Sen. Barack Obama’s Floor Speech, March 20, 2006 -

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.  Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally.  Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

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Question of the day: what’s the point of a debt LIMIT if it can just be raised each time the people who spend our money want to spend more?  Shouldn’t increasing the debt limit be put to a vote for all the taxpayers?  Isn’t it our money?

I had mentioned that I’ll be mostly staying away from politics on my blog.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t have whallitics!

But first, a tip of the hat to Dawg for introducing me to Toonlet.  I decided to take this mornings political tweetfest between Dave2 and I and make it fun, enlightening, and easy to read, even for kids!

I figure it’s like this – Dave2 can draw.  Like, awesome-like.  It’s like he’s an artist or something.  So I have to use technology to even the field.  It actually comes out pretty fair – he has the artistic talent, and I have the brains.

(yes, I know it’s hard to read when it’s resized to fit my blog – so click on it to read it in it’s glory.  In fact, you can just click on the first one to launch the clip in another browser, and just click on the arrow on the right to go to the next frames)

Ain’t nobody can argue with “So’s your face.”

Yay! A weekly series meant for Sunday, done on Sunday!  

Free Harry Nicolaides

I rarely beg on the blog of whall.  

A good blog friend of mine, Adam Daniel Mezei (also on utterli and twitter) brought this to my attention and I’m bringing it to yours.

Would you please sign this petition to ask for Harry Nicolaides to be freed from Thailand prison?

There’s an interesting (and outrageous) backstory to the whole deal, which I encourage you to listen to or read, but if you don’t have time to learn, please have time to sign.

Side note: If you’re on utterli, I also encourage you to follow Mr Adam (also known as ADM) mentioned above.  As the Eastern Europe’s Utterli Ambassador from Prague in Czech Republic (a Canadian transplant) who speaks a million and one languages, he imparts knowledge by proxy… all you have to do is listen to him regularly and you will get wiser about the world.

Shiny’s Plagiarism

If you don’t read Shiny’s Takeout (sound it out, you’ll get it), or haven’t visited it in a while, you should go check out his Plagiarism Week 2009.  

I’ll go ahead and say this now and get it out.  He completely stole this idea from me.

But at least he called it Plagiarism Week.  I guess that’s his “out” so to speak.  His mimicry has been outstanding.  I tell you, this Shiny guy is really funny.  I still laugh out loud when I think about the time I read his political post.  It was the most brilliant thing I read that week.

He’s plagiarized some fantastic bloggers out there.

Stimulus

Although I said I’d steer clear from the politics on my blog, I’ll at least do one more bout of begging.  Call or email or fax your Senator to have him or her vote NO on the Stimulus plan!

You can go to congress.org, put in your zip code on the top right and find your elected officials.  Most Congressmen and women allow you to contact them directly online, so do it.

At least learn what all’s in this stimulus plan.  THEN tell your Senator what you think.  You don’t have to agree with me – if you think they should pass it, contact them and tell them.  But I think if you learn about the package, you’ll see more and more why passing it is a horrendous idea.

Best of LOLcats

Which is your favorite?

Mine is the “unsettling” one.

I composed this utter on the way to work this morning, and liked it so much I decided I’d transcribe it and make it my post today.

(I can’t wait for auto-dictation on utterli)

So click on over there and listen to me talking about it off the cuff, or read on in the extended entry.

(more…)

I saw this on Poppy’s place so I thought to myself… “maybe I should delve deeper into my own actual beliefs and see where the candidates stand.”  I really haven’t done ANY issues research on any of the candidates, and have been mostly relying on party lines to help me nudge one way or another, and I figured I’d check out the issues in more depth after the nominees were chosen. 

Pick your 2008 Candidate For President

About the only things I’ve learned over the last two weeks from the caucus and primary were:

1. I like Huckabee more than I thought I would, after seeing him speak.  To me, he looks like a cross between an older Kevin Spacey and a younger Richard Nixon.  Anyone else see this, or is it just me?
2. I liked Obama a LOT more than I thought I would, especially after hearing him speak.  I trust him.  He doesn’t seem to carry the typical political baggage with him.
3. Mitt Romney seems like an arrogant and corrupt fool just another typical politician.
4. Fred Thompson seems to be a lot smarter than I ever thought he could be, but a lot less presidential.  He seems like someone who actually needs to work on the plans and implement them, NOT be the officeholder.   He’d probably be a decent Vice President – less of the spotlight and more of the internal leadership and intelligence to get things done.
5. The Fair Tax is more important than ever to try to support and create awareness about.
6. McCain seems quite accomplished, capable, experienced, calm and I wouldn’t have a problem with his age, especially if he picks a great Vice President who can rise to President in 4 years.  McCain/Huckabee or McCain/Thompson for example.
7. I don’t see how Rudy could be qualified for the national position after being just a Mayor.  Governors seem to have a monopoly on Presidential career stepping stones.  Rudy should go for Governor and then President if it works out.
8. Edwards seems like the same old politician to me he’s always been, and don’t feel like I could trust him at all.  Issues aside, trust is all-important.  What point someone’s stance, if the stance changes based on a poll or the audience they’re speaking to?
9. I’m paying a lot more attention to where lobbyist’s attentions are placed.
10. Hillary is still… well, Hillary.  I have definite trust issues with her.  While I have no problem with a female President, it shouldn’t be THIS female.

Here are my results.  Note: I wrote the above list BEFORE taking the quiz.

So, this surprises me some.  Before this, I probably would have rated it Huckabee, McCain, Obama, Paul, Thompson.  But the quiz doesn’t take into account my polarizing issues, like my distrust for Romney or my “right choice” issue for Thompson.

Now, what would be nice for this quiz to do for poor little ol’ me would be to display all the questions again, with my answers, and show by candidate how much that candidate agreed or disagreed with me on that specific issue.  Then I could probably tweak the “care / don’t care” button as I re-discovered more about my own beliefs around the issues.