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Archive for February 9th, 2009

Isn’t bearing false witness a sin?

7 comments February 9th, 2009

Certain people, all of whom claim to be religious, had better shape up if they want to get to heaven.

HERE’s what they’ve been up to lately, none of which seems to jibe with Commandment VIII (above).

Unlike Bush, Obama doesn’t appear only before pre-screened audiences

6 comments February 9th, 2009

Whenever George W. Bush ventured abroad in the land as president, his handlers took great pains to make sure the audiences in school gyms and American Legion halls consisted only of pre-screened Republican loyalists.

That way, the Great Decider never faced any probing questions. They were all lob pitches.

In contrast, President Obama appeared before an unscreened (in the political sense) audience today at a town hall meeting in a county he lost to John McCain in the November election.

HERE’s more on the matter.

Obama uses presser to diss New Deal revisionists

4 comments February 9th, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHnT99b0E-s

Most GOP senators who oppose stimulus are from states that leech off the rest of us

1 comment February 9th, 2009

A couple of months ago, I wrote HERE about the fact that Republican states generally are those that get back more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes.

Such states, in effect, are leeching off the rest of us. But most of them are represented in Congress by politicians who love to warn against redistribution of the wealth and cry about creeping socialism.

Interestingly, these same hypocritical pols also tend to be opposed to President Obama’s economic stimulus proposal.

Take, for example, Republican Sens. John McCain and John Kyl (above), both of whom represent Arizona, which gets back $1.19 for every $1 it pays in federal taxes, according to the LATEST FIGURES available from the Tax Foundation. (The numbers are a little dated, but the patterns have pertained for many years.)

South Carolina does even better than Arizona. It gets back $1.35 for every $1 it sends to Washington. And one of its senators, Lindsey Graham, is a leading GOP spokesman against the stimulus bill.

Another big foe of the stimulus is Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who’s from Kentucky, which receives $1.51 in federal spending for every $1 it pays in taxes.

These phonies are from what I call ”taker states.” They take from the “giver states,” states that pay more than they get back.

Illinois is a giver state. We get back only 75 cents on the dollar from the feds. Yet both of our senators, Democrats Dick Durbin and Roland Burris, are strong supporters of the stimulus bill.

So, the way I figure it, Republican lawmakers must be afraid that the stimulus bill isn’t enough of a giveaway to their states. The Democrats, on the other hand, are trying to save America — all of it, not just their own states — from economic ruin.

POSTSCRIPT: I should note that I borrowed the terms “giver states” and “taker states” from author Daniel H. Pink, who used them in an op-ed column in The New York Times more than five years ago. I subequently used those terms in several columns I wrote for the Register Star, and I credited Pink on those occasions.