Category Archives: Current Legislation

Posts describing legislation currently before the House or Senate.

Monsoon

Sarah Palin noted when criticizing President Obama that “it doesn’t rain but it pours.”

Indeed.

It has been 40 years since a president was pushed out of office for (among other things) ordering a break-in at the offices of political opponents (he got out of trouble by quitting.) It has been some 30 years since a president escaped prosecution for selling both anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles to the Islamist Iranian government and using the proceeds to finance a civil war in Nicaragua (he got out of trouble by saying he had no recollection). A decade and a half has passed since a president was impeached for lying about the willful abuse of a cigar in the Oval Office (he got out of trouble by asking for both sex and is to be defined.)

Just 10 years have passed since the last President, and his Administration, made the conscious choice to lie the American people into a war with Iraq. In contrast to the previous scoundrels, the last President’s actions only cost us $1 trillion and 4,000 of our best people…far less important, evidently, than a blow job in the White House. And far less important than the barrage of earth-shattering scandals plaguing our current scoundrel.

Oh the humanity!

A Marine holding an umbrella over the head of the President. That dozens of pictures and videos show dozens of servicemen holding umbrellas over the head of every president in recent memory apparently makes no difference. Of course, a female Marine holding the umbrella over the President’s head would have been within the code, but I can only imagine the hysteria that would cause. All would be well in the hills and dales of our peaceful countryside if only that dammed Obama would hold his own umbrella. Sure.

Heavens to Cheney, make it stop!

The former co-president recently said that the Benghazi raid was one of the worst things he can remember in his life. Having received no less than 7 deferments from military service in Viet Nam, it is easy to believe he holds no bad memories from then. But this is a guy who (along with Rumsfeld) helped sell Iran a nuclear reactor, and then watched the country taken by Khomeni…that had to be rough. He was a congressman when terrorists attacked a diplomatic compound in Lebanon  killing 241 Americans. This is a guy who personally supervised the first Gulf War…a lot of death and destruction in that deal. Finally, this is a guy who was the Vice President of the United States on a bright September day when the national security structure of our nation failed to keep us safe (to the tune of 3,000 dead and billions in damage.) One would assume that incident was traumatic. Oh yeah, and the ten (10) attacks on U.S. embassies or consulates that occurred when he was the Vice President of the United States; one might assume they were at least irritants to the man.

I almost forgot…Obama wasn’t the President during any of the above mentioned incidents.

But he was the President when the I.R.S. began targeting political organizations who oppose taxes, and who openly offer support to individuals in attempts to evade taxes, and who have applied for non-profit status to avoid paying taxes. I would call that an agency doing its job…but I guess profiling is only good when it is used on those “other people”.

And Sarah Palin says that it doesn’t rain, but it pours. And she says it as a part of more criticism of the President; the President that has persisted in doing his duty in the face of opposition so cynical and ridiculous that it looks like a Saturday Night Live skit come to life. Which is appropriate given Mrs. Palin’s own (ex) career. Lest we forget, the person that used the 2008 campaign as a machine for thrusting her family into celebrity, and several hundred thousand dollars of clothing into their wardrobe is a quitter.

When scandal threatened her administration, she took a flier. Sarah Palin clearly didn’t get the memo; sometimes the rain never stops, and sometimes the floods come. Real Americans wade through the detritus and start again; real Americans don’t like quitters. I suspect the Ex-Half-Term’s egg timer is about to ding.

 

The Rational Middle is listening…

 

Memo To All Good Christians

To follow on the enlightened views of the supporters of California Proposition 8, and the Godly statements of Focus on the Family, the following memo has been written to ensure that no good Christians burn for their ignorance of the consequences of sex.

Marriage is for procreation only…so all good Christians widowed or divorced who have either passed the age for child-bearing or have no Godly intention to mate, must immediately stop any and all activities relating to dating or courtship, as these actions can only lead to an unholy union.

Also, as marriage is the only appropriate state for sexual union, all good Christians fitting the above description must immediately accept lifelong abstinence. If you are currently, or have in the past violated these rules…seek pastoral intervention immediately or risk burning in Hell.

The Rational Middle hopes this clarifies a difficult spiritual issue, that has obviously been clouded by Godless atheists and homosexuals. Good day.

Random Stupidity

The Rational Middle today makes the natural progression from the insane to the sublimely stupid, as my depression of last week is turned to blunt astonishment by events local, national, and international.

Around The World

Afghanistan’s U.S. installed puppet leader (it would really be more appropriate to call him the Governor of Kabul, as Afghanistan lies outside of the Western views of nation-state) has apparently decided that it is politically expedient to not be friends with the United States. I guess I don’t blame the man, when we leave there will be a healthy number of folks ready to settle scores with Karzai, but is it really advisable to be so overtly belligerent?

Continue reading →

What’s All This Sequester Fuss About?

I thought I was fairly savvy about most items of a political or economic bent; I read a great deal about the topics from a wide array of sources, and I try to keep up with the math. But I just can’t fathom what’s going on right now that has so many people in such a snit. For the better part of five years, I have read op/eds, watched the Sunday sit-arounds, and listened to the nearly nightly ablutions of the Very Serious People, all centered on the the absolute screaming necessity of:

Getting this spending under control, and practicing a little fiscal discipline!!

Now I know that Republicans, for three consecutive sessions of Congress (they controlled the House, Senate, and White House during that time), spent money like the proverbial profligate sailors…that much is clear. Republicans diverged from Democrats under Obama (who saw tax revenues fall due to job losses, and automatic spending raise as the newly jobless put their kids on Medicaid, and registered for unemployment and food stamps.) For the years between 2000 and 2007,  conservatives intentionally poured money into their favorite pet defense programs, and intentionally lowered revenues in two giveaways called, collectively, the “Bush Tax Cuts”, giveaways that largely benefited Americans in the upper third of income earners.

Continue reading →

End Game?

Thinking a dozen moves ahead in a game of chess, the combination in boxing, the bets one makes early in a session of Texas Hold’em; the practice of anticipating various possible futures and acting accordingly is the linchpin of strategy.

And its practice in our nation seems to be, sadly, on the decline.

The simple act of thinking ahead is something supposedly fundamental; we ask our children to adopt the practice  and wring our hands when they don’t. “Why can’t you just consider the consequences of you…not getting that job…not doing your homework…not applying for college…taking those drugs…driving after you drink?” We ask our children to consider many possible futures, even as we learn that most teenagers are not physiologically able to consider future in the same manner as adults.

Continue reading →

Fiscal Cliff Diving And Debt Ceilings, Oh My

Well, the Mayans were wrong about the world ending, Jack Van Impe was wrong again on the rapture, and the fiscal cliff was avoided. Yahoo! But just as Americans never really seemed to understand what the Mayans were saying (it was the calendar ending, not the world), few Americans really grasped what the fiscal cliff meant.

And it isn’t hard to understand why.

The fiscal cliff, like its parent the debt ceiling, is an arbitrary creation; a crisis of convenient contrivance. Both parent and child were born of power politics, with no connection to economic or financial need. The 2011 confrontation over the debt ceiling produced a series of debt reduction spending cuts known as the sequester scheduled to take effect in January of 2013. These cuts were seen as “fiscally responsible,” despite the macroeconomic nonsense of massive spending cuts during a slow recovery. A year later, those that saw the sequester as fiscal responsibility, acknowledged the fiscal irresponsibility of the sequester. The presence of the spending cuts, paired with the expiration of both the Bush and Obama tax cuts, created a precipitous cliff over which our nation might fall.

Continue reading →