@Mike’s America:

LOL — I JUST GOT IT. Gosh I am slow lately.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

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MataHarley, thank you for your thoughtful response. (Happy Thanksgiving as well).

The congress is a really daunting issue to deal with. My suggestion is a bit radical since term limits are not my favorite course of action. Basically I think a lower ratio of Representatives to constituents would be much better. In many areas congressional districts have millions of constituents which requires a ton of money to get elected. Much of this money comes from outside interests to the actual districts they wish to serve. The whole idea of citizen representation is eroded for our lower house due to the dilution of constituents vs. representative. The size of congress could be expanded to allow for more voices. That might seem a bit counter intuitive, but it would allow for true coalitions and probably would break down the two major parties which have had a monopoly on power for so long.

Similarly, I think it is time return the selection of Senators to the states (as it was in the beginning of our Republic). Now Senators seem to look like they are “super representatives” instead of looking after the specific interests of their states. This too would return more power to the states and remove the massive amounts of money that influences Senators.

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blast… INRE your

I am not here to defend the democrats or republicans. The issue today is who is leading us right now, not 8 years go or 50 years ago. There are plenty of salient points to be made when illustrating different issues over time and some can be useful and instructive. Will history say “oh, that crisis was caused by Barney Frank” NO, and why? Because he was not elected president, he was not leader of our nation. Frank will be a mere footnote if remembered at all.

I’m going to have to disagree with you here. Fact is the majority of those “leading” us today are the same as the past decades… meaning Congress. They hold the purse strings. They create the legislation and regulations. They dole out the cash. All a POTUS can do is say yes, or no. If he wants legislation intro’d to the floor, he must get a Congressional member to write it up and introduce it.

Too many place too much power in the hands of the POTUS when it comes to this stuff. His veto power is not usurped by the construction and details of the bill. Virtually everthing that is going on with the economy today can be traced back to Congress and their poorly constructed legislation.

bbart… I’m away from my own computer set up and couldn’t accommodate for the size of the photo. So I just provided a link… tho it appears you don’t want to see it anyway. But it was provided in response to blast’s comment #16.

But I do agree…. I don’t think it’s a healthy thing to get people to again spend. In the 90s the household debt was getting out of control. Fact is, people… and our Congress… need to learn to live within the budget they have – not the budget they wish they had. Fiscal responsibility is a lost art in both personal and government.

Any fix will just postpone the bullet we will inevitably have to bite…. and possibly prolong the recouperation period. We should just get it over with… but I don’t see that as likely at this moment. Those in Congressional leadership and new WH admin will prefer to put a bandaid on this so that making it worse cannot be tied to their legacy. But this didn’t start over night, and was decades in the making. It will take time to reverse the damage… and retrain consumers and govt to live within their means. (if either of these dogs can learn old tricks….)

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REALITY CHECK

Ron Paul’s “conservatism” . . . . NOT!

One Conservative’s Top Ten (- 1) list of objections to Ron Paul

He’s a quirky Libertarian (as most I’ve either read about or known). Deal with it.

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@bbartlog:

“The ACU provides reasonably objective ratings of ‘conservatism’, and gives Paul an 82 or 83.”

I’ll have to go over there and check it out, because his voting record doesn’t confirm that.

Out of 100 votes
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/p000583/votes/
he…
(1) …voted with the Reps 53 times, and against 29. (53*100)/(53+29) = 64.6% pro-Republican
(2) …voted with the Dems 14 times, and against 65. (65*100)/(65+14) = 82.3% anti-Democrat

Looks like their measure of his “conservatism” might be his moderately strong opposition to Democrats rather than his luke warm support of his own party?

Your going to have to do better than make unsubstantiated claims.

UPDATE- hold the phone… here’s something interesting.

I always considered Ron Paul more a kook than a conservative. But even I was stunned when I did some analysis of the American Conservative Union’s lifetime ratings for congresspersons. [I changed the author's link from "LA" to "TX" to facilitate checking] It was worse for Ron Paul than I thought. He is clearly not among the more conservative of our elected representatives. The results surprised me so much, that I reprint here an edited comment I posted to another thread (the ratings referred to are the ACU’s lifetime rartings through 2006):

Ron Paul has [ONLY] (my emphasis, not author’s) an 82.3 rating. Ha! Some conservative. Here are some well-known Senators who are (or, in case of those who recently left Congress, were) rated more conservative than Paul:

Kay Bailey Hutchison
John Cornyn
Trent Lott
Lindsey Flim Flam Graham
Bill Frist
Amnesty Mel Martinez
Chuck Hagel
John Sununu (New Hampshire for God’s sake!!)
Libby Dole
Lamar Alexander

(Of course there are many other senators, such as Jeff Sessions and Orrin Hatch, who are not listed here because it is a given they are more conservative than Paul.)

Paul has the same rating as John McCain!!!! [OUCH!]

Plus, there are over 170 – 170!!!! – House members rated more conservative than Ron Paul. That means he is one of the MOST LIBERAL Republican House Members in the United States!

More revealing, of Texas’ 32 members of the House of Representatives, 20 are more conservative than Paul! He comes in 21st out of 32. Imagine, he is not even in the top half of the Texas delegation when it comes to voting for conservative principles!! Thank goodness there are people like Sheila Jackson Lee (7.5), or Ron could be the house liberal.

Who started this myth that Ron Paul was a conservative, anyway? And who exactly is buying it?

LOL! I guess we know whose “buying it” don’t we bbart. Nice try, though.

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Figures, more lame pablum. Immature.

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“Is that all you can bring?” (Blast)

NO. I can bring so much more. But I would have to start so far back for you to understand, I wouldn’t know where to start. This is why I suggest to you a Political 101. After that, we could maybe exchange. This is not an insult, it is a good advice for you.

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Craig, is this your MO? Is this all you can bring???? Come on… send another useless snide ignorant comment. Grow up.

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“The thing is, if the evils that have been placed on the democrats as being most culpable are true, why the heck didn’t Bush do something to change it?” (Blast)

LOL! Politic 101 would help you understand and maybe give you an answer.

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Seems we have one of those periodic Paulbot outbursts!

This is odd.

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