blogger

The new year will give us a new President and a newly elected Congress. Only 61 individuals are newly elected to it though. The remaining 474 are simply returning to continue their work (two are going from the house to the Senate). But in this session, all of them are expected to bring about that muct "touted change" that many of them promised along with President-Elect Obama.

How much "change" they will actually bring and what kind of change they will be responsible for has yet to be seen but early on, there exists one change that they will effect right away.

While the nation and the world have entered economic trouble, the 535 collective members of the House of Representatives and Senate will have the opportunity to see their salaries change with an increase of as much as $4,700 a year.

The pay raise is automatic and turns out to be about a 2.8% increase and although it may not sound like much, when one considers the circumstances of the times that we are in, accepting such a pay raise would be criminal.

I say criminal because there do not exist many American institutions that can determine their own salary at their own whim. And there are even fewer institutions that would dare to give themselves more money when they have less money to spend.

On top of that, given the fact that elected federal office holders already make a touch more than $169,000, most Americans feel that that is quite suitable. In fact many Americans might consider it to be a great deal more than suitable. Seeing as how Congress currently has an approval rating of 18.4% and a disapproval rating of 73.4%, I would say that most Americans think that $170,000 for the bad job they are doing is totally inappropriate and way too much.

So why should they get almost $5,000 more for their poor approval?

Even more disturbing, how can they look voters in the eye and claim to understand that the economic climate is rough but that it is necessary for them to shoulder additional costs that Congress had a hand in creating in the first place.

While Congress approves bailing out almost every faction of the private sector that requests help, how can they also accept more money too? Is that the type of change that the elections of ’08 meant, more spending and higher Congressional salaries?

The amount of money we are talking about in regards to the pending pay raise may be minuscule when compared to a 7 or 800 billion dollar bailout but it is still more money being spent. It is still more money being paid by taxpayers and it is still more money than each member of Congress requires. But more than that , accepting a pay raise during the time we are in is a horrific symbolic gesture that essentially tells the American taxpayer “screw you, were in charge and we are going to do what we want, when we want and how we want”. Never mind the out of work salesman who has no conglomerate that can slip congressman or senators a hefty campaign donation and then request federal assistance for themself. Never mind the additional taxes that Democrats will be requesting taxpayers to pay or the out of work taxpayer who can’t afford to pay their property taxes this year. By accepting a pay raise, Congress will be making it clear that they have absolutely no concern for the people whose money they spend.

With Democrats in total control of government, if the 2.8% pay raise goes through, than their hold on power will be short lived. If Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi do not put a stop to increasing their salaries than folks, they are not just greedy, they are downright stupid and should not be in office in the first place.

Having control of government makes Democrats responsible for what happens in government, totally responsible. Accepting a pay raise at a time like this is something that they will have to be held accountable for and they will.

But there is still a chance for them to savwe face. If they act responsibly and derail any efforts to increase their salaries, they can spare themselves the blame and avoid the resulting repercussions of their greed and irresponsibility.

That is one reason why President-Elect Obama should publicly urge the House of Representatives and the Senate to show the American people that they have their priorities in order and that they are aware of the tough times we may be in and demand that they forgo any raise.

It is also why POLITICS 24/7 has issued a national petition.

It is a “Declaration of Rejection of a Congressional Pay Raise ”

As a free society, we cannot simply wait for our representatives to act. We must make our desires known before they act.

In the case of irresponsible government action we cannot wait for irresponsibility to be enacted, we must avoid it from happening . So we have initiated a petition to Congress. It is a petition that calls upon them to reject any increases in their “salaries, staffs and office budgets, as well as personal expense limits, and currently allocated per diem expenses. If such a vote or votes come before Congress at any point between January 2009 and January 2011, we demand that they reject it and that a new vote repealing such increases be brought to the floor of both the House of Representatives and the Senate”.

Simply click here for the "DECLARATION of REJECTION of CONGRESSIONAL PAY RAISE" Online petition and make it clear that will tolerate spending more on Congress than they are worth and that you certainly do not intend to tolerate their greed.

After signing it you must still do two things. Pass this petition on to others. Just cut and past the following link into an email

http://www.gopetition.com/online/24301.html

Then send it to friends, family and business associates and urge them to do the same.

Once you've done that, the second thing you must do is contact the two U.S. Senators representing you in your state and your congressman. Do so either by phone, snail mail or email. No matter how you want to do it, just do it!

If you are really ticked off over this potential pay raise, write your local newspapers too. Send letters to the editors voicing your disapproval of any hint of raising congressional salaries at a time like this.

BE SURE TO SIGN THE PETITION

9 SYMPTOMS OF CONSERVAPHOBIA

conservaphobia: noun. The fear of the American conservative political movement, often based on unfounded stereotypes and distortions.

You might be conservaphobic if:

• You've never really listened to Rush Limbaugh because you're already sure that you disagree with practically everything he's ever said.
• You refer to liberal Catholics, Protestants and Jews as "people of faith" but conservative Catholics, Protestants and Jews as the "religious right" or "radical religious right". (Maybe you have a thing for alliteration too.)
• You think all white Republicans are racists and all black Republicans are sellouts.
• You are a champion of first amendment rights except in public school classrooms and in front of abortion clinics.
• You're glad you're not a Republican because after all, they want to starve school children and senior citizens.
• You actually think that "liberal" and "progressive" are synonymous.
• In your opinion, a government donation to the poor is somehow more effective than yours would be.
• You only listen to and respect the views of "open-minded" people who think like you do.
• You blame society's problems on "religious fanatics" and "corporate greed", never on the irresponsible behavior of individuals.

As many call a truce in political negativity for the Christmas holiday, some politicians and political wannabes wont be focusing on Santa or practicing any piety over the birth of Christ.

No,……. I am not talking about atheists.

Whatever they believe or do not believe is their business, not mine, and as long as they do not try to stifle my celebration of the holiday, their not celebrating it doesn’t bother me.

That is their business, not mine.

I am referring to a group of organized political mobsters who unlike Santa are not stuffing any gifts in any stockings or under Christmas trees. No, these organized criminals are stuffing ballots and playing the role of the Grinch.

Up north, in cold and snowy Minnesota, almost seven weeks after Election Day, Minnesotans are still counting ballots.

Folks in Minnesota are not especially slow or particularly uneducated. They know how to count. Its just that every time Board of Election officials finish counting a district or town, Democrats supporting ultra, leftwing, liberal, lunatic, comedian Al Franken for the United States Senate, keep finding more ballots that election officials seem to have missed. They either misplaced them, or forgot to bring them in the counting room, or just plain didn’t count some machines.

The sudden appearance of this continuous stream of ballots out of nowhere is hindering the process. It’s understandable. I mean after all, once you think you finished tallying up the votes in one district and find out that incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman won it by 115 votes, you would assume that it was over in that district.

No not in Minnesota.

In Minnesota just as one district is done and they move on to the next, new ballots from the town that they just completed pop up, out of nowhere. Even more surprising is the fact that all of the votes that mysteriously appear happen to be for Al Franken and it just so happens that the number of newly found Franken votes is just slightly more than the plurality of votes that Coleman previously won by.

Hmmm……that is really funny, you might even say miraculous. I mean it makes you kind of expect a burning bush to appear and communicate the final vote, which Al Franken will no doubt win.

But day after day, these miracle ballots appear. Most of them, if not all of them are found by Democrat officials. In one case 100 votes on one voting booth in a heavily Democrat town were discovered. All of the 100 votes were for Al Franken and even more odd was the fact that the time stamp on each of the 100 votes read November 2nd, 2008.

Election Day was November 4th, 2008.

Whoa,…….. now hold on here. Now its getting spooky.

I mean this is almost as miraculous as the Virgin Mary giving birth.

Maybe this guy Franken really is special. Maybe he is the “chosen one” who will walk on water, split the waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior and transform mankind.

Or maybe this guy Franken is simply as freakish as Frankenstein.

The circumstances surrounding the astonishing finding of votes, that are all for him, is funny. Much more funny than any of Franken’s offbeat humor and comedic routines.

I can’t wait for Saturday Night Live to do a segment on this situation.

That could be a truly hysterical skit. I could just see SNL cast members portraying blind election board officials counting ballots as liberal Democrat operatives keep passing them the same ballot over and over again and declaring it for Al Franken each time.

SNL scriptwriters could have a field day writing that segment. It would really be funny. Unfortunately the reality of the situation is not funny. It is sad. Sad but true.

Liberal Democrat operatives are stuffing ballots. They are counting illegitimate votes for Al Franken that they would never consider to be legitimate for Norm Coleman if the circumstances were reversed.

But true to form, liberal hypocrisy abounds. Hypocrisy reigns supreme in liberal la la land. These are the people who try to combat discrimination by implementing forms of discrimination.

They are the people who want everyone to pay their fair share, but refuse to pay it themselves.

They sit in private jets writing press releases that denounce some for speeding up global warming by driving an S.U.V. without thinking twice about how much more damaging their flight is than any S.U.V..

Liberalism is rooted in hypocrisy. So it should not surprise anyone to know that Democrats accept a lower standard for themselves than they do for Republicans. Just like Florida in the election fiasco of 2000 when Democrats wanted a higher standard for approving vote counts in some districts than in others. In 2000 they wanted higher standards in counties that Bush won and lower standards in counties that Gore won.

Then they decided that they didn’t want all disputed votes reevaluated and recounted, only some votes.

Let’s face it folks. Democrats are now in control. Total control. From the White House to the U.S house and the senate.

If Coleman wins this thing it will really be a miracle.

The way I see it, even if Minnesota’s liberal Democrat Secretary of State certifies Norm Coleman as the winner, the Democrat led Senate may refuse to seat him. Under senate rules, that is something they can do. It happened as recently as 1974 when in New Hampshire a Republican won a close election and despite certification of that victory, by the state of New Hampshire, the U.S. Senate called for a new election.

Democrats in the House of Representatives did the same thing with a close election in Indiana. Here again the Republican won. The state certified the Republican winner but Democrats refused to seat him. They ordered a recount and the Republican won again but by an even larger margin than before. Democrats still refused to seat the Republican winner. House democrats conducted their own recount, with their own standards and declared the losing democrat, the winner.

This stuff didn’t happen in the “old days”. It happened during the most recent past decades. And liberals haven’t changed very much in that time. If anything their hypocrisy has increased over time.

So it doesn’t look good for Norm Coleman.

Even if a preponderance of legitimate votes for him overcomes a preponderance of illegitimate ballots for Franken, liberal senate leader Harry Reid and his henchmen will probably ignore it and refuse to seat Coleman.

It may not get that far anyway. Minnesota liberals are pretty ruthless. They will probably spend Christmas falsifying any piece of paper that isn’t wrapped around a Christmas gift and submit it to blind Board of Election officials who will count it as a vote for Al Franken.

You have to remember that these are the liberal Democrats who, six years ago, did everything they could to prevent Norm Coleman from winning the first time he ran for the Minnesota senate seat.

Back then he was running against incumbent, liberal, firebrand, Paul Wellstone.

As popular as Wellstone was, the race between him and Coleman was tightening up. Then suddenly in a truly horrific and tragically sad turn of events, while campaigning, the plane carrying Wellstone, one of his sons and a campaign worker crashed and killed them along with the pilot of the plane.

As tragic as it was, Minnesota Democrats pulled out another corpse, Jimmy Carter’s vice stooge and a former landslide-losing, Democrat nominee for President in his own right, Walter Mondale. They asked him to fill the vacancy and become the Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate in Wellstone’s place. He accepted and Democrats held a nationally televised memorial service for the senator.

As sad as the the occasion was, with the body of Senator Wellstone, his son and campaign associate still warm, Minnesota liberals launched Walter Mondale’s campaign to replace Wellstone in a spectacle as raucous and celebratory as the Democrat’s national convention.

Filled with music and cheerleading speeches, the event only lacked the traditional balloon drop.

The blatant disrespect for Senator Wellstone and the astonishing exploitation of his death actually ended up hurting more than it helped. Even non-activist, left leaning, Minnesota voters were appalled by the political spectacle.

It wound up making history. Up till then, Walter Mondale never lost a statewide election in Minnesota. In fact even when Mondale embarrassed himself and Democrats in his landslide loss for President against Ronald Reagan, Minnesota was the only state in the union to still vote for Mondale.

Well after turning the somber funeral of a sitting senator into a boisterous campaign rally, even Minnesota rejected Walter Mondale.

Liberals in Minnesota are still feeling the sting of that debacle. Walter Mondale won’t even show his face anymore and others are still bitter. That is why you can bank on their not spending this Christmas celebrating. They will spend it stealing. Stealing an election that they were not able to steal six years ago.

This Christmas, Minnesota Democrats have no visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, they have visions of ballots falling from the heavens. Ballots that are all marked in support of Al Franken.

So tonight, don’t be surprised if Santa is a little late to your house. Democrats will be forcing him to stuff ballots instead of stockings at Minnesota’s State Board of Elections headquarters.

If they are successful, all that the voters of Minnesota will find in their carefully hung stockings tomorrow morning will be a couple of lumps of coal.

Just before Christmas, there was an honest politician, a kind lawyer and Santa Claus traveling in the elevator of a very posh hotel.

Just before the doors opened they all noticed a five dollar bill on the floor.

Which one picked it up??

Santa of course, the other two don't exist!

December 16^th, marks the 235^th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

235 years ago the residents of the American colonies had enough. They could no longer quietly tolerate the oppression of a ruling authority that dictated too much. They were tired of the majesty’s demands upon them and it all came to a head in Boston when the cry of “taxation without representation” resulted in a tea party that was anything but sedate or civil. Back then, American colonists were developing a sense of independence that wanted government out of their lives. They wanted to make their own wages without a ruling authority limiting how much of it they could earn. They wanted the right to have a say in the way their territory was run. This spirit led to the Declaration of Independence and eventually it led to the birth of what the world would came to know as the freest, most innovative and powerful nation in the universe.

Today, we still hold that impressive title but many of us see it being lost.

That greatness is a bi-product of freedom. A freedom that has allowed individuals to flourish well beyond the limited framework that any one established authority could set it’s people on. The diversity of thinking, and goals has created the greatest pool of ideas known to man.

Our freedom and individuality has been the key to our greatness but unlike the people of colonial America, today, Americans are giving up their freedom and relinquishing their individuality to a controlling authority that they want to give greater control to.

Instead of demanding “no taxation without representation” we are accepting of the practice.

If you live in New Jersey but work in New York, in addition to a litany of federal taxes and state taxes, you have to pay a commuter tax. Does paying that tax give New Jerseyans the chance to vote for leaders and representatives in New York? Heck no! But without any representation for them in New York, they are forced to pay taxes to New York.

This scenario is not limited to New York. It exists almost everywhere in the nation but that does not make it right. It is simply an indication of the spirit that has been lost since days of old.

Further indication of this is made in other areas of government.

Instead of that sense of responsibility that the colonists had, today we look towards government for everything. Where the colonists wanted less of the majesty’s governance, we want more of the federal bureaucracy’s governance.

Have a business that isn’t successful? Let the government bail you out.

Want to start a business? Let the government give you a grant to do it.

Lost money on a business deal or investment? Let the government give you the money back.

Let the government do everything and pay for everything, right?

Wrong!

The money the government gives you is not theirs to give away. It is your money, it is our money. It is the tax dollars we let them take from us and the more we refuse to do for ourselves, the more money they take from us.

Economically, that doesn’t sound like a bad thing but in reality it is anything but a good deal.

When the bureaucracy of government does something, they do so in a way that costs much more than any individual or private sector institution can. So by letting the government do more, is allowing more money to be wasted. If you needed a hammer would you buy one for 8 bucks at Home Depot yourself or would you buy the same one from the Pentagon for 108 dollars?

The government needs to get out of our business and Americans need to recapture the independent spirit that founded this country and made us the great nation that we are.

We need to start doing for ourselves what we have come to expect government to do for us. Our reliance on a controlling authority has taken control of our lives away from us. That reliance has created a dependency that has led to the growth of government and that growth has created the need for more money. Money that is raised by increasing the taxes that the people have to pay.

The Boston Tea Party may not have been a cozy afternoon gathering but it was a good thing. It signaled our deep rooted yearning for our God given freedom and believe it or not, freedom is still a good thing.

235 years later Americans are far removed from that fact. Instead of demanding less government and more personal freedom, we ask for more government and more government action. Instead of protesting excessive taxation we just held an election that endorsed more taxes and “spreading the wealth around”.

Maybe we will have to lose some of our freedom in order to realize what all the hullabaloo in Boston was about.

Slowly we already have lost some of our freedoms but apparently not enough. Not enough to select candidates who want to limit government. Not enough to force representatives to stop trying to solve problems by restricting our freedoms and creating more problems.

Just how much freedom we must lose before we begin to miss it, is quite important.

That freedom made us the great power and people that we are and the more of it that we lose, the further from greatness we shall fall.

So today, before charging the spouses gift on that past due credit card, take a moment and reflect on the participants of the Boston Tea Party. A bunch of colonists who saw more value in their freedom than any Christmas gift. A group of soon to be Americans whose desires for a better life led them to renounce the authority of a government for the sake of their freedom and the eventual freedom that we have come to take for granted and whittle away.

A man took a trip out West after a harrowing IRS audit. He stopped in a bar, and after a few drinks, stated to no one in particular, "IRS agents are horses' asses."

One of the locals spoke up on hearing this: "Mister, you'd better watch what you say. You're in horse country."