Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Posts Tagged ‘Reid’

President Barack Obama boldly proclaims, “The buck stops here!” But, whenever his policies are criticized, he acts as if the buck stopped with George W. Bush.
 
The party line that we are likely to be hearing from now until the November elections is that Obama “inherited” the big federal budget deficits and that he has to “clean up the mess” left in the economy by the Republicans. This may convince those who want to be convinced, but it will not stand up under scrutiny.

No President of the United States can create either a budget deficit or a budget surplus. All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives and all taxes are voted into law by Congress.
 
Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president. The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.
 
The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, Bill Clinton was president, so it was called “the Clinton surplus.” But Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, for the first time in 40 years. It was also the first budget surplus in more than a quarter of a century.
 
The only direct power that any president has that can affect deficits and surpluses is the power to veto spending bills. President Bush did not veto enough spending bills but Senator Obama and his fellow Democrats in control of Congress were the ones who passed the spending bills.
 
Today, with Barack Obama in the White House, allied with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in charge in Congress, the national debt is a bigger share of the national output than it has been in more than half a century. And its share is projected to continue going up for years to come, becoming larger than national output in 2012.
 
Having created this scary situation, President Obama now says, “Don’t give in to fear. Let’s reach for hope.” The voters reached for hope when they elected Obama. The fear comes from what he has done since taking office.

Read more at One News Now

The imposters have once again gotten their come-uppance!  Who would vote for liberals that are so desperate for power they have to trick voters by trying to co-op the “tea party” label?

The Daily Caller reports:

The secretive effort to create a formal Tea Party political party in Michigan ended Friday with a death sentence from the Michigan Supreme Court.

In a 5-2 ruling, the court upheld an appellate court decision to bar the Tea Party and its slate of 23 candidates from the November ballot because of a technical problem with petitions the party circulated.

Activists in the tea party movement who believed the Tea Party

political party was a fraud by some Democrats to dilute the influence of conservative voters in this fall’s election were relieved by the ruling.

State Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer has denied any involvement by his organization in the Tea Party effort. Still, ties between the wannabe party and Democratic officials and sympathizers were documented by the Free Press in a report Friday. Most damaging were revelations — now the subject of a criminal probe — about possible forged signatures on candidate affidavits notarized by a former Oakland County party official.

Activists Say Tea Party Imposters Infiltrating Elections

Phony “Tea Party” candidate charged with felony theft

When the Founding Fathers issued the Declaration of Independence, they proclaimed: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, have made it clear that they are willing to operate without such authority in order to pass their “cap-and-trade” energy-tax legislation. For the sake of our representative government, they must be stopped.

On Nov. 2, the American people will give their consent to the candidates whose legislative agenda they support. Based on the discontent throughout the country, both sides of the aisle think the upcoming midterm elections will reduce the size of the current Democratic congressional majority. A widespread loss of Democratic seats would be an unmistakable condemnation of the far-left legislative agenda being pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Obama administration.

Incredibly, this forecasted repudiation of big government could be greeted by ousted politicians with a repudiation of voter intent. After the election, but before the newly elected Congress is sworn in in January, the current Congress may call a lame-duck session in November and December. During this session, congressmen and senators removed from power may still vote to enact new legislation. Some Democrats already are talking about their plans to exploit this session to address unpopular issues.

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lieberman have been particularly unabashed about their hopes to advance the cap-and-trade bill in a lame-duck session where defeated congressmen and senators would be estranged from the will of people. This bill – which intentionally would raise the cost of energy produced by fossil fuels so we would use less of it – has not had enough support to pass. In fact, the bill was shelved recently by Mr. Reid, who clearly stated, “We know we don’t have the votes.” They don’t have the votes because congressmen do not want to vote for another expensive, unpopular bill just before a highly contested election. Of course, those congressmen who lose their election will no longer be accountable to the people in a lame-duck session.

Mr. Lieberman admits that “there is a certain awkwardness in a lame-duck session. But these are big and important issues. …” Perhaps it is the opening words of the Constitution are the cause of that “certain awkwardness.”

“We the People” speak with our votes and already have spoken out resoundingly against this energy agenda. If those who support cap-and-trade are voted out of office, Mr. Lieberman and his colleagues should respect that message.

Read more at the Washington Times

The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy: Push through union ‘card-check,’ cap and trade, and more

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

It cannot be said often enough that Washington is a city of endless fairy tales. Politicians in both parties can be found spinning these fantasies, but the yarns have been coming especially fast and furious since President Obama and his two best buddies — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — have been running the government. They spun two new fantasies just this week.

The first was that without the latest Obama-Reid-Pelosi government bailout, at least 100,000 teachers would lose their jobs this fall. That’s why the $26 billion “stimulus” bill passed by the House in an “emergency” session included $10 billion for “job creation.” That’s a charming legend for the gullible.

The reality, as the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci noted, is that “it’s common practice for school districts to overestimate the number of teachers that will be laid off in advance of budgets being set, and in advance of the school year.” So the vast majority of those dire warnings of 100,000 teachers being laid off were mostly just hot air.

And here’s something else to ponder: If it cost $10 billion to save 100,000 teachers’ jobs, they are each being paid $100,000 a year. Since the national average teacher salary is just over $54,000 a year, somebody — federal bureaucrats? — is making a bundle on overhead.

The second was the assertion by the Medicare trustees in their annual report to Congress that Obamacare “improves the financial outlook for Medicare substantially.” That assessment was based on multiple assumptions that, frankly, defy political reality.

Read more at the Washington Examiner

The Ruling Class shows their true colors once again. If you’re a woman, non-white, or gay, Democrats think they own you and have an automatic right to your vote. Don’t you dare step out of ideological lockstep or wander off the plantation of government dependency!

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The Examiner opines:

Harry Reid once again demonstrates that it is that it is OK to be a racial bigot, so long as you are a leftwing racial bigot.

“I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, OK? Do I need to say more?” — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), August 10, 2010

Earlier this year we learned that, in 2008, Reid suggested that Obama’s success was due in part to his “light-skinned”appearance and ability to turn on/off his “Negro dialect.” Because Reid is a leftwing bigot, the biased main stream media wing of the Democrat party gave Reid a pass for his racist remarks about Obama. In case it is necessary to point out the double standard here, just think for a moment about what happened to former Majority Leader Trent Lott over more innocuous comments.

Fortunately there are alternatives to the JournoList-controlled media. Fox News’ “Fox and Friends,” gave Florida’s Republican U.S. Senate nominee Marco Rubio –a Republican of Hispanic heritage, an opportunity to respond to Reid’s latest “outrageous” and “ridiculous” racial slur.

And Fox’s Megan Kelly hosted an interesting dialog in which Mark Sawyer from UCLA trotted out the same tired old argument that anybody opposed to illegal immigration is supposedly a xenophobe:

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Obama’s Poll Numbers Down, Imaginary Racism Up

“Call Them Racists”: How “journolists” tried to suppress the news

In New Jersey, a “Tea Party” candidate surfaces but local activists haven’t heard of him. In Michigan, a Democratic operative appears closely tied to a slate of candidates running under the Tea Party banner. In Florida, conservative activists are locked in court over the right to use the Tea Party name.

The list of peculiar Tea Party happenings goes on and on.

As the midterm election nears, allegations are surfacing across the country that Democrats are exploiting conservatives’ faith in the Tea Party name by putting up bogus candidates in November — the claim is that those “Tea Party” candidates will split the GOP vote and clear the way for Democratic victories.

Read more at Fox News

New group crashes Nevada’s Tea Party, steals name and chance to defeat Reid

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn made it official: Illinois will have a special Senate election just for the lame duck session.  Thus Illinois joins Delaware and West Virginia (both having special elections) as the three states whose winners on election day will—barring a disputed election result—be seated for a lame duck session in December.  A fourth, Colorado, is less clear but may also be in play.

The lame duck session looks increasingly likely—and increasingly ambitious.  Sen. Kerry continues to stress that cap-and-trade will be on the agenda, and Sen. Harry Reid (who may be a lame duck himself after Election Day) confirmed it to the Netroots Nation audience, saying: “We’re going to have to have a lame-duck session, so we’re not giving up.”

Along with cap-and-trade, a lame duck will likely consider the recommendations of Obama’s deficit commission — a package that will include enormous tax hikes and could draw the support of some departing Republicans like Judd Gregg of New Hampshire George Voinovich of Ohio, and Robert Bennett of Utah.

And organized labor, seeing the lame duck as their last chance for a legislative return on their political investments for years, will also demand lame duck action.

While Sen. Tom Harkin is still promising some version of card check, more likely is Sen. Bob Casey’s proposed union pension bailout, S. 3157, which would relieve unions of their pension obligations – with a potential price tag for taxpayers in the hundreds of billions.  Democratic Whip Dick Durbin signed on as a co-sponsor yesterday, indicating this bill is a top priority.

The winners in Delaware, Illinois, and West Virginia could be the vital deciding votes on these major policy issues.

Read more at Big Government

The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy: Push through union ‘card-check,’ cap and trade, and more

They’re just waiting until after the November elections.  Once they’re in a lame duck session, they can jam through all sorts of legislation like this without worrying about facing the music.

The U.S. Senate is shelving efforts to pass legislation that would limit emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to climate change, dealing a major blow to one of President Barack Obama’s top priorities.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said Thursday that neither he nor the White House had persuaded 60 senators to support even a limited proposal seeking to restrict emission from electric-power companies. Mr. Reid offered no timetable for action on such a bill, but said Democrats would continue trying to build support for such legislation.

Mr. Reid said the party’s leadership will push instead for more limited legislation, aimed at holding oil giant BP PLC “accountable” for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Specifically, he said the measure would include a provision to remove the cap on economic damages paid to residents and small businesses by oil companies after oil spills. Mr. Reid said the bill would also include incentives to encourage the production and purchase of vehicles fueled by natural gas, and to fund various land and water-conservation programs.

“This is what we can do now,” Mr. Reid said. He blamed the Senate’s failure to enact limits on greenhouse-gas emissions on Republicans, even though some members of his own party have for months objected to the idea.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy: Push through union ‘card-check,’ cap and trade, and more

Never let an oil spill go to waste

Obama’s “green” vision distorts his perception of reality

Democratic House members are so worried about the fall elections they’re leaving Washington on July 30, a full week earlier than normal—and they won’t return until mid-September. Members gulped when National Journal’s Charlie Cook, the Beltway’s leading political handicapper, predicted last month “the House is gone,” meaning a GOP takeover. He thinks Democrats will hold the Senate, but with a significantly reduced majority.

The rush to recess gives Democrats little time to pass any major laws. That’s why there have been signs in recent weeks that party leaders are planning an ambitious, lame-duck session to muscle through bills in December they don’t want to defend before November. Retiring or defeated members of Congress would then be able to vote for sweeping legislation without any fear of voter retaliation.

In the House, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters last month that for bills like “card check“—the measure to curb secret-ballot union elections—”the lame duck would be the last chance, quite honestly, for the foreseeable future.”

Other lame-duck possibilities?  Senate ratification of the New Start nuclear treaty, a federally mandated universal voter registration system to override state laws, and a budget resolution to lock in increased agency spending.

Then there is pork. A Senate aide told me that “some of the biggest porkers on both sides of the aisle are leaving office this year, and a lame-duck session would be their last hurrah for spending.” Likely suspects include key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congress’s “favor factory,” such as Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter and Utah Republican Bob Bennett.

Conservative groups such as FreedomWorks are alarmed at the potential damage, and they are demanding that everyone in Congress pledge not to take up substantive legislation in a post-election session. “Members of Congress are supposed to represent their constituents, not override them like sore losers in a lame-duck session,” Rep. Tom Price, head of the Republican Study Committee, told me.

It’s been almost 30 years since anything remotely contentious was handled in a lame-duck session, but that doesn’t faze Democrats who have jammed through ObamaCare and are determined to bring the financial system under greater federal control.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

Tell me something I DON’T know.

President Obama has taken the United States one more giant step toward socialism by ramming through the Senate his financial regulation bill.

The bill authorizes the secretary of the treasury — a political appointee — to seize any financial company (bank or non-bank) simply because, in his opinion, it is too big to fail and in danger of insolvency. This power can be used for political retribution, pressure for campaign funding or any other abuse that bureaucratic whim or partisan politics can conceive. It is a power Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez would love to have!

So how did it pass? Four Republicans sold out, that’s how!

Read more at Townhall.com

Surprised that he’s a RINO?  Not really.  He IS from Massachusetts, after all!

From Hot Air:

Actually, four Republicans voted yes — Collins, Snowe, and Chuck Grassley were the others — but it was Scotty B who flipped to make it happen.

Shelby, who helped write parts of the bill before ultimately voting against it, called it a “massive new consumer bureaucracy” and a “liberal activists’ dream come true.” So why’d Scotty flip? Pressure:

So why did Brown buckle, after voting to uphold the filibuster on Wednesday?

For starters, he received 3,000 phone calls to his office over the last week, all of them by supporters of Organizing for America, the apparatus that sprung out of President Obama’s campaign for the White House that is now housed inside the Democratic National Committee…

Then there is guilt. Reid all but called Brown out by name on Wednesday when he said that the Senate did not move forward on a procedural vote to end debate and overcome the filibuster because a senator had “broken his word.”

Brown told reporters that he had in fact given Reid his word that he would vote if his concerns were addressed in the bill, but that he voted no on Wednesday because his concerns had not been addressed. Thursday Brown voted yes, though his concerns had still not been addressed.

Translation: The left knew they could make things uncomfortable for him in Massachusetts if he didn’t cave, so they turned the screws — and he caved. Which, admittedly, was fully expected after the first filibuster, but is no less depressing for having been predictable. Exit question: Forgivable offense for a blue-state Republican worried about reelection or primary-worthy sin that’ll have Red State pounding the table tomorrow?

Senate approves sweeping Wall St. reform bill

At this point, they’re not even PRETENDING to follow procedure.  They’re making a mockery out of the entire legitimate lawmaking process.

If you enjoyed the lack of transparency shown by the Senate when crafting their version of Obamacare, you will love the way they plan on crafting the Cap and Trade legislation. Instead of introducing the bill and sending it to committee, future Nevada Senator Emeritus, Harry Reid is taking over the process. Just as he did during the Obamacare process, Reid will be taking the bill drafting process behind his closed office doors for the deal making.

Next week, Reid will be handed the reins of the bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions while expanding domestic oil, gas and nuclear power production. His challenge could not be tougher…  

In an effort to keep the bill in Reid’s hands, the sponsors — Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) won’t officially introduce the bill in the Senate when they unveil it to the public next week.

“If we introduce it, it’ll get referred to committees,” Lieberman said. “We want him to be able to work with it and bring it out onto the floor as a leader whenever he’s ready.”

There are those who hope that Joe Lieberman switches parties when he has to run for reelection in 2012. His cooperation with this secrecy effort is a good indication of why the country would be better off if Joe stayed in his own (Democratic) party and was defeated by a Republican. 

Already, some senators also are raising red flags about the committee process, which they warn may be circumvented if the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman proposal moves directly into Reid’s office.

“These bills need to go through committee,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). “If you’re talking about making major deals on energy policy, it needs to go through the Energy Committee. If you’re making major deals on tax policy, it needs to go through the Finance Committee. I mean, if you want to get it done.”

What Senator Cantwell is forgetting is a committee process would make it much harder to insert provisions like the “Corn Husker Kickback” inserted into the Obamacare bill.

Read more at Red State

Looks like the “Tea Party” name isn’t the only thing Scott Ashjian has stolen – he’s now also charged with felony theft for writing bad checks!

Back in February, I blogged about how Tea Partiers in Nevada were enraged to discover that a group of imposters had registered the name “Tea Party of Nevada” and were planning to use it to run supposed “Tea Party” candidates.  The purpose?  To confuse voters and derail any candidate that the REAL Tea Partiers might try to run against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. 

Well, the imposters did run a candidate – Scott Ashjian – who calls himself the “Tea Party” candidate, even though every legitimate Tea Party group has denounced him as a fraud. 

The Talking Points Memo finally jumped on the story a couple of days ago:

The Tea Party Express, a division of Our Country Deserves Better PAC, has a new Web ad excoriating “Tea Party” candidate Scott Ashjian in the Nevada Senate race, accusing him of being a Democratic mole trying to help re-elect Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The ad has not been put on television just yet — but it could be soon.

Ashjian has registered as a candidate with an actual “Tea Party” label for the general election, rather than running in the Republican primary. Right-wing talk radio host and Tea Party Express spokesman Mark Williams tells Ashjian to “get lost.” “Dozens of Tea Party groups across Nevada have spoken out against your candidacy,” Williams says. “None of us has ever heard of you, or even seen you at a Tea Party rally. Nothing. We think you’re a fraud who’s trying to split the vote and help re-elect Harry Reid.”

Now that he’s been formally charged with theft, however, the mainstream media is giddily reporting that a “Tea Party” candidate is being brought up on charges – never mind that he has NEVER been a legitimate member or representative of the Tea Party movement! 

MSNBC is running the story under the headline “Nevada tea party candidate facing felony charges“, reporting that “other tea party activists have been distancing themselves from Ashjian…”  instead of honestly revealing that he stole the name in the first place and NEVER had been a true Tea Partier in the first place. 

CNN is running the misleading headline “Tea Party candidate might face felony charge“.   They at least have the decency to reveal (albeit in the sixth paragraph), that:

“The Nevada businessman-turned-candidate is also under fire from Tea Party organizations who have crafted an ad telling Ashjian to “get lost.”

The groups insist Ashjian is a pretender who’s only running in order to siphon votes from conservatives.

This just in: the “most ethical congress in history” has agreed that adding a second story will make government more efficient.

Fewer taxes, less government and no “Obamacare.”

That’s the message thousands of conservative Tea Party activists were hoping to send to Washington as they streamed into Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hometown in Nevada Saturday morning.

“Harry Reid is symbolic of the problems in Washington in the sense that he’s been the leader in the Senate of all the things we’ve been against — expanding the government, increasing the deficit, and raising taxes,” Sal Russo, chief strategist of the Tea Party Express, told FoxNews.com.

Read more at Fox News

See more fantastic photos of the rally here.

Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker at the rally, and later went on to stump for McCain’s reelection campaign. 

OK, Palin, you gave McCain the obligatory speech out of gratitude. We get it.  Now let him join George Bush in Statist retirement where he belongs!