CAFTA is Spanish for Another Sellout...

The House and Senate have yet again chopped away another piece of the American middle class. They passed the Central American Free Trade Agreement and sold out the American people yet again. This bill passed in the 11th hour by only 2 votes and has been described as “Lets Make a Deal” legislation. The House vote, supposed to take 15 minutes, dragged on for an hour as negotiations swirled around the floor among GOP leaders and rank-and-file members reluctant to vote for the agreement. It make me very angry that so much pork was promised for the upcoming Highway and Mass Transit bill to get this bill passed. This will have a huge impact on the textiles and citrus fruit industries. Congress says that this will only account for 1% of all trade. I ask them how we can afford to trade away 1% of our jobs and economy for the benefit of a few?

I am so tired of hearing how these deals are good for business and will create jobs. How do you create good jobs in this country when we ship more industries out of the country? We keep losing industries and don’t manufacture much in this country anymore and we end up with a lot of cheap Chinese products in a Wal-Mart. This will only continue to deepen the trade deficit. They tell us its good for business but I have watched my IRA, 401K, Mutual Funds and stocks spin their wheels for the last 4-5 years. How is that helping us investors?

We need to put term limits on Congress and start electing people that will look after the American people and stop selling us out to lobbyists. This goes for the President as well. Do the job we elected you to do. Shut down the southern border and stop sending jobs oversees. This has gone on long enough. Its time for real statesmen and not backroom dealing politicians…

Political Hypocrisy...

Am I the only one that finds it very amusing that Senator John Kerry has demanded that The White House release all of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ documents and memos in their entirety? This is the same guy that would not release his SF-180 military document until well after the election and only after he was pressured into it.

He said, “We cannot do our duty if either Judge Roberts or the Bush administration hides elements of his professional record.”

And “The American people should know whether John Roberts will protect their constitutional rights if confirmed as a justice to the court.”

I feel so much better knowing that Senator Kerry is looking out for my constitutional rights. What about my rights to know, based on that SF-180, the truth about your military service?

Kerry is not even a member of the Judicial Committee. Why is it that these hammerheads in Congress feel the need to weigh in on everything that is none of there business and avoid doing what is supposed to be their business…

Personal Savings at All Time Low...

This past Sunday the Washington Post ran a series of stories about the drop off in personal savings and investment in IRA and 401K retirement plans. They report that personal savings is at an all time low. Also, fewer people are making contributions to retirement plans. This has Congress worried and they plan on passing some legislation to make it easier for people to save for retirement. How the heck can they make any easier?? How hard is if for someone to open an IRA and contribute money to it each year? Walk up to your payroll office and ask for a 401K-enrollment form at work. We need Congress to make this easier for us? Once again Congress refuses to do anything meaningful and now want to try and make a very easy task even easier. Yea right!

This is a serious situation and I fear that many people are not going to have any money for retirement. What do you do if don’t have a 401K or IRA and no pension at work? Social Security will not be enough to survive and that’s all they will have to live on. Far too many people have no knowledge of what it takes to live in a budget and save money. They don’t feel the need to start saving for retirement until its too late. They have run up huge debt on credit cards and use the equity in their home to pay them off. Not only will they not have any money for retirement, they wont have a home to live in. Many of these people make good salaries and are just very irresponsible with their money. I fell that we will start to see this decline of the standard of living for retired people in the very near future.

Another thing that upsets me is that Congress says in the future they may need a means test to determine if you qualify for Social Security. That will mean that my wife and I may never see a dime in Social Security because we have worked hard and saved in IRA and 401K accounts and paid in are whole lives. We will be left out to be sure the people who have lived irresponsible lives are taken care of. Each year people get a summary letter from the Social Security Administration that shows what he or she would get in benefits and also a report showing how much they made each year. I think that if means testing becomes a fact, it should factor in the salaries people made in their working years. A person should not be allowed a full benefit if they squandered all their money instead of being responsible…

America's Newspaper... Yea Right...

The Washington Post has once again frosted my butt with its editorial policy this past Sunday. I went to the Outlook section and became upset. There were 3 articles on the front page of this section. The top editorial was from Candida Crew, a “freelance journalist” who says, “… why should our country, with Blair so much in Bush’s pocket, and so much a part of the Iraq fray, have continued to get off scot-free?” This whole piece went on to say the reason for the London bombings was “Blair’s co-dependent love affair with George Bush and our repellant involvement in Iraq”. After reading this I began to get a bit steamed. More Bush bashing.

The 2nd editorial starts out by saying that Senator Richard Durbin was just “careless” in his statements comparing U.S. interrogation practices to those of a Soviet gulag. Then Juliette Kayyem went on to say, “… in the super-charged torture debates, its much easier for the Bush administration to focus on the critics’ choice of word than on the interrogation practices themselves”. Once again more Bush bashing. The rest of her piece goes on to give her “legal” opinion of the “torture” occurring at Guantanamo Bay and how Congress should regulate interrogations by Americans.

The 3rd piece by Elliot Cohen is how he as a father and former hawk on the Iraq war is now questioning his thoughts about the war now that his son, an Army Officer and Ranger will be going to Iraq. His first paragraph gets right to his point by criticizing Bush and his speech at Ft Bragg last week. He says, “Our oldest son now dresses like the impassive soldiers who served as stage props for that event…” Now he has second thoughts about his whole belief on American Middle East policy and Bush’s handling of things.

I voted for President Bush but I am not a huge fan of his. I feel he has let us down in many areas but I still support him. I get really upset when I see the Washington Post, and other MSM, continue to print so much anti-Bush rhetoric. One of these days I will actually do what I keep promising and cancel my subscription to the Post…

Good Money After Bad...

The G8 Summit is over and already there are some who whining that not enough was being done in terms of monetary aid and debt relief for African and other 3rd world countries. In my opinion this is just a waste of good money after bad. I am very opposed to giving monetary aid to any foreign country. Handing a check to leaders in most 3rd world countries is just wrong. These countries have proven over and over again that the money ends up in private accounts and a miniscule amount makes it to the people who need it the most. It is no wonder that these countries are falling further behind.

My suggestion would be to offer these countries a “shopping list” instead of money. Things on the shopping list could be farm equipment, food processing equipment, electronic equipment, electrical producing and distribution equipment, health supplies and these sorts of things. Then when the list comes back whoever is overseeing the operation would place an order with John Deer or International Harvester for the farm equipment, General Electric or some other large manufacturers of electrical and electronic equipment. This could be done for everything on the shopping list. If we don’t manufacture it in this country let the other G8 nation that does put it on their shopping list. By doing this money spent would produce jobs and keep the money in this country. It makes no sense to me to give a country cash and then they go to China and buy the product, if they even buy any at all. I hate the idea of my taxes being turned over in a check to a corrupt 3rd world leadership.

I am also very upset by the idea of increasing any aid to the Palestinians. This is not a country and has no real established controlling government or leadership. The per capita aid being given them is over 20 times higher than that being given to African nations. This is a group of people so poorly led over the last 30 years that they have been thrown out of every Arab county in which they have settled. Until the Palestinians can show themselves to be in control of their leadership and the leadership in control of the situation they should not receive any more monetary aid. The oil rich nations of the Middle East are the one that should be supplying aid to the Palestinians, and I don’t mean paying the families of homicide bombers. These countries are gouging us for oil now. Let them spend some of the more than $2 a gallon I pay now to truly help the Palestinians. I don’t think that will ever happen because they need the Palestinians to be downtrodden to justify the anti Israeli hatred…

Clinton To The UN...

This past weekend I was at the local watering hole talking with a friend of mine who is a U.S. Senate staffer with the Armed Forces Committee. We were talking some baseball, weather and politics. This is when he floated an idea of the White House withdrawing John Bolton’s U. N. nomination and replacing it with Bill Clinton. I nearly choked on my beer when he said that. “Are you nuts? What are you drinking there?” I asked him. He then began to explain his thinking and to me it began to make more sense.

John Bolton will not be very effective in the U.N. after all he has gone through during the nomination process. The rest of the members of the U.N. are going to know he doesn’t have the full support of the Congress and are likely to act accordingly. Most of the U. N. member countries like and respect Bill Clinton. I am not quite sure if that is a good or bad thing. For all his problems as President I do think Bill Clinton is an American first. He would do what is best for this country. I didn’t care for him as President and didn’t vote for him but never doubted his love for this country. Okay, so far I am listening to my friend’s idea.

Now comes the real beauty he tells me. If Bill Clinton is nominated as the United States delegate to the U.N. the liberals and Democrats cant possibly oppose it. This should give the White House some more help with Supreme Court nominations. The Republicans can get some mileage from this appointment. With Bill Clinton as the U. N. Delegate it would seem that Hillary couldn’t throw her hat in the ring in 2008 as a Democratic presidential candidate. She would most likely have to recuse herself. I honestly feel she does not want to run for President. I don’t think she wants to have all those skeletons dragged back out of her closet. Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster and Universal health care to name a few. This would give her the out she needs. This appointment would also not allow him to go out on the campaign trail in 2006 and 2008. “But wait” I tell my friend, “When he goes out to help a Democratic candidate they have been losing lately.” My friend tells me that he may not help the candidate by going to rallies but he does manage to raise a lot of money. We all know that whoever has the most money in a campaign stands a much better chance of winning. It’s a win-win for the Republicans. “I’ll have to think about this for a while but so far it sounds like a decent idea.” I tell him.

Just then the Washington Nationals scored some runs to take the lead and the conversation went back to baseball…

Iraqis Turn their Guns on Al Quada...

The British paper The Telegraph has been reporting that there have been armed clashes between the tribal groups in western Iraq and the Al Quada near the Syrian border. Tribal leaders in Husaybah are attacking followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist who established the town as an entry point for Al Quada jihadists being smuggled into the country.

The reason, the US military believes, is frustration at the heavy-handed approach of the foreigners, who have kidnapped and assassinated local leaders and imposed a strict Islamic code. They believe the trigger for this fighting was the assassination of a tribal sheik which was ordered by Zarqawi because he met with U.S. Marines Since then anyone considered to be aiding coalition forces was being killed or kidnapped. That included those with links to the government - seen as a US puppet - such as water or electricity officials. As a result local services had collapsed. Part of the strict code included closing any shop selling music or satellite dishes. Women were ordered to wear all-enveloping clothing and men forbidden from wearing western clothes.

The U.S. Military reported that they had been attacked by a group of foreign terrorists and as the foreigners were beaten back local Iraqi tribesmen ambushed them. As I blogged earlier, I feel the insurgency in Iraq will come to an end when the Iraqis take some control over their own country. While I am all in favor of fighting these Al Quada terrorists and murderers in the deserts of western Iraq instead of the streets on New York, London, Madrid or even Paris, it is very heartening to see that Iraqis are stepping up to the plate as well…

July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offencesFor abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

If the Season Ended Today...

Here it is July 1st already and the best thing happening in Washington D.C. these days are the Washington Nationals baseball team. The Nats are in first place in the National League East with a 4.5 game lead over the Atlanta Braves and the best home record in the major leagues. This was the team that no one wanted. They played last year in Montreal in front of crowds of 3000 people. This year they have reached over a million fans and this was done on June 12th, their 32nd home game of the year.

Last December I blogged that there was no way the Montreal Expos would play in Washington DC and become my “home” team. Politics in DC were at work and just when it got close it looked like the rug would get pulled out from under them. I was wrong and a day later the particulars were worked out and Washington had a Major League Baseball team. They still need real ownership and a long term stadium plan but this team has got the area talking baseball and not just about the Redskins.

I know its only July 1st and there are still 84 games to play but the Nats are in first place. I think the real reason for their success is that they didn’t choose the name Senators for the 3rd time. Man, talk about a offensive name for a team…

Foreigners Blowing up in Iraq...

CNN and Fox News have reported that the vast majority of homicide attackers in Iraq are not Iraqis but foreigners. Since 2003, Iraqis have carried out less than 10 percent of the more than 500 homicide attacks, according to one defense official. I suppose that many of these foreigners that come to Iraq see the new Iraqi government and U.S. troops in much the same light as they saw the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s. There is a huge difference in that the Russians had planned to stay and eventually annex Afghanistan.

It seems that the vast majority of those being killed in Iraq are Iraqis. I feel the Iraqis really need to step up to the plate and take charge of these foreign terrorists. When Iraqis take control of Iraq the insurgency will end.

The liberals continue to say that the Bush administration is the whole cause for this “hatred” of Americans like this is a new development. Why don’t some of these Republican apologists stand up and tell it like it is. President Clinton did nothing to stop the Islamic terrorists in 8 years. The first World Trace Center bombing, the 2 embassies, the USS Cole. His administration failed to deal with Bin Laden when they had a chance. To them he was a minor annoyance. All of the intelligence failures and the weakened and neutered intelligence agencies happened in his Presidency. President Bush inherited a broken system and now liberals are saying the whole situation is his fault. Why wont one of the blowhards in Congress get up and tell the country that September 11th was going to happen even if there had been a President Gore…