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Or is this the REAL projection?  We’ve heard for weeks (Er, months?  Years?) that Republicans, Conservatives, TEA Partiers, Constitutionalists, or Libertarians are the extremists, the terrorists, the people with suicide vests strapped to their chests (while clinging to their religion and guns?)….you know the litany.  In all cases, just trying to subtract even one single dollar from any Government budget brings out this talk that we are anti-Government, we’re Anarchists…and with any diminution of Government, the litany of hating the poor, hating kids, hating illegal aliens, hating education, hating the hungry, hating….need I really say more?

That’s what we were told during this shutdown, that the wrong decisions by Republicans were being be felt by the most vulnerable as Government had to shutdown.  Shutdown?  We really ended up with a SlimDown as only 17% of the Feds actually did stop.  And we got MORE expenses as the stuff that got shutdown was aimed at hurting the public in hopes of turning the public against those evil Republicans who took the “nice” things away.  Instead we saw the UGLY face of a Government grown too large to the point of having little remorse over targeting those they serve.  This just over the Slimdown.  And now with the specter of the Debt Ceiling floating onto the stage, what is it that the Administration is willing to go after first?  Yeah – guess who gets the haircut first? (emphasis mine, reformatted):

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Just like Grokster Steve’s post on the Nashua Elementary School’s continuing the sissification of American (“ooh, someone might get hurt!!!”), we see someone else saying “TOO MUCH RISK – you can’t do that!”.

Tell me, which sport or activity do you think (there are three) are those that the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports, & Nutrition are SO dangerous for kids that they demanded that the US Postal Service scrap the entire stamp run?   Seriously?

Now remember, this is not a school setting – there are no playgrounds involved.  No real people, either.  Cartoon figures, really (and they even hide the ‘toons innocense  by blanking out their faces even).  I looked at all of those activities and remembered back many years (and pounds) ago and went “I did them all”!  OK, not so much the skateboard as the poly wheels hadn’t yet been invented and those boards road rough – but I did a lot of roller skating instead.

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Consistency yields Trust yields Votes.  Simple, eh?  While I’ve been saying this for a while as to the disaffection of voters for the Republican Party, it doesn’t seem to be getting traction.  That is, at least in Republican circles.  Rarely do I even hear this idea mentioned – only that “We have to win (even if we just suck less than Dems)” seems to be the mantra.  Lots of extraneous stuff, lots of “strategic” reasoning, lots on tactics, but not much on re-establishing Trust. Sad, that.  All it takes is “walk the talk”; tell us what you really believe, tell us what you will actually do.  Then the hard part – just do it.  Don’t give us the “shuffle” and “it’s complicated”.  We expected you to play this all out in your head and in your heart BEFORE you got elected.  What are the values that you said you had – just do it.

Why is this so hard?  No, I wasn’t in DC and no, I wasn’t in Concord (NH, the state capital) – just in my little hamlet.  I was accused, all the time, of having an agenda – and that pleased me.  Why?  I had three principles while on my hamlet’s Budget Committee:

• It ain’t my money but spend it like it was mine
• Government growth should NEVER outstrip that of the Civil Society that pays for it
• It ain’t my money

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From BLACKFIVE (emphasis mine):

First, it was the order to close/block memorials – expending mucho dinero to protect memorials and monuments that – generally – are never protected. This is particularly disgusting when it comes to blocking the WWII memorial where flights of WWII vets are making a first and (most likely) last pilgrimage to their place

Then, there was the order to deny death benefits to the families of the Fallen…

Turns out, the orders to close off the memorials and to deny death benefits to the families of the Fallen came directly from…the budget office of the White House.

The White House.

Who’s in charge over there?

The President.

The Vets have had enough.

Indeed!  They have fought for our freedom before and they are about to fight for it again.  Truckers this weekend.  Bikers this weekend.  TEA Partiers are reving up.  Obama’s approval rating is approaching his sense and display of traditional American morality and outlook (which is to say, not much at all).I said at the beginning of the TEA Party movement that Obama and his political sycophants and fellow sojourners had so compressed the air in the cylinder of the political diesel engine that all it needed was a spark – and that was the rant by CNBC’s Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago (of all places) Board of Trade.  And now, Obama has done it again – not with threatening to pay irresponsible peoples’ mortgages with money from those that had always been responsible with their own, but by actively using WW II veterans and tourists as hostages.  He is using Government, and the Party that stands for and IS Government, to have his revenge. 

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Simple reason – Government has grown so large that it:

• we Citizens can no longer have enough proper oversight so that it does what WE want it to – versus what IT wants to do.
• has become its own special interest group all unto itself. And in lobbying their bosses (our elected officials), it drowns out Citizens’ voices (e.g., see California)
• can conspire with and within itself – for itself over the best interests of those they are supposed to serve – Citizens

Yes, I have been on a rant tonite – 4th post of the nite on the same theme. Certainly the progressive wings of BOTH the Democrats and the Republicans have encouraged and enabled this super-sizing; to them, the strength of America is in its Government’s might.  They believe that Americans need this guidance – and are hellbent to provide it in all ways possible.  More and more, the Bigger the Better.  We are to be mere cogs in their Machine.

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Heh!:  “Due to the absence of either an FY 2014 appropriation or Continuing Resolution for the Department of Health and Human Services, there is no one to process your action or respond to your message. If you require immediate attention, please contact 410-786-4160”

See below for the inside joke

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Quick note: It seems that the Obamacare Exchange being run by the State of Maryland has some really “cute” slugs on the “privacy” that Marylanders think they might have.  Now, if you KNEW this and had any doubts of your, er, past, do you think this might give you reason to pause?

“[W]e may share information provided in your application with the appropriate authorities for law enforcement and audit activities.”

And if you are going “phew, only the cops?  Nobody else?” – Hah!

“your correspondence could be disclosed to other parties upon their request in accordance with Maryland’s Public Information Act.”

Cool!  Maryland’s law, that Public Info doo-hicky, will keep my info from the badness that is Big Biz, right?  To which my retort would be: when’s the last time you actually sat down and READ that PIC?

Better yet, before handing over your name, your address, your birthday, your social security number, number of people in your household, your income, your “household income” (from little Jimmy to Granny), all of the social security numbers of everyone living in your household, citizenship/immigration status; did you READ the Privacy on whatever Exchange you were using?

Like you have much choice, right?  With 16,000 new IRS agents,

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…specifically allowed.  Certainly not by legislation but by fiat by the Executive Branch.  It has been said that each of us breaks four or five laws everyday (either statutory or regulatory) without ever knowing it.  How can one defend themselves when one, even if trying hard to not, is breaking a law under that condition?  The philosophy undergirding our system of jurisprudence is that a law has to be short, clearly stated, and understandable by the average person.  Nowadays, just seeing the multitude of just lawyer specialties, how can the ordinary person cope?  Or are we already sacrificed on the altar of Legality?

And that sacrifice comes merely because nobody asks “when is Enough, ENOUGH”?

So when I saw this, I went – yup, good start – can we keep this Slimedown (er, can you call it a Shutdown when only 17% of the Fed is actually shut down?) going?:

Regulators and proponents of stronger protections warn that rulemaking delays will jeopardize public safety and health. But some conservatives say the reprieve from red tape is welcome, even if it doesn’t last long.

“We’re very pleased that the Obama administration’s ongoing efforts to wreck the U.S. economy with more and more heavy-handed and colossally expensive regulations has been put on hold,” said Myron Ebell, director of the right-leaning Competitive Enterprise Institute’s energy and environment center…

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Really!  With their new coal industry killing regulations, and that PA’s electrical generation is heavily skewed to coal,well, the obvious is about to happen. From Junk Science (“Pennsylvania prepares to downsize economy rather than build more power plants“), we see that (with all due respect to Mary Poppins)  “money will make the crap go down, the crap go down”:

Using less electricity will become more lucrative for Pennsylvania universities, government agencies and industries when coal-fired power plants close during the next several years.

A regional power-management group is boosting payouts to organizations that conserve voluntarily, offering money if they curtail demand on summer’s hottest days. Maximum payouts will climb about 33 percent by 2017, management group PJM Interconnection told the Tribune-Review.

The move should help contain power prices for residential customers and small businesses by easing pressure on limited supply, industry observers said.

“It really is just supply and demand,” said Stu Bresler, a vice president with Montgomery County-based PJM. “If customers are able to shift their demand, there would be less need for additional capacity for generation or transmission.”

That is, for the replacement capacity, for the current capacity being taken away by bureaucrats.

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From The Corner comes this story about how the Establishment Republican Old Guard just can’t stand that  now taking a shot at a seated TEA Party / Libertarian, Congressman Justin Amash:

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post reported yesterday that Representative Justin Amash, the House’s ur-libertarian, could have a primary situation:

Within Grand Rapids’ powerful business establishment, patience is running low with Amash’s ideological agenda and tactics. Some business leaders are recruiting a Republican primary challenger who they hope will serve the old-fashioned way — by working the inside game and playing nice to gain influence and solve problems for the district. They are tired of tea party governance, as exemplified by the budget fight that led to the shutdown and threatens a first-ever U.S. credit default.

So it seems all over – a Republican that actually says what he believes and then walks that talk come voting.  It is the TEA Party / Libertarian wing of the party that is not pulling the Party rightward (which infuriates the Dems as they follow that foreign philosophy call socialism and throws a monkey wrench into the “go along / get along – we’ll do the same things but do them better than the Democrats” world view of the Republican elite (here, in Michigan, at the national level, everywhere).  They find it hard to understand that, more and more, many of us are returning back to the philosophy on which this Country was founded – and standing on them.   They don’t understand that the “New Republicans” aren’t motivated by “getting stuff done” or “moving the Country FORWARD!“.

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Government seems to have forgotten that they exist at the will of the people, not to rule over them, but to serve them in the needs of society, organization, stability, and public safety. Recently, due to the total failure of of our two party system to work cooperatively, to negotiate and compromise in the best interests of the people, we saw one proud group ignore their childish attempts to punish the people over their own partisan ego and divide, and refusal to compromise on either side of the aisle. I am referring to World War II Vets, often referred to a the Greatest Generation, who would not let childish self-indulging political power plays get in the way of them visiting monuments to honor them on public land that belongs to all of us. The Federal government may set aside parts of our country as protected lands, but they do not have the right to deny us access to is it because it does not belong to them, it belongs to us, the people. Like our founding fathers, these old Warrior Veterans revolted against the orders of government, and we should all be proud of their actions. In fact we should be so proud that we follow their lead – tear down the barricades and refuse to accept that government even has the right to close public facilities – after all this is our country, not a Communist state where Government owns and can dictate who gets to use what land for what purpose. I mean how can we be so adamantly opposed to Eminent Domain and yet accept that the government has the right to deny us access to land they took in our names, and supposedly for our benefit?

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Questions?  Yes, questions of Dr. McCaughey following her talk about Obamacare and she was happy to take them:

Question #1:

In the bill, so many of the different components say “at the discretion of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. So, if we get a Republican President, are those put in stone now because of Sebelius?

Takaway: Pew – only 38% could name the three branches of Government.  That how Obama can say the false things he does and get away with them – the public doesn’t any better.

Question #2:  Please talk about the “navigators”?

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