Flyover Country

Maybe this was obvious to everyone else, and I’m just a little slow.  The debt commission finally makes sense to me now, after seeing this:

Co-chairman of debt commission calls job ‘suicide mission’

It wasn’t created to reduce the debt or the deficit, we all know that.  The answer to that problem is really simple: knock off the insane spending.  The problem for Washington is that when spending cuts come, who gets the blame?  Congress (specifically, the House) controls the purse strings.  The president makes a number of spending “recommendations” and many of the funded agencies are run by the executive branch.

The “debt commission” is little more than a way for the Whitehouse and members of Congress to cover their asses, and to give themselves a a chance to point at someone else and blame them for any proposed spending cuts or tax hikes.  When it inevitably comes to light how incredibly unpopular the VAT tax is, members of Congress will throw up their hands and say things like “A bi-partisan, independent panel said we must do this, don’t blame me!”

Welcome to the new era of transparency and ethics in government.

The idea of a value-added tax has generated a lot of controversy in Washington in recent weeks, as top officials connected to the Obama administration have openly discussed its implications. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insists the president is not considering it, but Obama himself appeared open to the idea in an interview last week.

Several sites have posted video of the Glenn Beck keynote from this year’s CPAC (or here).  I went ahead and made an audio podcast out of it so I could take it with me in the car and listen to it.

Definitely one of the best cases for the fundamentals of conservative values and the greatness of America that I have heard in a very long time.

Enjoy it, enjoyers: cpac2010_keynote.rss

FoxNews Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., said every time an evacuation [of the capitol] is ordered, it has usually been caused by a private pilot in a small plane using an old map. Ross suggested that the size of the plane is irrelevant because one dirty bomb could do a lot of damage. But, he said, sending everyone a map could be done for the money spent on one evacuation.

“I’m sure its running a million dollars every time there’s an evacuation, wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to send every private pilot in America one of the updated maps?” he asked.

Maybe the congressman can get a clue before he opens his mouth. Sectionals are about $7 each, and updated every few months, and pilots are required by regulations to have current information. Any pilot with half a clue knows where the ADIZ is located, congressman. The problem isn’t a lack of maps, it is pilots who aren’t doing what they are supposed to, or just get lost. And they get busted for it. There is no reason for any pilot not to have current information. Sending the ones who are going to violate the ADIZ a map is going to waste OUR $55, because they’re not going to use it anyways. (Thats how much each sectional would cost to send to every registered pilot of congress decided it had to be done.)

If it costs a million dollars to evacuate the capitol building, maybe we can not evacuate and see how happy they are.

So MA Senator John Kerry came out a couple of days ago and tried to make a point about his disagreement over our current policy in Iraq. What was meant to be lame joke about the President of the United States came across as an insult to the intelligence of our men and women in uniform. From an AP story: Two days ago, Kerry stirred controversy when he told a group of California students that individuals who don’t study hard and do their homework would likely “get stuck in Iraq.” Aides said the senator had mistakenly dropped one word from his prepared remarks, which was originally written to say “you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.” In that context, they said, it was clear Kerry was referring to Bush, not to the troops.

The point is that I had to laugh when I saw the following on TV tonight. At first, I really was scratching my head wondering why these people with this banner spelled the senator’s name wrong. Then it dawned on me. I would be pretty ticked if someone called me dumb or suggested I was uneducated because I’d joined the military. Instead, these guys used irony to make their point. No dummy would have come up with something this funny in light of the senator’s remarks: