Monday, September 28, 2015

John Boehner: Bad Speaker or Worst Speaker?

All you need to know about the failed speakership of John Boehner was exposed to the entire world by Boehner himself as he announced his resignation from Congress.  The what, the how, and the why of his failures were succinctly explained when he said, “The first job of any Speaker is to protect this institution that we all love.”


Do what?  Well, no wonder he was a disaster as speaker.  He had no clue what the job description was.  In just 15 words, everything about his disastrous reign was brought into laser-sharp focus.  Never has someone so orange said so much with so few words and so many tears.  When you're this out of touch and have abused this much power and wasted this many opportunities that have caused a nation great pain, there is no limit to the scorn you deserve.


And for the record, that "institution that we all love" comment may be the dumbest political statement since David Brooks proclaimed Barack Obama a great president on the strength of his pant crease.  It's also a perfect bookend comment to some words he uttered through tears in November of 2010 as he was preparing to take the gavel without a clue what message the voters had just sent.


The salient point that Boehner made clear is that the country is here to serve the government.  The important people are those in government.  What else can his words possibly mean?  When he said "the institution that we all love" – it's clear that we means the House of Cards Washington Cartel in the House.  For damned sure, no one else has any love for that institution. 


No one this side of Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood character has shown so much disdain for constituents while playing the Potomac game.


Boehner also was admitting to not knowing what his constitutional duties are.  The duty he saw as his first and most important duty – "to protect this institution" – is not even among his duties, let alone first. 


In other words, for seven years we've had a president who despises the Constitution – and held in check (theoretically) only by a House speaker for five years who doesn't understand what that document demands of him.  Gee, what could possibly go wrong with that? 


And there's no reason to doubt that Boehner sincerely thinks that protecting the institution was his "first duty."  On the night it became evident he was going to have the speakership – election night 2010 – he gave a victory speech that was a harbinger of things to come under his leadership.  To be clear, no conservative expected great things from Boehner, but he has managed to fall far below even our lowest expectations.


It wasn't the tears per se, even though they are what everyone remembers.  It was what was missing from that speech that was most foretelling.  To be precise, Boehner's comments made two related notions painfully clear.  First is that the speaker in waiting had absolutely no idea what had transpired across the country to give his party majority power.  It was if he had been off campaigning on another planet – far, far away from a place known as the real world.


This, in fact, is more or less true.  Washington, where Boehner has spent most of the last 23 years, is an isolated planet of about eight counties with no resemblance to a nation subjected to the whims of those inside.  There was a big message sent by the voters in 2010, and Boehner's brain apparently filed it under spam.  This was true of most or all of the Republican establishment.  They had no idea what was driving the mood of the public.  And they haven't figured it out.  Until now, perhaps.  Perhaps.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

An Anti-Gay Pastor Talks Discrimination

Jon Stewart recently sent correspondent Jordan Klepper off to Eureka Springs to get a pulse on the place. In the wake of the recently passed anti-discrimination Ordinance 2223,  he wanted to understand exactly how ignorant and in denial the townspeople are.

Klepper sat down with Pastor Randall Christy, a vocal opponent of the ordinance, who told him that, as a Christian, he’s felt “deliberately discriminated” against  in Eureka Springs.

Watch the interview:

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Two Americas - Bob Lonsberry


The Democrats are right, there are two Americas. 

The America that works, and the America that doesn’t. The America that contributes, and the America that doesn’t.

It’s not the haves and the have nots, it’s the dos and the don’ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, to obey the law and support themselves and contribute to society, and others don’t.
That’s the divide in America.

It’s not about income inequality, it’s about civic irresponsibility. It’s about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization in order to win elective office. It’s about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country. 

That’s not invective, that’s truth. 

And it’s about time someone said it. 

The politics of envy was on proud display last week as the president said he would pledge the rest of his term to fighting “income inequality.” He notes that some people make more than other people, that some people have higher incomes than others, and he says that’s not just. 

It was the rationale of thievery. 

The other guy has it, you want it, Obama will take it for you.

Vote Democrat.

It is the electoral philosophy that gave us Detroit. It is the electoral philosophy that is destroying America.

And it conceals a fundamental deviation from American values and common sense. It ends up not being a benefit to the people who support it, but a betrayal. The Democrats have not empowered their followers, they have enslaved them – in a culture of dependence and entitlement, of victimhood and anger instead of ability and hope.

The president’s premise – that you reduce income inequality by debasing the successful – seeks to ignore and cheat the law of choices and consequences. It seeks to deny the successful the consequences of their choices and spare the unsuccessful the consequences of their choices.

Because, by and large, the variability in society is a result of different choices leading to different consequences. Those who choose wisely and responsibly have a far greater likelihood of success, while those who choose foolishly and irresponsibly have a far greater likelihood of failure. 

And success and failure can manifest themselves in personal and family income.

You choose to drop out of high school or to skip college and you are apt to have a different outcome than someone who gets a diploma and pushes on with purposeful education. You have your children out of wedlock and life is apt to take one course, you have them in wedlock and life is apt to take another course.

Most often in life our destination is determined by the course we take.

My doctor, for example, makes far more than I do. There is significant income inequality between us. Our lives have had an inequality of outcome. But, our lives also have had an inequality of effort. Whereas my doctor went to college and then gave the flower of his young adulthood to medical school and residency, I got a job in a restaurant. He made a choice, I made a choice. And our choices led us to different outcomes. 

His outcome pays a lot better than mine. 

Does that mean he cheated and Barack Obama needs to take away his wealth? 
 
No, it means we are both free men. 

And in a free society, free choices will lead to different outcomes. 

It is not inequality Barack Obama will take away, it is freedom.

The freedom to succeed, and the freedom to fail. And there is no true option for success if there is no true option for failure.

The pursuit of happiness means a whole lot less when you face the punitive hand of government if your pursuit brings you more happiness than the other guy. 

Even if the other guy sat on his arse and did nothing.

Even if the other guy made a lifetime’s worth of asinine and shortsighted decisions.

Barack Obama and the Democrats preach equality of outcome as a right, while completely ignoring inequality of effort. The simple Law of the Harvest – as ye sow, so shall ye reap – is sometimes applied as, “The harder you work, the more you get.” 

The progressive movement would turn that upside down.

Those who achieve are to be punished as enemies of society and those who fail are to be rewarded as wards of society. Entitlement has replaced effort as the key to upward mobility in American society. 

Or at least it has if Barack Obama gets his way. 

He seeks a lowest common denominator society in which the government besieges the successful and productive and fosters equality through mediocrity. 

He and his party speak of two Americas.

And their grip on power is based on using the votes of one to sap the productivity of the other.
America is not divided by the differences in our outcomes, it is divided by the differences in our efforts. And by the false philosophy that says one man’s success comes about unavoidably as the result of another man’s victimization.

What the president offered was not a solution, but a separatism. He fomented division and strife, he pitted one set of Americans against another.

For his own political benefit.

That’s what progressives offer. Marxist class warfare wrapped up with a bow.
Two Americas, coming closer each day to proving the truth to Lincoln’s maxim that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

- by Bob Lonsberry © 2013



Source:
bob lonsberry dot com

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Is There a Constitutional Right to Own a Home or a Pet?

One American in three says that the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to own your own home, while Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania has found.
one in four thinks that it guarantees “equal pay for equal work,” a national survey by the

Those protections are not in the Bill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution.

The survey, released for Constitution Day (Thursday, Sept. 17), shows that many Americans are unfamiliar with basic facts about their government:
  • Only one in three Americans (31 percent) could name all three branches of the U.S. government, while just as many (32 percent) could not identify even one.
  • More than one in four Americans (28 percent) incorrectly thinks a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling is sent back either to Congress for reconsideration or to the lower courts for a decision.
  • About one in 10 Americans (12 percent) says the Bill of Rights includes the right to own a pet. It does not.
The survey was conducted Aug. 27-31 among 1,012 adults ages 18 and up. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percent, and is one in a series of national surveys by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) that asked Americans about their civic knowledge. To download this survey report click here.

“Past Annenberg research has shown that basic civics knowledge is valuable,” said Ken Winneg, managing director of survey research at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. “The current survey shows that, in the presence of statistical controls, the odds are two times greater that you know the three branches of government if you’ve taken a high school or college civics class than if you haven’t taken any civics courses.”

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, added: “Those who can identify the three branches and key provisions in the Bill of Rights are more likely to support the system embodied in the Constitution. Civic knowledge predicts a willingness, for instance, to retain the Supreme Court whether it issues a desired or unpopular ruling.”

Read more here:
The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania – Is There a Constitutional Right to Own a Home or a Pet?

Monday, September 21, 2015

James Carville Comes Clean

Quote from James Carville

 “Ideologies aren’t all that important. What’s important is psychology.

 The Democratic constituency is just like a herd of cows. All you have to do is lay out enough silage and they come running. That’s why I became an operative working with Democrats. With Democrats all you have to do is make a lot of noise, lay out the hay, and be ready to use the ole cattle prod in case a few want to bolt the herd.

Eighty percent of the people who call themselves Democrats don’t have a clue as to political reality.

What amazes me is that you could take a group of people who are hard workers and convince them that they should support social programs that were the exact opposite of their own personal convictions. Put a little fear here and there and you can get people to vote any way you want.

The voter is basically dumb and lazy. The reason I became a Democratic operative instead of a Republican was because there were more Democrats that didn’t have a clue than there were Republicans.

Truth is relative. Truth is what you can make the voter believe is the truth. If you’re smart enough, truth is what you make the voter think it is. That’s why I’m a Democrat. I can make the Democratic voters think whatever I want them to.”