Deficit Reduction

I have a plan to reduce the federal deficit.  I can't take total credit for it, I formulated the idea while reading the blog the Chief.  He was saying that Ron Johnson and his staff should refuse government run single payer health care.  He is right, that is what the campaign was about and now he is replacing a principled senator who has been know to stand on those principles.  But, this got me to thinking.  Wasn't this entire election about rejecting "government run health care"?  The people have spoken, anyway that is what the media says.  The President should end government run and paid for health care for all employees of the US Congress.  I figure conservatively that would amount to $400 million dollars in the first year alone.  I haven't seen this on Eric Cantor's U cut page.  As long as we are reigning in Congress, remember the people have spoken, maybe we can end their expense accounts.  They are all being funded by corporations anyway so the fear of corruption should not exist.  If they need to take someone out to dinner use the Congressional dining room.

Chad Lee vs Tammy Baldwin

This has been an interesting race to watch.  Contrary to what John Nichols says I don't think that Chad Lee is a good candidate.  His campaign consists of a narrow world view and Republican talking points.  Tammy Baldwin would be vulnerable if there was the right candidate.  In Chad Lee  you get a devout Christian with some business background with scant knowledge of our system of government, little knowledge of the constitution, and without a clue on foreign affairs.  Consider, he is for the balanced budget amendment.  OK, what are the details?  Whenever there are terrible economic times the balanced budget amendment comes up.  Where was Mr. Lee in 2001? 2002? 2003? 2004?...No where, it wasn't until 2009 that deficits mattered.  Doesn't carry much weight with me.  I have advocated bringing the budget into balance for years but recognize that in times of crisis deficit spending maybe necessary.  The budget should have been brought into balance in 2004, even with the wars.  So, Chad how vaguely are you going to write the amendment so that you can support deficits by Republican Presidents.  Consider, his position on war.  He is for exhausting all means short of war in dealing with other nations (sounds like a Democrat) but yet supports the war in Iraq.  That would be the war that the President decided that we should start after what seemed like 10 minutes of negotiation where we didn't believe what we were told which turned out to be true.  We wouldn't be in Iraq if Saddam could have got his position on Fox, but instead Fox reported that Saddam was lying when in fact he was being truthful.  Chad is also willing to attack Iran (not giving diplomacy a chance) to stop them from getting nuclear weapons.  Consider Iran's position, their sworn enemy (remember we labeled them the axis of evil) has troops and who knows what weapons systems on 3 sides of their country.  Seems like a threat to me.  What is the fear of a nuclear Iran?  They can't attack the US.  They could attack our troops.  If they did we have something like 2000 warheads that we could drop on their country.  They could attack Israel, but again Israel has somewhere around 100 warheads more than enough to obliterate the country.  Chad is unconcerned about Pakistan, an unstable and corrupt country with 80-90 warheads.  This is where our enemies could get a bomb.  He also would privatize Social Security, eliminate Medicare, repeal Obamacare, and bring Religion into the government.  I'm afraid once again the only choice in Tammy Baldwin.

Stephen Colbert at Congress

Colbert's testimony was right on and proved once again that Republicans are:
a. Ironically challenged and
b. Don't understand Colbert

What Stephen pointed out was how ridiculous the immigration argument in Congress has become and his character offered solutions that you would have expected to hear from the Republicans.  American business and farms employ the illegal immigrants at the same time as Americans won't do the work or if they do they are not very good at it (watch Colbert at the farm).  I watched much of the hearing and I especially like the charge that the President has left the borders open when the reality is that under this President deportations are up.  Raids on businesses are up.  Number of troops on the border is up.  Interdiction is up.  Everything that you hear is down is in fact up.  I don't get it.  So the Democrats bring Colbert to Congress.  The Republicans contend that he made a mockery of the hearing process.  How can you make a mockery out of something that was already a mockery.  In fact this whole legislative session has been a mockery.  Way to go Mr. Colbert.