Saturday 10/30/2010 what about the day after Monday?

What about the day after Monday? What will happen when Wednesday morning comes? What will have happened in America?  For one, we know we have stopped a potential terrorist attack. This is one that we know of but it is nothing new. We stop potential terrorists every day, this is just one "they" felt comfortanle to share with us. What about the effects of the Mid Terms? Will we finally be rid of Nancy Pelosi and her far left reaching tactics? ( I for one, would like to see it also end Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, and on the state level Jery Brown in California really he's back again?)  There was a rally in Maryland that is all about firing Nancy Pelosi and we know the RNC chairman Michael Steele was there, wearing a fire Pelosi sweat shirt.

Does it matter? I think I have reached critical mass in regards to American Politics. Will the American people come out and make the call or will billions of corporate unmonitored donations all legal under current FEC regulations supported by the recent US Supreme Court swing this election? Is it possible for the Average American to have a say in this process that our founding fathers wanted us all not only to have a say in but wanted all of us to be actively involved in? I can honestly say that we will not know until the day after Monday.

I think the best thing that could happen is a 50/50 split between the parties give the house to the Dems and give the Senate to the republicans, or vice versa, dont give any one party all of the power, NOTHING will get done if that happens? The best thing that ever happened in American Politics I was remindd by my Brother in law Gil, happened During President Clintons second term when Dem's. lost control of  both the house and senate, retaining control of just the house. Why was this so great? It forced repeat FORCED bipartisanship. There was no way the Clinton's wanted to commit Political Suicide. They reached Across the part lines and Governed.They spent the last two years balancing the budget, passing meaningful reforms reducing the welfare rolls, and helping to make conditions favorable for small business to grow and create new jobs. ( you see Senator Reid, Sharron Angle was right, Senators Do NOT create job's they simply vote on legislation making conditions more favorable for small business to expand and hire more people......small business creates jobs not has been Senators from Nevada.).

I have found it interesting the number of Democrats trying to save thier jobs distancing themselves from President Obama. President Obama's approval rate is 48% unfavorable Job Performance 46% favorable ( source:  http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx ) this is a notable improvement in the last six months partially because the focus is off of the President, and focused on the midterms.

My prediction is that the President's approval rating will tank again once the Midterms are over. As for me, I think the midterms will do whatever Billion Dollar Corporations want it to do, right up until the FEC grows some teeth and goes after real campaign reform. The American electoral process has been shanghied by the billion dollar donations, I say billions but we will never know the true amount, why? The US Supreme Court has upheald that unlimited donations by Corporations do not need to be disclosed or monitored by the FEC? According to the US Supreme Courts Ruling in January opened the door to unlimited spending on elections by Corporations and Unions, and other groups. The decission did not affect direct corporate or union contributions to candidates; those are still banned.......huh? what? Nor did it cover spending by political action comitees run by special interests, which must disclose contributors! Huh what? where? WTF? The ruling did however free corporations and unions to spend on independants ads for and against candidates, as well as on other advocacy efforts such as mailings? ( sources: The Louisville Courier Journal, The Non Profit Sunlight foundation, Washington D.C., Google Search,)


In the end this blog is not meant to give legitimacy to the far left or the far right to the tea party or my block party. I am to be sure a Fiscally Conservative Centrist Republican. I am also a Federalist believing that the power should rest with the individual States, not the federal Government ( just like Ronald W. Reagan). I believe that we should reduce the size of Federal Government, wherever practical and fiscally responsible. I am an American, I served in my countries armed service and urge others to do so if for no other reason than to gain the heightened sense of Patriotism I hold dear. I love the emails and phone calls and interaction this blog has allowed me, to talk politics with people from all walks of life. I know with one of my favorite persons in the world residing in Dallas Texas, it initially appeared that we were miles apart on our beliefs but after talking through the blogs I have posted, we found out there was not much we totally disagreed on and there was some we agreed in principal but broke down on funding but the best thing is that we talked about it and we are close, that gives me hope that in the House and the Senate when the blood letting is over that they will all sit around and talk for once openly, and find common ground, and return American Politics to the prominence it once held as the design for Democracy around the world.

I have always felt a duty and honor for my country I will not ever agree with burning the flag, or those that consider themselves witty and hang their flag upside down when an election does not go their way ( an international sign of distress) but I do agree that the freedom of speech and expression gives them that right. To use an old saying from the Vietnam War era, "America love it or leave it man." This is our Country, our home, it is who we are, the most charitable nation on earth. The defenders of freedom and safety around the globe. We are judged and viewed differently by the nations of the world with every administration, that is the greatest gift our forefathers gave us, the founding fathers gave us the freedom of election and democracy, the ability to change the way we are viewed worldwide every 4 or 8 years, all in all I love this place, and I love my fellow Americans, and all I have to say is God Bless America, give us all the courage to go out on the day after Monday and vote our conscience, and do the best we can. Lastly,

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under GOD indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

Bring on the Mid Terms and can someone Please get Ms. Pelosi a dolly to clean out her office!

As we inch ever closer to the 2012 midterms the Republicans are looking at a victory by all accounts. We will be done with Ms. Pelosi as speaker of the house, her glaring, sneering, downright nasty looks. Her backdoor politics and perhaps a separating of the strings she has had attached to the president making him her personal marionette. Maybe not, we may never know the full extent that President Obama sold his sole to the Uber Liberals like Pelosi, Boxer, Finestein,Reid, and others that remain nameless, and shameful.

 

Nancy Pelosi may not go down as the worst Speaker of the house but I for one can't tell you why. Quite the contrary I think she should be categorized as the worst speaker of the house ever in the history of our country. She has been one of the most ruthless, self serving self absorbed minutia struck useless excuses for a politician I have ever seen. She has never understood what the founding fathers had in mind for our country and she has never wanted more than to drag our country into a pit where there is no Moral value to life, where people are free to do anything they want regardless of the consequences to those that surround the offending citizen.we all have freedoms that are inalienable rights this is an inherent right in the vein of the pursuit of life liberty and happiness, however there once existed a Moral imperative that dictated to almost all people that there were moral rights and wrongs. Nancy Pelosi has thrown these all out the window and would have America a virtual free for all if left to her. Thank god for the midterms, and thank God for the departure of Nancy Pelosi!

Now do I blame her for America's problems.....NO MAM/SIR, she is but part of the problem. Do I blame the politicians? No way in hell. Do I blame the system? NO then who you ask? Well the answer is clear you and I are to blame. We vote or don't vote and we get what we deserve. I am not talking just about the beer drinking redneck living in the double wide, why? because believe it or not, exit polling shows they vote. The folks that don't are the middle age  upper blue collar lower white collar Americans 26-45 years old, and the newly able 18 year old through 25 year old and the senior citizens who are no longer mobile. Who does that leave? Well the upper White collar 45 year old and above wealthy folks, the same age group of poor folks, and the seniors who have not yet lost their mobility. we have less than a 50% turnout at major election times and usually less than a 40% turnout for the midterms and off year elections. We need to get all Americans to the polling booth and get their voice heard. Why is it some people do not think that their vote counts why do people think they have no voice? We need to be good stewards of our country and teach our children the process of the vote and why we all need to vote our founding fathers and framers of the constitution risked their life for the right to vote. It is that simple register to vote then just do it, without being a part of the process how then can you complain about the outcome or the government  that we have? Now to digress about the role of Speaker of the house and their importance in US Politics

Tip O'Neill was Speaker of the House for 9 years 350 days ranking him 2nd in US history in terms of length of service. Second only to Sam Rayburn ( who served 17 years and 53 days) Tip O'Neill was a liberal, he was an in your face House Speaker throughout his time as speaker and during the Reagan Administration. However, there was an unwritten rule of respect between the President and the Speaker even though they were on the opposite sides of the isle. They had a mutual respect for the Office of the United States President Not so with Speaker Pelosi, I believe she has more to do with the rise of the TEA PARTY formation and small victories they have achieved, then anyone else in politics today. Tip O'Neill disagreed vehemently with President Reagan on so many different things but never lost his respect for the Office of the President and in the case of President Regan the man. They had what many have called the truly gentlemanly debates. Even dining together on a regular basis to try and find common ground. The speaker of the house represents the party with a majority when that party and the party of the President of the United States are different legislating can be difficult at best. Everything gets to be a game of political brinkmanship. Everything can be open for a campaign issue, bills can be delayed to be used as campaign tools. Here are some area's that change need to be effected. I think if more Americans knew of the process, we would have more people turning up at their polling precinct on voting day.

wikipedia a user controlled website meaning that users of the site can input sometimes questionable material. I will use information supplied by the OEMB during the Regan Presidency which stated that the Democrats through control of either the White house or Senate and House ran up deficit spending for 45 years before President Reagan took office, and during the most recent Bush administration (republican) ran up tremendous deficits largely fighting wars on two fronts at a cost of over 80 Billion dollars a quarter for a nearly 6 year period. Personally being a Gulf War vet I supported the invasion of Iraq, not because of the reasons the Bush administration gave, but because we left the job unfinished in 1991. We left a despot in control of a country that failed to follow through with his terms of surrender in 1991 and he continued to flaunt his disregard for the UN and its 97 separate resolutions condemning his treachery. Sometimes a good guy needs to step in when a bully is suppressing the little guy.

Okay so what does this have to do with the midterms? well all of this has played into the total frustration that Americans feel for the shape of the country. As president Bush left office, it became clear that all of the money going into the war did severe harm to our economy. The election of 2008 which should have been about the ending of the war and repairing the economy was diverted into a finger pointing session allowing the Election to be stolen by smooth talks and promises that have yet to be accomplished. The Guantanamo Bay prison was to be closed in the first 100 days, nope the tribunals were to be moved to NY court rooms nope, we are going to get the economy back on track.....so far over a trillion dollars dumped into the us economy but none of it into the hands of small business but into the hands of wall street companies and insurance companies that made bad decisions. The truth of the matter is that the Glass Stegal Act repealed by President Clinton allowed Banks to buy up Brokerage Companies and sell mortgages as investments as CMO's or Collateralized Mortgage Obligations without telling the investing public what the real dangers were, I know this as fact, I was a Broker asked to sell these securities as bonds backed by the government to my clients (which was only partly true). By allowing these investments to be sold, additional investment capital was raised which was used to invent the sub prime investment market for mortgages, which led to the overbuying of homes via adjustable rate mortgages, which led to the home foreclosures that almost bankrupted the US Economy and may yet. Put all this together and you have for the first time since the great depression an American Populous that is fed up and frustrated with politicians in general. America wants change, and I think the problem will be change at any cost. We may lose some great public servants in what I believe will be a carnage on both sides of the isle.

This can be the most dangerous part of change on a level to the degree we are about to see. As we vote out the incumbents and we fill the house and Senate with new members we will tend to lose some of the leadership the senior leadership and if we are not careful we could end up with an entire house and congress with no Idea of how to make a bill or pass a law or to legislate. I hope we can all make intelligent choices at the polling booths and not make rash decisions just for the purpose of change.

Lastly, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which she stands one nation indivisible Under God with liberty and justice for all

Kevin JAnkoski

Doing a little light reading today and.....

Chose to read the Diary of President Ronald Wilson Reagan. I am amazed by the man, humbled to read his personal thoughts, and learn the way he thought about many things and many people, but more than anything I was gratified to find that he was exactly the type of man that I thought he was all the years I watched him in action and hoped and prayed he was the real deal.

Reading any ones diary is often times embarrassing or uncomfortable but reading the diary of a President of the United States of America is an amazing thing, it brings you into their life and their thoughts. It makes you feel as though you are in the room with him. Ronald Wilson Reagan was a mans man, he rode horses chopped firewood and when he pointed his finger and said Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall he damn well meant it.

I find myself realizing that this man was so much like my grandfather, a man that I loved so much, and he was true to everything he believed in. He hated the fact that after the failed assassination attempt by John Hinkley, he had to wear what he called the Iron Shirt around. He got down right ornery with his secret service detail about not being able to go to church because they felt it was too dangerous, as you read on he won out and decided to go to church anyway. He lived his life the way he felt he should uncompromising on the issues he felt he had an absolute knowledge of righteousness on, and a congenial compromising side that made you feel  you won him over to your side when in fact he had been leaning your way all along.

One of the things that I loved to read in his own words is that his love for his wife and his marriage was real it was no put up job. They had a special marriage, one like I have. There are several references in his personal diary about Nancy ( he called her Mommy) being out of town and how it effected everything from his sleep to his appetite, I am the same way with my wife, its how I know our marriage is a godly based marriage.

President Reagan was truly the real deal. His formal education was in finance from Eureka College, and as I read his diary entries about the double digit inflation, and the huge budget deficits and his plan to bring it all under control you realize that he liked to surround himself with the smartest guys around not so he would have ammunition to say he was right but because he liked to double check that he was right and he was most of the time.

President Reagan took office at a time when President Carter and the Democrats had taken four years to run up the amount of deficit spending to levels that were hitting the stratosphere, all the while President Carter had slash and burned the military spending down to next to nothing. The US Military was at the smallest levels since pre World War two, and he knew that we needed to get our Military might as strong as possible, we needed to break the Soviet Communist Regime by the threat of awesome power that was NON Nuclear in nature (As a footnote I entered the United States Army under President Reagan's first term in 1984).This was an imperative, as President Reagan believed from the start that he had a chance to break through the cold war. This is evidenced by his early apprehension to sell surplus grain to the Soviet Union, something we had been doing for years before he took office. He was afraid that if we continued to sell surplus grain to the Soviets, there would be no reason for the Soviets to change or even to give pause to the idea of change.

President Reagan in his 1984 State of the Union address called for scientists to find weapons that would make Nuclear weapons obsolete, he was honest that it may take 20 years or more but that it was not just important, but a moral imperative that we make these terrible weapons obsolete, for the safety of our children's children's children. He wanted to ensure a safer place in this world for my kids, and he did. My daughter Penelope and my son Cole will never know the duck and cover drills I did in elementary school in the time of the cold war, when the real possibility of a Nuclear War loomed ever present, when the United States lived in a time where the Soviet Union actually had plans to take over the world for communism. We owe a debt of gratitude that President Reagan demanded a stronger military as well as the MX missile program at a time of double digit inflation and the 14-20% interest rates, and half a trillion dollar budget deficit, and the Democrats screaming into every available microphone that President Reagan was wasting taxpayer money on weapons while running the deficit up even higher.

Back in the Eighties the President was required to make projections to congress on where the economy would be in five years. President Reagan hated this as he felt is it was a monumental waste of time compiling all the data that was basically a stab in the dark as we had no way to make those predictions accurately then. This ridiculous ruling was repealed by executive order by President George H.W. Bush in 1989.

President Reagan took the worry to heart, he worried that his plan to fight inflation, lower interest rates and spur on the economy, would be torpedoed by his plan to build up the military, but he also knew that if he was right and he built up the military, the defense contractors would begin hiring again, the increase in the US Military would scare the Russians (it did that) and the new MX missile would force the Soviet's to the table to talk about real limitations on Nuclear build up. He also knew his tax cuts and economic package would work.

What I find out as amazing is that he was right on all counts, and when he and General Secratary of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev met in 1985 the US's views of the strength of the Soviet Economy and Military were extremely overly optimistic, and President Reagan saw the opportunity, and he went for it. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, gave way to Perestroika and Glasnost, followed by the fall of communism and the fact that the Soviets didn't even have the capacity to feed their people, this made Salt I and Salt II possible and are responsible for the relationship we have now with the Russian Federation note the absence of the term USSR. I can't wait to read and re-read this book of his diary.

Although I am only half way through the book I find myself looking throughout the Republican Party for a 72 year old candidate for president with a John Wayne swagger, a true and unwavering love for his wife, that shows the ability and capacity for working out differences and overlooking idiosyncrasies. I want a President faithful, loyal, and true to the Office of the President of the United States of America. I need glasses because I am not finding that candidate. I will continue to look around. The American People missed that opportunity in John McCain in 2008 and I fear we will regret it for years to come.

Lastly in closing, I pledge allegence to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation UNDER GOD indivisable with liberty and justice for all.