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Tag Archives: politricks

Ignorance Is No Excuse


The past several days have brought forth  more erroneous information on the release of hostages from Iran. Dupublicans have loudly touted the idea that the US paid  400 million dollars in ransom for the release of hostages from Iran. Two of the main mouthers of this information include one who should have knowledge of what the real situation was, that person is Paul Ryan,  Dupublican house leader. The second shout out with no facts person is Dupublican candidate for President Donald Trump. The facts are as follows: The United States has held those funds and much more of Iran’s cash for years (since the fall of the Shah in 1979). Holding this cash has given the US some leverage but since we are dealing with an empowered religious leader rather than a diplomat, that  made it more difficult to build any sort of “normal” relation with Iran. This particular release of cash coincides with the release of US citizens but at the same time made this transition easier. This information is something the Speaker could have, should have and probably needed to know before touting the ransom scenario just to make political points. Since the information was wrong, it would make one wonder how much truth is in any statement put out by the party. Remember the middle letters of  Politics is “LI” (lie). We do not have the best choices in this election overall however my choice would be the person who has some experience and not a shoot from the lip huckster. The Dupublicans as a party have pretty much killed their party as a force beyond saying no to any thing put forth by the President and his party. These unending noes have directly affected all of the American people (you know the People they have been so fond of citing without our consent). It is true Mr. Trump speaks his mind but so does a madman and if his followers think this is an asset for a President then they are in for a rude awakening. Each one of us has an opinion on how and what should be done but these opinions are considered in a microcosm which is lacking in the details necessary for a rational opinion which would be more relative to the situations we face.

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The Worst


The worst thing about modern elections is the instantaneous transmission of information. Recently in a seemingly desperate move to shore up support for the Dupublicans party, Reince Priebus stated  “Hillary Clinton will take a way your guns”. This is a subject that has not been reported as far as I know in this  campaign. Lets remember that same thing was said about President Obama yet gun owners still have their guns. If you are a member of any gun group and are a reasonable human being , you will understand that taking legally owned guns from anyone is something that Government has no interest in. It would be tough to impossible to remove guns from people who should not have them or illegally owns them so the premise of taking guns from anyone is highly unlikely. These are the types of outright lies and untrue statements that our modern political parties issue. All voters need to first do your homework and ignore the rhetoric coming out of campaigns. Unfortunately the only candidate who truly speaks his mind is Donald Trump but being rich ,uninformed and unflappable(?) is not an asset. Do we want this person running the country and shooting from the lip and hip? This does not say much in favor his backing party. If a politician is so desperate to win that lies are issued on their behalf then I would offer that this is not a person we want to represent us on any level.

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Vote Like An Adult


Watch your toes! Any of you who plan to vote for Dupublicans (Republicans) and Scamocrats (Democrats) need to rethink your choice. If you have not done your due diligence in reading about the Parties as they currently exist then you are part of the problem of poor government. Government has never been perfect, that’s why we vote but voting by rote is why we have such poor Congressional and other representation. Do your home work and vote like an adult. The next Congressional error could arrive on your doorstep. The major political race is not where the Governmental problems arise, the real problems are the people we overlook and just vote for due to name recognition. These are the Congressional stiffs who treat us like the village idiots, they invoke us (“the American People”) to support their agendas and those agendas do not include us no matter what they say in the media. It is certainly reasonable to be upset with the current Government but if we ignore the small races ( Congress et al) we are effectively keeping the same ineffective Government. The President will change every 4 or 8 years no matter what but the lesser elected officials will be there until they retire unless we vote them out. These are the same people are willing to shut the Government down and pass laws we do not agree with but invoke us whenever they desire. I caution you to not get caught up in angry rhetoric which leads to errors in voting.

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Who Can We Trust??


The current Presidential race has shown the darker side of our politics and unearthed the deeper evil of the whole system. Fact checkers uncover the misrepresentation of statements, media sources reveal the truth behind the sitting elected officials and we still vote some of these people in time after time. First let’s think about politics overall, this is a business that hires people to lie, misrepresent and cajole to get us to vote their way. There have been many times staffers have been caught and fired but how many have never been caught and continue to do their worst? These are the things we as voters need to pay attention to. These “stuffers” have created the rifts between us religiously, racially and economically. All of this for an elected position that invariably will benefit the voter very little. Think about the “Watergate Scandal” of the 70’s when our President and his closest aides committed crimes in his behalf. It is entirely possible that these sorts of things are still being done but with more secretiveness. “Lest we forget” our political system is rife with corruption and deceit as evidenced by the lackluster performance of our Congress in the past 20 years. it is always said:” If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and looks like a duck then it is most assuredly a duck!”

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Benefactors -Beneslackers-Benefakers


The ongoing and seemingly never ending rhetoric accompanying election campaigns is an indication of how jaded we have become as voters. This phenomenon has worked in favor of the candidates since their objective is to win at any cost. This cost may affect the people they represent more than anyone else. If we expand that representation to the nation , it will become apparent that voters need to be better informed before voting. It is easy to become enraged by sound bites, hate speech and lies but the truth no matter how obvious is always the first to be ignored. Our misdirected anger in this season of elections has brought out the worst in us, where we should be concentrating our efforts is removing our Congressional representatives as their terms end, once this precedent is established we should begin to see an upward swing in the quality of our government at the local, State and Federal levels. The people we have elected regularly all  have the same spiel and that is, “I work for you”! We are stuck with 535 “benefakers” s  who have  offered themselves as benefactors have for as long as they have been in office. What benefactor would shutdown the Government leaving the people they are supposed to work for stranded. Now consider that these benefakers refuse to consider a replacement Supreme court justice, tried over 60 times to  overturn  the Affordable Care Act and failed. If these “benefakers” had spent the same amount of time reading the ACA and making necessary changes to create a better product, that would have  been beneficial. If these benefakers had not spent so much time naysaying climate change, air quality and economic  issues where would we be? We (voters) need to decide what we want and what we need, then balance the two for a workable solution. If we as voters urge our representatives to do what’s right, that will benefit all of us.

 

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Analysis of Scotus selection


Ten days before Justice Antonin Scalia died, launching the political battle over who would fill his vacancy, Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a speech slamming the Supreme Court nomination process. In remarks at Boston’s New England Law,The New York Times reports that Roberts denounced the politicization of the process that he says is really just meant to ensure that nominees are qualified for the job.

“We don’t work as Democrats or Republicans,” the chief justice said, “and I think it’s a very unfortunate impression the public might get from the confirmation process.”

Roberts pointed out that while nominees back in his day were easily confirmed, the last three justices — Samuel Alito Jr., Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan — have all faced split votes from the Senate. “Look at my more recent colleagues, all extremely well qualified for the court and the votes were, I think, strictly on party lines for the last three of them, or close to it, and that doesn’t make any sense,” Roberts said. “That suggests to me that the process is being used for something other than ensuring the qualifications of the nominees.”

President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court last week, despite Republicans’ promises that they will deny any Obama nominee in favor of letting the next president fill the vacancy. It has become clear that the Congress is essentially Racist and disingenuous. Vice President Biden made it clear in a recent speech that the GOP Congress has  taken excerpts from a prior speech to avoid doing the job of vetting a candidate for the Supreme court. For the past 7 years we (voters) have been operating under a dysfunctional Government due to the Political machinations of our Congress. Voters are better than the people we elected to represent us but we seemingly have not considered this. Our Federal lawmakers are no more than 535 people who are taking our money for a job poorly done or not done  at all. If this were a contractor or service, we as consumers would be up in arms so the question is: Why are we not taking these people (Congress) to task  for not doing their job?

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Guantanamo Camp Cost $900,000.00 Per Prisoner Per Year


This posting from The Huffington Post shows what the cost to keep Guantanamo Camp open and what should be spent on the actual facility to bring it up to standards. Where could this amount be better used? We have several 
“High Security” prisons in the U.S. but due to politrics and fear mongering these facilities and the apparent boon to the communities as far as material resources like jobs, products sold to the facility and traffic from products being brought in has not happened. Maximum security is just that maximum security and would cost a lot less in the United States than off shore. This move would free up military forces now engaged in guarding this facility for other duties. The move would be n money saved and well spent.

WASHINGTON, May 3 (Reuters) – It’s been dubbed the most expensive prison on Earth and President Barack Obama cited the cost this week as one of many reasons to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which burns through some $900,000 per prisoner annually.

The Pentagon estimates it spends about $150 million each year to operate the prison and military court system at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, which was set up 11 years ago to house foreign terrorism suspects. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 per prisoner.

By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000, they say.

The high cost was just one reason Obama cited when he returned this week to an unfulfilled promise to close the prison and said he would try again. Obama also said that the prison, set up under his Republican predecessor George W. Bush and long the target of criticism by rights groups and foreign governments, is a stain on the reputation of the United States.

“It’s extremely inefficient,” said Ken Gude, chief of staff and vice president at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank, who has followed developments at Guantanamo Bay since 2005.

“That … may be what finally gets us to actually close the prison. I mean the costs are astronomical, when you compare them to what it would cost to detain somebody in the United States,” Gude said.

The cost argument could be a potent weapon at a time of running budget battles between Obama and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and of across-the-board federal spending cuts that kicked in, in March. The “sequestration” as it is known, is due to cut some $109 billion in spending up to the end of September and has cut government services small and large.

Just one inmate from Guantanamo, for example, is equivalent to the cost of 12 weeks of White House tours for the public – a treasured tradition that the Secret Service says costs $74,000 a week and that has been axed under sequestration.

A single inmate is also the equivalent of keeping open the control tower at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport for 45 months. That control tower, another victim of cuts, costs $20,000 per month to run.

The $900,000 also matches the funding for nearly seven states to help serve home delivered meals to the elderly. Sequestration has cost Meals on Wheels a median shortfall of $129,497 per state, the organization says.

Or measured in terms of military spending and national security, the cost of four inmates represents the cost of training an Air Force fighter pilot – based on the Department of Defense’s figure of $3.6 million per pilot.

WHY THE HUGE COST?

The huge cost of running the prison and judicial complex stem from its offshore location at a 45-square-mile U.S. Naval Base on the southeastern coast of Cuba. Because ties between the two countries are almost nonexistent, almost everything for the facilities has to be ferried in from outside.

When the military tribunals are in session, everyone from judges and lawyers to observers and media have to fly into Guantanamo on military aircraft. Food, construction materials and other goods are shipped in from outside, experts say.

But despite the high cost of the camp, and despite the fact that Republicans traditionally demand belt-tightening by the federal government, a Republican aide with the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee said there was little point in asking if the price was worth it because “there isn’t an alternative at the moment.”

“No one has any particular affection for Guantanamo Bay, but no one has come up with a practical solution that’s better,” the aide said.

Obama needs to produce a plan for what to do with the detainees at Guantanamo “who are too dangerous to release,” Representative Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an opinion piece in USA Today this week. “Until a better solution is offered, at Guantanamo they must stay,” he wrote.

Among current inmates, nine have been charged with crimes or convicted, 24 are considered eligible for possible prosecution, 86 have been cleared for transfer or release and 47 are considered too dangerous for release but are not facing prosecution.

But until now, worries about security have prevented the idea of transferring some or all of the inmates to the United States from getting much traction.

Obama pledged to close the prison within a year after first taking office in January 2009 but his efforts ran aground, partly because of congressional opposition, from both Republicans and some in his own Democratic Party, to transferring prisoners to the United States.

Inmates started a hunger strike in February that has swelled to some 100 prisoners and has led to force-feeding of 23 of the prisoners. With the camp back under a critical spotlight, Obama told a news conference on Tuesday he would renew efforts to shut it down. He has an array of options, some of which would be more achievable than others.

Gude said it was difficult to figure out how much the United States has spent overall on Guantanamo detention facilities since it began housing prisoners there in 2002 because administrations only recently have been noting the expense in a budget line item.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an estimate but it is certainly more than $1 billion by a comfortable margin, I would say, probably more than $2 billion,” Gude said.

Above the annual operating cost, capital spending on the prison could rise again if the Pentagon receives the funding it says it needs to renovate the place.

General John Kelly, the head of Southern Command, which is responsible for Guantanamo, told a House of Representatives panel in March that he needed some $170 million to improve the facilities for troops stationed at the base as part of detention operations. Kelly said the living conditions were “pretty questionable” and told the panel, “We need to take care of our troops.” (Reporting By David Alexander; Editing by Frances Kerry and Tim Dobbyn)

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Io’s rison Facility

 

Not 1941


A recent poll shows that  “a majority ” of Americans want American boots on the ground to fight ISIS. Personally I believe this to be a knee jerk reaction. First remember that wars are expensive and the money has to come at the expense of other stuff. Given the inability of the Congress to construct a budget where will the money come from? Currently the UN Security council has called for members to join the fight against ISIS this action will relieve the financial burden from the United States while affording quicker responses to the threat by local member countries. Keep in mind that ISIS members  are no more than criminals who have subverted a religion to gain recruits and unfortunately have used online methods to spread their message of hate around the globe. We can complain about what needs to be done, what is not done  or even who should do it but the fact remains that we cannot enter into another protracted ground war without the UN security council members. This is not December 7, 1941. The current Dupublicans can scream and shout about what should be done as long and as loud as they want but in the end we the people suffer for it. We lose resources such as irreplaceable human capital and hardware of all sorts. We (voters) need to keep in mind the knee jerk reactions are what put us in IRAQ, Afghanistan and Vietnam and we know how those incursions turned out.

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note This was from a Newsweek Poll

Zero Accomplishment


The House has again made much ado over nothing, you would think that these folks would look into existing rules for refugees before making new ones that shadow or negate existing ones. The new bill is listed below first then the existing one below it under Politics. This is just another item to think about when it is time for reelection . This is another “business as usual moment.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan holds up statements from the FBI director and the secretary of Homeland Security about the risk involved in admitting refugees from Syria, during a news conference Wednesday about the House bill calling for a stricter vetting process for refugees from Syria and Iraq.

Gary Cameron/Reuters/Landov

The House of Representatives has easily passed a GOP-authored bill to restrict the admission of Iraqi and Syrian refugees to America by requiring extra security procedures.

The bill — called the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act of 2015, or the American SAFE Act of 2015 — would require the secretary of Homeland Security, the head of the FBI and the director of national intelligence to sign off on every individual refugee from Iraq and Syria, affirming he or she is not a threat.

The FBI director would also need to confirm that a background investigation, separate from the Homeland Security screening, had been conducted on each refugee.

Lawmakers say it is the first of many bills aimed at addressing security concerns in the wake of the Paris attacks, reports NPR’s Muthoni Muturi.

Supporters of the bill say it would require a “pause” in admitting Syrian and Iraqi refugees, as current applications would be halted while a new vetting process was established. Some conservative critics object that it doesn’t ban such refugees outright.

Meanwhile, liberal House members say requiring top officials to be involved in thousands of individual applications is unmanageable, and that the bill would result in an extended roadblock for Syrians and Iraqis fleeing a humanitarian crisis. That’s a rejection of American values, some Democrats argue.

The bill passed the House of Representatives 289-137.

It’s unclear whether the Senate will take up the legislation, says NPR’s Arnie Seipel. If the bill does pass through Congress, President Obama has pledged to veto it. But if the House were voting on a veto override, they’d need no more than 290 votes — just one more than they had Thursday — to overrule the president.

The administration says the bill would introduce “unnecessary and impractical requirements that would unacceptably hamper our efforts to assist some of the most vulnerable people in the world.”

It would also undermine allies and partners in the Middle East and Europe, the administration says.

Obama argues that the existing vetting process — which includes fingerprinting, examination of personal history and interviews — is sufficient, and the certification requirement the Republicans are calling for would “provide no meaningful additional security.”

The Obama administration has recently begun disclosing details about how Syrian refugees are currently screened. As we reported Tuesday, the process includes multiple agencies and lasts up to two years.

One challenge is that the Syrian government does not cooperate with the U.S., making it difficult to verify some Syrian documents, The Associated Press reports. But the administration says Syrian refugees provide extensive amounts of information for investigators to use.

Politics

4 Things To Know About The Vetting Process For Syrian Refugees

The U.S. has taken in about 2,500 Syrian refugees since 2011, according to the AP, and the Obama administration has announced a plan to accept 10,000 more in the coming year. The White House says half of the refugees admitted to the U.S. are children, and about a quarter are older than 60.

 

With the news that one of the Paris attackers may have entered Europe posing as a refugee from Syria, more than half of American governors are now objecting to Syrian refugees being resettled in their states. On Tuesday, White House officials hosted a call with 34 governors to better explain current security screening measures. And this week, some members of Congress have called on the Obama administration to stop or at least pause the resettlement program until refugees can be properly vetted. Here are four things you should know about the current vetting process and concerns over security:

1. Refugees are screened by several different agencies.

Their first point of a refugee’s contact is with the U.N. High Commission for Refugees. The UNHCR refers people to countries based on whether they have any family members there and where resettlement makes the most sense, say U.S. officials. If that’s the U.S., then refugees are vetted by the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, and the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security. Fingerprints are taken, biographical information is collected. They are then each individually interviewed by U.S. officials trained to verify that they’re bona fide refugees.

Refugees from Syria are then subject to additional screening that looks at where they came from and what caused them to flee their home, stories that are checked out. All of this occurs before a refugee is allowed to set foot in the country.

2. It’s a lengthy process.

As you might imagine, all of the vetting, from interviews to fingerprinting, takes a while. On average, officials say it’s 18 to 24 months before a refugee is approved for admission to the U.S.

The U.S. has admitted some 1,800 Syrian refugees in the past two years, and President Obama wants to allow 10,000 more. The administration says half of those who have been admitted are children and about a quarter of them are adults over 60. Officials say 2 percent are single males of combat age.

3. Physical resettlement.

There are nine different nonprofit groups, six of them faith-based, that help refugees settle in the U.S. Volunteers with the groups help refugees find homes, furniture, school supplies and jobs.

4. Objections of governors and members of Congress.

Some officials, including FBI Director James Comey, worry there are what Comey has called “gaps” in the vetting process. Experts say U.S. intelligence in Syria isn’t very good, because the U.S. lacks much of a presence on the ground. So there’s no way to compile a thorough watch list of possible terrorists from Syria against which refugees can be checked. Administration officials are briefing governors and members of Congress about the process, but lawmakers may try to pass legislation calling on the administration to suspend its refugee resettlement

Is It Possible


Is it possible, could we as people become color, race and religious blind? How important are the divisions that separate us? American being a microcosm of the world should be an example of how a diverse group should work together. We have always had the capability to be the example beyond our other problems of financial, political and manufacturing malfeasance. In spite of the past 200 plus years of learning to be a world power, we still have a way to go. We should have no place in our mainstream for political misdeeds, tacit bigotry and financial cheats. It is odd that other countries have figured out how to educate their citizens without a mountain of  debt, provided healthcare that works for all without debt. It appears that proper taxing of the citizens and correct use of the taxes is the key. We currently have several  (too many) aspirants to be a candidate for the Presidency, each brings his own baggage yet we are fascinated by their speeches and ranting’s. When the speeches and debates are over we really need to understand what the President can actually do and keeping in mind that there is still the issue (no mistake, issue is the correct word) of Congress. Our Congress has become no more than a group of people who have begun to see themselves as better than the people who placed them in office (repeatedly). With that thought in mind, isn’t it time to decide that our Congress is our real problem and not the President (no matter who it is). None of us would trust anyone who would lie to our faces and then pretend to help yet we have 535 people who have raised that activity to an art form. These seat fillers have avoided action on healthcare so that it fails the people it is designed to help, our 535 could have acted in a statesmanlike manner and made changes that would be even more beneficial to us all however politics took over and we all lost. Now it is election season and  time for the politricks to begin along with the blatant lies about everything and done in our names.

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