National budget crash . . . or Congressional grit?

Confronting the aproaching demand to raise the national debt ceiling, your congressman will have to make a difficult choice -- is he coward or chicken? He will either require serious budget cuts ($860 Billion is one proposal), or chicken out in fear of losing re-election from constituents hurt by cuts. Summon the grit to do right by the country, or cover his own bottom.

If he argues for 3 months while the government lives on accounting tricks, our foreign debt holders will see us edging into insolvency and may demand much higher interest return before buying U.S. bonds. Our government's economy could crash. Washington burn while Congress fiddles, so to speak. So who has the grit to step up now and vote for substantial cuts?

Like to be an MD forced to perform abortions?

That’s where regulations said to be pending from the Obama administration are going to place many MDs as per yesterday’s news reports.

The Euro Union even has express provisions that no health care provider may be liable or subject to any discipline for a matter of conscience by which he or she declines to participate in abortions or euthanasia. Our own Congress has repeatedly passed lanlguage desisgned to prevent this happening.

These people are bad to the bone on some issues.

Grandma and Grandpa . . . Retarded or Retired ?

After Christmas, a teacher asked her young pupils how they spent their holiday away from school. One child wrote the following:

We always used to spend the holidays with Grandma and Grandpa. They used to live in a big brick house, but Grandpa got retarded and they moved to Arizona . Now they live in a tin box and have rocks painted green to look like grass. They ride around on their bicycles, and wear name tags, because they don't know who they are anymore. They go to a building called a wreck center, but they must have got it fixed because it is all okay now, they do exercises there, but they don't do them very well. There is a swimming pool too, but they all jump up and down in it with hats on. At their gate, there is a doll house with a little old man sitting in it. He watches all day so nobody can escape. Sometimes they sneak out, and go cruising in their golf carts. Nobody there cooks, they just eat out. And, they eat the same thing every night - early birds. Some of the people can't get out past the man in the doll house. The ones who do get out, bring food back to the wrecked center for pot luck. My Grandma says that Grandpa worked all his life to earn his retardment and, says I should work hard so I can be retarded someday too. When I earn my retardment, I want to be the man in the doll house. Then I will let people out, so they can visit their grandchildren.

Load the correcting and payback on the kids?

The Dream Act under consideration by Congress would grant to children of illegal immigrants, who have grown up in the U.S., instate tuition, student loan eligibility, legal status by serving in the military. It would require they have essentially no criminal records.

Some oppose in seeming knee-jerk reaction, being opposed to anything that would benefit illegals in any way, crying “No amnesty!" They refuse to recognize that our businesses have employed and our economy benefitted from the immigrant parents; and because of this our federal government has largely winked at their coming. So now we should load the correcting and payback on kids who have grown up as much [U.S.] Americans as you and I?

Congress – The hurrier they go the behinder they get.

So with the hurry of the current bill to extend Bush tax cuts for all (including the high incomes) the Senate both stimulates the economy (Obama wanted this) and aggravates the deficit (the Republican tea-partyers strenuously opposed this.)

If the economy continues to recover, perhaps spurred by these extended tax cuts (who can tell?), then how do we rate them? Deserving our votes next time around for helping economic recovery or undeserving for aggravating the damaging deficit. And then there are those senators, like Bennett of Utah, who don’t have to care – they’re lame ducks anyway.

Divorce law prevent quarrels over children? . . .

Recently a family counselor complained that the current system of divorce law often turns children into something to fight about. The law proscribes parents using parent time, custody as bargaining chips, but parents will do it anyway, despite their attorney’s best efforts. The blame for the quarreling does not lie at the feet of the state or the law, but the parent or parents, as the case may be.

No state and no law can prevent parents quarreling over the children, and co-parenting works only where both parents are willing. States are not good at meddling in family affairs, never have been and never will be. Unfortunately, in our society, they must meddle anyway.

We all spy, but must never admit it.

Mr. Assange of Wikileaks believes revealing the U.S. spied on the U.N. in violation of U.N. security protocols helps keep the government honest. Others think his leaks have jeopardized diplomacy and endangered our soldiers. Who knows the truth? Time was when one U.S. President shown diplomatic mail someone had intercepted said, “Gentlemen do not read other people’s mail.”

It is said Eisenhower shocked State Department people when he forthrightly admitted we were over-flying the USSR for surveillance after they had brought down the U-2 flight back in the ‘50s. State department rules are that everyone knows you do these things, but one must never openly admit it. Why not? Eisenhower’s admission provided a refreshing breath of candor in the formalistic world of diplomacy and pretended secrets.