Yesterday was the anniversary of the most notorious day America has ever suffered. Nearly 3,000 people were murdered. They weren’t murdered for anything they personally had done to someone else. They weren’t murdered for profit. They were murdered because they were not Muslim. They were murdered by a group of people that want the entire world to convert to Islam or die.
Our Illustrious President Obama has decided that this should be a “Day of Service and Remembrance.” Isn’t that nice? A Day of Service? Not since December 7, 1941 has the US suffered an attack by a foreign entity on US soil. We do have a “Day of Remembrance” for that day, we call it Pearl Harbor Day. We remember what happened that day and why it happened. I don’t need a day of service, I need retribution. I need to forces that caused this disaster to be abolished, annihilated. I need them to be dead. I need a government that understands what is at stake, that is willing to do what is necessary to end this war in such a way as to ensure that this never happens again. I need a President that will give up the idea of making our enemies like us and embrace the idea of making our enemies pay for the act of murdering our friends, neighbors and fellow Americans.
The Day of Service is not what I need. The murderers did not attack us because I, or anyone else, neglected to help an elderly lady across the street. They didn’t murder almost 3,000 people because we failed to pick up some trash on the street. We were attacked because they want to convert us to their religion, and failing to do that, they would choose to make us dead.
What we need is a “Day of Kick Their Ass,” a “Day of Now You Can Die By The Thousands.” We need a President that is less worried about making friends than he is about winning a war that our enemies started. Bush was a good President about attempting to fight the war, but even he failed to understand what was truly needed. Even Bush was concerned with “winning the peace.” Screw “peace.” We need to win the war, let those who started this fight worry about securing the “peace” after we kick their Islamic asses.
After Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor, nobody told American’s “we have to understand why they hate us.” Nobody told us that we need to be considerate of the enemies feelings. We were told that we would win. And we did win. We didn’t lose any sleep if civilians got killed. War is hell, people die. Even civilians. Did the Islamic attackers worry about civilian deaths 8 years ago? No. Did they worry about our collective feelings 8 years ago? No. Should we worry about theirs now? HELL NO. We should be worried about convincing them it is a mistake to attack us. We should be worried about getting revenge for what they did, getting revenge in such a way that they realize they should never attempt that kind of act again. We don’t need their respect, we don’t need their friendship. We need their fear. We need to teach them fear.
We need to understand that nothing ends a war like near extinction. When we have killed almost all Muslims, Muslims will see the need to live in peace with us, and the rest of the world. We dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan to end World War Two. How many civilians were killed? How much longer did Japan continue to fight after those bombs were dropped. How much sleep did Americans lose over the loss of Japanese lives? How long did it take the Japanese to learn it is better to be our friend than to be our enemy?
Mr. President, you can keep your “Day of Service.” We don’t need it. Not on September 11. You can have your day of service another time, any other day. But not on September 11, this day is special, not to be politicized. What we need on this day is a “Day of Rememberance and Kick Ass.” We need a day to resolve to actually win a war like it is a war, not try to bribe the “schoolyard bully” into liking us.
Obama set the record straight lastnight. He corrected the mistruths the Republicans and special interest have been using to “scare” the American people about healthcare. Unfortunately, if one does not tell the whole truth, one is lying.
Obama lied. Healthcare reform, as proposed by the Democrats in the House and the Senate, will require you to give up your current healthcare plan even if you are satisfied with it. While the bills specifically say you can keep your current plan, they also make it impossible for companies to profitably continue to offer healthcare coverage for their employees. While companies generally pay 20 to 50% of their payroll on healthcare for their employees, the fine for not providing healthcare is only 8% of payroll, according to HR3200 Section 102. Companies are in business to make a profit, as a result they will always choose the more profitable route. If it is more profitable for companies to pay the fine than to pay for healthcare, they will cancel healthcare plans and pay the fine. HR3200 prohibits any insurance companies from writing new policies after “day one of year one” and mandates anyone without insurance will be “auto-enrolled” into the government plan.
Therefore, Mr. Obama, you flat out lied to the American people. You can call me on misrepresenting the “facts,” but you rest assured that I will call you on intentionally lying to the American people in order to accomplish your communist agenda.
This article appeared on The Daily Kos this weekend. It should scare the daylights out of anyone who believes in America and the US Constitution. I will post the entire article so noone can claim I took them out of context.
“The Problem of the Small State Senator
by mcjoan
Sun Aug 23, 2009 at 01:00:04 PM PDT
In the ongoing red state/blue state, small state/big state public opinion tussle, the small states have been on the losing end lately, with small state Senators having huge influence on two major pieces of legislation, influence that is either significantly weakening, and even threatening to kill, those bills. That leaves plenty of people wondering how it is that a handful of senators who represent a tiny fraction of the nation’s population get to decide for all of us. But I think the real question needs to be whether that tiny fraction of the nation’s population is really being represented, and if not, what are they going to do about it.
Wyoming’s Senators are starting to talk tough on killing cap-and-trade legislation recently passed in the House of Representatives. That’ll mean Mike Enzi will have to take some time out of his schedule killing healthcare reform, which he has been pursuing mightily for months, along with colleagues from North Dakota, New Mexico, Iowa, Maine, and of course Max Baucus from Montana. A handful of Senators, representing less than three percent of the nation’s total population, have the ability to obstruct must-pass legislation that the rest of the nation is clamoring for. That is, unless another small state Senator, Harry Reid, decides to bypass them.
The nation’s founders intended the Senate to be the deliberative body, the careful body that would provide the check on the unruly mob that the House would likely become on the one hand, and the potential tyrant the executive might become on the other. What we ended up with is the least democratic body in our republic. It means that, as Nate Silver points out, “A voter in Wyoming — population 533,000 — has about 70 times more ability to influence the Senate’s direction than one in California — population 36.8 million.”
That means that cap-and-trade legislation that could achieve a 17 percent carbon reduction for a cost of about $7 per household per month, $83 per year, could end up totally eviscerated in the Senate, keeping the United States on track as an unrepentant world polluter, using the convenient excuse of, “yeah, well, China is worse.”
“There’s nothing good about it,” said U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo. “I’m going to do everything to make sure it doesn’t pass.”
U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., said the bill is “the biggest hidden tax in America.”
“It’s a Ponzi scheme because we’re just going to print certificates for CO2 and not take care of any CO2,” Enzi said. “It’s just another way to make money.”
Note that these remarks were made before the industry trade group, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. Note also that Mike Enzi is the number one recipient of PAC money in terms of percentage in the Senate since 2003. Interestingly, the bill is extremely friendly to coal, making one wonder what Senators Enzi and Barrasso would say if they were speaking before a coal mining association. It’s a deeply flawed bill that can be opposed on many levels—because it doesn’t go far enough fast enough, and because it favors certain industries, like coal, where lawmakers from coal producing states again had undo influence in the committee process.
Which brings us back to the small state conundrum. There is something fundamentally wrong about senators who represent less than three percent of the nation’s population deciding the fate of the other 97 percent. And there’s a problem with a senator from a state with an experience that is so completely unlike the experience of the rest of the nation. That’s demonstrated most clearly in this debate by Kent Conrad’s fixation on regional co-ops. In his experience, a co-op brought electrification to his parents or grandparents. It helps the dairy farmers secure fair prices for their product. But even in North Dakota, are a plucky bunch of folks going to organize their doctors and hospitals to strike out in a new organization, breaking the stranglehold Blue Cross/Blue Shield has on the state, which holds 91% of the market?
Letting Max Baucus Kent Conrad limit the health care choices for the entire nation based on their experience in North Dakota and Montana is as irrational as it would be to have Chuck Schumer set all of the gun control policy for the entire nation, based on his experiences in New York.
That’s on the merits of debate alone. When you factor in the money part of the equation, it gets more disturbing. As many Congress watchers have pointed out, most recently Peter Drier in a column reprinted at New West, “Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus’s political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008, when he began holding hearings and making preparations for this year’s reform debate.” These small state Senators pull in inordinate amounts of money from corporate donors and PACs, in part because they have a small individual donor base in their home states–fewer people, fewer individual donations.
More corporate donations, higher likelihood of making policy in the interest of the corporation? It’s just common sense. That’s where the major problem for all Americans, particularly small state residents, comes in to play. For all of the outsized clout these Senators might have, is it in these states long-term interest to have their Senators working on the behest of corporations in the short term.
Consider Wyoming, and Enzi’s and Barrasso’s work to represent the petroleum and natural gas folks. Yes, Wyoming is booming now because of those extractive industries, with the high paying jobs and the royalties they bring in. What has it also brought, though? Take Sublette county, ground zero for industry. The levels of ozone in the air in the county have measured higher than Los Angeles’s, with all the subsequent health problems that entails. The influx of transient oil and gas workers has created some serious social upheaval in towns like Pinedale. The groundwater has been poisoned, killing off or forcing out the area’s famed pronghorn antelope herds, and causing losses for livestock owners.
Wyoming has had plenty of booms and busts in its past, in large part because of the hold extractive industries have on the state’s economy, and the hold extractive industries have on the reelection prospects of the state’s federal elected officials. Think about what energy legislation could mean for Wyoming in the long term, if its federal policy-makers were thinking in those terms. Wyoming potentially has it all in alternative energy resources–wind, solar, and geothermal all readily available and exploitable. Wyoming could become a key player in building a more sustainable path to economic growth not only for itself, but for the nation in creating sustainable, smart, energy production. Which the Petroleum Association of Wyoming is going to fight tooth and nail, with Enzi and Barrasso carrying their banner, and taking their PAC donations.
The same dynamic is playing out in the healthcare reform debate, where Senators from Montana, Iowa, and North Dakota, are determining the fate of us all. It’s not that residents of those state don’t deserve representation. Residents of small states are as equal as Americans as Californians or Floridians or New Yorkers. There’s a tendency among pundits when pointing out this small state problem to be dismissive of the states themselves, the fly-over country, the states who are a tax-drain on the rest of the country. It can smack of coastal elitism. And it ignores how much we are all in this together.
But in setting up that dynamic, the lack of representation small state residents receive is rarely considered by the critics. More unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be considered by the Senators in question, either. Let’s look at the state of healthcare access in some of these states. In North Dakota, 11 percent of the population is uninsured; in Montana 16 percent; in Iowa, it’s 10 percent.
Add to that, look at the monopolies the insurance companies–majority donors to these same Senators, have in their states. Blue Cross/Blue Shield covers 75 percent of insured Montanans, and 70 percent of insured residents of Wyoming. Wellmark covers 71 percent of insured Iowans. Hardly a good example of free-market enterprise and competition, something these conservative Senators are quick to say they’re trying to uphold.
The percentages of uninsured in the small states is on par with the big ones. We’re all suffering. In New York, it’s 14 percent; in Florida, a whopping 21 percent. These are crises in which we all share, unfortunately, including the three percent of the population being represented by the Senators who are trying to decide for all of us. The climate crisis isn’t as immediate as the healthcare crisis, or at least not as pressing on individual daily lives. But it’s just as critical to the fate of the nation in the long term. And just as likely to be decided by corporations, many of the multi-nationals, like Halliburton which has a big chunk of the contracts in Wyoming. The short-term boom and bust mentality that maximizes corporate profits–where in oil and gas or in health insurance–is at work again in these current votes.
It’s at work again in influencing Max Baucus and Mike Enzi and Chuck Grassley and Kent Conrad and John Barrasso. They’re helping out their friends in industry, forgetting that while their campaign coffers might have been filled by those lobbyists, they owe their votes to the actual people who sent them to DC. This isn’t a partisan thing, and it isn’t a regional thing. But the small state residents who sent these folks back to Washington to represent their best interests are getting the short end of the stick, yet again.”
What mcjoan is saying is that the small rural states, the ones that tend to be more conservative, don’t deserve the same representation as the bigger, more liberal states. While smaller states don’t get the same representation in the House, mcjoan would go further, by denying representation in the Senate, as well.
What makes it more frightening is the responses to this suggestion of repressing those who are essentially politically inferior.
“ Yes, it is that bad (6+ / 0-)
- Recommended by:
- bolson, GreenSooner, Ice Blue, George Hier, Puddytat, rmrice
That Senate is a travesty of democracy. No sane person would adopt it as is today.
Ok, so I read the polls.
“Three big constitutional fixes: (3+ / 0-)
- Recommended by:
- verso2, SottoVoce, Maverick80229
- Abolish corporate personhood, allowing the government to constitutionally regulate corporate “speech.”
- Institute publicly financed elections, reform election financing by severely limiting the “money is speech” constitutional principle. Prohibit corporate entities from contributing directly or indirectly to election campaigns.
- Clarify the President’s warmaking powers vis a vis Congress: explicitly subjugate the president’s role as commander in chief to the direction of congress.
Baz
“We’ve overcompensated (2+ / 0-)
I think the situation we’re in today with health care and climate change, plus the undue influence small states have in choosing our candidates for president, illustrate that we have overcompensated and that small states abuse this attempt to level the playing field for them.
Not only are larger states (in population) forced to subsidize smaller states but in smaller states it’s much easier to buy a politician, so the smaller states sell us all out to their own special interests. They are abusing their advantage and abusing millions of people in this country who are forced to subsidize them.
It’s a double whammy. This is a major problem and it’s going to lead to more state vs. state division and perhaps worse problems.
And, as mcjoan says, they are not even voting in the best interest of the people who elected them. Will they be held accountable? I’ve seen people posting here who say there’s nothing they can do about Kent Conrad, that no other Democrat could be elected because it’s a Republican dominated state.
I’m not inclined to accept excuses from people in small states right now. The people who live in those states need to do something about it. We can help, but we can’t do it for them.
“Yes, it is that bad (6+ / 0-)
- Recommended by:
- bolson, GreenSooner, Ice Blue, George Hier, Puddytat, rmrice
That Senate is a travesty of democracy. No sane person would adopt it as is today.
Ok, so I read the polls.
Getting the idea? These people are Obama’s primary base. They don’t like the Constitution, they don’t like Conservatives, and they want the system “changed,” completely changed. They want Conservatives silenced.
