Month: July 2010

The Bush tax cuts of 2001 were passed under the socialist Senate procedural move known as budget reconciliation, so they sunset after ten years. Next year, all those tax breaks will go away unless Congress renews them. Candidate Obama promised not to let those tax cuts sunset for everyone making less than a quarter million dollars a year. But taxes will go up on everyone unless Congress actually passes something. It appears that Congress will not move to pass new tax law until after the election during the lame-duck session. Here’s what Grover Norquist has to say about the delay.

“They’ve been saying it’s high on their to-do list but ‘We’re not getting to it just now,’ ” Norquist said. “They could have done it any day of the week. They have no intention of restoring all those tax cuts.”

He noted that Democrats raised taxes on the use of tanning beds to pay for healthcare reform, a tax he argues hits the middle class.

“Rich people go to the Caribbean to get a tan,” he said.

Of course, Norquist knows all about rich people and Caribbean cruises.

Imagine cruising the Caribbean, visiting historical and charming islands as you meet face to face with your favorite Newsmax pundits and some of the top political minds in the country.

Dick Morris, the famous Fox News analyst and best-selling author, along with his wife, Eileen McGann, will be co-hosting this important cruise.

Joining Dick and me on the cruise will be several prominent speakers: John Fund of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal; political strategist Ralph Reed; anti-tax leader Grover Norquist; Newsmax Washington correspondent and best-selling author Ronald Kessler and many others.

PLUS: we’ll even have our medical team of Dr. Russell Blaylock and Dr. David Brownstein to discuss the latest medical breakthroughs and alternative health strategies.

Imagine one-on-one conversations with major media and political personalities. Well, your dream can come true!

In 2010, I will be hosting our spring cruise—and you will have an opportunity to join us for one of the most exciting vacation of a lifetime.

We’ve already reserved staterooms on the best ship, with the best itinerary at the best prices—the Holland America Westerdam, March 21-28, 2010 — we’ll be sailing to some of the Caribbean’s most beautiful islands such as Turks & Caicos, St. Maarten and others.

As a Newsmax reader you have been part of our success — and we want to meet you and share with you our thoughts on today’s most important topics.

You will also spend quality time with me and our most popular contributors—not to mention you will be exchanging ideas with like-minded people, hear unfiltered commentary from leaders of the conservative movement, and best of all, enjoy their company on this 7-day trip through the enchanting Caribbean.

I know this will be a delightful way to spend an unforgettable spring vacation aboard a super-luxury cruise liner.

Dick Morris, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist and Ronald Kessler plan to give you an “insider” briefing on what is really happening in Washington and the new White House.

Democrats are always picking on the middle class. Republicans (excepting John Boehner) are sticking up for them by getting a natural tan (resulting in a color that the occurs in the natural world).

David Broder can and will use any excuse to promote Broderism, and the death of Robert Byrd is no exception. Because Broder exploits this opportunity to talk about the proper role of the ‘great’ ‘not representative’ Senate, it is of special interest to me. We’ve got a bunch of ‘tenthers‘ out there in the country right now talking about repealing the Seventeenth Amendment that made for direct elections of U.S. Senators. Sometimes I think they’re onto something.

But, really, a more useful reform might be to prohibit senators from running as party representatives. They wouldn’t have their party printed on the ballot, they wouldn’t be nominated by a party, and they’d be prevented by law from accepting support or coordinating with party committees. Anyone could run as long as they could demonstrate support by obtaining enough signatures.

This might be a strange thing to propose, and I am only half serious, but so long as we have this strange institution we ought to consider how to make it work as intended. Consider Broder’s overall point.

What Byrd and other senators of his generation understood is that on a wide variety of routine issues, partisan calculations are always at play, but there is a category of questions that truly are different. And on those issues, senators are bound to consider the broad national interest.

That obligation falls especially on the Senate, as Byrd always pointed out, because it is — unlike the other part of Congress — not designed as a representative body, close to the people. The senators are few in number — only two per state, no matter what its size. They have longer tenure than the president, and three times as long as a House member. Their constituencies are broad and diverse. Everything contrives to give them a degree of independence, to exercise their best judgment on the national issues.

Today, unfortunately, on the big issues that ought to be beyond partisanship, acting in the national interest has almost vanished because the party leaders, unlike Byrd and [Howard] Baker when they led their parties in the Senate, do not display that consciousness or evoke it in others.

Byrd concluded his remarks by reminding his colleagues that “in the real world, exemplary personal conduct can sometimes achieve much more than any political agenda. Comity, courtesy, charitable treatment of even our political opposites, combined with a concerted effort to not just occupy our offices, but to bring honor to them, will do more to inspire our people and restore their faith in us, their leaders, than millions of dollars of 30-second spots or glitzy puff pieces concocted by spinmeisters.”

The sense of loss expressed by Byrd’s colleagues of both parties is real. The “King of Pork” really did evoke what made the Senate great. There is a hunger there now for what is missing.

While I regularly mock Broder for his vapid calls for the two parties to stop disagreeing about stuff, he has a point about why the Senate no longer works. After all, people have always disagreed about stuff, but the Senate managed to function until very recently. The Netroots is a partisan entity, and it has had a large role in the election of Jon Tester and Jim Webb, as well as a large influence on the reelection campaigns of Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, and Arlen Specter. We’ve rejected the wisdom of the national party and pushed our own candidates, and that’s not how things are supposed to work. As Broder says, the people are not supposed to be close to the Senate. We’re not supposed to influence their decisions. But the parties are organizations of people. As a member of the Democratic Party, I should have some say over who my leaders will be, and if I am not supposed to have any say over who serves in the Senate then senators should not be allowed to belong to my party or use its resources.

Personally, I prefer to have a say over what happens in the Senate and I prefer them to listen to the people, but I do acknowledge that that is not how the Senate is supposed to work. And the fact that senators vote overwhelming in lock-step with their party leadership just demonstrates that the intended independence of senators is illusory. If the Founders didn’t intend the Senate to be little more than a smaller House of Representatives, they also didn’t intend the country to be ruled by two ideologically rigid factions.

Now, I’ve written this partly tongue-in-cheek to demonstrate the absurdity of the situation we face in today’s Senate. If someone truly embraces the undemocratic nature of the Senate, they can easily be led down the path I’ve spelled out here of enhancing the Senate’s remove from the people as a way to make it work again. And, repealing the Seventeenth Amendment is only one conceivable way of doing that.

The more immediate problem arises from only the Republican Party, which is paralyzing Congress through their use of procedural shenanigans in the undemocratic Senate. Limiting their power to do that should be the first priority of the next Congress. Tom Coburn isn’t embracing Broderism any time soon.

.
This is what I can recall from a recent first diary by “Naomie in Moscow” and my comment to Steven D’s welcome words:

After the recent FBI bust of a Russian spy ring, hiding behind Naomie from Moscow and the real estate site Domdot.net was the Russian beauty Anna Chapman …

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."