Importance of Sizeable Revolt as Boehner Wins Speaker Vote

 

It is suspected that the day after reports in the mainstream media will belittle the Republican Representatives who voted against reelected Speaker of the House Boehner emphasizing their failure while intentionally ignoring the fact that had all the members of the House of Representatives voted their revolt would have succeeded. What they will omit from their reporting is that the real reason Speaker Boehner won reelection was due to the funeral for former three-term Governor of New York Mario Cuomo as this event drew twelve Democrat Representatives attendance thus missing the vote for Speaker of the House. Subtracting these twelve Representatives from the 435 members to a maximum of 423 voting which changed the number of votes necessary to win the Speakership from 218 to 212. As all of those attending Mario Cuomo funeral were Democrats, this resulted in changing the numbers necessary for the Republican revolution to change from 28 to 34 out of the total number of potential Republican 246 votes. As if that was not enough, the final voting recorded only 408 votes cast which meant the Speaker Boehner needing 204 votes which raised the number of votes required to prevent Boehner’s reelection over 40, something well beyond the original 29. Despite the daunting task ahead to garner the votes to block the Speaker’s reelection and the obvious lack of votes, the original 15 decenters still raised another 10 dissenting voters but getting beyond the 25 count proved too much of a mountain to climb.

 

What is lost in all the numbers is that the number of dissenting voters was the greatest revolution against a sitting Speaker of the House in recent history. The revolution also makes the expected effectiveness of Speaker Boehner to control the agenda more challenging leaving him two directions which he can seek to get the necessary support. The direction the conservative and constitutionalist leave for Speaker Boehner is to lean in their direction and work within his party. The other direction would be to find either a dedicated core of Democrats willing to agree to support a neutral agenda thus giving him whatever votes he might need to replace those Republicans who oppose his direction and support for compromise legislations. The other problem is that no matter which direction will be taken by the Speaker, the legislations he passes along still must pass through the Senate and even then get past a veto from President Obama as he has guaranteed to do in his recent statements. The direction the Speaker will be availing himself of will become evident early on and thus define where the opposition will be concentrated. The dissenting Republican Representatives will very possibly gain additional Representatives who may have refused joining the revolution against the sitting Speaker but actually align politically with the revolutionary Representatives as polls showed that sixty percent Republicans who voted in the last elections opposed Boehner being reelected Speaker making their desires for new and more conservative direction.

 

These facts brings us to another important subject that the current Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, to deliver on their desired conservative support and avoiding severe compromises where the Republicans are marshalled to reach compromises which appear more like simply surrendering and adopting the liberal, progressive agenda. This will only serve to further alienate the Republican base. A very significant portion of the Republican voters are demanding for their Representatives in both Houses of Congress to define the Republican platform through their legislative agenda even if sending such legislation to the President results in his using his veto to block every bill. What would surprise very many people is that much of the truly conservative, constitutional agenda would be supportable by numerous Democrats in Congress as their constituents may be inspired to call in support such legislation. This is not to say that the Republicans will not face a confrontation to their agenda and that there is any guarantee the Democrats will not attempt to filibuster in the Senate which begs the question as to whether the Republican controlled Senate will adjust the cloture rule back to the 60 vote requirement or simply leave the nuclear option of requiring merely a majority vote to gain cloture and end debate or a filibuster. Should the Republicans adopt the rules as they were in the previous Congress we can expect some real shouting about the Republicans killing the Senate by changing the traditional rules while leaving out of the argument that this nuclear option was initially voted into place by the Democrats during the previous Senate when they had the majority.

 

The coverage given virtually every Republican piece of legislation or even making the rules exactly as they were under Senator Harry Reid in the previous session would receive damning coverage in the media. In reports from the ‘newspaper of record’, the New York Times, and the other most quoted papers which includes the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Chicago Tribune, the Seattle Intelligencer or other far left media will make the story in almost identical wording casting the Republicans as the greatest threat to civility and transgressing all the rules of decency by their motivations and enactment of rules. The truth that the Republicans were simply adopting the currently standing rules will not stand in the way of reporting that the Republicans are adopting Senate rules which will grant them dictatorial powers and squelching all oppositions. There will be polls taken which claim that the Republicans are overreaching and destroying all the historic rules which had stood for close to two-hundred years. We can expect such a ruckus while making mountains out of ant hills casting the Republicans as the usual ogres and spawns of demons that the Republican leadership are often defamed with all while not reporting anything weighty nor making honest reports. What is coming is nothing new nor is it actual news. The editorializing by the papers and their overt partisanship should not alarm anybody as the carrying the water for the Democrats has been guiding their path for decades and have yet shows any desires or indications for changing any time soon.

 

We can also look forward to hearing many sound bites and speeches from President Obama with some being given with media present instead of simply releasing a press release. No matter how the President decides to give out his disdain for the encroachments on a whole series of life on the planet, the media will simply accept everything he announcemes as truth. The President will castigate the Republicans for taking actions which are killing the planet, destroying the safety nets which help the poor, refusing to permit undocumented citizens from joining the rest of society in the light, and that they are destroying the medical coverage provided the entire citizenry by altering of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. There will also be skits on Saturday Night Live, Comedy Central and other places all spoofing the Republicans as the brutish knuckle dragging dolts just as they have been betraying the Tea Party movement members. Each channel will use the same phrases which are best received by the public simply as if it works once, it should work every time.

 

So, in conclusion we did not receive sufficient numbers of Representatives to replace the Speaker of the House but at least neither did Nancy Pelosi as the only thing that can be stated with absolute certainty is that Boehner is an improvement over Pelosi and McConnell is an improvement over Reid. That leaves an election to place a preferable person in the White House; something I feel will happen even if it ends up being anybody but a Bush or a Clinton, even if it ends up being Elizabeth, I’m a Native American, Warren; and who knows, maybe the Americans can find some new leadership and start to revive an America that the world can be glad is back on track, even though once that comes to fruition the World media, particularly the European media along with the rest of the Western intolerant media sniping at their every values based decision. Americans ask why the Islamic world despises them so completely and the answer is so easy to see. Right in front of their own eyes they can see the problem, it is the face the world receives thinking this is what America is all about. They see America as America is represented in the media which makes America in their eyes as Miley Ray Cyrus (born Destiny Hope Cyrus), Justin Bieber and the rest of the media favorites from Hollywood, the music industry, advertising and commercials and anything else from either coast. What is missing from the view many around the world and especially in the Muslim world not get to see as often as they should if they honestly desired to know what makes America great, the regular working class American. What is so great about the regular working class American is that they are so much not regular as they are exceptional. Many of these very same regular working class Americans have the exact opposite morals as are portrayed in films and television and other media, they are industrious instead of frivolous, they are modest, not empty braggarts, and many are believers in G0d even if they are not church goers and they have a strong sense of morality and responsibility. What would shock the followers of Islam the most would be the average American residing in what the elitists call flyover country as they would see something they do not recognize. There are many elites from Islam who know very well that the vision they paint of America is false, but they use the horrid image of the media to paint the average American as a debauched boor seeking only carnal pleasures and the other sins of the flesh rather than a believer in G0d and having exemplary moral characters even if they stumble from time to time. There are many Americans who have lost sight of the ordinary American who may be ordinary in America but is something extraordinary everywhere else. We must remember that it was those unusually silent, mostly unseen, hard-working, completely dedicated, moral through and through, down to earth, selfless people who have saved Europe twice in the last century ending both World Wars. Let us just hope Europe will not need saving once again.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

What the New Republican Majority Congress Must Not Do

I have seen near countless articles and editorials, is there a difference between the news and editorials any more, making every sort of suggestions for what the Republicans must do to make their majority count for something and be successful. What was a constant for virtually every suggestion of what they must do was how almost none of it would get passed the White House Obama veto. As President Obama once warned that he has a pen and a phone could also imply that he could veto legislation passed by the Republican Congress and then phone them to come pick up their worthless pieces of paper. So, with the veto pen and the insulting phone call in mind I thought suggesting what the Republicans should avoid if they desire to be successful in the ensuing Congress over the remaining two years of the Obama Presidency. Where they should pass certain principled legislation initially which defines their principles but not waste months doing so, they should also repeat this procedure in the summer leading up to the 2016 elections to augment a candidate for President that hopefully can excite the Republican voters across their spectrum and can express the core conservative and constitutional principles in a manner similar to President Reagan but also able to use social media to good advantage.

The Republicans must not fall for the media mantra that what voters demanded from the new Congress was for them to reach across the aisle and work with the Democrats and President Obama as a great number of their voters wanted no such thing, something I learned about through personal and close up observation and a listening tour in Oklahoma which ended about one year ago. They should not make attempts to modify the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obama Care, and also should not spend great amounts of time repealing it as having President Obama veto one single protest legislation repealing Obama Care should suffice. The electorate did not send their representatives and Senators to Washington to waste time playing political games; they sent them to relay a message, no further damage to their nation and the future in which their children and grandchildren will live. The one message the Republican voters want delivered is no automatic and immediate amnesty by Presidential edict even if it requires cutting funding for the entirety of the Immigrations and Naturalizations Department. The people want the budget to be carefully crafted and the wasteful spending reduced as much as can be accomplished. This means no omnibus spending bills or full budget bills which leave discretional spending by the administration. If that requires passing tens or hundreds of individual pieces of legislation funding each department and even each program individually even if it takes the vast majority of their efforts in order to prevent monies from being diverted to places and programs they were not intended to finance. The people want the spending trimmed down by any means necessary. Do not worry about what the media accuses you of being as their name calling will not affect your voters if you treat their desires with respect and do their bidding.

The people who sent many of you to Congress do not want any compromise immigration reform, especially if it includes amnesty. They do not want another immigration legislation which grants a path to citizenship in the immediate and a future sealing of the border and completing the double fence as such legislation in the past never did build the fence or seal the border. Immigration reform means sealing the border and building the fence the entire length of the borders, northern and southern as either border can be used by those who desire to harm us just as easily as the other. The Democrats will be doing everything in their power to force the amnesty to come first but that must be resisted. Now that you are controlling both houses you can refuse to permit adding riders and amendments to legislation which are unassociated with the subject of the legislation or simply add little treats for the home districts as the people you presumably serve do not benefit or desire these little favors which have become part of business as usual and waste billions upon billions of dollars every year. Whatever you decide to do, do not pass any legislation which is more than two or three pages unless entirely unavoidable due to the complexity of the subject such as a manned mission to Mars or a moon base. Your constituents will be very unforgiving of any legislation which is hundreds of pages, let alone thousands of pages in length and are, as Nancy Pelosi once stated, that we have to pass it to see what is in it. Know that there are many amongst your supporters who will read every last page and then write notes, articles, comments and convers on social media and across many places on the internet and you will hear their disgust loudly when they replace you at their earliest convenience. Ask those Republicans who lost primaries and thus never got to seek reelection, they understand.

The voters who elected you are sick of deficit spending and expect that you will not spend more than the government takes in from taxes and other various fees, licenses, fines and whatever. Even if this means that there must be some cuts in services or programs, then so be it. They want jobs, economic growth and fewer regulations which strangle economic growth. Many may not understand the mechanics of the interactions between the government actions and economic matters but they do understand unemployment, low growth and the other effects such things have on their lives and that they can detect whenever they balance their checkbook account. They really do not want excuses for why you had to enact certain legislation in order to make compromises with the Democrats and get other items passed with Democratic help. They remember how the Democrats acted completely unilaterally and passed Obama Care without a single Republican vote and see no reason for compromise now that the Republicans control Congress. Do not repeal the nuclear option that Harry Reid put in place so that any Presidential appointment could be ratified by simply majority in order to freeze out any Republican dissent, turnabout is fair play. You were not sent to Washington to be invited to all the Georgetown parties and other social functions, nor were you sent to get along with the other side, you were sent to Washington to ruin President Obama’s last two years and ending his reign of terror over the United States as well as its people and allies. You were sent to Washington to send a message and prove that the Republicans have finally learned from their past mistakes and are prepared to return to their roots and basics and are able to resist any influences and pressures from the Democrats, the media or the lobbyists and NGOs who are paid to persuade you to forfeit the trust of your constituents and instead serve their moneyed interests. Feel free to also not do any of these things and ignore all the warnings if you choose and enjoy your one term for as long as it lasts. The new face of the most active elements of the Republican Party are done with business as usual or go along to get along politicking and will continue to seek new faces until they get the representation they desire. The choices are yours to make for now but eventually the final decision over whether you are returned to Washington is that of your constituents and the one disadvantage you have is as a Republican you must win the minds more so than the hearts of your constituency and that constituency are high information voters, a phrase used by talk radio personalities to describe their listeners and these are also your voters. If your get nothing more from this article than those who sent you to Washington are awake, politically savvy and watching your every vote and will hold you to account for every vote should you betray their trust and cross their red lines, and they will use the nuclear option on your candidacy should you cross their red lines as they are not like the President, they mean what they say and vote what they believe. You have been warned and if you are aware, then it should be easy for you to understand the situation and act accordingly or else it has been nice knowing you and hope you enjoy your next day job.

Beyond the Cusp

Iran as the Deal of the Century, but For Whom?

 

Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes has commented that they consider the nuclear deal with Iran to be the crowning achievement for President Obama during his second term and as his first term was defined by Obamacare. One might hope that the comparison was speaking to their importance and monumental effects and not about their competency. Any deal with Iran to limit their nuclear research, in order to assure that weapons are not the result in the future and that Iranian nuclear designs are actually as innocent as they claim and truly for medical uses and electrical power generation, should provide for strong verification inspections along the lines of previous such deal during the Cold War where the mantra was ‘trust but verify.’ If, on the other hand, the Iranians have been deceiving the P5+1 nations (five permanent members of the Security Council, United States, Russia, Britain, China and France plus Germany) and actually are seeking to produce nuclear weapons and warheads to tip their missiles with which to threaten the world, then reaching an agreement solely so the Obama administration can claim to have reached an agreement leaves the process open to being futile in preventing Iranian attaining nuclear weapons capabilities if that proves to be their true goal. Just as the passing of Obamacare was the goal more than making the resultant healthcare program a workable, efficient, advantageous and improvement over the existent healthcare system, simply making the reaching an agreement with Iran the goal instead of demanding a strong, effective, enforceable and lasting set of protocols, inspections and limitations preventing Iran from being capable of attaining nuclear weapon breakout conditions is placing emphasis on being granted a piece of paper promising peace in our time instead of making an enforceable agreement guaranteeing peace for all time. Reaching a deal is easy as is passing legislation when your party has a large majority in the House of Representatives and over sixty seats in the Senate thus making your majorities filibuster-proof, but that does not make the results in either case effective or desirable beyond those seeking an accomplishment at all costs all other desires cast aside. Thus, the desire of the Obama administration to reach a deal with Iran with which to define the second term for President Obama actually has even more dangerous ramifications with higher and more damaging results than any healthcare legislation which can be repealed or adjusted to make it more effective, something which cannot be attained as a treaty pretty much is complete and beyond any one party taking corrective adjustments without the agreement of the other parties.

 

These worries expressed above may beg the question why one would be so concerned about the desire of the administration to reach a deal with Iran, after all, isn’t it the whole idea of negotiations to reach an agreement and encoding the results into a treaty or other agreement? And furthermore, doesn’t every treaty require the ratification of the Senate before it can be enacted as the law of the land? Technically the answer to both questions is ‘yes’, of course. Below is the video of the interview where Ben Rhodes commented on the importance the Obama administration has placed on reaching a deal with the Iranians. Within his interview the most important part which must be inspected and stressed consists of where Mr. Rhodes states, “…we are already, kinda, picking through how do we structure a deal so that we don’t necessarily require (starts laughing) legislative action anyway. Um, And there are ways to do that.” This is just another example which can join the rest of the inferences which exemplify the disdain and contempt that President Obama and his administration have for the United States Constitution should it come between his desired actions and what is allowable by that Constitution. We were once told by then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, along with our elected representatives, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” That particular bill was passed in both houses purely with Democrat party line votes as not a single Republican in either side of Congress voted for Obamacare. This time around the administration does not even desire to rely on a straight party line vote to ratify any treaty or agreement by any other name in a special session called by Harry Reid as the President cannot be assured of receiving every Democrat vote. The reason this is important is that since any agreement reached with the Iranians will likely happen between now and the deadline of November 24, as that is the deadline set when the last negotiations broke down almost six months ago, it allows the possibility to attain a ratification with the current Democrat controlled Senate which would make such a move more likely than waiting for after the seating of the Senate with the recent election results which favored Republicans. But even with this Senate the President would still need Republican votes as it takes a two-thirds vote, or sixty-seven votes, to ratify a treaty. Perhaps this is one reason why the Administration is seeking another route to attaining an agreement with Iran without necessitating any ratification from the Congress.

 

 

 

 

But would it be possible for President Obama and the administration to circumvent the necessity for Senate ratification to certify and enact a nuclear treaty agreement with the Iranians? That depends on semantics, a political way of taking something and granting it a name which means the same thing without actually using the traditional terminology used in the Constitution. Thus the administration might decide and write the speech for President Obama where he would announce something along the lines that ‘today the P5+1 nations and Iran reached a mutual settlement whereby the Iranians have established future inspections and certifications that their nuclear program is entirely for peaceful intents which will assure that the Iranians are not pursuing nuclear weapons but are using their nuclear program for medical, power generation and peaceful research and have assured the world by their agreement that they are not pursuing to weaponized their nuclear programs.’ There you go, presto-change-o, no treaty needing Senate ratification, the parties simply reached a settlement, and means to a mutual establishment of a set of structures and procedures through which the sanctions are removed as there is no longer the conditions for which they were first implemented and this was accomplished through having the Iranians grant certain allowances and without necessitating anything as bulky and outdated as a treaty as we have entered an age where such vestiges of the Cold War and before are passed and we have attained a new enlightened way of dealing between nations and resolving differences. This will be heralded by much of the mainstream media as a revolutionary concept that is issuing a new age where the restrictions and limitations on heads of state have been discarded allowing for agreements between nations and facilitating cooperation which were unimaginable before this bold new initiative. President Obama will receive accolades and potentially another Nobel Peace Prize for his great accomplishment. Once he receives international accolades and the second Peace Prize there will be no possibility of turning back and what this change will bode for the future is frightening as it gives the President and the executive branch powers so far above and beyond the limitations imposed by the Constitution that Congress will have become superfluous in the arena of foreign affairs and having not even the power of review over treaties as the word treaty will be replaced by newspeak words such as arrangement, agreement or even protocols attained by mutual stroking of egos.

 

Should this scenario come to fruition it will mark the death of the United States Constitution. Once the Constitution has been nullified in its applications restricting the Presidential ability to enter into treaties simply through using the simple tactic of rebranding treaty into some other terminology and successfully claiming that such actions between nations are a whole new creature completely removed and separate from those treaties of the past as they no longer are agreements between one nation and another but rather an agreement between a council of nations with the target nation thus no single nation of the council has complete authority, authorship or responsibility for the terminologies and ratifications of the agreement or the offers presented thus the arrangements are in no way equivalent to the concept or definition of something as simple and straight forward as a treaty, these things are far more complex and the parties far more intertwined than anything formerly seen in international relations. Eventually the words will stop making sense and soon after lose their individual syllables as they will start to run together and even the most ardent of political junkies, you know, me and my closest friends, will have to turn it all off and surrender that those things they valued are beyond their capability to preserve and the world is entering an age which will very likely prove their worst predictions are coming true. They will realize that the individual citizen no longer has any say and their vote has become meaningless because even nations are about to enter a dangerous intertwining from which there will be no return until the entire conglomeration fails, something which will bring on chaos beyond anything from all of remembered history. Imagine a world in the state of France immediately after the French revolution when the two main parties to their glorious revolution where Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins unleashed a reign of terror attempting to destroy the Girondists who opposed Robespierre and the Jacobins. Eventually, the Thermidorian Reaction led to the arrest and execution of Robespierre and placing the Girondists in power with the expected results of the reign of terror against the Jacobins, even to eventually including many of the Jacobins who assisted in the removal of Robespierre who they agreed had lost his way and was counterproductive to the ends of the revolution. Imagine this on a worldwide scale. That is the probable outcome when the individual leaders, whether elected or autocratic, are empowered to reach agreements and aligning their nation within alliances without oversight of the bodies more directly representing the separate individual peoples and constitutions become superfluous and no longer have their designed effect and limitations.

 

Beyond the Cusp