Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Politics Sucks

...and politicians suck mightily.

• Obama, determined to make his point that the affaire de Benghazi means nothing to him, appoints Susan Rice, at the center of that scandal and cover-up, to be his National Security Advisor. She's a pure Chicago-gang hack, an insider, nothing more. She has fewer creds to be National Security Advisor than I do.
• If this story is correct, Benghazi explains itself, anyway. Publishing our only true Mideast ally's secret defense plans and saying that error is just part of normal bureaucracy indicates incompetence in international affairs of the worst sort.

With the Obama Administration, it's becoming painfully obvious that Obama wants nothing to do with his erstwhile role as the main protector of Western Civ, the only thing he's REALLY interested in is getting his paws in the loot, then spreading enough of it around to guarantee that the Left owns what remains of this Nation for the forseeable future.

Okay, enough of Obama. Even if a lot of Democrats write him off because of his incompetency, he's planning to do an instant-buy of 11 million votes real soon, anyway. Amnesty for illegals is right around the corner.

How about that Tubby the One-Note Tuba, though? The venal old Senator Lautenberg croaks, so NJ Gov. Chris Christie gets to name a successor to serve until the 2014 election. Tubby has been under some criticism lately for buddying up to Obama, supposedly across Party lines, but that line is not very distinct in Joisey, never has been. New Jersey is the place where all pols look like liberals, even though a few of them wear the GOPe toga.

So, Christie has a chance to name a GOPe to Lautenberg's seat, at least temporarily, and who knows what votes might come down in time for that new Senator to shrink the (D)onk majority a bit? The Immigration Bill, at least. What does Christie do? He calls an immediate Special Election instead. In all liklihood, this will insure that the Senate seat stays in Liberal hands. His action DOES short the (D)onk majority by one vote until this Fall, but with several major GOPe Senators falling all over themselves to let the (D)onks buy those Hispanic votes, it makes no never-mind.

So much for Christie as a prexy-possible for 2016. He just wrote himself off any possible GOPe ticket, but in his mind, that's not a loss, and there might be more donuts for him from the (D)onks, anyway...

Observing politics used to be an honorable writer's game. At this point, I just feel basically slimed every time I sit down to the keyboard to issue these reports.

Monday Maudlin Meandering Manifesto

I have a few hours before the big fight to save the gudwife resumes, so here are some meandering thoughts I've been accumulating for a week or so.

• (Gun) Control: PawPaw skewers the traitorous Captain Mark Kelly with his sharp Acadian lampoon, and bastes him over a slow pit with his own juices. Laissez la Verite roule, monsieur!
• Our President: dares to flash his anti-semitism at Israeli defense policy. Here's a flash for YOU, Mister President: Israel is actually faced with nuclear annihilation should Iran get their nuke. We are only second on Iran's list. Being a small Nation, one nuke would do a lot of damage to the Israeli nation, whereas we could soak up one nuke and soldier on in the USA. If Israel is actually "beating it's chest", which I haven't seen, it's doing it as a means of issuing the strongest possible warning to Iran. Your "warnings" to Iran, Mister President, have no substance to them at all, and are taken as jokes, or worse, as Taqiyya in Qom and Tehran, so S.T.F.U., Mister President. BTW, the "beating the chest" remark is an obvious suck-up to Egypt's IMFWIC (Islamist mo-fo what's in charge) Morsi, and refers to his anti-semetic remark about the Jews being descendants of apes, so this is all about a bunch of anti-semites trying to one-up each other. Still think Obama isn't a closet Islamist?
• Nature musing: Do you read the venerable nature 'toon "Mark Trail" in the Sunday funny-papers? There is good stuff in there, and little of the usual earth-religion apple-crapple you get from other such sources. This weekend's enlightenment was about the genus Myocastor Coypus, better known by it's commercial name, Nutria, or it's local name, "water rat", except in Oregon, where "water rat" is the title given to OSU Beavers (by OU Duck fans, anyway). The story on the nutria was one of the usual meddling with nature and it's disastrous consequences. The prolific animal was brought here because of it's lustrous fur, and a commercial exploitation of that fur was made with varying success. Current exploitation of Coypus is to try to interest yuppies in eating it's flesh. One unscrupulous coypus farmer in Clark County, WA was discovered selling his skinned coypus carcasses to a local taco-shack chef, who put it in tacos and called it "pulled pork". While this sounds far-fetched, it's not, a good friend of mine from Seattle, down here to visit family, ate some water-rat tacos she picked up in Vancouver WA, got food poisoning from it, but had the left-overs to take to the King County medical officer, who positively identified it as water-rat meat, and had his counterpart in Clark County hammer the taco shack that sold them. I get a chuckle at the consternation of the enviros that all their precious wetlands are being done in by coypus, though, because, as the Wiki explains, they took care of this problem down Louisiana way by putting a bounty on the water rats, and .22s in the hands of hunters did the rest. Horrors! A GUN solution to a problem? Can't have that!

Well, it's getting on towards time to pester a few more medical staff about the gudwife's program, so I'll sign off for now.

All y'all keep your BeeEss detector screens on Double-Front, you hear?

Thursday Thuds, post-Holiday edition

Thud the First: Heard on Fox News yesterday morning at about 10:34 PST: "Survival is the new Prosperity"...referring to the state of small business in the good-ole US of A. Word!

Thud the Second: The New Yawk Stock Exchange soared yestiddy, presumably because of the dreaded "Cliff" being in the rear-view mirror, but, guess what? So did the Gold price (fell back some today, though). Verrrrry interesting. Institutions are still buying gold despite all the supposed bully news from DeeCee? Something does not compute, and my guess is that the Street is very wary of the "fiscal solutions" involved. Also, TCWIC (Tax Cheat What's In Charge) Timmy Geithner now says we've reached the statutory borrowing limit, but, hey, that's okay because he can cook the books for at least two months to keep the downgrade wolf at bay. Of course, if any of us ran the books of any corporation the way he runs the books of the Federal Government, we'd all be in jail...

Thud the Third: The Grand Old Party continues it's collapse into political futility. The best available economic minds (Simpson-Bowles Commission) recommended a Fiscal Cliff solution with a ratio of Revenue enhancement (tax increases) to Spending increase of 1:2.6. The GOP just signed off on a plan with a ratio of 1:41  I forgot how to do mathematical proportion calculations or I would tell you what factor of excess past Simson-Bowles that number is, but it seems to be at least an 800% departure. The GOPes approved of that? Now we all go over a different cliff, and it is such a tall cliff, we will have a LOT of time to consider the error of our ways before we impact the base of that cliff at terminal velocity. The GOPes seem split, but in the entire House, there are only 25 or so true fiscal conservatives, so it's not likely that anything will change with the Speakership of John Boehner (just in: Boehner retained his seat). The TEA party types seem inclined to try to replace all the GOP fiscal wimps with conservative who have spines, but can the TEA party folks get it together again in 2014 like they did in 2010? I'm not putting any money on that outcome.

Thud the Fourth: Last night, Leno tried a zinger on prospective Secretary of State John Effing Kerry. Leno noted that Kerry's face is shaped more like a horse than a human, so he sould be called "Secretariat Kerry". Few laughed, and it immediately occurred to me that Leno missed an opportunity because he was looking at the wrong end of the horse...

Thud the Fifth: As I indicated here, Mad Mayor Bloomberg of New Jack City seems to be trying to seize control of the entire gun-control movement. He made another move in that direction by sitting down with various Civil Rights Deniers and Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. My guess is that he is actively recruiting her to be the new poster-girl for gun control. She would, of course, replace Sarah Brady in that role (no links to enemies!).

How bad IS the GOP?

This bad.

The latest (D)onk ploy: buy a few "Republicans".

Item: Charlie Christ of Florida, Marco Rubio's primary opponent. Bought and Paid For and has reported for duty as a (D)emocrat. This may not be news, since he's been threatening this action for a while, but he will be added to this list of additional suspects:

Item; Michael Bloomberg, Dictator of New Jack Citeh, who claimed the Republican Party to be elected Hizzoner, doesn't really mean it. Probably also claimed it in the first place for the purpose of staying connected to his Richey Rich pals, before he was smart enough to figure out that most of them are closet or actual liberals. He now claims to be "independent". Riiiight. Obama just announced the price for buying Bloomie off: the lion's share of $60 billion bucks for "storm relief":

"And it would provide $15 billion for community development block grants that would fill in gaps in recovery by ad­dressing needs not covered by other fed­eral programs. (my emphasis)

Obama also asked Congress to provide nearly $13 billion to harden states against future storms — a key request of Governor Christie in the month after Sandy."

I'd LOVE for the Feds to pay the tab for modernizing MY city, but we don't have any faux-GOPers running it, so Obama won't get to crow like he will when Bloomie signs the (D)onk pledge.

Ditto Tubby the One Note Tuba. Chris Christie will likely be added to the D-list before the '16 Election, too. He just announced that Uncle Hussein, who Tubby praised to the skies just a few days prior to the election and probably took Romney votes away by doing so, has agreed to finance his Joisey dream-sheet as well. Christie's probably finished as the Conservative he pretended to be, his only "conservative" action since election being the trashing of his Joisey public employees' unions (but not the Big Unions, like Dockworkers). He has no other Conservative credentials at all, and damn few Republican credentials, either.

All in all, it appears that US taxpayers (or their kids and grandkids) will be on the hook for at least $28 billion of "storm aid" past the actual estimates for just-plain restoration after Hurricane Sandy. That's nothing but naked influence-peddling.

Can anyone else report any other likely candidate for the Big Switcheroo, which will become a centerpiece for the (D)onks, maybe even in time for the Congressional Election of 2014?

Fiscal Cliff? It doesn't exist.

"Fiscal Cliff"-gazer? Nothing to see here, move along, please.

We, the People, can end this "fiscal cliff" nonsense. We have 16.5 calendar months to do it, not just one month as the doomsayers have screamed at us from our TVs and computer screens.

The Federal Government, through it's IRS, collects income and business taxes 470 days after they are payable. The fiscal cliff doomsayers seem to have forgotten that fact.

Yes, if nothing is done in the next 32 days, the tax rates will all rise on January First. We don't pay those new rates until our tax bills are payable on April 15th, 2014. Yes, employers and your other payers such as pensions, etc, will try to adjust the withholding upwards next month to reflect the new rates, but you, the taxpayer, can adjust them back downward via an IRS Form W-4 With Worksheet. The process is simple: you just claim more dependents. I don't have the current "red flag" level, but you didn't used to raise any Red Flags with the IRS unless you claimed more than 9 dependents.

Guess what else happens later in 2014, Dear Readers? RIIIIGHT, Elections for Congress, The Senate and your local yokels.

If We The People push this issue to or near 4/15/14, it WILL effect the 2014 Congressional elections. If the REAL "fiscal cliff" is then passed, the (D)emocrats will get the blame in the voting booths, and in January of 2015, Obumbler the wannabe Socialist is done. Yeah, he will occupy the office for the next two years, but with a hostile Senate and House, will get nothing done. Should he then try to rule by Executive Order, the new GOP Congress will then impeach, convict and remove him from office. Joe Biden doesn't have many virtues, but way more than Obumbler, and he's far less of a Socialist.

Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, and pleasant New Year. There's no Fiscal Cliff to fall over, over.