Congress Lifts Its Skirt Again

As I seem to be doing on a fairly regular basis at the moment, I must again apologize for the randomness of my posting schedule lately. As it turns out, time is such a limited commodity currently. But soon my tenure as a two job employee will be at an end. There is little doubt that the topic of the day seems to be the deal struck between the President and the Republicans in Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts for all Americans in exchange for an extension of the unemployment benefits for those who need them. I have to say that the world of Washington DC as I know it appears to be “Bizarro World”. The Democrats are lambasting the President and spouting off about standing up for their principles. The Republicans are lambasting the President and spouting off about standing up for their principles. Well, now USWeapon is going to NOT lambast the President and point out the lack of principle in Washington DC. What a bunch of hypocritical children we have in Congress.

Guest Commentary – The Fake Dichotomy

Thursday night really snuck up on me this week! My first week back at work after being out of the store for a while is always a challenge. In this case, getting caught back up on all the paperwork, training of new employees, and issues that came up while I was gone for two weeks is a quite daunting task. It is made even more daunting by an upcoming product launch that will be revolutionary in the industry and will also require a ton of my time for the next 8 weeks (work time not blog time!). I am pretty excited about some of my upcoming topics as well. I have some good discussion topics coming up, starting with Sunday night’s article in a few days. Tonight’s guest commentary comes to us from a tried and true contributor. I have a couple to choose from but I really wanted to run another one from Jon Smith. I always enjoy his topics because they are pretty thought out and well written. Jon has a knack for using that grey matter inside his skull to flesh out good discussions. Tonight’s contribution will be no different.

Seeking False Purism…. Flaws in the American Mindset

I know, it is Tuesday night and everyone is opening up their browser this morning and expecting the open mic thread that usually greets them on Wednesday morning. I was sitting around reading news on my dinner break tonight, reviewing the different primary races out there, and the status of each prior to election day. It spurred some thought from me so I figured I would offer a quick article around that subject instead of the open mic thread. Fear not though, I will do the open mic on Wednesday night instead of Tuesday. Instead, I want to talk about an article that I read a couple of weeks ago and was reminded of this evening. The article was originally on Fox News. The subject was the fact that despite the deep partisan pitfalls that every voter says that they despise, the elections come closer and middle of the road candidates get thrown out in favor of those that fall further towards the “far” edge of the parties.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for February 16, 2010

Tonight we have a bit of a theme in our open mic topics, at least in the ones that I am providing. Those who add other subjects don’t have to stick to any theme. The theme seems to be partisanship. Evan Bayh says it is the reason he is leaving. Robert Reich says it has been the big obstacle. The DNC is using partisan rhetoric that is ridiculous against the GOP states that accept stimulus funds. And finally, Obama is doing something that I feel is a centrist move by investing in nuclear power. In three of the four articles, we see partisanship overcome or discussed as a negative by influential figures. Are we looking at a situation where the people in positions of power are beginning to understand that the partisanship is Washington is causing the majority of Americans to lose faith in the entire system? Or are these outsiders simply a few enlightened folks who see the issues and want to deal with them. Interesting day in the news cycle, none-the-less. So on to the open mic…

Guest Commentary: Glenn Beck is a LIAR!

Tonight’s Guest Commentary is one that I am interested to hear the discussion around. Over the course of the last couple of months, we have seen several folks use Politifact as kind of the “unbiased truth” around the statements made by folks on the political stage. Just the other night, I was presented with Politifact’s evaluation of Sarah Palin’s speech to the Tea Party Convention. I have read over there enough that I can see that there is a bias to what they check and what they don’t, as well as the way they present it. That is fine, but I do have to take their evaluations with a grain of salt because of it, much like those who disagree with me take my evaluations with a grain of salt. The sad thing is that there isn’t a BETTER place to go for an unbiased evaluation of what folks on both sides of the aisle are saying. If such a place existed, I imagine it would be one of the most visited sites around. I also imagine that there would be a lot of “Pants on Fire” ratings on both sides of the aisle. Because an unbiased evaluation would show that about 99% of what comes out of Washington DC is bullshit… I’m just sayin.

A Country Moving Towards the…

Left. Right Center. Who Knows. We all know what the different factions tells us. The left says the country has moved to the left, and as such their extreme left agenda is what the people want and need. The right tells us the country is on their side. Scott Brown proved it after all. A lot of pundits tell us that the country is primarily in the center, with dwindling numbers the further away from that median you you get. Who to believe? I say believe what you want. It does not matter what they say or what we believe. At least… it shouldn’t matter. We find ourselves in today’s world arguing incessantly about which direction the country needs to move. Political pundits preach the virtues of either cutting taxes or increasing them. And a support of a single issue is constantly considered an endorsement for that entire ideal. And that, dear readers, is a small microcosm of the problem with today’s non-representing representatives. That they represent the people or thier party is a constant debate. What is not part of the debate is whether they represent a solution. And for the record, I am going back to the Open mic tonight to answer some posts from Ray and others, so check that out too.

Using Populist Appeal to Change the Rules

Mr. Smith Filibusters

This article actually began as an open mic night topic last week (as you will be able to tell by the format I offer it in), when I initially read the story. As I began thinking about it, I realized that it was something that was going to take a little bit more time to cover than was usual for an open mic topic. That is mostly because I want to expand the discussion into a broader one, focused on more than just this one instance. The article that I am linking to below is written by Senator Tom Udall from New Mexico. This freshman Senator is setting his sights on eliminating the the ability for the Republicans to block legislation through the use of the filibuster in the Senate. And his rationale for doing so is the Constitution. Now I am not a Constitutional scholar, but I understand it pretty well and I have studied it extensively, both as a supporter and a detractor. And what I see from the Senator is yet another attempt by members of government to find a “loophole” to accomplish whatever they want to accomplish, our freedom be damned…

State of the Union? Same old Crap….

So I have finished watching both the State of the Union and the Republican rebuttal. I thought both were weak. I thought both were full of bulldookey. I am not going to address every single thing that the President said tonight, but I am going to address some of the things that jumped out at me. Because in the end, I felt like he was right back in campaign mode, but more importantly, he was right back to claiming one thing while doing something completely different. I am sure that Black Flag will say “what did you expect?” I would answer that I expected exactly what I got. I am simply pointing out my disappointment that I was not surprised. And there are just so many things that I have to rebuke, if nothing else for the plethora of facebook posts from all manner of my friends saying how great Obama was and how awesome it is that he is on our side and how proud they are to be Democrats tonight. It literally almost drove me mad. Had I not had a few Raptor hybrids that D13 sent me to test out, I wouldn’t have had anything to kick and might have gone out and attempted to remove the pom poms and springs from Nancy Pelosi’s hindquarters. By the way D13, they really are as trainable as you promised.

A 20 Year Old College Student Runs the World…

There I was, skimming the political news this evening, still smarting over winning my final 4 games in fantasy football only to not make the playoffs because of one win on the final day by the team I needed to lose to enable me to get in. As I contemplated the repercussions in the fantasy world of finishing with a better record than two of the 4 teams that made the playoffs (they won their division, last place in my division would have won their division), I stumbled across the “grade” that Barack Obama has given himself for his first year in office. It was an interview with fellow sham town hero Oprah, and he exclaimed that he feels he earned a “solid B plus” for his first year. As I chuckled to myself, I realized that The Obama administration is just like every single graduate of a college with a business degree as they enter the workforce.

Have Republicans Fallen Out of the Mainstream?

A happy new week to all! Tonight I am going to offer the first of what will be my “fall back plan” during the holidays. As many of you are aware, I run a sales operation. As such, I am in the busiest 5 weeks of the entire year. A little over 30% of the entire year in sales is accomplished between Thanksgiving and Christmas. What that means for me is, as the boss (and the best at what goes on there 😉 ), I end up with a lot of long days and nights where I need extra sleep. As a result, I am unable to research and write as normal. However, I think there are so many important things going on, I want to ensure that we are still maintaining our edge and having important discussions. So my plan is, on the nights when I am unable to write as usual, I will offer perspectives on what is written by others, allowing some discussions to happen on the subjects in a different way.

Obama Speech

Thursday night and I am back in the mix. Sorry to all that I was unable to write last night. I had a lot to do around the house the last couple of days, putting lights up, making the house like Christmas. I know that D13 has offered an analysis on the Obama speech the other day. I have intentionally not read his post on it. I have also intentionally not listened to any Fox News or anything else for that matter on the subject. I wanted to offer an analysis that was mine and mine alone. Without any thoughts from the MSM clouding my mind and making me pay attention to the parts that I don’t think are important. I have watched the speech, and I have read the speech twice. I will say up front that I think that the strategy and the speech were failures in my eyes. And I can honestly say that I don’t feel that it is simply because I don’t like Obama and nothing he would have said would have been good enough. I was looking for a few things from him. I didn’t get them.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for October 20, 2009

Another Tuesday night  comes along for the open mic night and I have some general open mic topics and a couple that are directed at some of my many critics. You know I was reading the comments from my article from Monday morning, and I noticed that for about the hundredth time, I was accused of offering only scathing opinions of the moves from the left. I never seem to get an answer when I reply to this so I will be more direct. I also had a fun time discussing things with some folks on my wife’s facebook account, one of whom really got his feelings hurt when he was publically shamed for making a statement that “teabaggers are racists”. His friend who participated in the conversation seemed interested in honest discussion so I invited him here. I hope he replies. And of course there is the usual nonsense in Washington DC for me to comment on! So away we gooo….

As the Poll Numbers Drop…

It seems that there are endless numbers of polls out there that tell us whatever the talking heads want us to believe. I take them all with a grain of salt. So when the new poll numbers came out from Pew, I wasn’t surprised. I had already seen about 30 different polls claiming that Obama’s approval ratings were dropping. It brings to light an interesting conundrum for the far left in America (and remember I speak of the far left, not all the left). For they have been rubbing this last election cycle in the faces of conservatives and Republicans for quite a while now. So as we see the changes occurring in public opinion, what are we to make of it? I know there will be some out there who simply say the polls mean nothing. But those same folks sure thought the polls meant something 6 months ago. I was reading over at CNN and Jack Cafferty, someone I have a healthy respect for, offered some thoughts that I will share below. But I am interested to hear what everyone thinks on this subject.

Howard Dean Publicly Exposes All Politicians

Whew…. Back at home once again. After a month and a half or so filled with travel and family and all kinds of stuff, my life begins its return towards normal (or at least my own abnormal version of normal). I spent the weekend back in my hometown. I had taken my computer, hopeful of some quiet time with my blog. No such luck, the one hotel in town had no internet access. Which was actually kind of nice. So I spent some time at Gettysburg battlefield (I grew up about 25 miles from there) educating my son and wife on the historic battle. Visited a couple of old friends. Marveled at the town’s growth. And didn’t know a single political thing that happened for the entire three days. Tomorrow begins the adoption process for our new family dog from the local shelter. But other than that, things begin getting back to some semblance of normalcy. I had been thinking about this article prior to leaving, so I return to it now. It seems Howard Dean felt it necessary to remind our representatives that they don’t answer to their contituents….

Channeling John Adams

My wife and I were watching the first part of the HBO mini-series this evening that chronicled the contributions of John Adams during the time of our founders. I have watched it before, a while ago. Mrs. Weapon had not watched any of it. So we thought we would sit down and watch an episode each night that we can until we finish it. I was listening to the speech that he gave just before he left for Philadelphia as one of the 5 representatives for the congress being held there. As I did, something really struck home with me. That spark has put me back on my soapbox tonight. And that is that the people of the United States have completely lost sight of everything that the founders were striving for when they did the things that they did. We have fallen into traps that were laid with the best of intention in most cases, and nefariously in others. I hear the calls to return to our roots and I submit to you that we are not ready to return to our roots….