Chicken Little Is Alive and Well

The last few weeks, we’ve been bombarded with dire threats that the sky will fall if we don’t raise the debt ceiling. The president’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner claims a financial crisis more severe that the one from which we are now recovering will occur if the ceiling isn’t raised.

The president also insists that eighty percent of the American public wants the ceiling raised. If it isn’t raised, Armageddon is upon us.

He says, if we don’t, perhaps no social security checks, mortgage rates will rise, housing sales will plunge, panic on the world market, destruction of the value of the dollar, and no more kid meals at McDonalds.

Whew!

Now, I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree, but there’s enough incandescence remaining to realize I’ve just been subjected to a prime example of Chicago politics, 2011 style.

Bully and frighten the people with unverifiable consequences that threaten that which they hold most dear.

Armageddon? Not quite. Despicable politics? You bet!

Did you know that in December, 1973; March, 1979; November, 1983; December, 1985; August, 1987; November, 1995; December, 1995; January, 1996; and September, 2007 that debt ceilings were not raised by the deadline, and the sky didn’t fall? Yep, there was no default.

How can the president and his staff claim such when the 14th amendment to the constitution explicitly says debt payments must be made before any other spending?
If I’m not mistaken, the president is a constitutional lawyer, so he has to be aware of that law.

In late ’95 and early ’96, during a government shutdown, President Clinton used incoming revenues to pay interest on the debt to ward off default.

Many of us who haven’t the good fortune to be born with a silver spoon have been forced at one time or another to pay interest on a bill. You might not have thought of it as interest on your loan, but simply as a gesture to your creditor of you intention to maintain your credit. That’s all the whiz kids in Washington have to do, pay the interest, a mere 20 billion a month.

Let’s talk more about the social security checks. He said he didn’t know if there would be enough money to pay them. He is either prevaricating or ignorant, and no way could you convince me he is ignorant. If he is the ‘professional politician’ he claims, he knows very well over two hundred billion a month flows into the government coffers.

That is enough to cover all social security, Medicare, Medicaid, children’s health insurance, defense, federal law enforcement and immigration, all veterans’ benefits and—and interest on the debt, according to John Lott, economist and author of ‘More Guns, Less Crime’ from University of Chicago Press, 2010.

The present administration claims mortgage interest will rise if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. That doesn’t make sense. If there is less money available, there will be less spending. Lending institutions would be foolish to raise rates, making those reluctant to spend even more disinclined.

I find it hard to believe in policies that have yet to cut the deficit, lower unemployment, or create 200,000 jobs a month.

Now, what about the dollar losing value?

Look at it this way. If the government doesn’t borrow more money, it won’t need the taxes to pay additional debt. If it doesn’t need the taxes, rates could drop eventually, and lower taxes would make the United States more attractive for businesses from other countries.

Pie in the sky? No more than the misrepresentations designed to frighten those on social security and other entitlements.

Oh, yeah, he mentioned that eighty percent of the public supported raising the debt limit, yet CBS News and New York Times poll showed Americans against raising it by 69-24 percent.

Our president dismissed the poll with the condescending response that American citizens do not have the comprehension of the debt ceiling like ‘professional politicians’.

You know what the definition of ‘professional politicians’ is, don’t you? Professional crooks.

You and I have to share some of the blame for this mess. After all, we, the citizens who voted and the citizens who did not vote, are the ones who put those guys up there.

The hubbub reminds me of the spoiled kid whose parents finally got tough and refused to give in. The kid falls down on the floor, kicks his heels, bangs his head, and says he hates you.

Sound familiar?

The sky is still there, and it will be there long after you and I are gone from here.
rconwell@gt.rr.com

http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.Kent_Conwell
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The Truth and Nothing but the Truth

If you’re like me, you quickly grow weary of the name-calling, back-stabbing, vilifying, mudslinging, and muck-raking that goes on in Washington. And that’s just between friends. Heaven forbid what happens to enemies.

I’ve had my fill of politicians from every party delivering a speech or granting an interview one day, and then standing up the next and with angelic innocence blatantly denying the meaning of the words they spoke.

‘I misspoke.” That’s the new mantra for so many. “I misspoke’.

One most recent ‘misspoke—misspeak?’ was the budget cuts from the Senate. From what the public was told, over sixty billion dollars had been cut when actually, only 322 million was carved from the bulbous budget. Seems like the difference was simply moved back and forth in accounting tricks, a fact both parties failed to mention.

They bragged. ‘We cut sixty billion.”

Haven’t you noticed the growing usage of the expression?
According to the Bodhi Tree Swaying Blog, ‘misspoke’ is a weasel word.

Like the time Hillary Clinton remarked she ‘misspoke’ when she claimed she’d run across a tarmac airfield in order to avoid sniper fire after landing in Bosnia as first lady in 1996.

Weasel words are derived from the weasel’s habit of sucking the contents out of an egg without destroying its shell. A weasel word is deliberately misleading or ambiguous language used to avoid making a straight–forward statement while giving the appearance of having made such.

People today buy into such weasel words because by their use, they avoid the truth of their behavior, lying.

That’s what the then primary candidate Clinton really did in her Bosnia remark, she lied.

She isn’t by herself. They don’t misspeak. They lie. And they’re well aware of it when they do.

All right, so it isn’t fair to say all misspeaks are deliberate. Some come about out of sheer ignorance.

But the ones to whom I refer are the politicians. Far, far too many of them believe such linguistic gymnastics is essential to their success.

Do you remember when the then aspiring Supreme Court candidate Sonia Sotomayor remarked “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life?”

And when confronted with the statement, claimed she meant that all judges should render decisions without regard to any bias.

Or the time in 2005 she said a ‘court of appeals is where policy is made.” Immediately she added “And I know this is on tape, and I should never say that because we don’t make law. I know. O.K. I’m not promoting it. I’m not advocating it. I’m—you know.”

All I know is she does believe courts shape policy despite her protestations.

And then we have politicians who misspeak unintentionally. If we follow to the definition of ‘misspeak’, unintentional misspeaking is not really misspeaking, but simply a mistake. Make sense? Doesn’t to me either, but on with the story.

Our former president, George W. was a master at mangling the English language. I think it was playwright George Bernard Shaw who remarked that the British and
Americans were two people separated by a common language. Well, that common language was how old George got into the act.

I suppose the one remark of his that sticks in my mind was when he said, “They misunderestimated me.”

Stop and think about it. He knew what he meant to say. I know what he meant to say. We all know what he meant to say. But he didn’t say it.

Or what about the time he said “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system”?

That one, I can’t figure out.

Both of his remarks, though vague and ambiguous, are mistakes, not misspeaks.

When was the last time you went to a doctor and he prescribed medicine with the comment, “Take this and let’s see what happens?” Never? Right? Nobody’s going to experiment on me.

Instead, he says, “Let’s see how well you tolerate it.”

Same thing.

Misspeak?

Looks to me, it’s everywhere.






rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com

Our Next President

You ever think about running for president?

Yeah, that president. Of these United States.

Talk to anybody, and around sixty or seventy percent believe he or she can do a better job than whom we now have in the office.

That is a common political phenomenon.

Curiously, our current president has already started campaigning. Now, I don’t know why he started so early. Could it be he’s running scared because of the poor job he’s done, or because of the poor job he hasn’t done?

I don’t know. It just seems to me a two-year-long campaign is a mite too long. On the other hand, maybe it’s because he is an excellent campaigner. You can’t take that from him. Could it be he knows he knows he’s failed as president, but can excel at campaigning? So, he decided to campaign instead of president. (okay, so it isn’t a verb. Big Deal. Disrespect wasn’t a verb either)

Surely he can’t believe Americans are that dumb? Or are we?

Certainly, he didn’t begin campaigning so early because of possible candidates the other parties might throw at him.

English teachers always emphasize to their writing students not to use clichés; but here’s one anyway. Remember the old saying, ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’?
Same with the candidates the other parties want to throw at him. A bunch of cooks-result? A tasteless broth.

If you’re like me, I don’t see anyone out there who could beat him except maybe Hillary, and she’s in the wrong party. On the other hand, do you think that perhaps she covets the office so passinately that she might switch parties?

Now there’s food for thought.

Lots of folks around our neck of the woods have been switching parties. To hear them, their impeccably honorable reasons are based upon their sterling integrity and a slavish desire to lift their constituents’ quality of life to higher levels.

Right? And if you believe that, I have a long lost map showing where the pirate, LaFitte, hid gold at the juncture of the Sabine and Neches Rivers.

Or I can put in on the trail of the severed finger of Benito Jaurez, the Mexican bandido, for only a few bucks.

Most of those guys are cutting deals left and right.

But back to—ah, yeah, Obama and his campaigning.

A friend and I spoke recently of Donald Trump’s entry into the fray. Or maybe I should say, his considering entry into the bloodlust milieu to come.

My first impulse was ‘hey, maybe this is the guy.’ He’s got a lot of baggage, but who hasn’t? Many politicians are saying his candidacy is a joke. They, by the way, are considering running also.

You can’t believe what prospective candidates say about each other. Joe Biden commented during the primaries that ‘Obama was 'not yet ready' for the presidency, an office which did not 'lend itself to on-the-job training'.

Now he’s vice-president, working for the guy whom he claimed couldn’t handle the job. Make sense to you?

But, who will run against Obama?

First on many lists is Sarah Palin. I like her, but women hate her. She couldn’t do any worse than Obama, but somehow that just doesn’t seem much of a reason to vote for her.

Then there is ex-Massachusetts’ Governor Mitt Romney. Many say he is the front-runner, but he has run so many times it’s getting to be a joke. Besides, he was behind the horrible health bill in his state. Obamacare is Romney’s briar patch.

Mike Huckabee is back with his conservative religious group. Huckabee is a nice guy, but he wasn’t any too sharp as governor in Arkansas.

One of the big names for the office is Newt Gingrich. I heard a comedian remark ‘How do you get a divorce from Newt Gingrich? Simple, get uterine cancer.” That sums him up. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a saint.

And the list goes on and on and on. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, John Thune, Chris Christie, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Pence, Jim DeMint, Ron Paul, Nikki Haley, Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, John Bolton, Michelle Bachman.
Whew!

Oh, I forgot Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal.

So, you tell me. Who will it be?

My prediction?

Obama in 2012.

The Democrat party has only one cook in the kitchen. That’s the difference.



rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com

Pogo's Congress

Notice came out a couple weeks back that almost a quarter of a million Mexican citizens along its northern border had disappeared.

I’m not making this up. The 2010 Mexican census stated that down in Praxedis G. Guerrora, a border town east of Juarez, sixty-one percent of the 3,616 homes are uninhabited, as in empty, vacant, unfilled.

And Reynosa follows with 33% and then Juarez with 23% of its half million homes. All abandoned, left to crumble. That’s a heap of Mexican citizens bidding adios to their homeland.

Well, I have news for those wise census officials and their missing citizens. Those 230,000 Hispanics ain’t disappeared. They’re in my back yard, and my neighbor’s, and his neighbor’s.

I can’t blame anyone for wanting to get away from the violence wracking Mexico along the border. At the same time, I blame our own Congress for doing nothing over the last several years to stem the arterial spurting of illegal immigrants into the United States, regardless of reasons.

And I hold our Texas legislators as much to blame. They didn’t even have the guts to make an effort as Arizona. They dump it off on the feds, claiming the big boys up there prevent any local efforts.

In 2000, the U.S. census bureau claimed eight million illegals lived in the U.S. In 2010, it was up to an estimable twelve-twenty million. That is a fifty to one hundred and fifty percent jump. In fact, a Hispanic columnist claims it is over fifty million as of today.

To put controls on this tsunami of illegals flooding us won’t be easy, but surely, those jokers up there in the legislature or congress who were slick enough to con a majority of votes should be slick enough to come up with a solution.

The obvious starting point to a simpleton like me is to admit they ain’t no way we’re going to send 23-50 million illegals back.

That said, where do we start?

First, let’s understand what caused it.

As usual, it was a screw up in Washington.

The Civil Right’s Act of 1866 (read it if you don’t believe me) declared that people born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power are entitled to be citizens without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.

It does not say folks can pop in from Mexico, Canada, China, or Pluto, have a baby, and it is a U.S. citizen. Why can’t they? Because they are already citizens of another country. You know, A FOREIGN POWER! Get it?

A similar provision was written a few months later in the proposed Fourteenth Amendement to the United States Constitution. Section One states in the beginning: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thererof, are citizens etc…”

To repeat, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted U.S. citizenship to all persons born in the United States, as long as those persons were not subject to a foreign power.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know babies are subject to the whims of their parents. If their parents are citizens of another country who come here illegally, that means they are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction, but that of the country in which they hold citizenship. They do not go to the American Embassy if they have problems, but they go to the Mexican Embassy or the Russian or the Polish, or whatever.

How did this misinterpretation come about? Simple! Some of the 1866 framers of the Fourteen Amendment were probably lawyers who tried to get fancy with words and stuck in the vacuous expression ‘jurisdiction thereof’ instead of using plain, simple words like ‘not subject to a foreign power.

If we were to obey that intended precept, the inflow of illegal immigration would decrease dramatically. No citizenship? Then, Amigo, let’s vamoose our los extremos out of here.

But what about those youngsters who’ve been here for years, who are in school, some of whom have children of their own?

If they want to become legal citizens, give those who have been here five years or longer and completed high school a temporary residence for six more years during which they must complete two years in the military or two years at a technical school with a certificate or a four-year college degree.

And we have to accept the fact that many illegals will be with us forever, but at least, this way we have a start of putting some kind of control on it.

Now all of this is based upon the assumption that those who conned us into electing them will take steps to seal the stinking border, and that I am afraid is a lost cause because of the rampant congressional and legislative disease, ‘Deterioratous of the Backbonis’.

Don’t forget Pogo’s edict, ‘we’ve met the enemy and he is us.’

The T-Word

Perhaps to most, this isn’t earth-shaking news, but it does testify to the fact that sometimes the little guy can eke out a win over the big boys.
Seems like down in San Antonio, Domonique Ramirez, the winner of the Miss Bexar Beauty competition had her crown stripped for chowing down on too many tacos.
According to Ryan Owens and Jessica Hopper of ABC News, Miss Ramirez was told to lay off the tacos or else she would lose her crown.

Obviously she didn’t, and she did.

She sued and got her crown back.

Sort of a flaky story, but stay with me.

Lay off the tacos! Saying that to a Hispanic is like telling Hermie Swartz he has a nose that looks like a bagel or Joe Nyguen to stop smoking the Lotus leaves.

The entire argument between Ramirez and the pageant was a typical ‘she said,’ ‘he said’.

She claims she was ousted because of her weight in her bikini pictures. Said Ramirez, “She (the president of the organization) told me I need to drop thirteen pounds and I needed to lay off the tacos.”

The president of the Miss Bexar County organization testified the bikini pictures were ‘unusable.’

Now, I don’t know what ‘unusable’ means here. I saw the bikini picture. She looked okay to me although she did have a little pooch-out on the outside of her thigh. What I’ve heard called ‘saddleblankets’. I’ve seen better pictures, and I’ve seen worse.

The president added that the committee did not believe Ms. Ramirez would represent San Antonio well. (talk about flaky excuses)

There are many arguments for beauty competitions, and I know their proponents can rattle off a list of benefits. Still, what those contests boil down to is the measure of physical beauty and charm, paying little attention to the inner strengths of some young women.

Now, I know I offended someone there, and yes, I know many beauties have inner strengths. Don’t all beauty competitions have questions involving moral vigor and inner strength? You’ve heard the questions, and all seem to have the same perceptive answer, ‘World Peace.’

But can you honestly tell me that if Joan of Arc was as ugly as me and competed in a beauty contest, she would win—or even place—or even be allowed on the boardwalk?
I doubt it.

I’m sure the Bexar County pageant officials are all nice folks, but they’ve got to be a couple pickles shy in that barrel of political correctness so prevalent in our namby-pamby society for telling a Hispanic to lay off the tacos.

The courts obviously agreed.

Does this mean we can’t say taco? Will it become the T-word to go along with the N-word and S-word. I even heard some dude mention a ‘D-word’, whatever it might be. Surely we have not outlawed the obsequious ‘damn’. If that’s the case, I have several friends who will go mute.

I was teaching a writing class a couple weeks back and our discussion turned to the flap over Mark Twain’s classic novel, ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and its use of words prevalent back in the Nineteenth Century.

Seems some over zealous reformers with nothing better to do want to replace words in books they’ve never read. They’re probably on the Miss Bexar County Beauty Competition Board.

I grew up in another time and culture. Expressions I heard from my birth on were part of my vernacular, a vernacular I have over the years modified to conform to present expectations.

When I first heard it, I was amused at the expression, N-word, for to me it personified the abysmal ignorance and lack of historical significance to those demanding the use of the term.

The only time I hear the word today is among those of the culture it identifies. And when I hear it, the word is always a slur.

Yet, among other groups, Caucasians are often referred to as crackers and honkys.
What I propose is establishing an integration of vernacular among various cultures. If the expression ‘N-word’ is acceptable, then I say let us also accept ‘C-word’ and ‘H-word’ for cracker and honky.

Turn about you know.

Oh, yeah, and let’s don’t forget to put in the ‘T-word’. Can’t leave out our neighbors to the south.