My View

Random ruminations from your resident curmudgeon...

Democrats, liberals of all stripe, and the mainstream media...wait...I just repeated myself, didn't I?...have their underwear in a bunch over the fact that to vote in elections will require the voter to present identification so that they can prove they are eligible to vote and are the voter that is registered. In safeguarding one of our most precious liberties, insuring the sanctity of the voting process seems reasonable, does it not? Yet those on the left deem proving that you are who you say you are to vote is "undermining voting rights" and is "unduly burdensome"? Oh really? Tried to cash at your bank without proper identification? Want to fly on a commercial flight? Heck, try to go buy a beer at a ballgame. In every instance, one has to show I.D. It is a fact of our modern life that we have to prove that we are who we say we are, and yet liberals say that proving who we are in the voting process in burdensome. I think not. Allowing votes without proper proof of identity makes it easier for voting fraud to occur and for those that are ineligible to vote to get into the process and record a vote. Don't believe me? Investigative reporter James O'Keefe walked into a Washington, D.C. polling place and asked for the ballot for Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States. AND IT WAS GIVEN TO HIM! Without proof of I.D. Asking voters to comply with proper identification requirement is neither burdensome nor does it undermine voting rights. It does make the process cleaner and more secure. And that is what liberals, Democrats, and the mainstream press do not want.

My wife and I have a deep psychological relationship. She is psycho; I am logical

This week, President Obama trotted out the case for raising taxes on all incomes over $1 million dollars. That populist canard sounds good and it is an easy sell to say the "rich" aren't paying their fair share of taxes. In fact, Obama calls this the Buffett Rule, after his shill Warren Buffett, who said his secretary paid more in taxes than he did ( I have already discussed how Buffett uses the tax code to shelter his own personal taxes and how his company, Berkshire Hathaway has been fighting the IRS for 5 years over taxes that the company owes. Hypocritical? Absolutely). Here is what you need to know about this call for more taxes. According to Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, the Buffett Rule would raise $47 billion over the next 10 years. By contrast, President Obama's proposed budget will add $6.7 TRILLION to the deficit over the same time period. The inconvenient truth for Obama and those in Washington is this: the top 1% of income earners in this country (those making more than $380,000 per year) paid 38% of all taxes while earning 20% of all income. The top 10% of income earners (those making $114,000 or more) paid 70% of all the taxes and earned 45% of the income. Clearly, the wealth re-distribution plan that the Democrats have promoted for years is working. The real issue, though, is the top 1% of income earners are typically in a position to create jobs and own their own business. Punishing them with higher taxes sounds good on the political stump, but the damage to the economy from a long term lack of job creation will be devastating. And we as voters have to get past the populist rhetoric about "fair shares". That is a great lie of the left. Instead, let's honestly look at how to rein in government spending and get our fiscal house in order.

Ever since my doctor told me I suffer from insomnia, I have laying awake at night worrying about it.


I want you to look at these two charts, really study them, because they graphically and clearly give you a good idea of why we are in such a financial mess in this country:

Think that the chart on top is influenced by the one on the bottom? The exponential growth in entitlements, coupled with the uncontrolled printing of dollars has caused our national debt to skyrocket. And this is the dilemma for politicians- getting our debt under control is going to entail reforming our massive entitlement programs. Any attempts at reining in our debt and solving our fiscal problems has to include reforming our entitlement programs, and this will take political will and courage that Washington has not exhibited in years. Taxpayers should be aware that just raising taxes does nothing constructive to fix our fiscal mess if we do not reform entitlements. We as voters and taxpayers should be demanding that Washington address meaningful entitlement reform BEFORE we discuss raising taxes.

Since I have started exercising, I have met a lot of new people. Mostly, they are paramedics, but still they are new people.

And that, my friends, is my view.