforcement agents and officers. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees would continue to process green card applications.

MILITARY

The military’s 1.4 million active duty personnel would stay on duty, but their paychecks would be delayed. About half of the Defense Department’s civilian employees would be furloughed.

PRISONS

All 116 federal prisons would remain open, and criminal litigation would proceed.

VETERANS SERVICES

Most services offered through the Department of Veterans Affairs will continue because lawmakers approve money one year in advance for the VA’s health programs. Veterans would still be able to visit hospitals for inpatient care, get mental health counseling at vet centers or get prescriptions filled at VA health clinics. Operators would still staff the crisis hotline and claims workers would still process payments to cover disability and pension benefits. But those veterans appealing the denial of disability benefits to the Board of Veterans Appeals will have to wait longer for a decision because the board would not issue any decisions during a shutdown.

WORK SAFETY

Federal occupational safety and health inspectors would stop workplace inspections except in cases of imminent danger.

Much like the Obama Administration: The DNC is Broke

Very interesting:

FORTUNE — There’s another budget crisis in Washington, and it’s unfolding inside the Democratic party. The Democratic National Committee remains so deeply in the hole from spending in the last election that it is struggling to pay its own vendors.

It is a highly unusual state of affairs for a national party — especially one that can deploy the President as its fundraiser-in-chief — and it speaks to the quiet but serious organizational problems the party has yet to address since the last election, obscured in part by the much messier spectacle of GOP infighting.

The Democrats’ numbers speak for themselves: Through August, 10 months after helping President Obama secure a second term, the DNC owed its various creditors a total of $18.1 million, compared to the $12.5 million cash cushion the Republican National Committee is holding.

Several executives at firms that contract to provide services to the party — speaking anonymously to avoid antagonizing what remains an important if troubled client — describe an organization playing for time as they raise alarms about past-due bills falling further behind. And senior strategists close to the DNC say they worry the organization appears to have no road map back to solvency. “They really thought they could get this money raised by the summer,” one said, “but the fact is, from talking to people over there, they have no real plan for how to solve this.”

via The Democratic National Committee is nearly broke – The Term Sheet: Fortune’s deals blogTerm Sheet.

This could be why here:

Sources close to the DNC say officials there have quietly laid the blame in part on the White House. It’s no secret that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who also represents an area around Miami in the U.S. House, lacks strong relationships inside the administration. But it’s not even clear who at the White House should be minding the problem these days, following the exodus of President Obama’s top political brains.

Eh, serves ’em right for overreaching while they had the majority. If this Government shuts down and it does look like it is going to; the Democrats might not ever recover from it. Here is hoping that this is the case. The Republicans might end up eating it too. I mean, if you think that Government workers do not vote; think again. I have a friend, who works in the Government and right now — he is highly ticked off at both sides.

It should be interesting come 2014!

Video: CBN News Channel Morning Edition: Sept. 30, 2013

(Via CBN News)

Please note: At one point, I had thought about not posting these videos anymore. Mainly because of criticism from a well-known atheist. Well, after praying about it and really reflecting on it; I have decided that I am not going to allow other people tell me how to run this blog. It is mine, and I reserve the right to publish whatever I darned well please here. If fundamentalist atheists don’t not like it; too bad. This is a political blog, and not a Christian one; however, I will not hide my Christian beliefs, just to appease someone, who’s mission in life is to criticize with whom he disagrees with. I don’t work like that, never have, never will….

Rod Dreher writes one of the smartest things on the shutdown so far.

Good points here:

They are a barking-mad pack of ideologues, is what they are. I haven’t written much about the Obamacare thing because I don’t follow policy closely. As far as I know, Obamacare is a bad idea. But here’s the thing: it’s the law. It was passed, signed by the president, and upheld in the Supreme Court. There is no way the House Republicans, or Ted Cruz or Rand Paul, is going to overturn it. The best they can do is to delay it. And then what? Guess what: the 2012 elections were their last, best chance to overturn Obamacare, and the country didn’t go for it.

[…]

When I think of the Republican Party, I don’t think of principled conservative legislators who are men and women of vision strategy. I think of ideologues who are prepared to wreck things to get their way. They have confused prudence — the queen of virtues, and the cardinal virtue of conservative politics — with weakness. I know I’m very much a minority among conservatives in this, but the behavior of Congressional Republicans pushed me out of the party two years ago, even though I almost always vote Republican, or withhold my vote. I am not a liberal, and do not want to vote for liberals, especially on social policy. But I told a Louisiana conservative friend the other day that the Congressional Republicans are making me consider the previously unthinkable: throwing my vote away by voting for a Democrat in the special election next month to replace my GOP congressman, who just resigned to take another job. The GOP candidates in this local race are hot and heavy to overthrow Obamacare. I think about how poor this district is — 26 percent of the district lives in poverty, making it one of the poorest Congressional districts in America — and how badly we need jobs and economic growth, and I think: What kind of world do these people live in? 

via Rod Dreher – Republicans, Over The Cliff | The American Conservative.

Go read the whole thing, as it makes for a good article.

This too:

There are other battles to fight. These guys are taking the government and the economy to the brink of crisis, and for what? For the sake of rebel yells and the Lost Cause?

Amen. We lost that battle, we should be looking to shore up what we can now and then in 2014 try to win as much as we possibly can; and then, in 2016, go in a new direction with a Republican President that is actually electable. (See 2012 and 2008, please.)

The problem is that Republicans would rather shoot off their own damned toe, to spite their entire foot —- and for what? Making brownie points with a bunch of people, who really do not like them anyhow?

It simply does not make any sense to me at all.

Great opinion piece on the Federal Reserve Bank by George Will

I highly suggest that you read it.

Quote:

Because Ben Bernanke’s public persona is as mild as milk, the transformation in American governance in which he has participated is imperfectly understood and hence insufficiently deplored. The change is dramatized by two recent developments.

One was the campaigning by several constituencies for and against what supposedly were the two leading candidates — Larry Summers and Janet Yellen — to replace Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Fed can no longer be considered separated from politics.

[….]

The Fed has become the model of applied progressivism, under which power flows to clever regulators who operate independent of political control. The Fed is, however, a creation of Congress, which may not forever refrain from putting a bridle and snaffle on a Fed that increasingly allocates credit, wealth and opportunity.

via George Will: The Fed has become a creature of politics – The Washington Post.

There are some of us, who believe that we should end the fed and go back to the gold standard. I happen to be one of those people.

What hath Detroit wrought?

This: (via The Southern Nationalist)

One of the many significant disadvantages to Southerners of being in the Union is the periodic transfer of wealth by the US Federal Government of Southern tax dollars to non-Southerners, including foreign dictators, Islamic terrorist groups and failed Third World countries. Recently, the US government decided to transfer $300 million to a Third World city – which, in this case, happens to be located within the United States. The City of Detroit’s decline over the past half a century has become the stuff of legend. It is now symbolic of the decline of the USA as a whole, a microcosm of the loss of industry and the demographic transformation of much of the US into a Third World society. In 1940 Detroit was 90% White and an industrial power-house. It was one of the most affluent and productive cities in the world. By 2010 the city was just 10% White and 82% Black. White flight from the failed city has dropped the total population of Detroit by 40% over what it was in 1950.  Any way that one looks at the numbers associated with Detroit it is clear that it is a Third World city in the middle of the United States. If one took a Haitian city such as Port-au-Prince, dropped it in the middle of North America and periodically transferred wealth to it from outside it would look very much like Detroit.

As much as it pains me to admit this; Michael is absolutely correct. Sad I am from the “Detroit Area” currently and I grew up in Southwest Detroit in the 1980’s. Even back then, Detroit was a different place in a different time. There are a ton of reasons why Detroit ended up like it did; I blogged about that in the past.

There are times, when I honestly wish that I could just pack up everything and move to another part of the Country. The flathead valley in Montana is where I would love to go; but, as many Americans, I simply cannot afford to move and I have parents that need me here for the time being. SighSo, I do what I can and wait.

This is my problem with the current state of the GOP

In a earlier posting, I wrote some stuff in anger. Now that I have calmed down a bit. I have more to say.

Basically what I have to say is this: For all intents and purposes: I am finished with the GOP on a National level. They are not a conservative Christian party in my humble opinion anymore. If anything they are nothing more than an “Democratic Party Lite” type of a party. From this moment on, I will voting whatever third party I feel matches my own personal convictions.

It looks like the Republican Party might just end up making Ted Cruz the face of the GOP in 2016. I hope that I am wrong about this, but if I know politics like I do; the GOP will pick someone who is a reflection of their base and a reflection of current political winds. The GOP tried an establishment candidate twice before and they lost — they will not do this again. It is not that I do not like Cruz, I just believe that he wasted a good deal of time and taxpayers money grandstanding on a losing bet.

It is very strange what is happening in the GOP now. There are two factions: One faction is the Cruz faction that some call extremist. The ones that call him this are those that believe that Big Government Conservatism is a-okay; but I digress. The other faction is the old Neoconservative Big Government Conservative wing of the GOP. Both factions are entrenched and both factions are quite well funded. Both factions are working out of concert with the other.

As a result of this, Obamacare is going to get funded and we are going to get stuck with it. That is, unless the house of representatives does something and I mean something bold. However, the realist and the common sense part of me, sees this comment by President Obama and knows that he is correct:

I don’t know how I can be more clear about this: Nobody gets to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States just to extract political concessions. No one gets to hurt our economy and millions of innocent people just because there are a couple of laws that you do not like. It has not been done in the past. We’re not going to start doing it now.

I’m not going to start setting a precedent, not just for me but for future presidents, where one chamber in Congress can basically say each time there needs to be a vote to make sure Treasury pays its bills, we’re not going to sign it unless our particular hobby horse gets advanced.

Imagine if you had a Republican president and a Democratic speaker, and the Democratic speaker said, well, we’re not going to pass the debt ceiling unless we raise corporate taxes by 40 percent or unless we pass background checks on guns or whatever other list of agenda items Democrats were interested in. Does anybody actually think that we would be hearing from Republicans that that was acceptable behavior? That’s not how our constitutional system is designed. We are not going to do it.

The American people have worked too hard to recover from a bunch of crises _ several of them now, over the last couple of years, inflicted by some of the same folks in Congress that we’re talking about now _ to see extremists in Congress cause another crisis. And keep in mind, by the way _ this whole thing has to do with keeping the government open for a few months.

There is video of it on CSPAN, but for some reason, I could not cut it up and embed it here. I guess someone at CSPAN must read my blog. Because here is that video:

 

That part that I bolded and underlined? The President is absolutely correct about and I hope like the devil that Ted Cruz and the Tea Party house members read this; and remember it. If they set a precedent, the Democrats will exploit it to their liking once they are in office. So, I would be really careful and really think long and hard about what they are about to do in the House.

Allen West proves to the world why he was tossed from the Military

Plain and simple — the man is an insufferable ass.

The Story:

Former Congressman Allen West is leaving his job at Pajamas Media after an altercation with a female staffer in which he allegedly called her a “Jewish American princess,” BuzzFeed learned on Thursday.

“In order to focus on political interests, Allen West will transition from his full-time role as director of programming for Next Generation.TV to a twice-a-month contributor of written commentary on PJMedia.com, effective October 1, 2013,” PJ Media financier Aubrey Chernick wrote to staff in an email from Sept. 16. “I wanted our staff and consultants to have this information first. However, PJ Media is not announcing this publicly for several weeks, so please do not share this news with anyone outside of the company until you see our public announcement.”

In a message to staff, West wrote: “Shortly, I will be giving up my position as director of programming at Next Generation.TV to get back on the front lines to expand the message of constitutional conservatism across our country.”

Two sources familiar with what happened told BuzzFeed that West had gotten into an argument with a female employee and called her a “Jewish American princess” while telling her to “shut up.”

Reached by phone, West told BuzzFeed he was leaving his job voluntarily, though one source familiar with the situation told BuzzFeed he had been fired. He did not deny that an exchange with the employee had occurred, but said it hadn’t led to his leaving the company.

“No, I didn’t get fired,” West said. “I’m leaving to pursue political aspirations. That’s it. There’ll be a statement that comes out and it’s effective in October.”

Asked specifically whether he referred to the employee as a “Jewish American princess,” West said simply, “There was an exchange, that’s all.”

via Allen West Out At PJ Media.

Allen West was an ass in the military, which is why he was tossed from the Military. Now he has been tossed from PJMedia. Something tells me that Allen West’s days as a Republican star player are over for good. Because there is one unpardonable sin among the Republicans, especially among the neoconservatives; and that is making disparaging remarks to Jews. Doing this will get a one ticket to obscure land in a real big hurry.

Did this man not know that PJMedia is owned, funded, and operated by a Jewish man? A fake conservative, but really a liberal former liberal Jew at that?!?! I would like to find out which staffer this was, I would love to hear her side of the story on this here; I really would.