Harry Reid didn’t get the last word. In response to his comments asserting that a deal is a deal, the GOP establishment has suddenly decided to use economic theories that they previously rejected. The argument against every Democratic proposal to stimulate the economy and create jobs has been we can’t afford it. The argument in favor of every spending cut that harms seniors and students and the poor is that we can’t afford programs for the people. The argument against allowing the Bush tax cuts is that we can’t afford to increase revenue in order to pay down the national debt. Besides if we take the money out of the pockets of hedge fund managers, they won’t continue creating all the jobs they haven’t been creating.

But now that the sacred military ox is being gored, the cacophony of voices has changed the tune. The military industrial complex simply can’t have any cuts; even if a law passed one year ago requires it, because cutting spending now will cost jobs. We can’t afford any cuts to the military industrial complex, because--this time we really mean it--cuts to the military industrial complex will cost jobs. We promise we are focused on jobs this time. Really.

It didn’t matter when government cuts in spending resulted in lost teaching jobs. It didn’t matter when government cuts in spending resulted in lost construction jobs. It didn’t matter when government cuts in spending resulted in lost police jobs. But we can’t afford to lose even one job in the military industrial complex. If we don’t spend money on military hardware that the Pentagon doesn’t want, we are gutting the military.

If you didn’t see this coming, you’ve been asleep. But here are just a few comments made by Republicans yesterday in response to what Reid said the day before:

John Kyle, (R-AZ) said “The whole point here is to try to get some economic growth, job creation, to get out of this recession...Why would we risk going backward with policy that even CBO says would be the wrong prescription right now?”

John McCain (R-AZ) said “I think it makes it pretty clear what Senator Reid doesn’t understand are the devastating effects on our nation’s security that Secretary Panetta has so graphically described…I wish [Panetta] would take a trip down to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and tell the president we cannot afford this from a national security standpoint…That isn’t John McCain’s opinion; that is Leon Panetta’s opinion.”

Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said “Gutting the military should be the last thing we want to do…[sticking to the debt limit deal would] “destroy our military and shoot ourselves in the head…Everybody should want to avoid that.”

Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H) said “I personally think that staving off sequestration is something that needs to happen before the election…I don’t think we should put our military and put our defense industrial base and our national security [at risk] and play political football with it.”

Democrats have been saying what they’ve been saying all along. Any attempt to reduce the national debt needs to have both spending cuts and increases in revenue. Everything is on the table for cuts. Everything--even Medicare and Defense.

Carl Levin (D-MI) said ““I think we’ll avoid sequestration, but the only way to avoid it is if everybody is in the soup together…When people see what the impact is, which is terrible on defense [and] on domestic programs, I think people will come together and say, ‘We will not let … irrational, across-the-board, nonprioritized massive cuts occur’…People will come together when they see what the impacts are.”

Don’t count on it Carl. This is an election year. Nobody is focused on what is right for America and her citizens. The GOP focus is on screwing Obama, consequences be damned. After all he isn’t really an American, is he?

Homework

Definition of Sequestration

Politico: Source of All Quotes

AZ Backs Off on Birther Crap

Mike Coffman Steps in Birther Crap

Yesterday I wrote about how the budget approved in the House and sent to the Senate in Washington proved that Republicans can’t be trusted to honor their word. Just last year they agreed to a specific level of spending cuts over the next decade; agreed to not fight budgets with deficits so long as the target spending cuts were obtained; agreed to use a balanced approach to balancing the budget; and agreed to revert back to automatic increases in the national debt limit, so long as the prescribed cuts were included in the budget.

I started, but did not finish, analyzing Obama’s budget right here on this blog. One thing anyone who bothered to read the analysis should have figured out was that Obama was sticking to the agreed upon plan, as laid out in a bill that he signed into law. The Obama budget is full of ideas to save money by combining departments; by doing things more efficiently in government; by eliminating duplicative programs. It also has ideas of how to increase revenue by getting Americans back to work, and changing how government run health care programs assign co-pays.

Obama took the GOP at their word by including military cuts in his budget and by making Medicare and Medicaid more financially viable. The GOP responded by saying, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah—I had my fingers crossed. They’ve moved from profits over people to perpetual war over people. The government, as practiced by the GOP, is no longer for the people, unless the people are carrying some implement of destruction.

Apparently the view of perpetual war, at the expense of any kind of safety net for “we the people”, was enough to get Harry Reid to take his boxing gloves out of retirement. According to Politico, he had this to say: “I am not going to back off the sequestration…That’s the law we passed. We did it because it wouldn’t make things easy for us. It made it so we would have to do something. And if we didn’t, these cuts would kick in…To now see the Republicans scrambling to do away with the cuts to defense, I will not accept that…My people — in the state of Nevada and I think the country — have had enough of whacking all the programs. We’ve cut them to a bare bone, and defense is going to have to bear their share of the burden.”

I just hope that Reid isn’t bringing boxing gloves to a gun fight. We already know that the GOP doesn’t fight fair.

Homework

DEMS Holding GOP to Bargain

Everything You Never Wanted to Know About the Defense Budget

Remember a year ago when the House and Senate could not agree on a budget plan? The House threatened to shut down government, and the result was that the credit rating of the US was downgraded. Eventually they punted all decisions to a super committee, with specific requirements for budget cuts. If the committee could not come to an agreement, which they couldn’t, then there was a formula that dictated which cuts would be made. Obama signed that bill into law, believing that it would end debate over raising the debt ceiling so long as the formula was enforced.

Fast forward to last week: The GOP controlled House once again submitted a budget to the Senate. The Senate rejected the budget, in part because it ignored the formulas imposed just one year ago. The vote in the Senate was 58 to 41.  So, Obama’s budget was rejected. Ryan’s budget was rejected. The compromise formula for making budget cuts was rejected. Are we being set up once again for a government shut-down?

Every budget submitted by the GOP refuses to cut military spending, refuses to raise taxes, and guts Social Security and Medicare. Both Social Security and Medicare have revenue streams devoted to them. The GOP wants to divert those revenue streams to military spending. It bets the question, if we gut Social Security and Medicare, effectively reducing the lifespan of American Citizens, who are we protecting with all of that military spending. We are taking money out of the pockets of the elderly in order to blow things up all over the world. Why? Who benefits? Certainly not the countries where we are waging perpetual war…

Homework:

Senate Rejects House Budget Plan

White House Budget

Ryan budget

Analysis of Budget Debate

When I received a phone call telling me that there had been some kind of altercation at a Republican meeting, I had no idea what would come crawling out of the wood work when I started digging into that story.

Here’s what I know that I didn’t know before: Republicans have no relationship with truth. Stories of racism within the GOP are true. The party is engaging in cannibalism.

About the truthiness:

Jennifer Bailey posted this at Colorado Pols (For the complete unedited text, go to ColroadoPols): “Police were not called, this is a blatant lie.”  (I posted the police report to this blog yesterday.) “I can tell you that if they would have been called it would have been Garry Brewer who would have been found to be the instigator.” (Read the police report.) “He pushed Jerry Huntsinger in the shoulder from behind! The video shows clearly that the our [sic]Co Assessor and her husband are out of control.” (Kinda wish I could see that video!)

“As far as WSCA and Kevin McCarney, he serves in no leadership position on the WSCA. …Kevin represents the Republican Party and he is the only one from the Republican Party "officials" that's on the board in any capacity.” (How can it be that he both serves in no leadership position and that he represents the GOP on the board? As for other GOP serving on the board, that is hard to confirm because WSCA does not list their officers on their website. I was given the name of at least one other individual who is both a GOP officer and a WSCA officer.)

About the racism:

Jerry Hunsinger wrote in a document that was attached to the police report: “I am a Confederate, always have been.”

About the Cannibalism:

 (I guessed that the following post was from Marjorie Haun, but a little birdie told me that the spelling errors makes it more likely to be someone else—again go to ColoradoPols for the unedited version.)

“Ralphie nailed it” (Ralphie of the Junction Daily blog has been nit-picking my posts at ColoradoPols since I first started posting there. That would be progressive cannibalism.)

“- Kanola blogged before checking her her [sic]first story - the cat is out of the bag. Now everyone in Mesa County knows Kanola's Republican source, none other than Jennifer Baily.” (Ah, no, Jennifer Bailey and I are not communicating about anything.)

Baily boasts her "conservative" credentials with the Western Slope Conservative Alliance, acts like she still works for Congressman Tipton (fired as the story goes) and claims credit for successfully launching Republican Ray Scott into office (and may still have an offial [sic]title with his campaign).”

“Kanola, on the other hand, ran for office (maybe against Ray Scott - she had such a hard time deciding which office to run for-I don't think anybody remembers) as a Democrat, hangs out at Main Street Bagels to make certain everyone in town thinks she is part of the Democrat inner circle and most recently proclaims an official tie to Dan Robinson's campaign-against Ray Scott.” (I did run against Ray Scott until I switched to the Senate race against Steve King. I am part of the Democratic inner circle by virtue of being the Treasurer of the local party. I am co-chair of Dan Robinson’s campaign.)

“The story that has most Mesa County Democrats and Republicans laughing (never together, but certainly at the same time) is the revealation of the unholy alliance between Kanola and Baily.” (That would be an unholy alliance, but anyone believing that I have any relationship at all with Jennifer Bailey is certifiably nuts.)

“ Politicos in both parties are stunned at the union of these outcasts from their respective parties. Some call it "twin sisters of different parties." (Given the grief I’ve given some DEMS recently for holes in data collected at Spring Fling, I may soon be an outcast, but so far I’m still in there plugging away at getting candidates elected, and raising money for the party.)

“While it is unfortunate that the campaign season will likely bring an end to the bi-partisan chuckle now going on in Mesa County, both parties should agree that it is only fair to Scott and Robinson to allow them to disavow any connection to Baily and Kanola and to move forward with their respective campaigns. (I plan to continue to help Dan Robinson win election, and send Ray Scott back to Grand Junction where he can have coffee with Jennifer Bailey.)

“Perhaps Baily and Kanola can find their own coffee shop, and keep both parties happier just a little longer.”

Think about this—people like the two posting comments at ColoradoPols are active in the Mesa County Republican Party. Is it any wonder that our GOP elected officials are such Neanderthals? The party appears to be a tea cup short of a tea service.

 Homework

WSCA website

Junction Daily Blog

I paid $1.25 to obtain a copy of the actual police report. Apologies to Jennifer Bailey. Nobody phoned
the police. Someone physically walked into the police department to report an incident. The case status
is inactive. After reading the actual police report, I stand by my original comment: The GOP needs anger
management therapy.

Names have been redacted from the report, but this is the text:

On Wednesday, 05-09-2012, I responded to the front counter to speak with [Redacted] and [Redacted]
who wished to report a suspicious incident that occurred at the Mesa County Republican board meeting
that had occurred between 1700 and 1740 hours.

The reporting parties advised me of the following:

Both [Redacted] and [Redacted] advised me that on Wednesday, 05-09-2012, they were attending a
board meeting of the Mesa County Republicans located at 1114 N. 1st Street. There was some apparent
animosity between some of the members. [Redacted] described these as Tea Party members. One
member, known to them as Marjorie Haun, was aggressively putting a digital recording device in front of
[Redacted] each time she spoke. [Redacted] ask Haun not to record her but Haun continued.

As [Redacted] was walking past another Republican member, known to him as Jerry Hunsinger, he
placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and told him that he had received the e-mails. As [Redacted] did
so, Hunsinger spun around with his arm extended. [Redacted] stated in doing so Hunsinger struck the
woman beside him, known only to [Redacted] by the last name of Chazen. Chazen accused [Redacted] of
hitting her, rather than Hunsinger. [Redacted] left the meeting and came to the police department to file
a report.

[Redacted] gave me copies of two emails that had been forwarded to him by another membr of the
party. Both emails appear to be written by Jerry Hunsinger who identified himself as SCV# 321254, which
stand for Sons of the Confederate Veterans. Both e-mails state Hunsinger’s open animosity towards
[Redacted]. Copies of those e-mails are included with this report.

[Redacted] also gave me a copy of a letter sent to the Grand Junction Free Press which speaks of a
divisiveness between the “new blood” and the “old guard”.

[Redacted] were looking for documentation of this incident in case they were accused of being the
aggressors.

I guess that they were right. Even though the names were redacted, my educated guess is that the
people filing the police report were Garry and Barbara Brewer, and Jennifer Bailey did, indeed, accuse
them of being the aggressors in her post at ColoradoPols.

Now for the attachments:
An E-mail was sent to the Grand Junction Free Press signed Jerry A. Hunsinger, delegate 3 rd CD and State GOP Assemblies. It was forwarded to [Redacted] on April 28, 2012
The text follows.

• 
  

New blood in the GOP

Will be thorn to old leaders

In response to the Gary Harmon May 19 article, “GOP candidates get ready for a showdown,” I
say, “Way to go Jennifer Bailey. All we need do is just back off and you or one of the other sanctimonious
WSCA Board members will say something stupid that clearly shows how out of touch you are.”

Bailey’s comment in Harmon’s article has to be a last-ditch dffort to prop up Tipton. Guess what, I was
at that debate and Tipton got whipped. Baily and her group had a chance to back the rising star, Bob
McConnell, but no, they backed a man who has already proved he cannot beat Salazar.

In case she hasn’t noticed, politicians aren’t faring too well. McInnis, Norton and Tipton are in for a
surprise at the state assembly. We are taking our country back and we no longer need organizations like
the Western Slope Conservative Alliance and retread politicians to help with that effort. New blood is
[balance of sentence is illegible in the copy.]

The final page of the report contains the text of two Emails received by [Redacted]

The below are the e-mails I received:

This was sent April 21, 2012

If the SCV meeting I just walked out of is representative of what I can expect, I will never attend another.
What the hell is up with the Sons of the Revolution or whomever they were? I don’t want to do anything
with them.

Furthermore [Redacted] is a low-life piece of shit as far as I am concerned and I have no intention of
participating in anything with him in attendance.

Jerry Hunsinger

SCV #321254

This was sent April 22, 2012

I think I was clear insofar as [Redacted] is concerned—I can’t stand to even look at the crooked son-of-a
bitch. If he is going to appear from “time-to-time,” I will not attend.

I have absolutely no interest in associating with SAR; I am a Confederate, always have been. Combing
the two diametrically opposed ideologies is of no interest whatsoever to me, nor will I ever be part of
a “camp leadership team” that supports such crap.

I’ve been reading about fights breaking out at GOP conventions and thinking that the GOP needs to sign up for anger management therapy.

Most of the fighting seems to be between Ron Paul supporters and Mitch Romney supporters. According to the Daily Paul website, “In Oklahoma, in a scene that has been called "contention at the convention", a Romney supporter (believed to be almost 80-years-old) punched a Ron Paul supporter in the head. Police were called after the punch was thrown over a disagreement on a vote.”

Grand Junction isn’t immune. I was told that a fight broke out at a recent Grand Junction Republican meeting (May 9.) Evidently two factions of the party were fighting over who would be the spokesperson for the Romney campaign locally.  According to my source, Grand Junction police were called to break up a fist fight between Jerry Huntsinger (author and civil war re-enactor) and Garry Brewer (husband of Barbara Brewer, Mesa County Assessor). Evidently Marjorie Haun and Jennifer Baily were witnesses to the fisticuffs.

I filed a Colorado Open Records Act request to get the police report with the Grand Junction police department. The response I received was that the altercation took place outside of the city limits, so I would have to file a request with the county sheriff. I’ll eventually get around to doing that, but it may be a while.

I’ve been getting whiffs of anger within the local GOP membership from responses to comments I’ve made at the Sentinel’s online edition. There are a couple of names that keep showing up in the E-mail letters to the editor: Kevin McCarney and Marjorie Haun, and they also frequently dispute anything I have to say in my comments. From what I’ve figured out, the main-stream Republicans want to claim ownership of the Tea Party. The Mesa County GOP and Western Slope Conservative Alliance (WSCA) have inter-locking boards. Many of the executives of the GOP are also executives of WSCA, which is claiming to be the local Tea Party. GJResult/Tea Party, claims to be the original Tea Party and is accusing WSCA of identity theft.

So, from what I’ve pieced together so far, there are four groups within the local GOP—the camp that includes Brewer, the camp that includes Huntsinger, the camp that controls WSCA, and members of GJResult/Tea Party who have not yet renounced their GOP affiliation. For the record, I am officially a member of GJResult, by virtue of signing up to receive information from them at their website. That caused a bit of a dust up between the GJResult president and bully Kevin McCarney, 2nd Vice Chair of the local GOP and officer of WSCA. McCarney doesn’t think that liberals should be allowed to talk to conservatives. I’ve met McCarney—he seems the type to result to fisticuffs.

In the meanwhile I have a report due at the Secretary of State’s office for the Mesa County Democratic Party. DEMS don’t always agree, but I’ve yet to see anybody throw a punch, even when it comes to money!

Homework

Daily Paul Blog

Link to Video of OK News Report

Link to GJResult website

Link to WSCA website

Link to Mesa County Republicans Website

It isn’t often when I open an E-mail blast from Jonathan Turley that is about laws in Colorado. This morning, however, he sent out commentary about a Colorado court striking down Colorado’s Day of Prayer. This E-mail particularly struck home with me because I had recently received an E-mail from a member of the local Atheists and Free Thinkers Society chastising the Mesa County DEMs for having a prayer to start their most recent Spring Fling.

My response to the E-mail about the Spring Fling was to suggest the author make a presentation at our next Executive Committee Meeting, scheduled for this Friday. I hope she takes me up on that. I was personally surprised that we started the official proceedings of our Spring Fling with a prayer that invoked the name of Jesus Christ. It rather reminded me of Janet Rowland and her insistence on prayer before each and every County Commissioner Meeting.

According to Turley, here is what was said in a unanimous decision by a panel of the Court of Appeals:

“The panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that “[a] reasonable observer would conclude that these proclamations send the message that those who pray are favored members of Colorado’s political community, and that those who do not pray do not enjoy that favored status.”

The practice, they ruled, ran afoul of the Preference Clause of the Religious Freedom section of Colorado’s Constitution” because such proclamations are “predominantly religious; they lack a secular context; and their effect is government endorsement of religion as preferred over nonreligion.”

Homework

Colorado Court Strikes Down Day of Prayer

I’m planning to spend the day with my mother. She asked me to pick her up around 10:00 a.m. Usually she goes to church on Sunday, but for some reason she isn’t going this Sunday.

I am very fortunate to still have my mother. She is one amazing woman. She is 82 and still living on her own. Although she did have a sprinkler system installed earlier this year because it was getting to be a burden to schlep hoses around in order to water her lawn. She decided that she wants to live in her home for at least five more years; she hopes the sprinkler system will help make that possible. Now she has to push a button to water her plants.

She had to plant grass where the trenches were dug. She told me she had never planted grass before, so she wasn’t sure that she could do that. But she did it, and now there is baby grass popping up along the trench lines. That is a good description of my mother’s philosophy—you never know if you can do something until you try it. Just try.

The other day I told her that she was a very modern woman. We were in the car driving, and out of the blue she told me that she wasn’t upset with the idea of Gay Marriage. She said that same sex couples marrying didn’t hurt her in any way, but she wasn’t going to try it.

The president of a museum is renting a house I own in South Dakota. Normally this is my summer home, but I rent it on occasion to vacationers. In this case, the family is building a new home and needed a place to stay until they could get the lay of the land in a new town. My house is completely furnished, so it made it easy for the family to close up a house in Montana without having to invest in a lot of new furniture for a temporary living arrangement. My tenant recently asked me who the artist was of all of the paintings in the house, and what her relationship to the house was. The artist is my mother and she was married to my father in that house in 1948. They were married until his death in 2010.

Mother is still painting; although she complains that her hand shakes, making it difficult. She once told me that she just liked to put color on paper. I’m glad that she is still doing it. That’s another bit of philosophy I got from my mother. If you love doing something, keep doing it. It doesn’t matter if it pleases anyone but you. Her paintings are still pleasing others. A friend of mine recently mentioned that she would like a painting of a sunflower. I told my mother. Mother painted a sunflower, and gave it to my friend, who would have gladly purchased it from her.

So, I don’t know why mother is skipping church this morning, but I’m really glad to be able to spend the entire day with her!

Putin in Charge

Russia recently held an election. I don’t know if it was any more honest than the elections that are held in the US. I’ve heard that if Jimmy Carter watched our elections, they would not meet international standards. Whether honest, or not doesn’t much matter. Putin, who seems to want to be president for life, is back in the saddle again.

One of his first acts was to decide to send his puppet and predecessor to the G8 summit, which was moved from Chicago to Camp David in order to make Putin feel more comfortable. The Obama administration claims the substitution is not a snub. The Putin administration claims that he is just too busy setting up his government after his election.

What I found interesting in the Homework link to this story is: “Since Monday, activists have been staging flash mobs across Moscow: suddenly assembling in public places, camping and staying there for the night.” That can’t be comforting for Putin. Western technology is helping ordinary citizens protest his government.

Homework:

Putin Cancels Meeting

JPMorgan Chase Blew $2-billion

For some reason I haven’t written much lately about the financial industry. Having spent a lifetime working in the industry, I just got so sick of it that I’ve been ignoring it. It is hard to ignore when the bank that holds my mortgage suddenly loses $2-billion, after spending buckets full of money lobbying for less regulation. At least in this case, it is the shareholders, not the depositors or the taxpayers who are left holding the empty bag.

One of the positions I’ve long held is that the U.S. should use anti-trust laws to break up the industry. There should be no such thing as “too big to fail.” For a party that claims to love competition, it is amusing to watch the GOP turn themselves into pretzels defending the “job creators” who keep hemorrhaging money because there is nobody insuring that they engage in safe and sound business practices. The telephone industry didn’t disappear when AT&T was broken up, neither will the finance industry. We need to stop pandering to the greedy SOBs and start breaking up the industry into components that can be easily managed and regulated. The unintended consequence of smaller financial institutions will be MORE competition.

Homework

New York Times Story About Risky Trading

Governor Hickenlooper showed some political spine when he called legislators back to work Monday. Legislators allowed the 2012 legislative session to expire at midnight on the 120th day without debating a civil unions bill. In fact, the GOP leadership was so afraid of debate on the civil unions bill that they also failed to vote on more than two dozen bills with bi-partisan support.

Special sessions are extremely rare in Colorado. They can be called two ways: by the governor or by written request by 2/3 of the members of each house. The last time there was a special session was in 2006, the result of controversial immigration legislation. Evidently special sessions are favored by Democrats—Dick Lamm called five during the 12 years that he was governor, and Roy Romer called one about tax rebates.

There is a rumor floating around that Hickenlooper phoned five large GOP donors and called in some favors. The five donors promptly notified the GOP that they could expect no money from them in the coming election. If this rumor has any truth to it, we can expect a quick up and down vote on civil unions early next week.

Homework:

Wikipedia Discussion of Colorado General Assembly

Washington Post Story About Special Session