By Craig Andresen 8-1-11
The great debt deal announced Sunday evening may well be no deal at all. In fact, as Members of Congress pour through it, it may wind up as no dice.
There are many troubling elements of the “deal” which must be carefully considered before the vote can take place, possibly later today and Members from BOTH parties are starting to sound more and more negative regarding their individual votes.
Here are just SOME of the troubling issues:
By Craig Andresen 7-31-11
In a week and a weekend when the war of words in Washington DC rose to extreme caliber as deadlines approached and rhetoric 
led the day, there were indeed winners and losers.
While the American people are still looking for leadership from the hallowed halls and the White House few if any feel like winners. Congress continues to conduct their business regardless of the prevailing wishes of We The People. In recent polls, 66% of the people have indicated THEY want or demand a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
While many of us persist to focus on the plankton–the incidental consequences–of issue after issue, we tend to ignore the provenance of waters which run deep. Okay, so maybe I’m not making much sense to you so far, but allow me a moment of your time to expound on a document I circulated a few weeks ago regarding the constitutionality of drug-testing welfare recipients. Although the points to counter my argument were compelling, sometimes poignant, it seems that a substantial amount of the counter-pointers live within ideologically fraught parameters. To a degree, the parameters encase a discombobulated “take” which may even, at times, include sub-parameters which cancel each other out. And yet, there they are, coexisting side-by-side with a crooked grin.
Okay, I’m still not making much sense. I understand…
So, I’ll just dive right in.
By Patty Ewing Robichaud, July 28, 2011
I was born and grew up in the Los Angeles area of Southern California for the most part. There was a time when I believed Los 
Angeles was the center of the civilized universe with its diversity of people, landscapes (mountains to beaches), laid-back attitude, and temperate weather. Sure, there was smog some days, and the temperature would soar into the 100s every October – but it was tolerable. I didn’t even mind when people said California was the Granola State, full of fruits, nuts, and flakes!
Employment opportunities abounded, aerospace was setting us apart from the rest of the world, entertainment and amusement was always accessible, and everyone had a car. No matter how far you drive in Los Angeles, it seems to take over an hour – whether it is 10 miles or 50 – but you accept that as the price of being mobile!
I was born in 1960. When I was but 6 months old, Alan Shepard did something no American had ever done. He flew in space. I don’t remember that but again, I was but 6 months old at the time.
By the time I was old enough to comprehend such things as astronauts, we had finished with the Mercury program at NASA and moved on to the Gemini program. Some of the first important people I can remember hearing of, were the original 7 astronauts. Shepard, Glen, Grissom, Cooper, Carpenter, Schirra and Slayton. I knew their names before I knew what NASA was.
They rode rockets.
They rode rockets with USA on the side of them.
As the debt talks continue, drone on may be a better description, and both sides dig in, there is a way to solve several problems.
The Tea Party faithful are digging in and calling upon their elected officials telling them under no circumstances should they give even an inch. Liberals are digging in insisting that THEIR elected officials not to allow ANY republican plan to see the light of day in the senate.
Impasse? Maybe…but there is one Tea Party backed Congressman who sees things differently.
Allen West from Florida’s 22nd District has stepped forward to back the latest plan put forth by Speaker Boehner and even some of the West faithful are talking about leaving because of it. Maybe they’re not looking closely enough at the deeper issues at play here.
Over the last several months we have seen continued battles over the debt. There have been possible government shutdowns, bailouts, proposed bailouts, calls for cutting spending, calls for higher taxes, a gang of 6, those who believe we have a revenue problem, those who believe we have a spending problem and a President who believes the best way OUT of the hole is to make the hole even DEEPER.
Obama wants to scare everyone into capitulation with liberal tax and spend ideologies and stonewalling while those who set our nation’s credit ratings seem set to sweep away our liberty in a tsunami of default.
By Margaret Smith on May 23, 2011
We have so many Federal regulations affecting businesses that small and large companies had to create positions just to deal with the “shackles of government”; now that is job creation!
Consider how the US EPA started, officially it is stated as December 1970, yet was truly revolutionized in 1962. This time frame is when Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring” in serial form in the New Yorker. The article was about pesticides and its effect on the bird population. Because of its popularity from readers the book was published and started a grass roots movement of environmentalist. Today, because of his books influence we have, ” 14,000 scientists, lawyers, managers, and other employees across the country to fight the good fight for “environmental protection.” Many of us probably would not be so concerned about the USEPA if it was only fighting pesticide companies.
By Jennifer Stephens on May 13, 2011
A toy company, HeroBuilders, has created an Obama action figure with him dressed as a Navy SEAL from SEAL Team 6, our heroes who took care of bin Laden. What an insult to our SEALs. (And as a Marine I have to say, insulting the SEALs is a seriously bad idea. Hazardous-to-the-health bad idea…) Obama has never served, and certainly not as an elite SEAL. He has never endured the training they go through. He has never made the sacrifices they make.
They are heroes, he is not.
By Craig Andresen on May 5, 2011
After the 2008 election and in fact before it, one by one by one, liberals both in and out of government stepped up and decried that enhanced interrogation techniques were wrong, would not lead to useful information and should never be employed.
Obama, Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and on and on all made such statements and made them emphatically. They all called for the shuttering of Gitmo…PROMISED it in fact.