bad times

Hi everyone, I haven't forgotten my blog here, I've just been pre-occupied with other things happening closer to home. I'm fully aware of the idocies going on in both parties, and actually agree with Congressman Ron Paul on certain points with this whole financial disaster. But, that will come later. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. Thanks.

-Brock

This week in voting away your pocket book

Well, Monday had to have been one of the most treacherous days in congressional history. Probably one of the most important bills for congress to vote on, was written hastily, unclearly, rushed, pushed and then the democrats pulled a sheet over the eyes of the American public and voted the bill into the Senate the next day. Some of you may already be aware of HR 6899. This was going to be the big Bi-partisan energy bill that would help us to drill for more oil here in the United States, and get us off of our dependence for foreign oil to refine and may huge amounts of taxes on. I'll take this opportunity to say to House Minority Leader, Representative John Boehner, Kudos to you! Folks, the way Representative Boehner stood up before his fellow members of the House and called this bill for what it was, a sham, was gutsy, brave and almost heroic. A 230 page document introduced at 9:45 pm, and then expected to be voted on the following afternoon. The democrats wanted everyone to read this...nobody did. Rep. Boehner even asked, by show of hands, how many people had actually read the entire bill. The room fell silent, and not one hand was shown on CSPAN. I was absolutely disheartened on Tuesday by the actions of our House of Representatives. To actually vote in a bill that they had just admitted to not fully understanding is wreckless and irresponsible. To everyone living in a district represented by a Democrat, or even one of the 14 or 15 Republicans that actually voted for this written piece of garbage, call them up and demand a reasonable explanation. The only purpose I see this serving is the opportunity for them to say, "Look, there was a bill in favor of drilling, and I voted for it!" Unfortunately, this particular bill did not relax any of the current restrictions on drilling, and in fact, put in more red tape in some areas. Really, the only thing that was voted on with this bill was more Democrat strategy for them to keep their jobs by lying to hard working, tax paying Americans who they are hoping don't pay too much attention to the news, and channel surf past CSPAN. Shame on them.
Enough of that. There were a few things going on this week. Governor Sarah Palin sat down with Sean Hannity for a one on one interview, and consistently answered every one of his questions with ease and confidence. Not once contradicting herself. The more and more her ideas for this country come to surface, I get scared of having an America without McCain and Palin at the helm. We need the kind of change they will bring to DC.
Oh! before I forget, let me back up a little. Monday morning. I was driving from the gym back to my office around half past eight, and passed a black SUV with some shoe polish writing in all the windows. No biggie, see stuff like that all the time, right? Wrong. This lady had every window covered with praise for Obama. The rear window is what really got me worried, though. "OBama '08 / Time for (up arrow) Change! / VOTE OR DIE!" Does anyone else see a problem here? Other than a liberal driving a gas-guzzling SUV? Vote or die? I'm wondering how she exactly plans to enforce this. But, this wasn't the last time this week that an Obama supporter would do something like this. Think back further in this campaign to Senator Obama making a statement that our National Anthem promotes war, and should be changed to something different. Earlier this week, a YouTube video was posted dating back to July, in which forward for the Dallas Mavericks, Josh Howard, is shown while the the Star Spangled Banner is playing. He's told that the national anthem is playing, and he says, "The Star-Spangled Banner' is going on. I don't celebrate this s---. I'm black."
So, apparently skin color makes you exempt from showing respect to the nation in which you live, and provides the very freedom he's exercising in not standing still. That's fine, he's entitled to his opinion. But, what really gets this going is what he said next, you hear another male, probably the cameraman say, "Obama '08!" Which is then immediately followed by Josh Howard with, "Obama, and all that s---!" Gee...Obama has some swell support for him. These are the kind of guys he should put on tv to campaign for him.
Has anyone seen these new ads on spanish tv for both candidates? As I hear more about it, it seems that Senator OBama first put out a spanish commercial claiming that Senator McCain is anti-immigration, and that Rush Limbaugh thinks all mexicans are monkeys and unintelligent. Senator McCain countered with an equally untrue commercial claiming that Obama voted "No" on the immigration reform, and national security bills that would enforce immigrations requirements and laws. In truth, and I hate to admit this, Obama voted in favor of both issues. Not once, but twice. I know that recently I've been showing a lot of support for John McCain, but wrong is just plain wrong. Both candidates showed poor judgement when they endorsed these ads, and both should face the music and apologize to the American public they expected to be dumb enough to believe the lies. Sadly, I only see John McCain as being man enough to step up to the plate and actually do it. Which is also one of the reasons, I can't vote for OBama...ever. I just can't trust him to ever show strong enough conviction to anything, and definitely not enough cojones to admit when he's wrong, or has done something wrong. I honestly expect him, in some way to twist this just enough to where he won't have to apologize to anybody for anything, and shift the blame onto the republicans. I see it coming. Mark this day on your calendars.
As I write this blog, I'm getting tired. It's kinda late at night, and I desperately need some sleep, so I'm going to wrap this one up here. I will post again a little sooner than I posted this one. In the meantime, however, I will remain diligent in my research for issues that should be addressed here, and make sure that at least my voice is heard from the tiny corner of the Blog-osphere.

Deli encounters

I went to dinner tonight with my family to a little Austin-based delicatessen that happens to have a shop in La Mesa, California. For those not familiar this Southern California, La Mesa is a small suburb of San Diego. As I was sitting there, enjoying my Turkey, Bacon Club on Sourdough (quite delicious), I noticed some folks wearing a lot of Texas Longhorns emblematics. "How quaint," I thought. The older woman in front of the family also happened to be wearing a Longhorns jacket. As all of us began talking, sensing that we were all from the Central Texas region, and it did eventually come out the I am a die-hard Aggie Fan, we discussed briefly the many changes in our beloved home state. That's when the Lib-Bomb hit. The older woman blind-sided me in a casual conversation with the classic "and that's why I hate Karl Rove!" Huh? I was talking about Kerby Lane Cafe. As she explained herself, she kept the finger pointing tactics up with the famous "you people" comments dropped here and there, and everywhere. I feel less on the defense when I talk with Bryan. This woman was in attack mode. And, of course she brought up the Supreme Court "handing over" of the presidency to our current President Bush. Not fair. Let's recap that little debacle. Al Gore lost the whole state of Florida with three heavily democratic counties, Miami-Dade county being one of them. Huge populous. Yes, he may have had those, in turn he did. However, what actually happened with the Florida Recount, was that Al Gore only wanted those three counties to be the recount, not the rest of Florida, which as it turns out is quite conservative. Not only that, but it's part of Florida's State Constitution. After the first state-wide recount, the votes still didn't fall into Al's favor, and he pouted. And, like hoping the scary shadow will go away if you just close your eyes and open them, he demanded another recount, which he lost again, and again. It finally got so ridiculous that the Supreme Court had to step in and tell Al Gore that enough is enough. But, unfortunately all the Dems tend to conveniently forget this. Good for America, though, John Kerry had a sudden flashback the morning of Nov. 5th and ceded his bid instead of wasting countless taxpayer dollars in another useless recount. Finally, she had to leave, and that was that. I could only shake my head and hope that her misguided beliefs could one day be brought to her attention as ill-informed.
Now, on to the many happenings over the course of this week. Governor Sarah Palin went on tv with Charlie Gibson. This was a moment of triumph for all of us conservatives. When you go back to the moment when he kept asking her the same question about Israel and Iran, she stuck to her guns, and just would not let him put words in her mouth. She kept giving him the same answer like a broken record to make sure he understand that her stance was exactly what it was, and no matter how many times he asked the same question with different words, he was not going to make a fool of her, and she would remain steadfast.
You can see it in each of her responses to each time he asked, check it out.
GIBSON: "What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?"
PALIN: I don't think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves, and for their security.
GIBSON: So if we wouldn't second guess it and if they decided they needed to do it, because Iran was an existential threat, we would be cooperative or agree with that?
PALIN: I don't think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.
GIBSON: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right?
PALIN: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself.
That was a beautiful moment. She told Charlie Gibson to screw off with her answers. All he was looking for was one slip up that the left could use to spray all over the headlines of the next morning's news papers. And, of course, she didn't fall for it. I was giddy.
Charlie Gibson, on the other hand, ended up looking like he was unprepared for anything substantial,a s he should have been, and was obviously under-prepared.
Later, on a CNN round-table discussion, in which Lou Dobbs was sitting, Governor Palin was defended by none other than Mr. Dobbs himself. I was in shock when I heard it. Could it be that he's a supporter? Dunno. We'll find out when the time comes. For now, as I understand it, he's in the Obama camp. There was an exchange between Jeffrey Toobin, Wolf Blitzer and Lou Dobbs all about the question that Sarah Palin was asked about the crisis in Georgia with Russia's invasion and absolute refusal to leave. Check this exchange out.
BLITZER: On the Georgia thing and what Palin basically said was that if Georgia were to be a member of NATO the US, of course, would be obliged to come to the defense of Georgia or Ukraine or any other NATO ally under those circumstances, so she had that little nuance in there.
TOOBIN: Well, yes, but we went through 50 years of a Cold War without going to war with Russia over things a lot more important frankly than Georgia, so I mean I just thought it was a somewhat odd answer, but we'll parse them very carefully.
BLITZER: First of all, what do you think about this latest sort of twist and turn in the presidential contest?
DOBBS: If you're sitting there listening to Obama, who's run the slickest, smartest, shrewdest campaign right up until Russia invaded Georgia, the man cannot find his tempo again. His campaign is like they're still on vacation. You just heard the man talking there with Letterman. He's boring, just as Palin comes in to give excitement to the Republicans. He talks about exciting the base -- 62 percent of men in this country have a favorable view of Governor Palin. And I heard our colleague Jeff Toobin say, "Well, he's got some questions or he's got to think about that answer of hers on whether or not, as a member of NATO, the United States would have to defend Georgia had Russia invaded it." Let me help you out, Jeff Toobin. No nuance required. We would be required to do so, as would all of the members of NATO.
BLITZER: So I hear you saying that Obama seems to have lost his momentum, his mojo, if you will, but McCain's gained it, is that what you're thinking, Lou?"
DOBBS: This woman has turned feminism on its head. You're watching women in this country trying to figure what in the heck, on the left, what in the heck this woman is doing to them. Women on the right are sitting there saying, you know, wow she's talking sensibly because she's first, pragmatic, who is trying to be painted as an ideologue of course by the Democrats, but she's coming across very pragmatic, she's strong, and, man, you gotta love the fact that this woman knows how to shoot.
Did anyone else have to read that over? I had to hit rewind to believe it. Later, in the same interview with Charlie Gibson, he ask Governor Palin what she thought about the Bush Doctrine. After goading her for a minute, he finally described what he THOUGHT it to be. Palin came back with yet another solid answer.
GIBSON: The Bush Doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right tie preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?
PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country.
This is right in line with the answer she grave previously with Israel and Iran. She remains consistent and with tons of confidence she rolls out her answers and just shuts him down every time he tried to derail her. I was in awe.
Did anyone else notice the hurricane in Texas? I also noticed that Michael Moore didn't have any sarcastic comments this time around. Was it because people that have a different view point from his weren't having a convention? I noticed he hates people that think differently than he does. Maybe that's why he likes Cuba so much.
However, to the police, paramedics, fire-rescue crews in Louisiana and Texas, I sincerely hope that all of you are able to accomplish all the things you wish to accomplish without any incidents. You have a tough job ahead of you, and not enough time to do it in. our thoughts and prayers are with you.

A new hopelessness

So, I just got off the phone with my brother back in Texas. It was an interesting conversation to say the least. The thing everyone needs to understand right off the bat, id that he is a diehard Libertarian. I've learned to take everything he says with a grain of salt. His ideas, while a bit extreme in nature, and ill-thought out, at least have the best intentions at heart.
He's still under the presumption that the Patriot Act gives blanket authority for the NSA and CIA to wiretap his phones at will. In truth, he couldn't be more wrong. As I tried to remind him that in order for the wiretapping to take place there has to be Probable Cause (PC). No different than a Police Officer pulling someone over or entering a private residence without permission. Reasonable PC has to exist, and you would then have to be able to back it up in a court. In this case it would be a FISA court. The biggest thing to understand with all of this, is that the average citizen is in no way targeted for surveillance. the CIA and NSA in no way have the manpower, the capabilities, and the inclination to wire tap the phone lines of every last person in the country and listen to their phone calls back and forth between them and the pizza delivery place, or Gramma. It's just not feasible. What they do is find PC with one person individually, be it they make frequent overseas calls to known terrorist organizations, they contribute large sums of money to terror groups, etc... There has to in some way be a logically deduced relationship between the individual and terrorism. Yet for some reason he's still up in arms thinking that the Government has violated his rights. Suuuuuuuuuuuuure.
Also in our conversation he stated he believes that every group within government that has an acronym should go away. IRS, CIA, NSA, FBI, etc... I gotta say that this idea is pretty retarded. As much as I dislike the IRS, they do serve a fundamental purpose within the existence of our nation. As a country we do need a method of collecting revenue. And, while paying taxes does suck, it is a necessity if we wish to survive as a country. Now, I do agree with my brother that the American public is taxed entirely too much, and for frivolous programs that should have gone away decades ago. However, eliminating the IRS is not the way to go about it. Nor is eliminating the FBI or CIA. Both of these organisations maintain the security and integrity (what little is left) of our national borders from within and externally. Without these two organizations, believe me, this country would be really screwed. Not to mention I would have to argue that once their failures outnumber their success, classified and unclassified, then we should talk about dismantling them. Then and only then. Right now, we need them too much. Whether anyone likes to admit it or not, they play far too important a role in our National Security to even consider getting rid of them.
Another topic that got brought up in our conversation was eminent domain. I couldn't agree more with him about this topic. It's just flat out wrong, and yes unconstitutional. Businesses and government do have the right to offer someone compensation to move for the development of an area, but to flat out force them out, is just wrong. And, I would argue that the individual citizen would then have a case against the government. Ownership of property is a liberty that is guaranteed under our living Constitution. This is one of the few things that I do agree with my brother on. That and we do need to shrink our government, and in turn lower taxes due to a lot of these useless programs sucking up money and not providing any return. Our current government is pumping all of our hard earned money into frivolous spending that none of us will ever see the fruits of it's labor. Meanwhile we slave away in our own jobs, so that we can support someone else's family, and not our own. Does anyone else see a problem with that? I'm not going to play partisan on this one, because both sides have screwed the pooch here. Republicans are just as much to blame. Until half of these idiotic taxes are in place get removed, then I will be constantly pissed and hold everyone in government accountable. It's just unrealistic to continue to increase taxes and expect everyone to maintain their current way of life. We're creating a welfare state. The more taxes increase and get pumped into welfare programs, the more people are going to fall into the welfare trap, because they can't maintain. I guarantee we're going to start seeing a rise in welfare families in the next decade unless we stop being stupid. When it comes to balancing the budget, the answer is not to increase the income, but instead decrease the output of money. Duh.
I want to take this opportunity now, before I close out this blog entry, to challenge our elected officials. Have some balls. It's ok to lower taxes and cut programs. Most of the republicans have already promised to do so.....now it's time to actually go forth and do it. Your constituents would appreciate it, and you'll probably have a better chance of getting re-elected. Not to mention folks will actually have money in their pockets to actually have enough gas to drive down to the polling precincts. Let's use our heads, Folks. That's why we got 'em.