Mike Pence Says His Role Model Vice President is Dick Cheney

Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence discusses his VP role model and his debate prep on “This Week.”

Let’s stop pretending what he ( Pence) is talking about. Cheney was the “grownup” in the relationship and Bush was the “spoiled kid”.

We can see from where Mike Pence is coming from. He will have to run the country and become the commander-in-chief, because, like Bush, Trump isn’t up to it. He is not completely ignorant, but stupid.

Bush, in a stupor, had to have his Chief of Staff run the war in Iraq, because he, Bush, thought it was about another Crusades.

My guess is that Pence will continue the war against Islam, while ignoring Nixon’s connection to Globalization, while Trump moves America towards authoritarianism. #fail

Source: Mike Pence Says His Role Model Vice President is Dick Cheney

Pay-Go?

The Republican held House has a decision to make. It can say that Obamacare is not as bad as House Republicans now claim, pay to have it fixed as they have done in the past, or take some of the wealth of a future generation and pay for Obamacare.

Of course there is always the option of revolution. Like the Tea Party of old, the new Tea Party knows revolutions.

You take the junk out of the holds of the ships and throw it into the sea.

Of course those “holds” are now in the ships of past honor residing in the House, the fear now in Republicans who don’t want to pay for it, and the interest in the wealth that future generations hold.

The domains of war, which let’s face it that is what a revolution really needs, are honor, fear and interest.

What I am trying to say, that is just something to be “highlighted”   🙂

Business as Usual?

Investment Summit, Day 2

So, I lost all my cable channels last night except one. That one program was on the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (CSPAN).

Hmmm…, my cable company was making me watch a show put on by the cable company. Bizarre to say the least.

The program came on just around the time my wife and I take our dog for a walk, so I couldn’t watch much.

What I did watch, after referencing Big Brother and how “they” want me to watch this program, I found that there were interesting comments made.

I think the most interesting of those comments came at 35:50 in the above video. The comment was made by Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO.

“We are not an accident, as a country.” and “When we have a problem we expel the problem.”

I am sure the “problem” he was talking about in the past was slavery and I am pretty sure the “problem” he was talking about in the future was the Tea Party, as a form of insurgency.

In defence of my argument, the panel didn’t really talk about the debt, big government and taxes. What they did talk about was the advantages our country is experiencing, and how our government works in the business environment to support those advantages.

Those advantages were cheaper energy and cheaper power than most of the world, ready to enact immigration laws that would be the envy of other nations, our education system that out performs all others in critical thinking, and our financial markets that are more resilient than any in history. 

All brought to you by the size and scope of our present government, thankyou!

Most of the advantages named were programs that are under attack by the leadership of the Republican Party, and the Tea Party specifically. But I think all would agree, the advantages exist within a government of size and scope that the Tea Party wants to see end.

It might be time for either the Dixiecrats of the Old South, who support the Tea Party, to once again change sides and go back to being Democrats; or for American Business, once the party of Lincoln, to join the Democrats in their efforts to expel the Tea Party from Congress.

Either way the lines dividing the insurgency and incumbent powers within our political system are forming, and it doesn’t look to me like anyone is going to be left in the middle.

Get over it Tea Party.

While it is my opinion, as a blogger of war, that the South lost the Civil War by trying to fight it like a big army instead of an insurgency, the US government has learned, in the last few years, how to fight an insurgency.

To fight an insurgency, the first thing you need is business on your side.

Check!

What Ted Cruz Should Have Learned

Senator Ted Cruz should have learned that in any campaign you need to know your enemy. There are two basic things one needs to know about them, their magnitude and the direction they come from.

In the case of Cruz, their magnitude in numbers was large simply because it only takes a very small but vocal number of people in any Party to make a change. I think Cruz understood the magnitude of his enemy, but he got the direction of his enemy wrong. The enemy lies behind the leader, not in front.

His enemy was the number of people in his party that were small but very vocal.

You see, when the whisper came around that the Republican Party may let the Government default, every Republican that made a statement on defaulting said that wasn’t going to happen.

It was then that his followers should have attacked and struck out against these Republicans, and they failed to do so. 

Of course, even though he probably would have scared most of his followers, Ted Cruz should have also attacked at that time.

So in a way Ted Cruz was, as were his followers, his own worst enemy and that is what he should have learned.

His next lesson maybe to learn who he is fighting for.

Both sides grope for solutions to shutdown, debt ceiling

President Obama emphasized the stakes at an event at a construction company in Rockville, Md., Thursday, saying Washington’s inability to deal with the looming debt ceiling would be worse than the government shutdown

Tactically, Obama got it right when he went right for the workspace of both work and home.

The solution to this problem is simple.

What Obamacare really needs is help. If the Republicans manage to defund Obamacare, it will probably bring it down, but that is not really that much of a big deal for the POTUS. There is a possibility Obamacare may fail anyway. Defunding Obamacare (as the “way” to win in the Republican strategy) probably only makes a small difference in its chances of failure.

What Obama really needs is help from the few remaining patriots in the leadership of the Republican Party. With help from these true patriots (not really sure there are any left in Congress), Obama can insure the healthcare program for all the people of the U.S.A. doesn’t fail.

Seems like a worthy cause that would do, not only enough to make people not only feel good, but be satisfied in being a part of a job well done.

via Both sides grope for solutions to shutdown, debt ceiling.

Senate rejects latest House proposal as federal government grinds to a halt

President Obama, declaring that his signature health-care law is “here to stay,” urged House Republicans on Tuesday to stop trying to derail it and instead “reopen the government” following a shutdown that took effect at midnight.

If the shutting-down of the U.S. government was a game, then Obama and the Democratic Party wins. It comes down to whose “cheap trick” was the best in the strategy of the game.

The House Republican’s “cheap trick” was to defund Obamacare, or they would shut-down the government. Their plan was to start with defunding the whole program, and if that didn’t work, at least get some little token for their effort.

I am sure the Republicans knew how fragile Obamacare is, and defunding any part of Obamacare would pretty much assure a failure down the line.

And there is no doubt that Obamacare is fragile, at least as it is being implemented. Obama has had to get help from business in ways that would only make any good Republican giggle. The problem with the Republican strategy: they had no concept of their strategy failing.

Without the concept of failure (the Government would actually shutdown), they had no backup plan for keeping the government actually running, like the House Democrats did when the Democratic majority in the House last shut the government down.

It was different seventeen years ago when the government was last shut down. There was no animosity towards the POTUS, nor against the Senate, because the economy was running pretty good, and the Republicans could relate to the POTUS, if they actually didn’t like him.

Today, House Republicans don’t relate to this POTUS, nor do most actually like him or even know him. You really need to be able to relate to someone before you know someone.

So now the government is  shutting down, and the Republicans in the House past about 3 bills (which the President and Democrats voted for or signed) that will help keep things moving if the government actually shuts down.

I think the House Strategy, if this was a game, failed because those who have control of the Republican Party actually wanted to shut the government down, in the worst way possible, and they did.

I guess the Democrats will just have to see if their strategy gives them enough power to “win”, as the government shuts down.

via Senate rejects latest House proposal as federal government grinds to a halt – The Washington Post.

“The Unwinding”™ by George Packer

It was only after Walton’s death, Mr. Packer says, “that the country began to understand what his company had done.” He writes: “Over the years, America had become more like Walmart. It had gotten cheap. Prices were lower, and wages were lower. There were fewer union factory jobs, and more part-time jobs as store greeters.” He adds: “The hollowing out of the heartland was good for the company’s bottom line.”

It was after watching part of this video and much of the Saturday debate in the House, on the CR to send back to the Senate and shut down the government, that I came to the conclusion that “America 3” (Our deeply rooted orientation toward personal and economic freedom will allow us to dismantle America 2.0 and build a better, freer, and more prosperous America 3.0 in its place.) isn’t going to happen.

Instead, America, as Mr. Packer says, has been “unwinding” and it is not going to transition into a better, freer, and more prosperous America 3.0 (although it could become all those things), but, instead of transitioning, it is about to rewind into something completely else.

And that “something” means that  America is never going to be the same.

On the House floor, one of the themes of the Republicans has been the tale of what corporations are doing to the American worker because of Obamacare. 

According to the House Republicans, corporations are no longer supporting their workforces.

The House Republicans say that businesses are throwing away healthcare plans, turning full time employees into a bunch of temporaries, moving more jobs overseas, and (although I didn’t hear this on the House floor) taking healthcare on the cheap by paying fines and scrapping healthcare for their workers all together.

Really? Most businesses in America has the worker by the short-hairs, do they really want to keep twisting.

I mean, I believe the House Republicans are truthful when they say that they have heard from both small and large businesses and worker who are terrorized by the thought that corporate America is abandoning them, but have they heard from the American worker–the men and women who are trying to keep their families together, as their wages stagnate and those at the top get more wealthy?

The King of England miscalculated the amount of control he had over his American subjects. It could be the House Republicans are miscalculating also. The only ones that believes our healthcare system isn’t broken are those who are supplying the money to the Republican Party, and it is the Republican Party who is refusing to form any kind of a fix to the Obamacare that will help small businesses and the American worker.

Ironically, it turns out the Republican Party has become the tool for revolution in America and it’s rewinding into something completely else.

The House Republicans better hope that Obama blinks, unless they really want another American Revolution and (unlike a peaceful transition) the violence that goes along with most unwindings of nations through revolutions.

via ‘The Unwinding,’ by George Packer – NYTimes.com.