The Benghazi Hearings: The Media Should Be Ashamed of Themselves

While I was at work yesterday, I was also keeping up with the House Oversight Committee Hearings concerning the murder of 4 brave Americans at the Embassy Compound in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012 by Barbaric Muslim Terrorists.

Here in America’s Heartland, the general consensus is that the witnesses who appeared yesterday are brave men in their own right, for coming forth.

The day definitely went to the House Republicans, who asked all the right questions, while their Democrat Colleagues came off looking like a bunch of braying jackasses.

Besides the political chicanery which was revealed yesterday involving Secretary of State Clinton and her lawyer, Ms. Mills, the other big story of the day was the intentional Main Stream Media Blackout of the Hearings themselves…a blatant attempt to keep the American public from learning the truth of that terrible day.

Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin posted on her Facebook Page yesterday,

Is there any wonder why distrust of arrogant, out-of-touch media is at an all-time high? During today’s Benghazi hearings, the Washington Post actually tweeted: “Who’s tweeting about Benghazi? Rich, middle-aged men and Chick-fil-A lovers.” This would be the same Washington Post that broke the story on Watergate. Now they just mock concerned Americans who want answers to why four brave Americans died, including two distinguished vets. And the Obama administration asks, “What does it matter?”

As I have related in the past, I took some Journalism courses in college, to go along with my major in Radio, TV, and Film.

In a course in Broadcast Journalism, I received the top grade in both classes, which my instructor taught, on an investigative research project. In the middle of the Iranian Hostage crisis, I found out that the Black Radical, Stokely Carmichael, whom the Black Student Association was bringing in to speak, had been brought in two years previously by the Iranian Student Association. That instructor, by the way, was a former CBS News Writer/Producer.

It’s funny, though. I remember this guy cautioning us to remain objective in our reporting.

Ironic, considering CBS News’ blackout of the Hearings, yesterday.

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program:

…here we are months and months later. We have career diplomats choking up, retelling a story that was of no interest to their commander-in-chief, no interest to the secretary of state, who did nothing to help these people. In fact, the next day the commander-in-chief gets up — after being out of touch for five or seven hours, nobody knew where he was — and he jets off to Las Vegas.

These are people that battled terrorists on the battlefield, at our consulate. They got nothing from the guy who put ‘em in harm’s way, and now they’re up telling the story. Their testimony, so far, is unfiltered and uninterrupted. It’s powerful, it’s devastating, it’s tragic. Then the Democrats get hold of it after they finish and do their best to discount it, discredit it. But after watching a little bit of this, I understand why some Democrats are worried about this.

If the media picked up on this and actually made this a cause like they did Watergate, it would be a whole different dynamic. I can’t forget Hillary telling those people in that hangar — wherever it was, Dover, Andrews Air Force Base — when the bodies came back, over the flag-draped coffins, “We’ll get the guy who did that video.” She was straight-face lying to them about why their family members died.

“We’ll get the guy in the video.”

We live in an upside-down world, folks. We really do.

…Nobody cares about any of this stuff but us. In fact, we are being called purists and problematic because we care about this because we are being so rigid, we’re making it impossible for people to see that the Republicans are flexible and adaptable and all that. We are making it impossible for the Republicans to ever win. Because we care about this. This is insignificant. This doesn’t matter. Nobody cares about this. Other than the families, other than the witnesses, other than the Republicans on the committee and five or six other people, nobody cares about it. We live in an upside down world. The challenge we all have here, folks, is staying emotionally and physically well in the middle of all this, because we live in a world where nothing makes any sense, and where it appears that everything that was the glue that held this country together is vanishing.

While I believe Rush is right, as he usually is, I also believe that, just like the Gosnell Case, if we average Americans holler loud and long enough, eventually the Main Stream Media will HAVE to cover the story.

The problem is, of course, the Liberals own and operate the Main Stream Media. So, therefore, their attitude toward covering the Hearings is to minimize their importance, just as the rest of their Liberal brethren, in our nation’s capital, are trying to do.

Lt. Col. Allen West, as he is wont to do, summed up the Obama Administration’s deflection and obfuscation of Benghazigate quite nicely,

I’ve been watching the Benghazi hearings and just find it amazing that we even have to have a hearing on something so blatantly clear. This was a terrorist attack that we were told was about a video and we hung Americans out to die. Yet, no one is responsible, just move along, nothing to see here, wasting time. This had nothing to do with funding, it had everything to do with failure….oh, what the heck, let’s all just go to Las Vegas for a fundraiser.

Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the 60s iconic rock band, the Doors, once said,

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.

In 2013 America, Liberals have control of our Media…and that’s why we have so many Low Information Voters.

The Main Stream Media’s Journalistic Mission is to perpetuate the blissful ignorance of the low information voters in order to protect the Liberal President of the United States.

And, for that chilling fact, which led to yesterday’s blackout of the Benghazi Hearings, they should be truly ashamed.

But, being shameless, hive-mind Liberals, they aren’t.

Until He Comes,

KJ

You Say You Want an Evolution…

A very strange phenomenon has been occurring, involving Capitol Hill Politicians…on both sides of the aisle.

The people who owe their livelihoods to us are doing an about-face in their views on the core principles which got them elected to office in the first place. It doesn’t matter what political promises were made on the campaign trail to the folks back home.

However, they’re not just simply changing their minds. They’re evolving. Republicans are evolving into Democrats and Democrats are evolving into socialists.

A social/cultural evolution, if you will.

I would say, let the professional politicians make fools of themselves, and throw themselves and whatever principles they have left into the Potomac River. The only problem is…they’re taking us with them.

For example…

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, is “evolving” on the issue of gay marriage, but she has stopped short of joining the other senator from Alaska, Mark Begich, D-Alaska, in endorsing it.

Following an address at the Chugiak-Eagle River Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, she said, “The term ‘evolving view’ has been perhaps overused, but I think it is an appropriate term for me to use,” Murkowski said, according to the Chugiak-Eagle River Star. “I think it’s important to acknowledge that there is a change afoot in this country in terms of how marriage is viewed.”

Murkowski said she is reviewing her stance on the issue.

“It may be that Alaska will come to revisit its position on gay marriage, and as a policy maker I am certainly reviewing that very closely,” Murkowski said, indicating that she had spoken to her two sons about the issue.

“I’ve got two young sons who, when I ask them and their friends how they feel about gay marriage, kinda give me one of those looks like, ‘Gosh mom, why are you even asking that question?’”

In an interview with Alaska Public radio she expanded even more, indicating a softening of the issue.

“I think you are seeing a change in attitude, change in tolerance, I guess, and an acceptance that what marriage should truly be about is a lasting, loving, committed relationship with respect to the individual,” Murkowski said.

If she does flip, she would joined Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, as the only other Republican senator to back same-sex marriage. Begich, the Democratic junior senator from Alaska, flipped and endorsed same-sex marriage earlier this week.

Murkowski spokesperson Matthew Felling confirmed to ABC News that Murkowski’s views are the same as what she told the Alaska media and that she does not currently support gay marriage, but that she is reviewing the issue.

In 1998, Alaska passed an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

Evidently, those brilliant minds that are up there breathing the heady air of the Beltway, simply have no choice but to evolve…away from the beliefs of their constituency.

The Guardian (UK) thinks that the Republicans should go squish…when they walk. Of course, Sharia Law is taking over the United Kingdom.

The one area where moderates are increasingly willing to speak up in a consistent way is on social issues. I used to live in the region that Dent represents. It’s certainly conservative area, but, increasingly, I would hear voters say something to the effect of, “I’m fiscally conservative, but and socially liberal or libertarian.” In other words, their economic beliefs lean Republican, their social values Democratic.

The fiscal issues and desire for a “smaller government” would often win out when it came time to vote, but it was notable that there was a growing acceptance – or at least tolerance – on issues like gay marriage. As Dent says:

“I hear from a lot of younger people who identify that way. There’s certainly room in the party for people like that – or there should be.”

It might explain why Dent has been one of the more vocal House Republicans supporting the Violence Against Women Act.

Moderate congressmen and governors can have a real impact on policy right now. They hold more power than they realize, and they might actually be able to change their party for the better. It starts with speaking up.

So what is all of this “evolving”into squishy mounds of Jello getting Republicans? The eternal gratitude of the Democrats, that’s what. Michael Tomasky of The Daily Beast has some advice for the GOP:

Moderate Republicans, and even mainstream conservative Republicans who want to see Washington function again, should get together to form and fund a network of organizations that will pursue four goals:

First, just make moderate Republicanism visible again. Launch a public-awareness campaign. Get a television show. Or at least get a stable of people to go on the other shows. Let Americans know that the viewpoint even exists.

Second, start an organization to recruit young people, activists of all ages, and potential candidates. Start college campus clubs and newspapers or magazines. Host big conferences in Washington and elsewhere. Give people a sense of an extant community.

Third, start running some primaries against some hard-right people in districts where victory is possible. Admittedly, there are many states and districts where there’s no chance in blazes that a moderate could beat a conservative. Many state parties have been captured lock, stock, and barrel by the Tea Party, even in liberal states (Maine). But there are some places where moderates could win. And the Tea Party may be fading.

Fourth, set up a big think tank in Washington to advance more moderate policy ideas and, just as importantly, to urge moderation in tactics as well—that is, more civility, such that every single vote isn’t a matter of warfare.

 

By moving toward Moderation and “Fiscal Conservatism only” (and, not much of that) Republicans are becoming lemmings, following the Democratic Party straight over the cliff.

I say that it’s time that the Republican Party turns back to what won them elections: Conservatism.

Back in 1979, the Iranian Hostage Crisis was all over the news. President Carter could do nothing to stop it. Americans were beaten down with insecurity and malaise. Sound familiar?

They were waiting for someone to tell them what they needed to hear.  That man was Ronald Reagan.  He told Americans that it was okay to believe in themselves again.  He proudly declared that the United States was a “shining city on a hill” whose best days were still ahead. The usual pseudo-intellectuals labelled him as too extreme and simplistic. The American people decided not to listen to them.   Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide, winning 44 million votes, or 50.7 percent, and 489 electoral votes to Carter’s 35.5 million votes, or 41 percent, and only 44 electoral votes. It put a sudden halt to the out-of-control locomotive that Franklin Roosevelt rode toward ever-bigger government and tore asunder FDR’s political coalition that had smothered the politics of America for most of the previous half-century.

Reagan never forgot who he was and where he came from. That is what endeared him to the majority of Americans.  On Election Day, when  a journalist asked Reagan what Americans saw in him, he asked:

Would you laugh if I told you that I think, maybe, they see themselves and that I’m one of them? ”I’ve never been able to detach myself or think that I, somehow, am apart from them.

Compare that statement to those of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  I dare you.

He was the oldest person ever elected president for a first term, but in the end Americans didn’t seem to mind because he was in such good health and looked much younger than his 68 years.  From the start, this humble man made his intentions very clear.  He would roll back communism where possible, strengthen national defense, cut taxes, and stop or slow the growth of government. Many disagreed with the details of his policies, but they accepted the direction he was setting and liked his positive, decisive leadership.

It was not coincidental that President Reagan’s rise in politics happened at the same time as the ascension of the religious right, the term given to millions of Christian Conservative voters who held the balance of power in many states.   Under Reagan,these people, like myself, became much more active in politics.

That is what is needed now. Strong Conservative Leadership. Reagan-esqe, three-legged stool Conservative Leadership.

Now, that would be evolution.

Americans deserve nothing less.

Until He Comes,

KJ

“We’re Not Here to Rebrand a Party. We’re Here to Rebuild a Country”

Those words were spoken by Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin during the Conservative Political Action Committee last Saturday.

And, as this week has progressed, we have found out exactly what she meant.

The Republicans, the Grand Old Party, if you will, are “preparing their aircraft” for 2016, like a bunch of Japanese Kamikazes preparing to take their final flight into oblivion.

Every day, since The Manchurian President’s re-Inauguration, new revelations seem to be originating from GOP Establishment Headquarters, deep in the bowels of the Beltway.

First, the rumors started swirling about a possible Jeb Bush run for the presidency in some sort of a vain glorious attempt to create the Republicans’ very own version of the Kennedy’s, minus Honey Fitz’ liquor smuggling and that whole “unfortunate incident” involving Teddy, a car, a bridge, and a beautiful young lady named Mary Jo Kopechne.

While I admire both Bush 41 and 43, I agree with the Rev’ruuuund Jacksoooon (as Rush says it). It’s time to “get out the Bushes!”

Ever since Obama ascended to the Throne of the Regime, the GOP has been doing their dead-level best to shoot themselves in their collective foot, and put themselves out of their misery. Instead of wisening up from their ill-fated attempts at winning the presidency throughout the running of Moderate Candidates, the geniuses of the GOP Elite have not only been holding on to their out-of-touch Moderation, they have been steadily moving on a Quixotic journey of embracing the cultural values of those clueless individuals known as “Liberals” or the “Looney Left”.

Not only have the Republican Power Brokers forgotten every cotton-pickin’ thing that they learned during the presidency of Ronaldus Magnus, they seem to be so enamored of the Democratic Party, that they want to be just like them.

In fact, the leader of the Republican Party, Speaker of the House,  John Boehner, recently said that he “absolutely trusts” President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm).

I hope Obama’s old “body man”, Reggie Love, doesn’t become jealous of their “special relationship”.

The GOP seems to be of the mistaken belief that, if they foreswear everything that the GOP has always stood for, completely alienating the Conservative base, which their party was founded upon, that they will gain a bunch of “swell new friends”. By promoting “Gay Marriage”, Gun Control, and a Path to Citizenship for illegal aliens (aka: amnesty), they believe that Homosexuals, *puff puff* Libertarians, and “formerly illegal” aliens will be beholden to them and vote them back into power.

Plus, the Republican Establishment has a lot in common with the Liberal Democratic Leadership: they both believe that they are “the smartest people in the room”, they both like to spend OUR money like sailors on 24 hour leave in Thailand, and they both believe that Reagan Conservatives, like myself, who live in Dixie and the rest of Flyover Country, are “bitterly clinging to their guns and religion”. They also seem to believe that morality is not an absolute, that ethics are situational, words are made for parsing, and truth is made for bending.

They also seem to be relying on the philosophy of  the Prophet of Global Warming, Al Gore and his role-model, P.T. Barnum, who once said,

There’s a sucker born every minute.

The GOP Elite somehow believe that if they place “social issues” on the back burner, or hold views similar to those found “across the aisle”, and make the American public believe that they are “fiscally Conservative”, that Americans will fall in love with the Republican Party.

There are some serious problems with this line of thinking by the Republican Establishment.

Ignoring “social issues” will not make them go away. Christians still make up 78% of our population, and our faith does not end when the preacher says,

Thanks for coming. We’ll see you next Sunday.

Further, as Ronald Reagan explained, Conservatism is a three legged stool:  Social Issues, Fiscal Issues, and National Defense.

For those of you who claim to be “Fiscal Conservatives”, you’re fooling yourselves.

By embracing “Social Liberalism”, you are not shrinking government…you are growing it.  Someone has to pay for the emergency services caused by a hedonistic lifestyle. Booze, pot, and umm…escorts (*cough*) cost money, and when things go wrong, i.e. accidents, shootings, disease, broken marriages, etc., the costs of these “social” matters, both emotional and fiscal, not only affect the individual, but family, friends, and strangers as well.

By tossing Reagan Conservatives, or “True Conservatives”, as we have been derisively called, aside, the Republican Party, and all those who call themselves “Fiscally Conservative and Socially Liberal” are  setting themselves up as the unwitting dupes of the Democratic Party and all of their nefarious schemes to “socially re-engineer” the Faith and Values Belief System of this country.

When Sarah Palin spoke of “rebuilding the country”, she was talking about far more than just the Herculean task ahead of us of repairing the economic damage done to our nation and its standing in the world, the Arctic Fox was also speaking about re-focusing our country on the things that made America the greatest country on the face of God’s green Earth.

Palin is a Christian American Conservative. So am I. We are a part of the Republican Party’s Conservative base, whom the Republican Power Brokers have treated so dismissively the last several years., which has only served to bite them in the hindquarters, come election time.

Now, they apparently are so arrogant and short-sighted, as to want to drive us away completely. 

As Ron White says,

You can’t fix stupid.

Apparently, the GOP wants to double-down on it.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Shame and Sequestration

Yesterday, the Godfather of Conservative Talk Radio, Rush Limbaugh, while speaking on the subject of sequestration, said,

Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in my life, I am ashamed of my country. To be watching all of this, to be treated like this, to have our common sense and intelligence insulted the way it’s being insulted? It just makes me ashamed. Seriously, man. Here we get worked up over $44 billion. That’s the total amount of money that will not be spent that was scheduled to be spent this year. In truth, we’re gonna spend more this year than we spent last year.

We’re just not gonna spend as much as was projected. It’s all baseline budgeting. There is no real cut below a baseline of zero. There just isn’t. Yet here they come, sucking us in, roping us in. Panic here, fear there: Crisis, destruction, no meat inspection, no cops, no teachers, no firefighters, no air traffic control. I’m sorry, my days of getting roped into all this are over. We have the media playing along with all this. The ruling class of both parties play along with all this. It’s insulting. I don’t know how else to describe it.

I’m into my 25th year.

I can’t tell you the number of times this has happened. This hit me yesterday. I’ve said the same things over and over for 25 years. Whether the Clinton presidency or the Obama presidency, whether it’s a Pelosi speakership or Tom Foley (who was speaker when I started), it’s the same stuff. It’s the same threats. It’s the same arguments over and over. Nothing ever changes! We just keep spending more money. We create more dependency, we get more and more irresponsible from one crisis to the next, all of them manufactured.

Except for the real crisis, which nobody ever addresses, and that is: We can’t afford any of this.

What’s happening here, folks, is we are being played for fools and being suckered — suckered into supporting the never-ending expansion of government, the wholesale destruction of the private economy. Everybody who joins in this debate under the premise that Obama puts forth, as well as debating the politics of this nonsense, is just being used to cover up what’s actually going on. Now, what’s going on is no great conspiracy. It’s no mystery. We’re spending much more money than we have.

The government is getting inexorably larger.

It’s less and less efficient at accomplishing anything. We’re creating more and more dependents. We’re robbing people of their dignity and humanity and of their opportunity to realize their dreams as they turn their lives over to the government. It’s like a never-ending cycle. The government makes the private sector smaller. There are fewer job opportunities. There’s less money in the private sector, less opportunity to accrue wealth. Income taxes and others threaten to go higher; they do go higher.

It all adds up to the government growing, the private sector shrinking, freedom being lost ever so slowly, and nobody ever talks about stopping this. Everybody gets sucked into debating the crisis of the moment according to the terms of the moment, without any context and relationship to the past and a knowable future and a relevant perusal of the present. These little debates take place within their own little universe, as though they’re unaffected by things that have happened in the past.

So if  sequestration actually happens, will the world as we know it come to an end? Hardly.

Back in September of 2012, fcw.com posted the following information:

The Obama administration has released its mandated report on how sequestration may be implemented, outlining in a nearly 400-page document detailed plans for cutting federal spending by $1.2 trillion.

The Office of Management and Budget released the report Sept. 14, a week later than the deadline set by the Sequestration Transparency Act. It includes line-by-line detail on more than 1,200 budget accounts, breaking down what is exempt from sequestration and what’s not.

Per the report, sequestration is estimated to result in a 9.4 percent cut in non-exempt defense discretionary funding, and 8.2 percent in non-defense, non-exempt discretionary funding. It would also cut 2 percent to Medicare, 7.6 percent to other non-exempt non-defense mandatory programs, and 10 percent to non-exempt, mandatory defense programs.

In the report and in a conference call with reporters, senior administration officials underscored their opposition to sequestration, which comes from the Budget Control Act of 2011. A “supercommittee” was chosen to hammer out agreed-on cuts, and when it failed to do so near the end of 2011, sequestration became the next step.

The last time America experienced a government shutdown was in 1995, when

…A wily Clinton politically outmaneuvered then-Speaker Newt Gingrich to turn the 20-day shutdown into a bruising PR defeat for the year-old Republican majority.

While Clinton had to eventually sacrifice on substance and put forward a budget that reflected much of what Gingrich and the Republicans wanted, he had set the narrative for his reelection campaign the next year: Clinton the moderate versus the radical Republicans in Congress.

That media narrative, combined with independent Ross Perot siphoning away mostly Republican votes in swing states, helped Clinton capture an 8-point victory in November of 1996.

Just who is responsible for Sequestration?

“The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.”

— President Obama, in the third presidential debate, Oct. 22, 2012

The president seems to have a selective memory. Per The Washington Post:

The battle over raising the debt ceiling consumed Washington in the summer of 2011, with Republicans refusing to agree to raise it unless spending was cut by an equivalent amount. Obama pressed but failed to get an agreement on raising revenue as part of the package. Woodward’s book details the efforts to come up with an enforcement mechanism that would make sure the cuts took place — and virtually every mention shows this was a White House gambit.

Here is a short summary of how it went down:

The White House proposed the idea of a compulsory trigger, with Sperling calling it an “automatic sequester,” though initially it was to include tax revenue, not just spending cuts. Boehner was “nervous” about using it as a budget tool.

Once tax increases were off the table, the White House staff came up with a sequestration plan that only had spending cuts and sold Harry Reid on the idea.

This is the third reference to the White House putting together the plan for sequester. Granted, they are using language from a congressional law from a quarter-century earlier, but that seems a thin reed on which to say this came from Congress. In fact, Lew had been a policy advisor to then House Speaker Tip O’Neill from 1979 to 1987, and so was familiar with the law.

Republicans agreed to the White House proposal for a sequester.

Republicans had to work through the night to understand the White House proposal.

Of course, the Republicans eventually caved and agreed to raise the debt ceiling…and, so here we are.

Obama is trying to pull a Clinton. The problem is…he’s not Slick Willie.

He does not have the people skills, or the ruthlessness of a Hillary to back him up.

Additionally, the New Media was not as prevalent back then. 

Knowing the Republican Establishment, they will probably cave at the last minute, once again, on their quest to become Democrat-Lite.

Which would be a pretty stupid move, considering they did not come up with the idea in the first place.

Until He Comes, 

KJ

Governor Chris Christie Wildly Popular…in New Jersey

New Jersey’s larger-than-life Governor has a larger-than-life popularity rating in the Garden State.

It’s the highest job approval Governor Chris Christie has ever had. At 74 percent, it’s the highest of any New Jersey Governor in the 17 years that Quinnipiac has been polling the state, and the highest of any Governor in the seven states that Quinnipiac polls now.

Seventy-one percent say Governor Christie deserves re-election.

“Barbara Buono, the State Senator who is the probable Democratic opponent for him [in the 2014 gubernatorial race] — he beats her 62 percent to 25 percent,” says Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Christie also performs strongly among those surveyed in a hypothetical matchup for the White House in 2016.

“If the Democrat was Andrew Cuomo or Hillary Clinton, Clinton beats him 49 percent to 45 percent — within the margin of error — and Cuomo trails him 54 percent to 36 percent in New Jersey,” Carroll explains.

Carroll says Christie’s response to Hurricane Sandy helped to boost his popularity.

Perhaps in “Joisey”, Mr. Carroll, but Governor Zeppelin’s (as New Jersey Conservatives have named him) “bromance” with President Barack Hussein Obama did absolutely nothing to endear himself to Conservatives in the rest of the country.

On November 19, 2012, the New York Times reported on Americans’ Post-Romney-loss reaction to Christie’s “bromance”:

A few days after Hurricane Sandy shattered the shores of New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie picked up the phone to take on a different kind of recovery work: taming the Republican Party fury over his effusive embrace of President Obama.

On Nov. 3, Mr. Christie called Rupert Murdoch, the influential News Corporation chief and would-be kingmaker, who had warned in a biting post on Twitter that the governor might be responsible for Mr. Obama’s re-election.

Mr. Christie told Mr. Murdoch that amid the devastation, New Jersey needed friends, no matter their political party, according to people briefed on the discussion. But Mr. Murdoch was blunt: Mr. Christie risked looking like a spoiler unless he publicly affirmed his support for Mitt Romney, something the governor did the next day.

Mr. Christie has been explaining himself to Republicans ever since. His lavish praise for Mr. Obama’s response to the storm, delivered in the last days of the presidential race, represented the most dramatic development in the campaign’s final stretch. Right or wrong, conventional wisdom in the party holds that it influenced the outcome.

But behind the scenes, the intensity of the reaction from those in Mr. Christie’s party caught him by surprise, interviews show, requiring a rising Republican star to try to contain a tempest that left him feeling deeply misunderstood and wounded.

The governor, who had spent days delivering bear hugs and words of sympathy to shellshocked residents, resented the pressure to choose between the state he loves with fervent, Springsteen-fueled ferocity and his future as a leader in the Republican Party.

In New Jersey, Mr. Christie’s politics-be-damned approach to the storm seemed to represent a moment of high-minded crisis management for a governor frequently defined by his public diatribes and tantrums. Mr. Christie locked arms with Mr. Obama, flew with him on Marine One, talked with him daily and went out of his way to praise him publicly as “outstanding,” “incredibly supportive” and worthy of “great credit.”

But in the days after the storm, Mr. Christie and his advisers were startled to hear from out-of-state donors to Mr. Romney, who had little interest in the hurricane and viewed him solely as a campaign surrogate, demanding to know why he had stood so close to the president on a tarmac. One of them questioned why he had boarded Mr. Obama’s helicopter, according to people briefed on the conversations.

It did not help that Mr. Romney had not called Mr. Christie during those first few days, people close to the governor say.

The tensions followed Mr. Christie to the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Las Vegas last week. At a gathering where he had expected to be celebrated, Mr. Christie was repeatedly reminded of how deeply he had offended fellow Republicans.

“I will not apologize for doing my job,” he emphatically told one of them in a hotel hallway at the ornate Wynn Resort.

His willingness to work closely with the president has cast a shadow over Mr. Christie’s prospects as a national candidate, prompting a number of Republicans to wonder aloud whether he is a reliable party leader.

“It hurt him a lot,” said Douglas E. Gross, a longtime Republican operative in Iowa who has overseen several presidential campaigns in the state. “The presumption is that Republicans can’t count on him.”

Republican voters in Iowa, the first state to select presidential candidates, “don’t forget things like this,” Mr. Gross said.

With Mr. Romney’s loss still an open sore, Mr. Christie’s conduct remains a topic of widespread discussion in the party.

And, it remains a topic of discussion to this day.

Gov. Zeppelin, in his own way, has become a loathsome symbol of the Vichy Republican Establishment, who have sold all their Conservative Principles and any integrity that they may have once had, in an ill-fated attempt to appeal to the squishy middle of the American voting public, while ignoring the date who brought them to the dance, the Conservative Base.

Unfortunately for the Grand Old Geniuses, their fictional “Moderate Base” exists predominately up in the Northeast.

Average Americans living in the Heartland are still Conservative by nature, with actual morals and ethics, which aren’t situational.

You’ve heard the old saying,

If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything?

Well, evidently Gov. Christie and the rest of the Republican Moderate Elite never have.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Great and Powerful Obama (Pay No Attention to the Marxist Behind the Curtain)

As I was sitting at my keyboard, waiting for some sort of divine inspiration, as often happens, something struck me (and no, it wasn’t my lovely bride backhanding me to take out the garbage).

Take a look at everything that President Barack Hussein Obama has been pushing since his misbegotten re-election:

1.) Gun Confiscation

2.) Amnesty for Illegal Immigration

3.) Gay Marriage (even in our National Cathedral)

4.) Fighter Jets to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

5.) Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense

6.) John Kerry as Secretary of State

7. ) And last, but not least, raising taxes on EVERYBODY

This is HOPE AND CHANGE?

Obama ascended to the throne of the Regime during a period when our nation was experiencing a period of economic recession, by appealing to the masses by promising that if he was elected, the oceans would rise and fall, the sun would come out tomorrow (Hey, that sounds like a song. Oh…never mind.) and everybody would receive a unicorn in their backyard. (Okay. He didn’t really promise that. But, heck, he promised everything else.)

Obama definitely has a mission. But what is it?

I mean, it’s not as radical as Valdimir Lenin’s was, is it?

Lenin endeavored to gain support by broadcasting slogans such as “Bread, Land, Peace and All Power to the Soviets.” To people suffering from famine, this promise hit the spot. Yet in elections for the Russian Constituent Assembly in late November 1917, only a quarter of voters cast ballots for the Bolsheviks. Lenin overturned the results and sent armed guards to prevent meetings of the democratic assembly. This made it virtually impossible for the Russian people to voice their concerns in a democratic way.

The years from 1917 to 1920 became known as “war communism” due to the methods the Bolsheviks used to push their political agenda. In 1918, the party was renamed the Russian Communist Party. Lenin and his communist cohorts endeavored to put Marx’s tenets of belief into practice. This marked the beginning of the Russian Civil War, which lasted from 1918 until 1922. When the war ended, the Soviet Union formed — also known as the U.S.S.R., the Soviet Union included Russia and 15 bordering states.

Lenin was aware that the upper class wouldn’t willingly give up land or wealth, so he created the New Economic Policy (NEP) to legislate redistributing land — taking it from the nobility and giving it to the poor. Upholding the necessary phases that Marx outlined, Lenin initiated the Red Terror, a threatening fear campaign led by the Bolsheviks. His goal was mass murder, which he accomplished through three main methods.

Man-made famine was Lenin’s most successful tool. He knew that if he could break the peasantry, he’d have full control. Lenin engineered famines by requiring peasants to sell their crops to him at virtually no profit, using the rationale that he needed the crops to support his army. The peasantry was so indignant that they reduced crop production drastically, leading to a full-scale civil war. The exact numbers vary, but tens of millions of people starved and millions died.

Lenin also instituted slave labor camps. Anyone who disagreed with Lenin’s rule was sent to work at one of these camps, where millions more suffered and died

And, he executed his detractors to silence their voices. During the Red Terror, hundreds of thousands of detractors were put to death. Victims included members of the bourgeoisie, White Army prisoners of war, socialists, Czarist sympathizers and innocent civilians.

I know. The guillotines have not been set up…yet. And, citizens have not been sent to Siberian internment camps…yet.

However…

With the support of a once-noble political party that has been taken over by Far Left Radicals, and a once-objective Fourth Estate, which has morphed into a government-backed propaganda arm, flooding television, radio, internet, and print sources with Obama worship, misinformation, and downright lies, about both the Lightbringer’s accomplishments and anyone who dares to oppose him (ask Sarah Palin…and Mitt Romney), that the shear audacity of it all would make Goebbels blush, Obama has been able to begin the process of turning “the shining city on a hill” into a third-world barrio, and the transformation of the Greatest Country in the World into just another Democratic Socialist nation, such as can be found in Europe.

Norman Mattoon Thomas, six-time Socialist candidate for president, said the following in a 1944 speech:

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But, under the name of “liberalism,” they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation without knowing how it happened … The Democratic Party has adopted our (Socialist) platform.

And…here we are. So, what now? Do we just give up and say, even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come?

Well…while I look forward to the day the trump will sound, in the meanwhile, I am still living in a sacred, God-given country, whose Founders not only believed in The Creator, but, also acknowledged Him in our Founding Documents.

During his radio program on January 18th, Rush Limbaugh made the following statement of guarded optimism:

I have a sense that it’s gonna be okay. I can’t get specific, and I know it flies in the face of reality. I don’t know anymore than that. I’m not a soothsayer, nor am I a seer. I can’t predict the future. But I’m fairly confident — and it’s not because of the second term tradition that happens to every president. Some scandal or something comes along and distracts them and takes down the president. I’m not putting faith in anything like that.

…I just think that it is going to be an event or series of events that reorients people in the way they’re looking at Obama. I do think that’s gonna happen, and it’s not gonna happen because I sit here and tell people who he is and what he’s like. I’ve been doing that for four years, and so have a lot of other people. Now, I’m not saying the four years have been wasted. We’ve built the foundation.

When the event or events happen that bring about this reality that I think is gonna occur, having this foundation, people saying, “Oh, yeah! You know what? Maybe they were right” is gonna happen. “You know, I should have listened to what Limbaugh or somebody else was saying.” Maybe it is a little overreaching, going too far. It’s rooted in a belief that a lot of people — and I don’t know how many and I don’t know if it’s a majority.

But certainly a lot of people voted for Obama having no idea what was really going to happen. Now, that could be blind faith. I try never to tell myself stories. Constantly. I never tell myself feel-good stories. I try to remain grounded in Realville where I’m the mayor every day. But I do believe that a lot of people will see this. We saw the first wave of this, by the way, when the paychecks went out and the take-home pay was smaller because the tax cut on payroll taxes was restored.

There’s gonna be more as Obamacare implements. At some point, all of these economic policies are going to hit. At some point the government, the Federal Reserve or somebody, is gonna run out of tricks to delay what’s coming. What’s coming is gonna eventually happen. Reality will eventually triumph here, and when it does I think it’s what’s gonna constitute this.

I’m not saying sit back and ignore everything else and don’t oppose Obama. I’m saying nothing like that. I don’t want anybody to get nervous here. I’m not gonna do that. I’m not waving the white flag and I’m not surrendering. I think the Republicans are. I think you better get used to the fact there isn’t going to be any serious legislative opposition to Obama for the next year. If there is and I’m pleasantly surprised, cool.

I agree with Maha Rushie. It is rough out there…and going to get rougher. 

However, by the Grace of God, and the indomitable will of the American people, we can turn this around.

Never give up. Never surrender.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama Sworn In. Continues Campaigning.

Inauguration Day is over. Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) is now President of these United States…again. But, is he Chief Executive…or Chief Campaigner?

Reuters.com reports that

Obama, who won a second term by defeating Republican Mitt Romney after a bitter campaign, will now face many of the same problems that dogged his first four years: persistently high unemployment, crushing government debt and a deep partisan divide. The war in Afghanistan, which Obama is winding down, has dragged on for over a decade.

He won an end-of-year fiscal battle against Republicans, whose poll numbers have continued to sag, and appears to have gotten them to back down, at least temporarily, from resisting an increase in the national debt ceiling.

And Obama faces a less-dire outlook than he did when he took office in 2009 at the height of a deep U.S. recession and world economic crisis. The economy is growing again, though slowly.

But he still faces a daunting array of challenges.

Among them is a fierce gun-control debate inspired by a school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, last month, a tragedy he invoked in his speech.

He said America must not rest until “all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.”

Obama’s appeals for bipartisan cooperation will remind many Americans of his own failure to meet a key promise when he came to power – to act as a transformational leader who would fix a dysfunctional Washington.

His speech was light on foreign policy, with no mention of the West’s nuclear standoff with Iran, the civil war in Syria, dealings with an increasingly powerful China or confronting al Qaeda’s continued threat as exemplified by the recent deadly hostage crisis in Algeria.

But Obama said: “We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully … We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom.”

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had declared in 2010 that his top goal was to deny Obama re-election, congratulated the president and expressed a willingness to work together, saying a second term “represents a fresh start.”

But some Republicans responded skeptically. “It was a very, very progressive speech, to put it in the best possible light,” said Republican strategist Rich Galen. “He’s not running for election anymore.”

But, Rich…what if that is all he knows how to do?

Back n November 28, 2012, as the fight over the Fiscal Cliff and Debt Ceiling was heating up, mediaite .com published the following insight:

Campaigning is comfortable territory for politicians and it is an especially cozy place for President Obama to occupy – he is an extraordinary campaigner and has spent the majority of his political career on the trail seeking one or the other public office. But is this an effective tool for governing? One need only look at Obama’s accomplishments in his first term to determine that it is not.

The president did not need to campaign to pass the stimulus act – his party’s electoral mandate after the 2008 elections was broad enough and the financial crisis so dire that virtually any measure the president advocated for would have been passed. The president did, however, need to push hard to pass his health care reform law – a program which remains deeply unpopular and whose future is forever in doubt.

The only reassurance that Democrats who support the Affordable Care Act have that the law will not be repealed (more likely, dramatically amended) by a future Republican administration or GOP-dominated Congress is that broad entitlement programs is rarely repealed after it is fully enacted because vulnerable members of the public become dependent on those programs. Those who hold this view cite the legislative accomplishments of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” to support this thesis. But Democrats who idolize Johnson and seek parallels between the 36th president and the 44th have few to choose from.

Johnson was a famously passionate negotiator and a dogged pursuer of legislative compromise – so long as ultimate goals were agreed to at the end of the day. The tails of his tireless efforts to strike deals between members of his party and Republicans in Congress (some of whom he had better relationships with) remain legendary.

Numerous accounts, notably those of reporter Bob Woodward in The Price of Politics, suggest that Obama is more likely to alienate his opponents in a tense negotiation than to win them over. Woodward noted that Vice President Joe Biden was the administration’s link to Republican members of Congress when several debt reduction commissions were convened in Obama’s first term. Given the vice president’s demeanor during the 2012 campaign, and his concerns for his own political future, it is unlikely that Biden can serve in such a role in Obama’s second term.

An executive in the White House would not attempt to strike compromise by directing his supporters to harangue his Congressional opposition through Facebook posts and Twitter-based guilt trips. Such tactics are impediments to real compromise, but these are the tools of Obama’s first resort.

Republicans have signaled their willingness to compromise by increasing tax rates on high earners and Democrats have begun to see the light on the need for dramatic reforms to entitlement programs. But the willingness to compromise does not automatically translate into a forthcoming bargain. The president seems set on making the political environment toxic and to make compromise less likely in order to secure the notion that he won a mandate in November.

It was announced recently that Obama for America was regrouping as Organizing for America, Obama’s very own bunch of Brown Shirts, who would provide”feet on the ground”  in an effort to intimidate and garner public support for Obama’s pet projects.

To recap…America has a divisive leader who has substituted perpetual campaigning for effective governance of our country, assisted by his own personal army of sycophantic supporters.

While the GOP Establishment are sounding like Neville Chamberlain.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama’s Gun Control Announcement: Some Republicans Come Out Swinging.Others Bow Down.

By now, some of y’all are saying: “KJ, give it a rest. Why are you continuing to write about this? It’s over.”

No, it isn’t. As the late Senator John Blutarsky said,

It’s not over until we say it’s over. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

But, I digress…

The Republican Party seems to be split in this fight. However, it appears that there are some of our public servants, who are actually ready to fight on behalf of us “bitter clingers”.

Like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas,

Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas said Thursday that Barack Obama is “high on his own power” with regard to the president’s announced efforts on gun control. Speaking on Laura Ingraham’s radio talk show, Cruz, who was just elected to the Senate last November, said “this is a president who has drunk the Kool-Aid.”

“He is feeling right now high on his own power, and he is pushing on every front, on guns,” Cruz said. “And I think it’s really sad to see the president of the United States exploiting the murder of children and using it to push his own extreme, anti-gun agenda. I think what the president is proposing and the gun control proposals that are coming from Democrats in the Senate are, number one, unconstitutional, and number two, they don’t work. They’re bad policy.”

Cruz told Ingraham that he does not believe Obama will be successful in passing gun control legislation and that the political ramifications of pursuing such laws could be bad for Democrats.

“I think he’s going to pay a serious political price, and I think the price that’s going to be paid on this is going to manifest in Senate races in 2014, in some red states,” Cruz said. “And there have got to be some Democrats who are up for reelection in 2014 who are very, very nervous right now that President Obama is picking this fight.”

But, then, there are the Vichy Republicans, like New Jersey’s own “Governor Zeppelin”, Chris Christie,

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is labeling “reprehensible” the National Rifle Association ad that brought President Barack Obama’s daughters into the gun-control debate.

The NRA ad accused the president of being a hypocrite for allowing his daughters to be protected by armed Secret Service agents but not embracing armed guards for schools.

The Republican governor and father of four said at a briefing Thursday in Trenton that the children of public figures should be off-limits to political attacks.

Christie again refused to take a position on Obama’s call for a federal assault weapons ban. The governor says he has no influence over what Congress and the president decide.

Christie has said he supports New Jersey’s current gun laws. They include an assault weapons ban in place for 21 years.

What a Tower of Jello. 

Coincidentally, what “Useless” said, actually happens to be what the President’s mouthpiece, Jay Carney, said.

So, what is The Regime going to do about the NRA? Their membership is skyrocketing, thanks to their brave, level-headed stand against Obama’s blatant attempt at gun confiscation.

Ben Shapiro, reporting for Breitbart.com, tells us the Administration’s plan:

The Obama administration puzzled many observers by leaving its campaign infrastructure largely in place in the aftermath of President Obama’s re-election win. Now we know why. According to Stephanie Cutter, President Obama’s former deputy campaign manager on Ed Schultz’s MSNBC program:

President Obama’s network across this country, grassroots individuals, who organize, volunteered with their time to get the president reelected are much more powerful than the NRA lobby. And I think that you can expect to see that network activated, very soon. And for good reason.

Cutter’s words should frighten Americans accustomed to the usual ins-and-outs of politics. Unlike prior presidents, who leveraged their campaign into power, then got down to the business of governing, Obama is running a permanent campaign intended to destroy his political opposition completely.

This has been his agenda for years – only now, the administration is pursuing full-scale opposition openly from within the White House. In the past, the President relied on his allies in the 501(c)3 charitable world to do his dirty work.

Last year, for example, President Obama set his lackeys at Media Matters and Color of Change on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which was then pushing voter ID laws. After George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, Obama quickly inserted himself into the proceedings, declaring that Trayvon looked like his fictional son. In doing so, he lent air to the mainstream media narrative that Zimmerman had shot Martin in cold blood, and used Florida’s so-called “stand your ground” law as cover – and ALEC had pushed for “stand your ground.” In reality, nobody at the Sanford Police Department ever cited “stand your ground” as the rationale for Zimmerman’s release, and Zimmerman never said “stand your ground.” This was all an attempt to gin up public indignation at “stand your ground” laws, and by extension, ALEC. The Obama-generated assault on ALEC ended with ALEC disassociating from its more controversial political positions, as organizations like Coca-Cola, seeking to avoid scrutiny, cut ties.

That wasn’t the first time Obama had used his allies outside the administration to attempt to destroy political opposition. After Rush Limbaugh called media moth Sandra Fluke a “slut,” Obama jumped in to call her with his condolences – though he was nowhere to be found when the media was labeling Gov. Sarah Palin a “c***” (actually, Obama’s super PAC took $1 million from Bill Maher, the cretin who said that). Obama then helped push a Media Matters-led boycott on Rush’s advertisers.

Now it’s the NRA. The NRA was always the target of the Sandy Hook-exploiting media. The NRA receives no public funding, and writes no laws. Yet the media immediately suggested that the NRA abandon its positions and those of its members or face public wrath. No such suggestion was ever made with regard to the ACLU’s defense of ultra-violent video games. That’s because the NRA is a serious opponent to the left’s public sway. And so it must be destroyed.

To summarize, the Republicans are hardly unified in their opposition to Obama’s attempt at “gun confiscation”. There are some who are taking a pro-gun stance, some who are taking a stance in favor of gun control, and finally, there is the Republican Leadership, who are standing in the shadows.

Thank the Lord for the National Rifle Association. At least, they have the testi…err… intestinal fortitude to stand up to the tyrannical despot occupying OUR House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.

They’re doing the Republican Establishment’s job for them. All we’re hearing from the Moderate Elite is **crickets**.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Fiscal Cliff: Congress Takes Their Toys and Goes Home

As you’ve know doubt heard by now, even if you’re one of those “‘low information voters” , with your head stuck up your…ummm…I-pod, Congress is at a standstill, regarding negotiations over Obama’s Marxist, Class Warfare-based, ludicrous plan to over-tax Americans who make over $400,000 per year, while offering no spending cuts to reign in his Soviet-styled out-of-control Mega-Government.

So, Congress…both sides, both Houses, have pulled a Cartman:

Sc@#w you, guys. I’m going home!

Per The Washington Times:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday he plans to send his chamber home for Christmas and then reconvene on Dec. 27 to try to work through the “fiscal cliff” — even as House Republicans said they’ll keep their troops in town to try to strike a deal.

The moves come as both sides jockey for the upper hand in trying to avoid blame for a possible breakdown in the budget talks to avoid the fiscal cliff. House Republicans are poised to pass a bill Thursday that would prevent spending cuts and most tax increases, and have said they’ll stay here to get a deal done. But there won’t be anyone on the other side of the table — at least not until next week.

“We want to be able to get home for a few days for Christmas, even though we will be back on the Thursday after Christmas,” Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, said in opening the Senate’s session.

Senators will be attending a funeral service Friday for the late Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii Democrat and the chamber’s senior lawmaker, who died this week. Many also will attend his funeral services this weekend in Hawaii.

“I honor the legacy of Dan Inouye; I’m going to the memorial service; I’m going to the funeral,” Mr. Reid told reporters later.

Nothing like blaming a dead guy, Dinghy Harry.

Across the Capitol, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said his lawmakers want to stay in town to try to get a deal done and will stay in Washington even if they pass their own “Plan B” approach to stave off tax increases and rewrite the looming $110 billion in spending cuts due in less than two weeks.

“We do not intend to send members home after this vote. We want to stay here. We want to avoid the fiscal cliff from happening,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at a brief press conference. “I think the decision is for the White House and Senate Democrats to come join us so we can avoid the tax hike on the American people and avoid the fiscal cliff.”

But Mr. Reid said the House Republicans should forget about passing their bill and not bother sending the Senate anything, but instead go deal with President Obama.

“We’re here to reach out to our Republicans in the House and tell them, get back and start talking to the president,” Mr. Reid said.

Meanwhile, in the House, and on the other side of the aisle, Reuters reports

With only 11 days left for bickering politicians to prevent automatic tax hikes and spending cuts, U.S. stock futures fell sharply on the news of the rebuke to Boehner.

The Ohio congressman had hoped to demonstrate Republican unity by passing a bill through the House, known as “Plan B,” that would limit income-tax increases to the wealthiest sliver of the population – those earning $1 million and more, a far smaller slice of taxpayers than Obama wants to pay higher taxes.

But Boehner canceled the vote after failing to round up enough support from his party because many conservative Republicans are opposed to tax hikes on even the richest wage-earning Americans.

“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Boehner said in a statement after huddling with other Republican leaders.

The White House pledged to work with Congress to reach a deal as quickly as possible.

“We are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement.

The bill, had it passed, would have put Republicans on record as supporting a tax increase on those who earn more than $1 million per year, breaking with decades of orthodoxy. It won the blessing of influential anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, but other conservative groups fiercely opposed it and many rank-and-file members said they would not support it.

Obama wants to raise taxes on families earning more than $400,000, a much lower threshold.

Unless these spineless, self-serving jellyfish sitting up on Capitol Hill return to work on Thursday, acting like adults, and performing the job they were all elected to do, average Americans are going to get clobbered with the biggest tax hike in American History.

To quote the late Slim Pickens from “Blazing Saddles”, 

What in the Wide Wide World of Sports is a’goin’ on here?

Hold on to something. Here comes another world-famous KJ Rant:

I want Conservative Leadership. I want somebody to stand up on their hind legs and tell Obama the way the cow ate the cabbage. I want someone to actually give a hoot ‘n holler about the average American, not the special interest groups, not the lobbyists, not “the smartest people in the room”…me.

I want an American President and competent American Congress people.

I want a dadblamed budget, first. I want them to be good stewards of MY money. Not their “revenue”. I want someone to stand up and be a MAN…or a WOMAN.

I am so dadgum tired of mealy-mouth squishes and political niceties and expediences, I could spit. Too many Americans are out of work and doing without this Christmas, while the three ring circus performs unabated under the Big Top on Capital Hill.

The American people are tired of cleaning up after the donkeys and the elephants.  

/rant off

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Fiscal Cliff: The Spartan Defense

As the date for the Bush Tax Cuts to cease looms ever closer, it appears that the Republicans might actually be trying to man up and mount a defense, reminiscent of the Spartans defending the pass through the mountains in the movie “300″.

Foxnews.com reports that

House Republican leaders said Wednesday they’ve done their job in negotiations to solve the looming fiscal crisis, while President Obama is returning to the campaign trail to sell tax hikes that studies show won’t have much, if any, effect on solving the problem.

“We have done our part by putting revenue on the table,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Cantor and fellow House leaders have agreed to close tax loopholes to generate revenue to reduce the $1.1 trillion annual deficit. But they argue the president has yet to say publicly what cuts he will make to the federal budget — specifically to costly entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — to reduce the deficit.

They also say the president’s plan to extend tax cuts only to middle-class Americans will not generate enough revenue to significantly reduce the deficit.

The leaders made their argument the same day Gene Sperling, director of the president’s National Economic Council, told House Democrats that failing to extend Bush-era tax cuts to the top 2 percent of income earners could trickle down to hit the middle class, sources tell Fox News.

On Wednesday afternoon, the president ramped up his public pitch amid a backdrop of hand-picked, middle-class voters at the White House.

“Right now, as we speak, Congress can pass a law that would prevent a tax hike on the first $250,000 of everybody’s income,” he said. “And that means that 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses wouldn’t see their income taxes go up by a single dime.”

He also urged Americans to use social media to try to persuade their congressional representatives to take the deal – telling them to use Facebook and their Twitter accounts. Obama even announced a new White House hashtag My2K — a reference to the estimated $2,200 tax increase that a typical middle-class family of four would see if the Bush tax cuts expire.

Of course, when word got out that Obama and his minions came up with that goofy #Mt2K idea, Conservatives immediately started hijacking it. Your’s truly was no exception:

kingsjester ‏@kingsjester1

Our money – Washington’s “revenue” – #My2k

kingsjester ‏@kingsjester1

“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” – #My2k

kingsjester ‏@kingsjester1

We’re all going to be too poor to pay attention – #My2k

Have you ever noticed how these modern Democrats try desperately to mask Marxism with the cloak of nobleness?

For example:

We’ve got to raise taxes! It’s for the children!

Republicans want control of your uterus!

and, of course,

The Republicans want you all back in chains!

How…noble? No. Self-serving.

If the Dems were as noble as they claim to be, they would keep their promises.

Like, the promises they made in the Debt Ceiling Compromise last August:

House Speaker John Boehner had to rely on a blend of Republicans and Democrats to push the bill through his chamber, with some conservatives unhappy about key provisions in the compromise.

House Democrats don’t want to carry Republicans’ water, though. Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., said earlier Monday that every Democrat who votes for the bill takes a Republican off the hook — he urged colleagues to wait until Republicans put at least 200 votes on the board “before we give them cover.”

Liberal Democrats are unhappy in part because the first phase of the plan relies solely on spending cuts — $900 billion worth of them.

The second phase of the plan relies on a special committee to come up with roughly $1.5 trillion in additional deficit reduction. Both sides are wary about what that process could produce, in terms of entitlement reform and tax reform.

And conservatives are particularly agitated about a provision that would enact sweeping defense cuts if the committee’s recommendations are not approved by the end of the year. Plus some are peeved that, while the package would call for a vote on a balanced-budget amendment, it would not require its approval in order for the debt ceiling to be increased.

About those Spending Cuts…they never happened.

This scenario, concerning the battle on the edge of the Fiscal Cliff, is, actually just a continuation from the recent presidential campaign.

On one side, you have Obama and the Democrats, playing the class warfare card for all it’s worth, blaming those eeevil rich people (I never got a job from a poor man.) and those wascally wepublicans (The Dems are huntin’ Entitlements. Heheheheheh.) for standing in the way of Baracky Claus delivering all the free stuff that his base really, really wants…err…needs.

On the other side is Speaker John Boehner and the Republicans, trying to man  up and find a Conservative spine among all that Moderation, in order to put on a good show for the home folks.

How long the Republicans will hold to their convictions remains to be seen.

This bunch, who gave us Mitt Romney, the candidate who thought that Obama was a good guy, who is just in over his head, seems to suffer from the same indecisiveness as Romney’s Campaign.

They can’t seem to figure out whether to stand and fight against Obama’s tax increases, go back into negotiations, or, just drop their guns and run.

(By the way…is anybody out there interested in two WW II French Army Rifles? Dropped once. Never shot.)

The question remains…are the Republicans going to be Spartans? Or, Vichy French?

Until He comes,

KJ