Universal Suffrage

“Universal suffrage” means everyone has the right to vote.  Everyone a) who is a citizen, b) who is at least 18 years of age (and c) who is not a felon (serving time) (a state by state requirement)).  Universal suffrage does not imply that a “democracy” prevails, because democracy means “the people rule.”  And while the people do choose their leaders, their representatives, their public servants, those who they choose seem more beholden to their “funders” – their significant campaign contributors – than to those who elected them to office in the first place.  This is a huge problem, of course.  It is the core of everything that I write about, that our democracy is a sham.

Fiscal Responsibility

The idea of “fiscal responsibility” is a pretty simple thing: the government pays for what it buys, or it buys no more than what it can pay for (and sometimes it even saves some monies that were collected from taxpayers, and applies them to pay down the National Debt a little).  Fiscal responsibility disappeared during the Reagan years (I know – you don’t believe me; look it up) when the conservative goal of “making government smaller” ran into a wall of Democrats who refused to slash their own precious programs; but Republicans went ahead and cut taxes anyway.  So, they accomplished half of “making government smaller” (the cutting taxes part); while they put the other part (cutting spending) on hold indefinitely.  The result was predictable and has come true with a vengeance for some 35 years: out of control deficits and an exploding National Debt.  This is NOT fiscal responsibility, it is fiscal IR-responsibility.

Lame Duck

Within only a few nano-moments of Justice Antonin Scalia being pronounced dead, the august Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of the great state of Kentucky announced that he would not allow the President’s nomination to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court to come to the Senate floor for advise and consent.  Putting aside his obvious-to-nearly-everyone-in-the-country political reason that the sitting President is a black Democrat whom he has battled from the gitgo, he asserted that President Obama was a Lame Duck President, and that it was therefore the President’s job to wait for his (Republican) successor to nominate the next (conservative Republican) Associate Justice, some eleven months and change from now. 

Unprecedented?  Yup.

But let’s spend a few words talking about his reason for delay: President Obama is a "lame duck" President.  But he is not a lame duck President.  He will become a lame duck when his successor is in place (look it up!), the morning after Election Day, Wednesday, November 9^th, 2016, more than eight months from this writing.  (Lame duck Presidents use this two and a half months’ time to help transition the President-Elect into office.)  Allowing for definitions to change (because Mitch McConnell is a powerful man), we might choose to see the lame duck period as the time that a sitting President in his second term has to contend with a Senate and a House of the other party, that is since January of 2015 – more than a year ago – or, worse, since the day after Election Day in 2014.  Is McConnell really saying that?  That President Obama has been a lame duck for the entire last half of his second term, that he should sit on his hands for two years, or go on extended vacation in Hawaii, with full pay?

Sample #4

Democracy

Democracy – rule by the people – do we really live in a democracy?

Sample #3

Liberals and Conservatives

The word "liberal" means free-thinking, generous, tolerant, open-minded, innovative, progressive.  The word "conservative" means restrained, cautious, moderate, conventional, respectful, traditional.  The younger mind tends to be more liberal, reckless, open to adventure; and the older mind tends to be more conservative, cautious and safety-minded.  Heaven forbid that we had a political system that honored one stage of life and slighted the other.

Sample #2

Preface

I will piss you off, I guarantee it.  But I do not want to lose you, on that account, before we even begin our journey together.  No matter if you are conservative or liberal, Republican or Democratic, Libertarian or Green, Independent or moderate or undecided – something I say will strike you the wrong way.  Nonetheless, I beg your indulgence, as the message of this book is too important to be left to those who agree with me 100% (not even my own family).  Whether you admire President Reagan or not, I will ask you to consider his words and for the rest of this book to give me the benefit of the doubt that I am not a “traitor,” that I am a patriot – one who truly loves his country – every bit as much as you are.

Sample #1

How to Read This Book

This book was written for Americans who are too busy to read 50 books a year.  It was written in a conversational style, an informal chat between me and you.  It was written to be digested any way that you like.  You want to begin at the beginning and read it straight through?  OK, but don’t expect to get the plot any better than if you read it wherever you happen to put your thumb.  Read it from the middle out?  OK.  You can read most of the book’s short essays in less time than you can hold your breath (“on your mark, get set, inhale.”).  You can read one while you’re taking a coffee break, while you’re grabbing a bite, or even while you’re sitting on your throne.  I have provided a check box (⎕) following each essay’s title for you to mark (√) an essay as “read.”  Or you could pencil a number in the check box for the number of times you have read that essay.  Or a number for how well you liked it.  Or a “Y” or “N” for whether you agree.  Or “*” for “I want to read this one again and tell all my friends about it.”

Chutzpah

If you are from New York, if you like New York, or Chicago, or Los Angeles, or Miami, or Philadelphia, if you live in a city with more than a handful of Jews, you probably know what "chutzpah" means.  In case you don't know the word, here is a perfect example of it: Ted Cruz panhandling folks he has just maligned!  And, by the by, if you are wondering what "New York values" really means, it's code for Jewish values.  Like chutzpah!  Way to go, Ted!

What is the Debt?

At a Town Hall meeting in New Hampshire on Monday, December 21st, an audience member asked Republican Presidential candidate Governor Chris Christie about the National Debt, claiming that Barack Obama had tripled the Debt in his seven years in office.  Governor Christie, without attempting to correct the man’s exaggerated figure, claimed that Obama had added to the debt more than every other President combined; in other words, he had doubled – not tripled – the Debt, still a potent charge.   But here is the truth: Presidents Reagan and Bush I more than quadrupled the Debt, from $998 billion to $4,411 billion, President Bush II more than doubled the Debt, from $5,807 billion to $11,910 billion.  President Obama took over a Debt at $11,910 billion and the Debt stood at $18,151 billion at the end of the last fiscal year, September 30th, 2015, an explosion of 52%, not 200%, not 100% (but he has only been responsible for 6 years of budgets so far).  And while President Bush II only had surpluses as far as the eye could see to overcome, President Obama had a deep recession to fight (and additional government spending is every serious economist’s response to a recession).

Politicians lie, even with numbers that are easily verified.  But politicians don’t expect you to care enough to hunt down the truth.  So, I am happy to do that for you. 

And, by the way, here is the SOURCE of my numbers.  I wonder what the governor’s source was.

And Governor Christie knows he told a whopper.  The alternative is: he is ignorant and he doesn’t care.  Which is worse?

For what it's worth, this is not an anti-Christie post, it is a post aimed at setting the record straight re: taxes and the National Debt.  All Republicans have put these untrue facts out there.  Democrats lie too, but Republicans – the party of fiscal responsibility – like to emphasize the fiscal irresponsibility of President Obama, and they don’t seem to care that it is just not true.

Big Deal Dates in Recent US History

This blog post is just an exercise in historical silliness.  There is no way you could come up with this personal list of big deal dates if you asked Google or Bing.  It is just MY list, 13 events.

November 4^th & 5^th, 2008

Barack Obama wins the American Presidency.  The world went crazy, the world celebrated, America had elected a black man President, America had grown up!  Even in the USA, Obama had a 76% approval rating following his inauguration, so even conservative Republicans were glad for America (for a short while).  It was quite an event, you could feel it!