Democrat Platform: $675 Billion in New Spending

Mark Noonan23 Comments

From the Chattanooga Times Free Press:

…The actual substance of the Democratic the platform calls for billions in new taxes, pushes for the further expansion of government and encourages federal spending to increase substantially.

In fact, the Democratic platform recommends launching a number of new federal schemes and increasing the funding for many existing programs. Among the 21 new spending proposals included in the Democratic Party platform are:

• $453 billion over ten years to fund an expansive stimulus-like job creation scheme;

• $18.4 billion over ten years to get the transportation sector to buy into alternative fuels:

• $6.5 billion over five years for global food security and agriculture research;

• $5 billion in one-time funding for clean energy handouts;

• $5 billion in one-time funding to force the government into the broadband Internet business;

• $980 million over ten years for government-funded abortions (if taxpayers’ pay for 10 percent of abortions); and

• $45 million over five years to support American Indian and Alaska Native languages.

In total, the Democratic Party platform recommends $674.8 billion in additional federal spending over the next decade…

We’re already bankrupt – $16 trillion in official federal debt and probably a hundred trillion in un-funded mandates…and here come the Democrats with plans to just spend some more money we don’t have.  These people are not in any way, shape or form connected with reality.  They appear to believe that the gravy train can just keep on rolling along forever.  Well, Democrats, it doesn’t work like that – you who are ensconced in your over-paid, over-benefitted government job might think that there’s an endless bucket of money, but there isn’t.  If you some how manage to sucker the American people in to keeping you in power and you go on with your plans then you’ll find a day – and only a few years from now – when the government checks just stop coming because there’s no money left.
I don’t back Mitt Romney for the reasons you back Obama – you back Obama because government has become your religion and Obama is your high priest.  I back Romney because he’s rational…he knows that we’re broke and unless we fundamentally change course, we’re doomed.  The life or death of the United States hangs in the balance and you Democrats – in perfect keeping with your ultimate worldview – are voting for death.  I vote for life, on all levels – Obama Must Go!

DNC Convention – Day II

Cluster86 Comments

Well so far, the Democrats have voted against God, against Israel, but in support of  tax payer funded abortion at any time for any reason. In fact, they even support aborting the child after pregnancy, so the question is for Democrats – at what age is it not ok to kill your child?

Feel free to discuss.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan:  Well, I guess someone got a call from Flyover Country because the Donk’s decided they had to re-insert God and Jerusalem in to the platform…trouble is, it seems that at least half the assembled Democrats didn’t want to re-insert the language. Hot Air has it all.

These people are pathetic – growing more and more alienated from the American mainstream and yet remaining mostly too cowardly to admit it.

UPDATE II, by Mark Noonan:  I could barely stomach Michelle’s speech last night so I’m going to spare myself the Clinton speech.  At any rate, I can nutshell his speech:

My fellow Americans, please forget what Obama has done the past four years and try to pretend you are re-electing me.  I know I had zero to do with the prosperity you remember from the 90’s, but I so slickly took credit for it in those pre-New Media days that most of you have forgotten that I fought tooth and nail against the policies which made the 90’s work.  So, vote for Barack because he’ll continue what I did – and I don’t mean the womanizing.  Heck, I also don’t mean the taking-credit-for-the-work-of-others, either, because Obama hasn’t the wit to allow Republicans to govern and then grab all the credit.  But Obama will continue….well…humm…he’ll at least continue the lies and the feel-good, poll-tested political bullsh** you all remember so well from me.

God bless you all.

DNC Convention – Open Thread

Cluster74 Comments

I am watching MSNBC and they are all a flutter that Romney has raised more than $100 million in each of the last three months, (which should tell them something) and bemoaning the fact that Obama will be outspent. It sounds like they are already setting the stage for the excuses when he loses.

How do you think the convention is going? Be civil.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan:  Donks make a video claiming that government is the only thing we all belong to…Team Obama, in a panic, immediately disowns the video.  These people are just sad…both in what they believe and how cowardly they are about their beliefs.

Obama’s Christianity

Mark Noonan101 Comments

A harsh but correct statement about Obama:

Obama and Co very much want to fool Christians, again.  He managed the trick in 2008 – and not just with Catholics, as Obama did relatively well among self-identified Evangelicals, as well.  As the video states, Obama is counting on our ignorance – on the ignorance of Christians, themselves – in order to sucker us to vote for him.  My view:  in 2012, our theme song will be “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.

 

A Romney Presidency

Cluster53 Comments

Provided the lies and distortions of the Obama regime and the liberal media don’t win out as they did in 2008,  we can all look forward to an actual adult administration and a Romney Presidency. So what can we expect? Well to begin with, we can expect a return to decency, where success is applauded, America is not apologized for, and people are once again judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. We can expect a return to work for welfare, allowing states to enforce the federal immigration law, and a repeal of the presidential “dream act” decree. And speaking of repeal, I think we can expect a repeal of Obamacare provided that conservatives win the Senate, which is crucial.  I hope we can also expect a reform of medicare and serious conversation about, if not a reform of the antiquated tax code, which is desperately needed to lower the tax burden on the middle class and eliminate the tax shelters and loop holes for those in the upper income brackets, all of which originate from lobbyists and special interests. Keep the tax code simple and easy to enforce. I think, or at least hope that we can also expect a lower corporate tax rate which will encourage corporations to come back to America and once again employ with the confidence that the tax and regulatory environment will not be too burdensome. And lastly I hope that Romney will allow those corporations to repatriate their off shore funds with a one time tax holiday, which should inject nearly $2 trillion into the economy and would be the best stimulus ever.

Add to this a concerted effort to develop our natural energy resources, and we can expect much lower annual deficits, if not a balanced budget within a few years. Consumer confidence would explode and government dependency would decrease as people found gainful employment and the dignity of providing for themselves. America would once again be that shining city in the hill.

Liberty and Prosperity

Retired Spook22 Comments

“A government big enough to give you everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have….”

This quote is often mistakenly attributed to Thomas Jefferson. In fact it was uttered on the floor of Congress by Gerald Ford in an address to a joint session of Congress on August 12, 1974, 3 days after he had assumed the Presidency following Richard Nixon’s resignation.

In the previous thread, Jeremiah posted this marvelous quote from Ronald Reagan:

I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited.  There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.

The same bit of research that revealed the Gerald Ford quote also revealed that Reagan’s words did, indeed, paraphrase a famous quote from Thomas Jefferson:

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” – Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, Paris, 27 May 1788

Contrary to the portrait his critics attempt to paint, Reagan was a wise and intelligent man, the closest thing America has seen to a visionary in the mold of the Founders in my lifetime, and anyone who doubts that should read his personal journals. I would add to what he said that prosperity and liberty go hand in hand. Since America is made up of immigrants from numerous other countries, none of which is as prosperous as we are, it can only be that our system of government allows a level of individual freedom that promotes a prosperous economy more than any other country. Now, right before our eyes, we’re seeing one man and a small oligarchy of radical Leftist cronies attempt to “fundamentally transform” that successful model into just another country. As long as we have the freedom to vote, such men will never stay in power long.

There’s a good chance that none of us on this blog has ever suffered under the tyranny of a dictatorship or totalitarian government.  If any have, I’d love for them to come forward and describe what it was like.  In his GOP convention speech, Marco Rubio noted, in reference to the policies of the current administration, “these are tired and old big government ideas. Ideas that people come to America to get away from.  Ideas that threaten to make America more like the rest of the world, instead of helping the world become more like America.”

The freedom that we have and for which we’ve expended great quantities of blood and treasure for others to have around the world is, historically speaking, not the norm.  It’s why the founding of this country has often been described as The Great American Experiment. Not since Rome had a country attempted to embark on a course that would allow ordinary citizens to govern themselves.

Now some are going so far as to suggest that the current occupant of the White House is the one who wants to continue that experiment, to expand liberty to new horizons:

America’s story is one of constantly tackling the big—the biggest—problems, ahead of everyone else, with very little to guide us but those founding principles that nag at our conscience. And each time we’ve made progress, extending civil rights to more and more people, it’s been because that old spirit of taking a gamble, of performing the ultimate experiment, took over and led us to the right decision.

As we think today about what divides Americans, I think it boils down to the fact that some Americans no longer want to experiment. They want to close the lab down. We’ve gone far enough into the unknown, making it known, they say; now let’s stop—let’s even go backward. We were wrong to conduct some of our experiments in liberty, and that’s the source of all our problems. Gay people shouldn’t be treated equally. Black people shouldn’t run the country. Women shouldn’t hold high office. Muslims shouldn’t be granted habeas corpus.

Whenever one of those Americans talks about the problem with our country today, they talk about how we should be like we once were, back when white people who defined marriage as one man-one woman and were Protestant veterans built this nation. They feel they are losing their birthright, their legacy.

But those Americans are wrong. What their ancestors really were was scientists. Experimenters. Radicals who always considered the impossible possible. To define those ancestral Americans as merely white or straight or Christian strips them of their most stunning feature, their near-supernatural qualities of optimism and defiance and willingness to go into the unknown and make it their home, to make the amazing the norm. They defied the status quo. That’s how they built America.

Americans who want to end the experiment are few, but boisterous. They clamor at the national microphone. But Americans who know that there is no America without the experiment will keep at it, and they will persevere. Barack Obama is such an American, and his election is proof that the lab is still open, and that America in general will always be at the drawing board, expanding its concept of liberty and justice and equality until we finally fulfill the founding principles that created this nation so long ago.

I have to confess, when I read this essay, my first reaction was, clearly I and the vast majority of Conservatives have missed something if this is true.  Perhaps we’re wrong, and this writer is correct.  Perhaps one or more of our resident Progressives can make a case for Obama being the great experimenter in expanding liberty.