Day: October 15, 2013

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Domestic Policies News Politics Teaparty

Meltdown

I’ve used the tsunami wave metaphor in other posts about the decline of the Republican Party and  its associated havoc-wreaking on the country over the past two years.

Today we talk about the complete meltdown of the party. The debacle over the debt ceiling and the as-we-speak collapse of any kind of deal shows us the final truth about the right: This is not an entity that can be a partner in governing.

Here we are on the brink of a default that many conservatives believe will not be “that bad,” despite the warnings from banks, foreign governments and ratings agencies, most of whom could not remotely be labeled liberal, and they are still trying to knock off the Affordable Care Act. Yes, I understand how important it is to settle the issue of whether congressional aides can qualify for subsidies on the health insurance exchanges, but is is worth embarrassing the United States and inviting the wrath of the financial markets?

Clearly, it is. And that’s the problem with the GOP as is exists today. The extremism knows no bounds and the disdain of the president is ugly. They accuse Obama of not negotiating when that has been their strategy since he was elected. They want to stall, delay, overturn and defund anything he’s signed. They want no revenue increases in any fiscal bill. They want the Consumer Protection Board gone and they want the EPA to stop telling factories they can’t pollute. These are non-negotiable items, yet it’s Obama’s willingness to stand his ground that has them so incensed (I would be worse, though. Open the government and increase the debt ceiling for a whole year, says I).

It’s a sad state of affairs that only the party muckymucks can address. John Boehner doesn’t know which way to go, because all paths lead to The Tenth Circle of Hell (the one that Donald Trump bought and developed). He either has to continue giving in to the Tea Party or he has to sacrifice his speakership and get Democrats and moderates to get us out of this mess.

Some people who know more than I say that the American voters will probably forget all this by next November. I don’t think so. The next wave will be a Democratic takeover of the House.

For more please go to:

www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and Twitter @rigrundfest  

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Politics vote

President Obama Makes Ad For Cory Booker – Vote For Cory

To all my New Jersey friends, Wednesday it’s time to vote!

President Obama has a message for you. Vote for Cory!

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Politics

Saturday Night Live – Time To Pray The Congress Gets It Right – Video

Maybe the most reasoned voice in Congress these days is that of Chaplin Barry Black. The Chaplin has opened all the floor sessions with a prayer, mostly geared towards the dumb path Congress has laid out for this country with the Government Shutdown and the unbelievable eventual outcome of America defaulting on paying its bills.

“Save us from the madness,” the Chaplin was heard praying in one of his sessions. “We acknowledge our transgressions, our shortcomings, our smugness, our selfishness and our pride,” he went on. “Deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable.”

Well leave it up to Saturday Night Live to bring some humor in this very serious time. Just hours before America defaults for the first time in our history, SNL extends the role of the Chaplin Barry Black.

Video

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pat robertson Politics

Ted Cruz On Republican Government Shutdown – God’s Will be Done, As It Will Be – Video

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said over the weekend that he had prayed to God to guide him in the shutdown fight and was sure that “his will be done as I know it will be.”

Televangelist Pat Robertson opened Monday’s edition of The 700 Club by describing the Oct. 17 debt ceiling deadline as a “countdown to Armageddon.”

“The Democrats, instead of holding spending down, now say, ‘We want freedom to spend more, we’ve got to spend more,’” Robertson explained. “They need a fix. It’s like a heroin addict, you’ve got to have your fix. And they need a fix. So, they want the sequester taken away as a price for re-opening the government. It is shocking!”

“This is crazy,” he added. “What we’re looking at is a party of people who are spendoholics: $17 trillion in debt, ladies and gentlemen. It’s insupportable. The interest on the debt is going to be mounting and encompass the entire federal budget pretty soon. Something’s got to be done.”

The TV preacher said that the drastic across-the-board spending cuts in the so-called “sequester” were “the most effective means of scaling back the spending of ours that’s taken place in decades. So the Republicans, they couldn’t possibly give it up. If they did, they’d be insane.”

At the same time, Robertson warned that a default on U.S. debt would “rocket around the world” and “mean chaos for every single citizen.”

“It’s going to mean the value of your pensions is going to go down, the value of your home will go down, the value of your home will go down, the value of what you’re going to have to borrow is going to go up extraordinarily, you’ll pay much higher interest rates,” he observed. “I mean, it’s going to be chaotic. And these guys are playing games and I hope the Republicans on this one will stand fast, they’ve got to stand fast and say no more.”

At the Values Voter Summit over the weekend, CBN’s David Brody spoke with Cruz about his role in instigating the government shutdown, which has been seen as complicating debt limit negotiations.

“Where do you see God in all of this fight that’s going on in your life right now?” Brody asked the Texas senator.

“Well, David, you know at every stage, my prayer to God is that His will be done,” Cruz insisted. “As it will be.”

Categories
Politics

United States “AAA” Credit Ratings on “Ratings Watch Negative”

Thanks Republicans.

Fitch Ratings put the US government’s “AAA” credit rating on ‘rating watch negative’ Tuesday, saying that the standstill on the U.S. debt ceiling negotiations risks undermining the effectiveness of the country’s government and political institutions.

U.S. stock index futures fell.

“Although Fitch continues to believe that the debt ceiling will be raised soon, the political brinkmanship and reduced financing flexibility could increase the risk of a U.S. default,” the rating agency wrote in a statement.

S&P 500 futures fell 9.6 points while Dow Jones industrial average futures sank 60 points and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 7.5 points.

A Treasury Department spokesperson said the Fitch move reflected an urgent need for Congress to act on the debt ceiling.

Earlier today Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lashed out at House Republicans, shortly after the collapse of a rival GOP proposal.

He warned at the time that the U.S. credit ratings could be downgraded as soon as Tuesday night.

Click here for the latest on the markets.

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Politics

Rielle Hunter Apologizes For Affair with John Edwards

Rielle Hunter is apologizing for her affair with former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

In a column for The Huffington Post, the former campaign videographer and mother of Edwards’ youngest daughter says she “behaved badly.”

“That may seem obvious to you but it’s taken me a long time to admit that, even to myself,” Hunter said. “For years, I was so viciously attacked by the media and the world that I felt like a victim. I now realize that the attacks are actually beside the point. The point is: I behaved badly.”

Edwards’ extramarital affair, chronicled in tabloids and a book by a former aide, led to his downfall. He had initially denied the affair and paternity of Frances Quinn, the daughter Hunter gave birth to in 2008.

Hunter’s new book, In Hindsight, What Really Happened: The Revised Edition: John Edwards, Our Daughter and Me, hit bookshelves Tuesday.

Categories
ObamaCare Pat Buchanan Politics

Pat Buchanan to The GOP – Fight! If The Party Goes Down, Take the Country Down With You

Pat Buchanan has a message for the House Republicans. If you’re going to go down, go down fighting even if it means taking the country down with you.

In an op-ed, Buchanan referenced the recent polls that showed Republicans taking the blame for the ongoing government shutdown. And he advised Republicans to stand their ground on their pushed to defund or repeal Obamacare, the way Samson in the Bible stood his ground, killing himself and all those around him.

According to Gallup, approval of the Republican Party has sunk 10 points in two weeks to 28 percent, an all-time low. In the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, approval of the GOP has fallen to 24 percent.

In the campaign to persuade America of their Big Lie – that the House Republicans shut down the government – the White House and its media chorus appear to have won this round.

Yet, the truth is the Republicans House has voted three times to keep open and to fund every agency, department and program of the U.S. government, except for Obamacare.

And they voted to kill that monstrosity but once.

Republicans should refuse to raise the white flag and insist on an honorable avenue of retreat.

And if Harry Reid’s Senate demands the GOP end the sequester on federal spending, or be blamed for a debt default, the party should, Samson-like, bring down the roof of the temple on everybody’s head.

This is an honorable battle lost, not a war.

Categories
Featured Halloween

Halloween Decoration So Scary, Neighbors Called 911

Johnnie Mullins’ neighbors love Halloween as much as the next heathen, but they think his decorations this year crossed the line from fun-scary to scary-call-the-cops-there’s-a-dead-body-in-our-neighbor’s-driveway.

“Just trying to scare people, that’s what I like to do,” Mullins, of Mustang, Oklahoma, told News9 in defense of his “Halloween prank”: Two fake bodies that appear to have met a bloody demise outside his house.

“My heart about came out of my chest. I thought ‘Oh my God,'” said neighbor Rebecca Fuentes. “If I think it’s real, just think of what a child would think?”

The children “don’t freak out or anything,” Mullins insists, but it seems the adults are freaking out enough for everyone.

One neighbor was apparently so persuaded by how lifelike the dead bodies look that they dialed 911.

Categories
Piers Morgan Politics shooting

Piers Morgan’s Battle with Gun Rights Advocate – Video

Already angered that a gun rights movement planned a campaign to promote the “good side of guns” on the first anniversary of the massacre in Newtown Connecticut, CNN’s Piers Morgan couldn’t contain himself when Alan Gottlieb, Founder of the Second Amendment Foundation brushed off the concerns of a Newtown family member.

Morgan read a statement from Erica Lafferty – whose mother along with 20 children and 5 other adults, were killed in Sandy Hook. In the statement, Erica called the planned event a “disgusting political stunt.” Gottlieb shook his head and smiled.

A bad move on his part.

“Why are you laughing?” Morgan asked

“Because that’s totally over the top. That’s not what our intent was. It’s not what anything we were going to do was.” Gottlieb answered.

“Wait a minute!” Morgan shot back. “You plan a campaign to promote the good side of guns on the first anniversary of the worst mass shooting at a school in American history, and you have the gall to laugh when I read out a quote from one of the victims’ families? How dare you?”

Gottlieb’s lame excuse was to accuse the “anti-gun movement” of politicizing the shooting. But that lameness was not calming fir Morgan. “How dare you laugh at them,” he continued.

Video.

Categories
Politics

Bill Clinton on Shutdown – People Need to “Work Together”

(CNN) — Former President Bill Clinton weighed in Monday on the legislative impasse at the heart of the government shutdown, admonishing the “constant conflict” that has come to define American politics.

Speaking at a convention of the National Community Pharmacists Association in Orlando, Clinton said he liked the crowd because of the practicality of their profession.

“I worry that our politics has gotten impractical. That’s about the nicest word I can think of,” Clinton said.

Convictions are a good thing, Clinton said, as are political beliefs and support of one policy over the other.

The comments are some of the first Clinton has made on the spat over government funding, debt and Obamacare since before the partial shutdown took effect October 1.

In an interview with ABC at the end of September, Clinton took a hardline approach to the looming shutdown, calling on President Barack Obama to call a congressional Republican “bluff” on defunding the Affordable Care Act.

Obama could have stopped the shutdown, Clinton said at the time.

“But the price of – the current price of stopping it is higher than the price of letting the Republicans do it and taking their medicine,” he said.

Clinton on Monday was far less confrontational and far more the elder statesmen who has seen and done it before, having been President during the last federal government shut downs in 1995 and 1996.

Instead of conflict, Clinton urged cooperation.

“Nobody’s right all the time. And the more complex problems are the more you need people to work together,” he said.

But politics is often a zero-sum game where there are winners and losers and especially in Washington, working together is often far less attractive than some notion of winning.

Categories
News Texas

Texas: Oil Storage Facility Explodes

An explosion sparked a large fire at an oil storage facility in Smith County, Texas, on Monday night, KLTV reported.

Firefighters from at least three area departments responded to the blaze at the Vess Oil Corp. The flames could be seen from miles away.

At the time of this writing, no injuries or deaths have been reported, KETK reported. Cause of the explosion is also unknown.

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