Text 8276, 170 rader
Skriven 2008-11-16 09:36:00 av TIM RICHARDSON (1:123/140)
Ärende: Obama BOMB!
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On 11-15-08, ROSS SAUER said to BOB KLAHN:
RS>WND first said it wa
Welcome to the Patriot Post
Friday Digest----volumn 8 No. 46 .... Mark Alexander, Publisher
Legacy of the American Revolution
"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views
beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect
himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may
be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on
ages yet unborn." --George Washington
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
News from the Swamp: Committee assignments take shape on Capitol Hill
House and Senate Democrats are currently picking the committee leaders for the
111th Congress -- leaders who will wreak havoc on capitalism, liberty and
common sense. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) will remain as head of the Senate Banking
Committee to maintain continuity during the financial crisis. After all, it
only makes sense to keep Dodd there since he was such a large beneficiary of
Fannie Mae's political contributions.
Russ Feingold (D-WI), the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act and an
original opponent of the liberation of Iraq, is in line to become the head of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; the current chairman, Joe Biden, is
heading to the White House. If Feingold does get the position, he could force
Barack Obama's hand on withdrawing American troops from Iraq. He is also
likely to spill a number of secret programs out into the open via attention-
grabbing investigations into our nation's rendition and surveillance efforts.
In the House, it appears there will be a coup attempt by California Democrat
Henry Waxman, who seeks to wrest control of the Energy and Commerce Committee
from John Dingell (D-MI). Dingell, who was first elected to Congress in 1955,
will become in February the longest-serving member in that body's history. He
is a moderate on climate change, however, and some of his fellow liberals have
accused him of being too cozy with Detroit when he should be putting the
squeeze on the industry for the sake of the tree huggers. But Dingell's
supporters believe they have the votes to hold off Waxman, an environmental
extremist. Many see Speaker Nancy Pelosi's fingerprints on the effort to oust
Dingell. She is close to Waxman, and she is a vocal proponent of all so-called
"green" legislation.
It looks as though Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will remain chairman of the Homeland
Security and Government Affairs Committee for the time being. He created
enemies among his former fellow Democrats with his public support of John
McCain. He met privately with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) this week, and
both men would say only that they would talk further and weigh options before
making final decisions. The Democrats must win all three remaining contested
Senate seats to reach a supermajority of 60 votes. Regardless of the outcome,
however, they will need Lieberman, whose apostasy can apparently be overlooked
if it helps the Democrats tighten their grip on power.
Republicans stand to lose some committee seats as well, thanks to the gains
Democrats made last week. Reid is likely to follow the model for committee
apportionment used during the 103rd Congress when the Democrats similarly held
57 seats in the Senate. The GOP is likely to incur its biggest losses in
Appropriations, Budget, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Meanwhile, any hopes Hillary Clinton had to lead the renewed effort for health
care reform were effectively dashed by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), chairman of
the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Kennedy considers himself
a champion of health care, and he has no intention of ceding the issue to
Clinton.
She currently ranks eighth in seniority on the committee, and others on the
committee are not keen on the idea of her leapfrogging senior colleagues to
lead some special subcommittee or task force. Beyond all that, Obama is likely
to run any health care reform drive from the White House, meaning that Clinton
may be involved in the crafting of legislation, but she will not have the
chance to lead, and likely fumble, a plan as she did in 1993. Hillary might
take comfort, though, in the current Beltway buzz that Obama is considering
her for the secretary of state post.
However Congress shapes up in the coming weeks, the denizens of the Swamp will
have a long way to go before earning the respect of the American public. In a
Rasmussen Reports survey taken after Election Day, 55 percent of those polled
rated the job performance of Congress as poor. Only 11 percent said Congress
was doing a good or excellent job. Republicans were more unsatisfied than
Democrats -- 74 percent to 37 percent. A separate survey indicated an
unfavorable rating of 42 for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and another 27
percent didn't even know who he is. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) earned a
53 percent unfavorable rating.
Speaking of polls, Reaganism is not dead
The Patriot doesn't often report on polls as news items because of how they
are used to sway rather than reflect public opinion. Regular readers will
recall our term for this destructive influence: "pollaganda." However, an
article by pollster Scott Rasmussen caught our attention because it announced
that, despite the election results, Reaganism is not dead. "Barack Obama won
the White House by campaigning against an unpopular incumbent in a time of
economic anxiety and lingering foreign policy concerns. He offered voters an
upbeat message, praised the nation as a land of opportunity, promised tax cuts
to just about everyone, and overcame doubts about his experience with a strong
performance in the presidential debates," Rasmussen wrote. "Does this sound
familiar? It should."
Rasmussen further points out that Obama stole the tax issue from John McCain.
Heading into the election, 31 percent of voters thought Obama would cut their
taxes compared to only 11 percent for McCain. According to Rasmussen, "the
candidate who most credibly promises the lowest level of taxes has won every
presidential election in at least the last 40 years." Additionally, nearly 60
percent of those polled agreed with Ronald Reagan's maxim: "Government is not
the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Obama may have used
some aspects of Reaganism to win the White House, but we have little hope that
Reagan's philosophy will find a place in the Obama administration.
The smell of change: For Obama, 2008 equals 1984 While President-elect Barack
Obama hasn't yet established his Ministry of Truth, there are signs that he's
going to rewrite history to suit his needs. Witness the scrubbing of his
change.gov Web site, which last week had 25 different agenda items sought by
the coming Obama administration. After controversy first erupted over the
oxymoronic concept of mandatory volunteerism, the site originally changed its
tune but then dropped the agenda items entirely, instead substituting a
vanilla mission statement.
Obama plans to be aggressive in his use of executive orders, beginning by
rescinding several signed by President George W. Bush which promote a socially
conservative agenda, such as those dealing with embryonic stem cell research
and abortion funding. Another Obama target is the Second Amendment. The
Obama/Biden team vows to not only close so-called loopholes at gun shows and
create other regulations such as trigger locks, but also to take guns "off the
streets" by reinstating the grossly misnamed "assault weapons" ban. When was
the last time readers saw anyone waltzing down the street with a semi-
automatic black rifle looking to make trouble? And did Obama notice the
Supreme Court decision in June that involved the Second Amendment? Indeed, he
did. If fact, he supported the Court's Heller decision in favor of the right
to bear arms, if only out of gross political expediency.
Obama's change.gov site originally had a full anti-gun agenda, but that was
wiped away along with his other promises. What was posted previously was a
claim to "favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights
of gun owners," but by making the gun of one's choice more difficult to
acquire and use, the incoming Democrats are eroding the intent of the Founding
Fathers, as well as the letter of the Constitution.
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*Durango b301 #PE*
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