Rand Paul, Republican Senator from Kentucky and son of Ron Paul, has been filibustering, yes I will say that’s the verb, the confirmation vote for John Brennan, who would head the CIA. What is prompting this filibuster is the letter from Attorney GeneralEric Holder which states that the US has the authority to use unmanned droned strikes on American soil but has no intention of doing so. The letter was prompted by Mr. Brennan’s written answer last month to questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee, in which he had written: “This Administration has not carried out drone strikes inside the United States and has no intention of doing so.” It seems as though Paul’s filibuster won’t stop Brennan’s confirmation, but what it is doing, which the Paul family is good at, is raising awareness for an issue and garnering press attention. And I am glad that there are some politicians who have the guts to do that sort of thing.
Since these terms had been confusing me as well I decided to look into them a bit more.
So the Fiscal Cliff is basically this, there are a series of laws that would: raise taxes, cut spending and lower the budget deficit by half. This bill was put into place during the budget negotiations in 2011. The big Debt Ceiling crisis. These laws unless changed will go into effect January 1, 2013.
The Debt Ceiling is the amount of borrowing Congress can do to pay for its budget each year.
I just wanted to give these basic definitions to you since I was getting these ideas confused in its media portrayal.
I am sure I have written something about this topic before but after this election I began thinking of this topic again. The Republican Party that Americans know today came in two parts. The first was as a reaction to the radical 1960s culture. There wasn’t the term “values voter” but the idea was still there. This is how Nixon came to power. After Nixon and Watergate there Whitehouse needed to be opened back to the American people, and that is where Ford and Carter came from. I know we didn’t elect Ford, but I feel as though President and Mrs Ford did more to heal the nation’s trust in the president that anyone else did. Carter came in as an outsider and in my opinion left the Whitehouse as an outsider. Then there is Regan. Ronald Regan did more for the Republican party than any other president in 40 years. He is the model of the Republican president that all other Republicans want to be. He was charismatic and was able to collect a majority of the Republican voices into one place and put them on the same path. No other president has been able to do such a thing. But Regan was president in a different time and a different age. In Regan’s day a majority of Americans were white, and could remember the troubled times of Watergate and some even the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. There was a collective consciences and a collective memory. This day in age is very different.
I wonder if Regan would have tweeted, tumbled, or had a Facebook page? He would have but I wonder if he would have used them. I wonder how Regan’s presidency would have been different with the internet. Would it have taken him so long to mention AIDS? Would the social issues of the 80s and 90s have been placed in the back burner and been left on our doorsteps to deal with? I don’t know. But I see now that the Republican Party isn’t willing to deal with the fact that with instant communication comes a need for instant answers and a need to deal with more opinions. The US is not a nation of one race, religion or ethnicity, and that’s what makes this country great. There are so many ideas and backgrounds of people, and now with the internet their collective voices can be heard. I see the Tea Party as a reaction to this. And before the Republican party followed suit with the reactionary politics, but this time the moderates see this will not work. The majority of the country is moderate, and compared to the rest of the world very conservative. The Democrats are trying to move the US towards a European style of governance, and there are people who don’t like that. Republicans seem to be fighting the wrong battles and using petty arguments to forget the real point. We are a nation of 50 states, with diverse geographies and regions and social dichotomies. We need leaders who can deal with all of it, and not just what he or she wants to.
Can Romney ever escape the notion that he isn’t a real conservative? I was having a political discussion with my father the other day. My father is die-hard anti-Obama, and was stating that he felt that McCain was fighting a loosing battle, because Obama didn’t have a large political record to pick at, which made it difficult for McCain to criticize him. Now Obama has a political track record for Romney to pick at and that should make things easier for Obama, the problem is Romney also has an extensive political track record, and not the kind that a Republican presidential candidate would want. It is an uphill battle for Mitt Romney to obtain political “street cred” with conservative Republicans because he has none. He don’t have anything to show other than his word saying that he’s a conservative. His past is going to haunt him for this entire election and it seems to me that fed-up Republicans may not end up voting, if he can’t win their trust. There is no base anymore for the Republican party to say, “This is who we are and this is what we stand for.” You may find financially conservative people who are socially liberal or socially conservative people who are more financially liberal. I think that this election is going to be an uphill battle for Romney also because the Tea Party, although not the majority of the party, are still a voting block and a bit of a force to reckon with, I don’t know if these people would vote for Romney just because, he isn’t Obama. It is sad to say but this election seems to be Obama versus Not Obama.
I went on the Yahoo Political page today, and as we all know this page has a highlighted view of the candidates and there are still three candidates lit up, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Ron Paul knows he’s not going to get the votes necessary to win the primary, unless he convinces people to change their votes, and I really don’t see him as a viable Vice Presidential candidate. While I am reading around the net that Ron Paul did end campaigning this week, but still wants to collect candidates to change the primary voting system. I wonder if that was his point? Sometimes I wonder how serious Paul’s campaign was and if he was really looking to win or if he was just looking for a door into the system.
Joe Biden, not really America‘s smartest Vice President, but maybe that is just an act. As I am sure we all know Joe Biden publicly stated that he is “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage before the president. This statement brought to light the Obama administrations less than concrete stance on gay marriage. While I am sure Obama would rather have stayed neutral on the issue Biden’s public support forced Obama to publicly state one way or the other his point of view. Sometimes I wonder if Biden planned this, or if Obama planned this as a trial balloon. You know have the Vice President who is known for making huge gaffes say something so large in public and see how the country reacts. Also this event and Obama publicly stating his support for gay marriage has now made this a campaign issue. While the Romney camp keeps stating they want to focus on the economy, and I hope they mean it, they will not be able to get away from the issue of gay marriage. So as it stands, the Vice President’s gaffe has brought gay marriage back to the forefront, showed a light on the way Republicans have been dealing with social issues and made Obama take a real stand in an election year. Maybe Biden should make more gaffes like these.
So for those of you who don’t know Newt Gingrich, one of my least favorite characters in this political fun and games, is leaving this race for the presidential nomination on Tuesday or Wednesday. But why then? That’s what many top Republicans are wondering. A candidate who has only been able to win two states, South Carolina and Georgia, and was absolutely slaughtered in last Tuesday five state primary should have been out of this race a long time ago. Many people in the party see this as a victory lap without a victory. Why would a candidate who knows that his party is so divided is allowing his party to be divided more by not supporting the stronger candidate. He is also, by taking this long “victory lap” allowing himself to fade into irrelevance. Nobody remembers why Gingrich was even considered a contender. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I just find it sad for the Republican party.
So Republicans seem to be trying to catch the youth vote with this campaign commercial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lhXGkeMdOJs In this post paid for by the Karl Rove linked Super Pac, Obama is painted as a celebrity president, and then those who watch are asked, is your life any better? Now for the real kicker, Donald Trump, former almost Republican, tried to trademark, “your fired,” friend of the birthers said while on a call with MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe“, “I thought it was one of the worst commercials, in terms of what they were trying to do, that I’ve ever seen.” This commercial actually makes Obama look cool, and anyone who knows how interest rates work know that it’s up to congress and not the president to fix those sorts of issues. Trump then continues, “They are making Obama look great,” Trump said. “They are making him look like that’s the man we want to be president. I looked at that clip very closely, and actually, I couldn’t believe it.” This is the first time I absolutely agree with Trump, this commercial is a horrible way of making Obama look bad.
So I went on Twitter today and found #don’tdoublemyrate was all over the place. That peaked my interest so I investigated. Apparently the interest rates for Stafford Loans are set to double in July from 3.4% to 6.8% which is in real life, an extra $5,000 over a 10 year period for borrowers. President Obama is asking Congress to not let this rate hike happen, but Republican Congressional leaders are making some valid arguments against holding the interest rates down such as: if a university can pay $1,000,000 for a football coach then why can’t that money go to lowering tuition costs, or using the generous endowments that universities get for to lower tuition, or better yet how about the states step in. This got me thinking, where does the cost of tuition at a university come from? It’s not some made up magic number that a university comes up with, telling you the value of your education, although it feels that way. Most of your tuition cost go to facilities, faculty salaries, utilities, building maintenance, and boring things like that. If you have multiple nobel prize-winning faculty members and buildings that are considered cultural landmarks, your tuition will be more. Now the United States is in a recession, where there are not many jobs, so what is a 20 something to do in this economy, go to school, but if the current rate doubles, those students will be in a big mess of trouble when they finish school and then they may or may not be able to find a job. In this economy should the government be asking student to pay their fair share of their student loan debt, or should the government keep holding these rates down so the student doesn’t create as much debt? That is the question. And at this moment, even with the thousands of dollars in student loan debt I have, Sallie Mae is a witch with a b, I side with the Republicans. Keeping the interest rates low is not going to lower the cost of tuition in the long run. We can’t live in a society of short-term fixes, we need real solutions to this complex problem and maybe public outrage and lower attendance numbers will help universities figure out how to lower their tuition costs. Maybe it would be better if kids today work before college, save money, or go to school part-time rather than living for four years in a stunted adolescence and being shocked with the bill at the end.
I am seriously confused? Are we having a presidential election or trying to start another cultural revolution? Also if we are trying to start a cultural revolution then why are we doing it with hate and propaganda? Look this race has gotten so crazy now people are talking about how President Obama ate dog meat as a child in Indonesia, and making a big deal out of it. The Democrats are doing the same, talking about how Romney left a dog carrier on the top of his car. Although if I am going to pick the worse of two character traits, a grown man forgetting about his dog on the roof is way worse than a child eating dog meat. But I digress, this race has turned into a clash of ideas: single mothers v working mothers v stay at home mothers, birth control, abortion, race and I am sure at some point religion and same-sex issues will come up. Why is it that these politicians cannot talk about the thing Americans want to hear about, the economy, jobs, fixing out future? This election has seriously gone to the dogs. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75355.html
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Rand Paul, Republican Senator from Kentucky and son of Ron Paul, has been filibustering, yes I will say that’s the verb, the confirmation vote for John Brennan, who would head the CIA. What is prompting this filibuster is the letter from Attorney General Eric Holder which states that the US has the authority to use unmanned droned strikes on American soil but has no intention of doing so. The letter was prompted by Mr. Brennan’s written answer last month to questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee, in which he had written: “This Administration has not carried out drone strikes inside the United States and has no intention of doing so.” It seems as though Paul’s filibuster won’t stop Brennan’s confirmation, but what it is doing, which the Paul family is good at, is raising awareness for an issue and garnering press attention. And I am glad that there are some politicians who have the guts to do that sort of thing.
