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Ted Kennedy's Replacement

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, September 25, 2009 2:32:03 PM
The Democrats in Massachusetts have resolved a legal conundrum in their own way- ignore the law.
 
In 2004, the State changed the replacement process for an open Senate seat, because they were afraid that if John Kerry was elected President, Governor Romney would appoint a Republican replacement. The new law took the appointment out of the Governor's hands and set a specific timetable for a special election.
 
When Kennedy died, that meant there would only be 59 Democrat Senators until the election next January. They started exploring the possibility of changing the law back, and probing the legal challenges of applying the new law to pre-existing circumstances (like replacing a seat that was already open).
 
They obviously didn't like the answer, because the Governor went ahead and appointed a replacement. They are hoping that while any legal challenges are happening, they will be happening while the new guy is on the Senate floor, using his vote card.
 
Whatever it takes. Welcome again to the world of moral relativism. This is what Governor Blago faced in Illinois earlier this year. He was told that, being he was under bribery investigation for his attempts to cull a replacement for Senator Obama, he should not appoint one. He defied that, and appointed one anyway. That guy is still on the Senate floor still, happily voting away.
 
I don't know how one calls out people for disrespecting the law like that. Illinois and Massachusetts are so heavily Democrat that there are enough moral relativists voting to allow that in perpetuity.
 
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ACORN Again

Posted by Bill Crawford on Saturday, September 19, 2009 9:25:44 PM
I've met some ACORN people who are really trying to do good things. I've met a few more that are glorified post-adolescent radicals. My problems with them have much to do with the fact that the people who started this group, along with it's present leadership, clearly fall into the latter subset.
 
How this news came into wide distribution is an argument of alternative media that I've raised before here- it is just a more glaring example of the state of things today. The mainstream media is no longer an apologist for one political agenda over another, many of them are now abject cheerleaders for the same. Which is all fine and good, but the joke remains that they (unlike the Conservative media) STILL maintain that they are simply passing the news to us in an objective way, a la Ed Murrow.
 
But I digress. ACORN passed the tipping point with these revelations. I think some people could handle trying to find housing for a prostitution ring. In many cities, this would pass with a loud yawn. Skirting the tax laws? Sticking it to the IRS is considered sport all over the country, even if this is an extreme example.
 
But being told that they were going to traffic underage girls from other countries for that? I can't imagine a better conversation ender for anybody with the smallest sense of morality. That is just nuts.
 
So the Senate voted to pull their HUD funding, and they are still contemplating what the House overwhelmingly did- to pull all their funding. That is good news. And Commerce will no longer be using them to help with the 2010 Census, which is better news.
 
I say find another group to do what ACORN ostensibly was set up to help with. Start over somewhere else. Enough is enough.
 
Let's see if Obama throws them under the bus when the Bills reach his desk.
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Swine Flu Is Coming

Posted by Bill Crawford on Saturday, September 19, 2009 9:12:28 PM
And we should all be wary of it. It is especially worrisome because the H1N1 configuration is similar to the Influenza Pandemic virus from 1918- probably the most numerically lethal disease ever recorded among humans.
 
The good news is, there are vaccines coming that will help abate the spread- live version nasal sprays and dead version injections, for those who have conditions which obviate the former.
 
The bad news is, the Swine Flu virus is showing itself to be similar to it's predecessors in two ways. First, by appearing in the Spring, going into a form of remission and reappearing in wider segments of the population in the Fall and Winter, which it seems poised to do. Second, by deviating from normal Flu viruses with it's unusual prediliction for going after humans in their prime.
 
More bad news is that it will tax the resources of most of the developing countries to handle the outbreak within their own populations. If anything can be done to aid the developing nations in a timely way, I'm all for forking out the money to do so. I doubt you would find a principled Conservative to argue that.
 
It will NOT be Influenza redux, for a largely unreported reason. The "Spanish Flu" of 1918 was spread in no small part because of the intermingling of large populations in the horrific trench warfare of World War I. These men had never travelled far from home their entire lives before going to Europe, and neither had the Europeans. Their bodies were totally unfamiliar with many of the bacteria that they were now encountering. By many accounts the spread of the disease in the United States started with soldiers returning to Fort Leavenwoth in Kansas.
 
This state does not exist today. So many people travel by air and return that there are many forms of European and Asian bacteria already in our population bases and we have been doing the antibody thing with them all along.
 
Finally, it has shown no signs of mutating, so the time and money we are spending on prophylactics are not likely to be overwhelmed by new versions.
 
So, if it appears, keep your kids out of school as long as it takes, and wait until they are fully recovered plus a few days. I worried about this, but I think we've been spared the worst this Winter.
 
 
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My Political Center

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 11:04:33 PM
This is a blog about national issues. I will be straying from that here, because I've been encountering people asking after me regarding my run for Mayor of my home town, looking to get an idea of who I am.
 
I do this because if you Google my name, this blog is the first thing that pops up, and I know that both those who support me and those who oppose me have perused it.
 
I am a Conservative who happens to be a Republican. I was a registered independent for many years, but when my professional life settled and gave me the luxury to become politically involved, I realized that being a registered Independent kept one out of the entire Primary season in most states. And the Primaries are where real choices are made, often at grass roots levels.
 
I am running for Mayor of Pittsboro, North Carolina. It is supposed to be a non-partisan office. That is because it is truly a local, grass roots, nuts and bolts office. It requires that you are able and willing to communicate with and make policy with people of all sorts of political persuasions, in the interests of the Town.
 
The major issues before the Town presently are not ones that demand partisan solutions. They call for common sense, attention to detail, a careful watch of the taxpayer's money and a healthy dose of the old Reaganism, "There is no limit to what you can get don't care who gets the credit."
 
I moved to Pittsboro because I thought it was a small town with the attendant character, along with a population that was still looking for some healthy growth and development, as long as it was managed properly. I think I can work with the Town and the County on all that without the regional distraction, the conflicts of interest and the occasional rancor that the Incumbent often brings.
 
 
 
 
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Bookstore Games

Posted by Bill Crawford on Sunday, September 06, 2009 8:46:16 PM
Since I got my electronic book reader, my book store visits have been sporadic- they have always been a favorite hangout of mine.
 
I had fifteen minutes to kill recently and I visited a Borders for the first time in a while. They haven't changed their childish ways.
 
In the peak of influence of the Clinton & Clinton Law Firm in Washington, conservative authors took off like rockets on the NY Times lists. In the stores, though, the workers would hide the copies for sale in obscure places, or turn them face down on the shelves.
 
In the age of Bush and Rove, there was a rennaissance of Progressive authors, and this was duly noticed by the press. Their books were prominently displayed, even when they went off the best seller lists. You could always find them in the front.
 
Now, in reaction to Obama, the conservatives are back. O'Reilly, Morris, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and others are all selling like mad. Not only does this not get a mention in the press, but you often won't find any of these in the front displays. In this store, the Glenn Beck book was nowhere to be found and had to be requested.
 
That is all to be expected. Conservatives and book store employees are not a match that you would find in e-harmony.
 
The amazing thing I found was the number of Ayn Rand books extant on the shelves. Obviously I am not the only conservative feeling like they are re-living the first chapters of "Atlas Shrugged" under this President. The employees, if they are familiar with Rand, must not see how she is reconnecting with conservatives. Otherwise, they would be hiding that, along with every copy of "The Fountainhead" they could find.
 
Oh, well. Who is John Galt?
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It's All My Fault

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, September 04, 2009 2:32:32 PM
Health care reform is on the guillotine, and everybody is waiting for Obama to make a last minute deal to stave off execution.
 
The supporters of reform are clearly not the look-in-the-mirror types, so the blame game is picking up speed.
 
Here's the funny part: it's the Republican's fault. How's that? I've been trying to figure that one out.
 
This is what Obama entered office with:
 
The highest popular vote of any Dem Presidential candidate since LBJ.
A House that took majority in 2006 and increased it last year.
A Senate that did the same as the House, increasing to virtually veto-proof in mid year.
A national press corps that votes Democrat by a factor of 8 to 1.
Major newsweeklies that have his face on the cover more than once a month, Time's "Man of the Year" for 2008.
Support of the major unions.
Support of much of academia and the education industry.
Support from the TV news networks that often goes way, way past tacit.
 
The Republicans have Fox News, a retired Alaska Governor, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
 
Yeah, that's about even.
 
Let's get this straight. The Democrats would ram this through at this point with a party line vote, if they had it. They don't.
 
They don't in part because health care is a huge thing in our economy, and many people want to think it through before we pass it off to the feds in a damned hurry before the next Congressional recess.
 
A bigger reason is that Seniors are having the wits scared out of them by talk of cost control, and constant reports of people like Ezekiel Emanuel musing about how we should farm off old people and concentrate on those in their societal prime.
 
The new scuttlebutt is that the "public option" should be held off, only to be ressurected by "triggers"- raising the standards for the private sector, and having the government step in and take over when they can't meet them.
 
Here is the core of it, folks: this White House wants to set a path to Single Payer in place before they rest this year. It has to be ennabled in a way that rescinding it is to be followed by charges of negligence of the uninsured (or newly insured).
 
They need to set up a no going back path.
 
 
 
 
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Obama's Standards

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, September 04, 2009 2:00:31 PM
This isn't about Van Jones. Mr. Jones will turn into another proof of how you are less consequential in a large arena, when you start off from way out there.
 
And Mr. Jones is out there. But he is a friend of the President, and his created position does not require any sort of confirmation process. And obviously no security check of any kind.
 
So he serves at the pleasure of the President, overseeing a budget of about $30 Billion, chasing after a 'green jobs' agenda. So he stands up in front of a friendly audience after Obama takes office (he must know by then he will be applying for a job, if he hasn't been promised one yet) and announces that Republicans are "a**holes". I guess they can roll with that, if you toss an apology out.
 
And he is an avowed Communist- converting to it AFTER the fall of the Berlin Wall. No problem.
 
Oh, wait, he signed a petition attesting to how 9/11 was an inside job, allowed by the Bush administration in order to foment a war on all of us. This one Mr. Jones does his level best to deny being any part of, even though it isn't working very well.
 
So Communist is OK, and so is being a hyperpartisan slug. Just stay away from the super kook conspiracy stuff, especially ones that treat your boss' predecessors as treasonous.
 
Just trying to get a handle on the standards in play.
 
Editor's Note: Mr. Jones resigned this weekend, citing "smears, lies and distortions" from the Right for his downfall. Like I said, looking in the mirror isn't a big thing with the Obama crowd.
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Obama's Busy Week

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 10:25:41 PM
The President has a speech agenda next week. He will address all our schoolchildren Tuesday 9/8, at Noon. He will talk about succeeding in education. There will be an attached agenda for any teachers that want to attach discussion time.
 
Railing on him passing some sort of partisan agenda is really a waste of time. The joke is, if Bush had tried this, the squealing about taking precious instruction time away from the NCLB testing would be going on for weeks. My advice to parents is to let it ride- he is just trying to paste his face on to another generation. And if you are upset that the school isn't allowing you to opt your kids out (and you an bet that New York and California wouldn't think of it), hit 'em where it hurts: keep your kid home for the day, and let them lose the aid money.
 
The following night, Wednesday 9/9, he is going to do a State of the Union thing in front of a joint session of Congress. Now that said Congress has pretty much announced to the world that health care reform is effectively dead, they are looking to the White House for a new direction.
 
This administration will be sucking on Red Bulls this weekend to fill that one in. It is almost a given that the "public option" thing will be given last rites, but nobody in the White House seems like they are over that one.
 
Why would I say that? Because all it's cheerleaders, from Dave Axelrod on down, are actually stepping up the rhetoric publicly. There is no talk of pragmatic reconciliation. So look for some sort of brand new concept to fill the hole. "Co-ops" was last weekend's trial balloon.
 
I don't know if he thinks his snake oil salesman act will carry this one, but I do know he and his people still want the path to universal payer to be set this year, no matter how it is done.
 
So whatever he comes up with, a new round of people will run it through the microscope, and new objections will arise.
 
That's what it comes down to. He isn't about to change the parameters. He isn't about to start negotiating with Republicans. And he doesn't have the votes in his own party. You do the math.
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Kennedy Care

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, August 28, 2009 2:58:25 PM
The Democrats are doing their level best to keep pumping oxygen into the health care proposals, still in committee in both chambers.
 
They've decided to use the name of the late Senior Senator from Massachusetts to, well, 'win one for the Gipper', I guess. Given his efforts in pushing single payer over the last thirty years, this seems entirely appropriate.
 
I don't think it will change the equation much. There still is a dead Senator who his State can't legally replace until they change the law again to suit them, at least until January. I understand this President hails from Chicago, where dead people vote Democrat all the time, but even there, the dead people don't get to vote on the Senate floor. Too many people are looking.
 
Even if it all dies before it hits the floor, which it will in the Senate because they don't have the votes, they may try to resurrect it under another name. The trouble for them is, if they try to be cute with it and parlay out the "public option" as a simple set of mandates for the health insurers that amount to the same thing ten years down the road, they already have set the precedent of having been cute, and people will make a point of digging into the details.
 
And, unlike the "Stimulus Bill", you can't "air drop" the amendments in overnight, so you can't create a health care Bill and vote on it 24 hours later. People actually get time to read it.
 
So, while I won't say this all is dead for the moment, it's close. It would be nice if they started over, and actually looked at Republican proposals on all this. But they won't. It's good money that many Democrats will try and make a living on the campaign trail next year talking about what great plans they had and how they were spoiled by the "party of No".
 
 
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Libertarian Nightmares

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, August 28, 2009 12:48:07 PM
Here is part of HR 3200 that I missed, that a friend of mine was nice enough to refer me to:
 
Section 431 instructs the IRS to release your tax return records to the administrator of health care in D.C., along with the administrators in all fifty states.
 
Section 1801 instructs the IRS to do the same with the Social Security Administration.
 
That is, whatever part of your tax returns the recipients see fit. Are we all clear on that?
 
I told you that Obama is not a civil libertarian. Not even close. The joke is, the people in this country who screamed the loudest about the Patriot Act are the ones that campaigned for him last year.
 
You want something even funnier? Most of them are moral relativists, so when you call them on this contradiction, they won't care.
 
If you add a major war to the mix, you will get a world where the ACLU should all have heart attacks, but won't, because they are relativists themselves at this point.
 
This is why the two worst Presidents in our history, from a civil liberties standpoint were:
 
1) Woodrow Wilson (World War One)
2) Franklin Roosevelt (World War Two)
 
Try and find me something, anything, that a Republican did to match the Alien and Sedition Act. Good luck with that one.
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Deficit Assumptions

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, August 28, 2009 12:33:10 PM
The White House has tacitly agreed to a deficit projection of $9.5 trillion dollars over the next ten years. It looks like they've kicked the can on the campaign promise of "cutting the deficit in half by 2012" and are settling on a number that brings the average below a trillion dollars a year. The OMB people must be passing the Xanax to sign off on dropping standards that fast.
 
But that's not where the fun truly starts. Follow along on a few assumptions that the OMB takes as given, in order for the deficits to be that low:
 
1) The Bush tax cuts will be allowed to die, and marginal tax rates will go back up about 10% across the board. This is a no-brainer, as all the Congress needs to do to make this happen is to sit on their hands and not vote to renew them.
 
2) Whatver health care reform comes down the pike will be revenue neutral. All new taxes and fees, along with cost reductions, will not add a dollar to the deficit. This means that 47 million uninsured (their number, not mine) will have medical converage, and will not make things any more expensive for the government than it is now.
 
3) This is the best one: under the new cap and trade hydrocarbon legislation, their estimate (not mine) is that the average family will be spending over $1000 a year more in energy, and most of that will translate into federal revenue. Starting in 2010, that is.
 
Because if you aren't prepared for forking out an extra grand, you will be adding to the deficit. So relax, folks, it's all for a good cause.
 
And he won't raise taxes on the middle class, "not one thin dime".
 
Welcome to the world of moral relativism. Say whatever you need today, to serve your needs today. Tommorow, if you need to contradict yourself because of different needs, so what?
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ABC News Steps On Itself

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, August 28, 2009 12:12:46 PM
There is an advocacy group out there that is looking to take it's commercials questioning Obama's health care proposals and air them nationally. They've found local affiliates to air them, but nationally, NBC and ABC have refused.
 
While NBC should not be a surprise to anybody, what I found most interesting was ABC's reasoning for it's declination. They say that they do not air paid messages of a "partisan nature". You mean, like when they parceled out their entire news division earlier this year for a night at the White House, so this administration could use the station's news air time for... advocacy of it's health care program?
 
Earth to Wikkipedia: if you are looking for a link to lay out as a primary definition for "moral relativism", feel free to start with this. The two examples are only a few months apart, surely that brings it above obtuse, no?
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Afghanistan And Iraq

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 10:24:51 PM
...Are falling apart while we watch. The Iraq coalition government has not shown itself prepared to handle their own security. The government is attempting to find a new coalition without the direct support of the Shiites, and things are breaking down in many urban sectors, including the vaunted Green Zone in Baghdad.
 
There weren't enough Americans extant in Afghanistan to maintain any decent vote turnout, save the Kabul area, and the Taliban scared the wits out of everybody.
 
The Pentagon has issued scenarios to the White House regarding troop escalation, and the "High Risk" option calls for 20,000 more. The "Low Risk" option is roughly four times that. Is Obama prepared to do this?
 
If he does, he will finally have to publicly address the question of, exactly what the hell is he trying to do there?
 
I'm betting that he isn't up to answering that yet, and that is a tragedy.
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Message To Governor Sanford's Staff

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 10:17:02 PM
When the Governor holds another news conference, can you just put an open mike there, but leave the power off?
 
Governor Sanford, when will you learn that you are digging a hole for yourself, every time you face the press? You want to stay on as Governor? Do it. Shut up and go to work, until South Carolina forces you to do otherwise.
 
You want to talk things out? Find a therapist.
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Adieu, Ted Kenedy

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 10:13:20 PM
The Lion of the Senate has passed on. He was only one of a half dozen geriatrics working that chamber- Democrats don't retire.
 
He was, however, a hard working soul who knew what was in every Bill. He also had a name and a clear rep for being a true blue, no bones Progressive. He was able, under the umbrella of that, to make compromises with Republicans and get things done that few of his Democrat cohorts would take chances with.
 
I categorically disagreed with the man on so many things, but I always respected him for what he tried to do, and the straight up way with which he usually tried to do it.
 
I flew my flag at half mast today, his office alone merited that, and he did, too. You won't find me with the hatful of people in this State that refused to do the same when Jesse Helms passed on.
 
He probably was the last we've seen of Joe Kennedy's dynasty and it's influence in politics here. None of the younger progeny of the family have shown me the moxie that Joe's end of the family had. JFK Junior might have, but he was another of the ones in that clan who suffered a tragic end before their time.
 
So let's all raise a toast to Theodore, who thankfully got his life together twenty years ago and lived to be a beacon for his Party. He had his innings, and he did something with them. He gave it everything he had, and you have to admire that.
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