Let's Go for Broke! Default Now!

Let's Go For Broke! Default Now!

Debt default seems academic at this point what with the announcement out of Washington Sunday night that a tentative deal had been brokered on the debt ceiling. However, the operative word there is “tentative.”

With reservations, Senate Majority Leader Reid likes it, which could and should be the kiss of death in the House. Speaker Boehner is ambivalent but believes it’s in line with GOP principles although, as a RINO, his view of those principles don’t jibe with conservative principles. House Democrat Minority Leader Pelosi isn’t sure what she thinks and will probably wait until the deal is consummated before reading it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell greased the skids for the agreement but can easily wash off the grease if it goes badly.

In sum, the vaunted deal will not become a done deal until the overweight lady sings her approbation and shouldn’t be approved since the so-called compromise accomplishes nothing substantive aside from authorizing the president to tack on a few more trillion to the federal debt.

Balanced budget? They’ll work on it. Cuts in spending? Piddling, but they’ll work on that too and appoint another toothless commission to study them. Re-structuring Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the most crushing crises facing America? Not even on the table.

Barring a temporary debt ceiling hike postponing the inevitable, what if America defaults Monday night at 11:59:59 p.m.?

That scenario is now unlikely since the party in favor of fiscal sanity has once again compromised and the party favoring taxing and spending the United States into financial oblivion seems about to get its way, once again, but, just for the jollies, what if we do default?

Who would be held responsible? What would be the effects of a default? Who would emerge the winner and who the goat? . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5143)

Shutdowns, Budgets, and Babies

Shutdowns, Budgets, and Babies

THE DEAL: The devil always lurks in the dirty details and, as specifics emerge on last Friday night’s eleventh hour settlement of the budget stalemate and threat of a government shutdown, it’s becoming clearer by the day that Republicans were snookered–again. President Barack Hussein Obama may have been the primary snookerer but Speaker John Boehner earned the prize as head of the snookered.

It was made to appear by both sides of the aisle that the spirit of compromise, the essence of politics, carried the night. By Saturday, the president was taking credit for cutting spending by “historic” amounts, the GOP was gloating that it had cut $38.5 billion from a bloated budget, and there was peace and tranquility on Capitol Hill.

Call it smoke and mirrors or compromise, it all boils down to distortions and lies.

Obama was hauled kicking and screaming to the cuts, the Republicans had sold out their original demands for $100 billion in spending, the deficit had already increased 15.7% or by $829 billion in the first half of fiscal 2011, the IMF is issuing warnings on the credibility of America’s borrowing, and the GOP demonstrated by its capitulation on Friday that all its noises about cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security entitlements and the nation’s crippling $14 trillion long-term public debt were just that, noises lacking substance.

The party of fiscal integrity has lost one more strategic battle and its general, John Boehner, in office twenty years now, has proven he is just another old Washington hack, part of the problem devoid of any solutions.

It will be a busy, and challenging, rest of the week for the Speaker. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4127)

Conservative Boehner vs. Liberal Schumer

Conservative Boehner vs. Liberal Schumer

There are many characteristics and qualities that distinguish a liberal from a conservative. The most obvious, of course, is the fact that conservatives are almost always correct and liberals are invariably wrong.

That difference pales in significance when contrasted with conservative willingness to confront issues and people when they know they are right as opposed to the liberal’s pusillanimous inclination to avoid issues and run away when they know they are wrong.

We see that liberal tendency all the time in international relations and conflicts.

America witnessed a perfect example of that gutless defeatism in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s actions re: the Iraq War when he opposed it from the outset, then opposed George Bush’s surge, then denied that the surge turned the tide in that conflict.

After Thursday’s useless Health Care Summit at Blair House, a variation on that cowardly behavior involved Senator Charles “Call-Me-Upchuck” Schumer and Senator Tom Coburn.

It was bad enough when Schumer’s leader, . . .

(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1527)

The Fine Art of Lying

The Fine Art of Lying

There are lies and there are lies. There are white lies, BIG lies, petty falsehoods, serious misrepresentations, gross prevarications, cowardly equivocations, major whoppers, silly taradiddles, and fibs.

The Obama administration has perfected and nuanced the execution of every variation of lie but none is more despicable than its lying about one of the two most contentious issues relating to Obamacare, abortion.

The other issue, of course, is that beast of many backs, the public option, the single payer option, the government option, all of which are no options at all since they will be part of the final bill.

Alternatively, that public option will, shortly after its passage, be covertly incorporated into Obamacare with as much clandestine sleight of hand Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama can muster.

That advertised transparent triumvirate has evolved into the most opaque, secretive, and evil trio since Richard Nixon and his teutonic duo of H.R. Halderman and John Ehrlichman.

The opaqueness and secretiveness of this administration and its congressional cohorts has been apparent from the beginning to anyone not brainwashed and figuratively waterboarded; the closed-door, ultra-partisan, heavyhanded Democrat manipulation of Obama’s signature health care issue simply iced his opaque cake.

It’s admittedly extreme to bandy about the loaded word “evil” but when the political shoe fits it’s more than appropriate.

The Nixonian triumvirs were evil in their arrogant abuse and misuse of presidential power and perks.

The Obamians are evil in their totality, . . .

(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1384)