Pelosi: Republicans Continue Indefensible Record of Underfunding Homeland Security: "'Republicans' misplaced priorities mean America is not as safe it should be. Democrats have a new direction for the American people -- one that will fully implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and make the security of the American people a top priority.'"
Hurricane Predictions Off Track As Tranquil Season Wafts Away: "It was not the hurricane season we expected, thank you. With cataclysmic predictions that hurricanes would swarm from the tropics like termites, no one thought 2006 would be the most tranquil season in a decade."
AccuWeather.com - News and Features - Weather News: "One in Six Americans Could be Directly Impacted by 2006 Hurricane Season- AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center Forecasts Potential Ripple Effect for All Americans "
Snipet weigh in:
HOW HAS THE DREADED 2006 HURRICANE SEASON AFFECTED YOU?
THEY JUST CAN'T HELP THEMSELVES...
Dems oppose birth-control foe as family-planning chief - CNN.com: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Several Democratic lawmakers asked the Bush administration Monday to replace its new family-planning chief because he has worked for a health provider that opposes the use of birth control."
The News Snipet has always maintained that the fall of the Soviet Union meant nothing. Of course we naive Americans think that everyone loves us...
BREITBART.COM - Russian rocket deliveries to Iran started: "Russia has begun deliveries of the Tor-M1 air defence rocket system to Iran, Russian news agencies quoted military industry sources as saying, in the latest sign of a Russian-US rift over Iran."
Russia sends air defense system to Iran | Jerusalem Post: "Russia has begun delivery of Tor-M1 air defense missile systems to Iran, a Defense Ministry official said Friday, confirming that Moscow would proceed with arms deals with Tehran in spite of Western criticism."
Russian nuclear chief to visit Tehran - Yahoo! News: "MOSCOW (AFP) - The head of Russia's nuclear agency Rosatom will visit Iran on December 11 to discuss economic cooperation between the two countries."
The News Snipet plans to send a donation.
ABC News: Whites Only Scholarship Creates Outrage: "BOSTON, Nov. 22, 2006 — Joe Mroszczyk, president of the College Republicans at Boston University, admits he set out to stir up a hornet's nest when he came up with the idea of offering a whites-only scholarship at the school. But he got a little more buzz than he bargained for."
Easy fix not so easy
Ralph Bristol
The Ralph Bristol Show
November 14, 2006
Are you unable to dunk a basketball? That's easy to fix. Raise the basket.
Huh?
Need to lose weight? No problem. Eat more and exercise less.
Say what?
That's the USA Today approach to fixing Social Security, as outlined in an editorial today. The headline boldly proclaims "Social Security: Easy to fix, but where's the political courage?"
The lead paragraph includes: "Have you ever actually read one of those statements that come each year from the Social Security Administration? In addition to disclosing that your retirement benefit won't support you in the style to which you're accustomed..."
Then, the editorial outlines the "easy fix," which includes a combination or raising taxes and lowering benefits. Let's review. A major problem with Social Security is that the retirement benefit is too paltry (particularly considering the cost). The fix is to increase the cost and lower the value. Sure, that makes sense.
Actually, the solution proposed by the USA does fix one problem with Social Security (solvency), but it exacerbates an equally serious problem – the one the editorial identified with the words "won't support you in the style to which you're accustomed."
Social Security was never intended to support you in the style to which you were accustomed, but when that decision was made, back in the 30s, it was also a very cheap program. You shouldn’t expect to live the life of Riley in your retirement years when you only contribute 2% of your wages toward your retirement. However when you contribute six times that amount - 12% -- you should expect a whole lot more, but you don't get more. You get the same paltry amount as the 2% got you in the early years.
You can in fact make the current Social Security program solvent by eliminating the lid on payroll taxes and making people wait until they are 70 to collect full benefits. That is, you can make the program solvent by raising taxes and lowering benefits – making people pay even more for even smaller benefits. If your only goal is to make the program solvent and you don't care about sustaining or increasing the value of your mandatory retirement contribution, that's what you should do.
It is barely short of criminal that the people in charge of Social Security have allowed the mandatory worker contribution to shrink to one-sixth of its original value and simultaneously ignore the solvency of the program, but that has happened, and sooner or later, one or both of those problems is going to have to be fixed.
Raising taxes and reducing benefits fixes one of the problems, but exacerbates the other. I prefer to fix both, and the only way to do that is to let today's workers direct some of their payroll taxes into a personal account that will grow for their own retirement. That will reverse the erosion of the value of their mandatory contribution. At the same time, we will have to find a way to pay for the benefits of current and soon-to-be retirees. The options are to increase taxes, borrow, or cut spending elsewhere. Naturally, I would prefer the latter.
In his final two years in office, President Bush should hire a Social Security emissary to Congress, whose job it to meet with all of the various caucuses and discuss both of the problems that past Congresses and Presidents have created. Find out if there is a will to solve both problems or just one. Frankly, if I were him, and he finds out they are willing to solve only the solvency problem, I'd drop the issue and leave it to the next President, but if he finds they are willing to try to solve both problems, he should make a concerted effort to do so before he leaves office.
Added Note for News Snipet-
In this debate there is something many do not realize. First, two questions:
1. Personal retirement accounts were first mentioned by which prominent politician?
2. When the issue was perceived as critical who was the Democrat that suggested personal retirement accounts?
The answer is FDR for the first, and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan for the second. Following the suggestion of Senator Moynihan's bipartisan committee, President Bush began to promote PRA's. It was only then that Democrats led a fight against them.
You workers under 30, you could be retiring by 65 with a couple million under your belt (do the simple math), instead, you will be retiring at 90 with your static $800/mo--if there is even that.
This is an opportunity for my friends on the left and right to weigh in on a New Snipet Challenge.
Here is the challenge:
Please name as many Bush Admininstration policies and initiatives that are "conservative"
HE DID A LONG TIME AGO!
Sen. Lincoln Chafee May Leave GOP: "Sen. Lincoln Chafee May Leave GOP-
Two days after losing a bid for a second term, Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he was unsure whether he would remain a Republican."
Get over it!
Ralph Bristol - www.ralphbristol.com
November 10, 2006
Rejection can be a very painful thing. It often leads to violent, angry over-reaction. Such is the case in Houston, where the Christian conservative owners of a small landscaping company, Garden Guy, declined to accept business from a homosexual couple. All hell has broken loose.
A few weeks ago, Michael Lord and Gary Lackey requested bids for a landscaping job at their new house. They received a polite and apparently too honest e-mail from Sabrina Farber, a co-owner of Garden Guy: "I need to tell you that we cannot meet with you because we choose not to work for homosexuals."
The response angered Lackey, who forwarded the e-mail to 200 friends (who in the world has 200 friends?), asking them not to patronize Garden Guy and urging them to pass the word on to friends and family. Soon, the news spread around the world via the magic of the World Wide Web.
A forum on the Garden Guy Web site, normally reserved for discussions about landscaping, was bombarded with angry comments and attacks from as far away as Australia. Some people threatened the couple and their five children, and said they ought to be sodomized.
There has been supportive reaction too, including some that condemned the gays as sinners heading toward damnation. Some would say, "Well, the venom is coming from both sides. It's an equally ugly reaction from both." Some would say that, but they're wrong.
When Christians say someone is heading toward damnation, that's not an expression of hate, nor is it a threat. It's a religious belief. Many Christians have told me that I'm heading toward damnation. It's not personal. It's their belief. There are many things that Christians believe will cause eternal damnation, first among them the failure to accept Christ as their personal savior. It doesn't mean they hate me. It mostly means they pity me. I certainly don't feel threatened by it.
That's a lot different from someone saying they wished I'd be murdered and my children sodomized. That's hate, pure and simple, and it's threatening. It is exactly the opposite of "tolerance" for diversity.
Christians reject homosexuality. So what? None of us have an inherent right to be accepted by other people. We all have free will, and the right to associate, or not, with whomever we please.
The homosexuals around the world who are spewing venom toward one little mom and pop landscaping company that politely turned down the gay couple’s business need a great big helping of "Get over it."
Drumroll...
The TERRORISTS!
Informed Comment: "' 'The vote shows the Iraqi and American people are of one mind about withdrawing U.S. troops,' said Falah Hassan Shanshal, who leads the parliamentary bloc of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
'We hope the Democrats don't forget their campaign promises. If they don't, we will deal with them in a brotherly way once the last American soldier pulls out from Iraq,' he said. ' "
The New Democrat Manifesto:
1. Mandatory homosexuality
2. Drug-filled condoms in schools
3. Introduce the new Destruction of Marriage Act
4. Border fence replaced with free shuttle buses
5. Osama Bin Laden to be Secretary of State
6. Withdraw from Iraq, apologize, reinstate Hussein
7. English language banned from all Federal buildings
8. Math classes replaced by encounter groups
9. All taxes to be tripled
10. All fortunes over $250,000 to be confiscated
11. On-demand welfare
12. Tofurkey to be named official Thanksgiving dish
13. Freeways to be removed, replaced with light rail systems
14. Pledge of Allegiance in schools replaced with morning flag-burning
15. Stem cells allowed to be harvested from any child under the age of 8
16. Comatose people to be ground up and fed to poor
17. Quarterly mandatory abortion lottery
18. God to be mocked roundly
19. Dissolve Executive Branch: reassign responsibilities to UN
20. Jane Fonda to be appointed Secretary of Appeasement
21. Outlaw all firearms: previous owners assigned to anger management therapy
22. Texas returned to Mexico
23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day
24. Carter added to Mount Rushmore
25. Modify USA's motto to "Land of the French and the home of the brave"
Source: http://www.rightwasright.us/
HAT TIP: AL
Hugh Hewitt: "The long and short of this bad but not horrific night was that majorities must act like majorities. The public cares little for the 'traditions' of the Senate or the way the appropriations process used to work. It demands results. Handed a large majority, the GOP frittered it away. The chief fritterer was Senator McCain and his Gang of 14 and Kennedy-McCain immigration bill, supplemented by a last minute throw down that prevented the NSA bill from progressing or the key judicial nominations from receiving a vote. His accomplice in that master stroke was Senator Graham. Together they cost their friend Mike DeWine his seat in the Senate, and all their Republican colleagues their chairmanships. Senator McCain should rethink his presidential run. Amid the ruins of the GOP's majority there is a clear culprit."
"Vote on principle" has always been the message of the News Snipet. But Americans have been brainwashed into a situationally ethical mindset.
"I vote for the lesser of two evils," say you, and the days leading up to this illustrates where you err.
Notice most of the political ads this year? Notice that you rarely saw a candidate running on his merit, on his values, what he planned to do--it was always about how much worse the other candidate was.
The message this year to voters was, "Vote for me, I'm the lesser of the two evils."
A people get the government they deserve.
I stopped listening to Rush quite a while ago because he had compromised his conservative principles and become an apologist for the Republicans and President Bush.
Rush On A Roll: I Feel Liberated: "The way I feel is this: I feel liberated, and I'm going to tell you as plainly as I can why. I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried. Now, you might say, 'Well, why have you been doing it?' Because the stakes are high. Even though the Republican Party let us down, to me they represent a far better future for my beliefs and therefore the country's than the Democrat Party and liberalism does. "
The News Snipet maintains (and has for years) that President Bush is a global socialist of the Fabian variety. He will gladly work with Democrats on issues of increased entitlement programs and more social control of the American people. The Democrats do not have a mandate, but apparently President Bush is prepared to give them one.
BREITBART.COM - Bush takes blame for election "thumping": "'I told my party's leaders that it is now our duty to put elections behind us and work together with the Democrats and independents on the great issues facing this country.'
Bush said he would spend a lot of time meeting with Democratic leaders in the new Congress, including with the likely new speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
'She's coming to the Oval Office later this week. I'm going to sit down and talk with her.'
'I believe on a lot of issues we can find common ground. There's a significant difference between common ground and abandon principles. "
Random notes:
The only race that I paid particular attention to was the governor's race in South Carolina. Governor Mark Sanford has worked hard for political reform in this state (much of the time against his own party).
Expect to see a lot of "investigations", but don't look for progress or reform.
Republicans lost and deservedly so.
When only 50% of your registered voters turn out to vote for you, you know you are doing something wrong. I seriously doubt that Republicans will get the message and return to their roots--they will see the Democrat win as a message to become even more socialistic ("moderate" they call it), further alienating their conservative base.
The party in Washington will continue much the way it has for decades. Only a third party has hope of bringing that.
A friend of mine pointed out, "Expect to see a kinder, gentler Pelosi." I don't think this will happen right away, but she will learn quickly.
The News Snipet still predicts that Senator Clinton will win the presidency in 2008.
*CAUTION - "NEGATIVE SOUNDING" POST*
Today many will go to the polls with high or low expectations. While we have a civic responsibility to vote, we have a duty to ourselves to have a realistic perspective.
The answer to YOUR or the WORLD's problems is NOT government.
While some government is good, look at the many things it hasn't done:
It hasn't-
ended war
brought prosperity
brokered equality
prevented disasters
controlled crime
erased bigotry
Look at some of the things it has done:
It has-
increased the burden of debt
launched countless wars
created inequities
prolonged disasters
become criminal
fostered hatred
If you go to the polling booth looking for answers you won't find them.
Try looking here for starters.
My friend, Mochi, over at Neolibs.com published 10 reasons for "Voting Republican" on November 7 (October 10 post). I asked him if I he would mind doing one for Democrats and he said it was ok, so here is a bit of a spoof on what he wrote (To understand some of these you may need to reference his article):
TOP 10 REASONS TO VOTE DEMOCRAT:
(1)You are a minority or consider yourself one.
(2)You have to believe that Democrats will fix the problem and aren't part of it.
(3)You believe that raising taxes is good but raising gas prices is bad.
(4)You have to believe that Democrats REALLY mean what they say about the environment.
(5)You think unborn eagle chicks deserve more protection than unborn humans chicks.
(6)You are a member of the NAACP, NOW, ACLU or DESSERT (Dave Edwards's Save the Spotted Egret Research Team--Grant expiration date: 2022)
(7)You DID approve of the Iraq war before you DIDN'T but really have no idea why you DID or DIDN'T to begin with but think you DO.
(8)You think that political scandals are only scandalous when Republicans are involved.
(9)You approve of pork barrel spending.
(10)You don't know who Gerry Studds is.
I often wondered why someone can be pro-abortion and advocate the killing of an innocent human being-
in the absence of any scientific data or declaration of when "life" begins
in the light of the many premature births of children who have developed normally and lead productive lives
and then fight tooth and nail against the capital destruction of a murderous pedophile -
in the absence of any scientific data that suggests that rehabilitation can help this person and that society in general can be safeguarded against them
in the light of the cases where these people have escaped into society to repeat their crimes upon other innocents.
The answer is one's assignment of arbitrary definitions:
To this person, the fetus is not human, but the pedophile is.
I guess it all comes down to your definition of "human"
A look at Pelosi's voting record - Editorials/Op-Ed - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper: "Typical for her 20-year House career, Mrs. Pelosi received a 100 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America last year and a 0 rating from the National Right to Life Committee. A Roman Catholic who has repeatedly voted to uphold partial-birth abortion, who has voted against parental notification when minor children seek abortion and who has shown no concern for the rights of the innocent unborn, Mrs. Pelosi has consistently opposed the death penalty.
Over the years, Mrs. Pelosi has consistently voted against welfare reform, including the 1996 bill signed by President Clinton and its re-authorization. In 1998, she opposed a constitutional amendment to permit school prayer in the classroom. In 1999, she opposed allowing state and local governments to display the Ten Commandments on public property, including schools. She has voted against education IRAs. In 2003, she opposed a $10 million program for school vouchers in the District of Columbia. That same year she voted against the 10-year $400 billion Medicare prescription-drug bill because she preferred one that was twice as expensive. Mrs. Pelosi has repeatedly voted for tax increases and opposed tax cuts, even the 2001 bill that doubled the child tax credit to $1,000, among other cuts. "
Men's testosterone levels declined in last 20 years Health Reuters.com: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study has found a 'substantial' drop in U.S. men's testosterone levels since the 1980s, but the reasons for the decline remain unclear. This trend also does not appear to be related to age."
"Snipet" (pronounced: snipe - it) is not a word.It is a derivative of two words: "Snipe" and "Snippet".
Miriam Webster defines Snipe as: to aim a carping or snide attack, or: to shoot at exposed individuals (as of an enemy's forces) from a usually concealed point of vantage.
Miriam Webster defines Snippet as: : a small part, piece, or thing; especially : a brief quotable passage.
In short, "Snipets" are brief, snide shots at exposed situations from a concealed vantage point.
WARNING! With due reverence to the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment there is NO comment policy on the News Snipet.
