Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Scott Brown and what Obama should do

So I did not win the Mass Senatorial election. More's the pity. But looking at who did win, Martha Coa...wait a minute. Scott Brown won the race?! What in the hell is going on, Massachusetts? Isn't this a red state through and through? No. It's not. The constituents of the commonwealth can transcend party lines when the needs arise. And what was the need in this case? Well, it was the need to shoot down a candidate who took this election for granted.

Here in Massachusetts, we hate being talked down to. We get annoyed very easily when we are told how we should act, think, behave and vote. Then we raise our middle finger and do the opposite. Boston Tea Party started it all, and we continue that attitude to this very day. When Coakley figured she had the election wrapped up from day one, she got our heckles up. As she was vying for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat with Obama in office, this was like shooting whales in a barrel. Not so much. Camelot II has ended for the president, and his efforts to push through a National Healthcare Bill is bringing down his stock considerably. Brown getting elected put a halt to that healthcare train. This is a good thing. Universal Healthcare is a fine concept, but it should be done properly, with bipartisan participation.

If Mr. Obama might listen to me for a moment, I have a method for getting his approval ratings up:
1) Put healthcare on the backburner for the moment. Clinton realized that it's a huge uphill battle when he tried to push it through. Take a lesson from Mr. Clinton and relax on UHC.
2) Remove our troops from Iraq. It was a mistake to be there in the first place. The war was a bad move. Time to end our occupation.
3) Take one-third of those troops to aid in the war we should be fighting: hunting down Bin Laden and his organization. Get him. If he's really still alive, that is.

The amount of money that we would save by not being in Iraq could be pumped into the economy or used to pay off the National Debt (or a fraction, anyway).

Friday, January 15, 2010

Today's topic: United States Senate special election in Massachusetts, 2010.

When Senator Ted Kennedy died, the weight of the influence the democrats had in the Senate dropped significantly. Whether you agreed with him or not, Kennedy was a remarkable senator and definitely had the voice of the people of his constituency heard on a national level. So who could possibly fill his shoes? No-one, really. A junior senator holds a vote but not much influence. But there is considerable nationwide interest in this campaign. The GOP are hoping to upset many applecarts with the election of Republican Scott Brown. The Obama administration really needs a democrat, so Martha Coakley is getting a lot of attention. And there's liberatarian party candidate Joe Kennedy (no relation to Ted) who could be a force for good in the Senate, but is most likely going to be a vote sucker for the other two. Let's look at the candidates in a very, very brief summation.

Martha Coakley (D): a liberal candidate, she basically fulfills the very definition of an Obama Democrat. Coakley supports the healthcare reform, ending the war in Afghanistan, supports gay marriage rights and strengthening hate crime laws.

Scott Brown (R): very much a staunch republican, he supports what you would expect from a republican candidate. Brown positions himself as a fiscally conservative candidate, supporting lower taxes and is against wasteful spending. He is against late-term abortions, same-sex marriage and is in favor of gun rights.

Joseph L. Kennedy (I): born Joseph Lewis Rodriguez and placed in the foster care system early in life, he is a true outsider to the political realm. He is against healthcare reform, the wars in Irag and Afghanistan, further taxation, supports gay marriage, wants to abolish Federal Dept. of Education and in favor or Ron Paul's "Free Competition in Currency Act".

and finally:

Mulderjoe (I): a cynical candidate, is pretty much going to call a horse a horse and will not B.S. you. I will take Washington by storm and will be very vocal in voicing the opinions of the citizens of the commonwealth. I will do my best to bring our troops back home as soon as possible and put all of the money spent on these ridiculous wars into getting our country back to a fiscally viable superpower. Once the country is financially stable, I will commission a military task force to hunt down the architects of 9/11 and will not rest until Osama Bin Laden is captured...which is what we should have been doing since the Twin Towers fell. I support gay marriage, mostly because this whole political unrest about it is absurd. If two people want to marry and be legally responsible for their partner, that's fine. Why anyone would want to marry is beyond me, but that's okay. I am completely against wasteful spending, and there's a lot of it. I will call out idiocy wherever I see it in the government and I will hold myself accountable for the will of the people under my constituency.

Thank you and vote on Tuesday the 19th of 2010.