HR 3221 has a neat little provision that (apparently Sen. Chris Dodd put in) to help the government find new money to spend. They are gonig to require any payment facilitator in the US to provide reporting to the federal government that exceeds $10,000 in a year. Sweet, so they can keep yet another database that some monkeys have access to with all of our personal financial data in? How about all of the merchants that have SSNs and EINs? They need all of this…I don’t think so. Figure out how to spend what you have and not tax the people you are supposed to be serving. The best part is that HR 3221 is little more than window dressing when it comes to trying to help homeowners and the real estate market in general. Check with the guys on Wall St. who were peddling the CDOs and work your way down.

The text of HR 3221.

Here is how you can find out who your US Representative is (in the US Congress)

Here is how you can find out who your US Senators are (you get two)

Here, here Bruce Fein, it is nice to know that there is at least one other person out there who seems to feel the same way I do. Read his commentary in the Washington Post.

John Edwards - There is something about John Edwards that is appealing to me…he wear his heart on his sleeve. While this may not be “Presidential” to some, at least you know where he really stands on an issue. John Edwards, IMHO, really seems to give a crap about the United States and how things are done. I am certainly not a fan of most lawyers, but it seems to me that of anyone on the Dem list, he is the one that would be the best for this country’s interests.

Hillary Clinton - Panderer. What else is there to say? Why is it that people in this country seem to think that the best people for the Presidency are those that have been there before? Wake up people.

Barak Obama - Wus. I think Barak Obama seems like a smart guy, a nice guy, but I will be honest, he reminds me of John Kerry. He is not willing to call people out when he disagrees with them or thinks they are full of crap (see candidate above), either because he is afraid, he wants to partner up if he doesn’t get the nomination, or he is listening to his consultants who tell him that people don’t like confrontation.

Joe Biden - Well, this is a guy who seems to say all of the right things all of the time. I actually like a lot of what Biden has to say most of the time. The problem is that he seems to change his tune to whatever is most popular at the time. Sorry Joe.

tags: candidates, democrats, nomination

Chris, I am a fan. I have been watching (tivo’ing) Hardball for 6 years at least. I have read a couple of your books and I think that most people would be fascinated to learn about the things you have experienced in your life. With that said, how about we take the show back to the days when you had great panels with Joe, Pat, Nora and others? Not to say that you don’t have some great people on the show these days, but I think the format that you used three or four years ago was better.

For the record, I have to say that I knew things had changed dramatically in the United States when I found myself agreeing with Pat Buchanan almost 100%. The time has come for people to start talking about all of our citizens as Americans, not Republicans or Democrats. Keep up the good work, keep pressing people, and interrupting them if you feel the need. My wife also got a big kick out of the show your wife hosted.

-Jason

Okay, some people shouldn’t be in certain positions in this country. Tom Tancredo has no business being President of the United States and he certainly doesn’t deserve to hold any public policy office IMHO. I just caught a glimpse of a new television ad he is running (and found it on YouTube.com). I really wish that most people in this country take some serious offense to this new ad and its attempt at scaring the hell out of people and getting them to vote for Tancredo. Joker, good luck.

Here is how I see it. No matter how you slice it, giving one person legal citizenship without following the immigration laws of this country, is rewarding people who cut in line.  There are people that cut in line. There are people that let people that cut in line. And, there are people that do something about people cutting in line (let me know if I left anyone out).  Cutting in line isn’t right and letting a huge group of people cut in line is really not right.  You let an old lady go in front of you because she can use the help.  I am sure there are a few “old ladies” in the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in this country, but I’ll bet the number is statistically insignificant.

tags: bush, cutting, immigration, rules

Just another great ancillary benefit to having a rookie run the country.  Here is some really exciting news from Russia today about them developing a radical new missile delivery system for nuclear weapons. Thanks to GW taking the US out of the long-standing 1972 Ballistic Missle Treaty (in 2002) the Russians went ahead and developed a new nuclear missile.  Blah, blah, blah, Putin is talking about making Europe into a powder keg by looking to put a US missile defense system over there, but the fact remains, we are safer today than we were 7 years ago. Gosh I feel good.

tags: bush, missile defense, moron, nuclear missile, putin, russia, star wars

I am never really amazed at the things that go on each and every day. One of the things that has surprised me a bit however is how long this whole supporting our troops = stay in Iraq vs. not supporting our troops = leaving Iraq.  It really is past the point of being pure comedy as it is clear that repeating something enough times on television is enough to make something true.  People here don’t seem to want to say what they really think out loud anymore…and it is not okay to do so either. It is really a shame and I hope that this is something that will change dramatically very soon.

But, the real point of this post is to give a 2 second explanation why George W. Bush will never say we are leaving Iraq (while he is President).  It is simple really, he doesn’t have to.  No matter what Congress or the American public does to him and what is left of his honor, it will never get worse for him.  We have been told that we were going to Iraq for one reason, then another and that has turned into something different.  Martha Stewart, who I have no love for, went to jail for lying to federal prosecutors about a stock trade that netted her less than a month’s salary.  However, lying every day about why we sent 130,000 troops to Iraq (that has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars) is ok.  Strange.  George Bush will never pull our troops out of Iraq because he can only climb out of the hole he has dug himself into.  The vast majority of Americans want our troops out of Iraq.  However, Congress can really only do two things to stand in his way and my bet is, they don’t do either.  If they did, Bush and Co. would simply use their ace in the whole.  Should Congress do something drastic, they would get blamed for breaking their program and then they in turn would own the war in Iraq…not Bush (even though that would simply not be the case).
1) They cut off funding for the war in Iraq.  This can be spun any number of ways by George Bush and Co. and will pretty easily mobilize the people that wanted to elect this man to a second term as President to rally behind him. At the end of the day, Congress would cave and we would simply be further down the line (like we are today) wondering when we will get our boys and girls home with all of their appendages and minds intact.

2) They impeach the President. You can apparently get impeached for lying about getting a BJ from some wacked out intern in the White House, but not for why you sent 130,000 troops to invade another country.  While this makes a lot of sense (sarcasm for those of you too retarded to figure that out), it won’t happen because then Congress owns the war. Bush and Co. would simply be able to say we were starting to turn the tide over there and then Congress kicked us out. They broke it, they own it.

So, boys and girls. I am afraid that unless someone who has some sack stands up and gets in the face of the insanity that we have been living in, I am afraid that we will simply have more of the same for a long time.

tags: bush, iraq, never, war, withdrawl