Welcome

Welcome to my blog http://www.skegley.blogspot.com/ . CAVEAT LECTOR- Let the reader beware. This is a Christian Conservative blog. It is not meant to offend anyone. Please feel free to ignore this blog, but also feel free to browse and comment on my posts! You may also scroll down to respond to any post.

For Christian American readers of this blog:


I wish to incite all Christians to rise up and take back the United States of America with all of God's manifold blessings. We want the free allowance of the Bible and prayers allowed again in schools, halls of justice, and all governing bodies. We don't seek a theocracy until Jesus returns to earth because all men are weak and power corrupts the very best of them.
We want to be a kinder and gentler people without slavery or condescension to any.

The world seems to be in a time of discontent among the populace. Christians should not fear. God is Love, shown best through Jesus Christ. God is still in control. All Glory to our Creator and to our God!


A favorite quote from my good friend, Jack Plymale, which I appreciate:

"Wars are planned by old men,in council rooms apart. They plan for greater armament, they map the battle chart, but: where sightless eyes stare out, beyond life's vanished joys, I've noticed,somehow, all the dead and mamed are hardly more than boys(Grantland Rice per our mutual friend, Sarah Rapp)."

Thanks Jack!

I must admit that I do not check authenticity of my posts. If anyone can tell me of a non-biased arbitrator, I will attempt to do so more regularly. I know of no such arbitrator for the internet.











Friday, July 22, 2011

What have we learned?

What have we learned in 2,056 years?




"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled,



public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be



tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should



be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to



work, instead of living on public assistance."



- Cicero - 55 BC




Evidently nothing.

I figured, Doug,but I'm sure it has come through before

See if you can figure this out - NO peeking!








I am sending this only to my smart friends. See if you can figure out what these words have in common.



1 Banana

2 Dresser

3 Grammar

4 Potato

5 Revive

6 Uneven

7 Assess



Are you peeking or have you already given up?

Give it another try Look at each word carefully.



(You'll kick yourself when you discover the answer.)



This Is Cool.

Answer: No, it is not that they all have at least 2 double letters, nor is it about the vowel arrangements, tempting though they were at first glance..



Scroll down











Answer:

In all of the words listed, if you take the first letter, place it at the end of the word, and then spell the word backwards, it will be the same word.



Did you figure it out? No? Then send it to more smart people and stump them as well. Then, you'll feel better too.

NewsMax.com on possible three trillion dollar debt cut

Forward Article Democrats reacted angrily to reports that the White House is cutting a deal with House Republicans to boost the U.S. debt ceiling and reduce deficits by about $3 trillion over 10 years without immediate revenue increases.



President Barack Obama’s team has told congressional leaders it is pursuing such a deal, according to two officials familiar with the talks, as the White House and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio denied one was at hand.



The officials, who described outlines of the plan on condition of anonymity, said congressional leaders were told it would enact spending reductions while calling for a future tax overhaul that could raise $1 trillion in additional revenue.



Obama summoned Democratic leaders from the House and Senate to a White House meeting at 5:30 p.m., a Democratic official said.



Little more than a week is left before the Aug. 2 deadline for raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling and averting a default. Negotiations for a deficit-cutting deal to set the stage for raising the cap were moving quickly, and some Democrats said they feared they might be asked to swallow a plan they couldn’t accept: steep reductions in programs including Medicare and Social Security, with no promise of higher tax revenue.



Lew Meeting



Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada confronted White House Budget Director Jack Lew about such a possible deal at a closed-door lunch at the Capitol, and Lew said he wasn’t aware of any agreement, according to Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. Some Democrats believe they are being left out as Obama bargains with Boehner, Lieberman said.



Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, said a major budget deal that doesn’t include new revenue “obviously” couldn’t pass the Democratic- controlled Senate.



“We are very volcanic at this moment,” Senator Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, said as she left the session with Lew. She said Democrats don’t want an agreement similar to last year’s deal between Obama and Republicans that extended Bush-era tax cuts for all taxpayers, including the wealthy.



‘False’



The news of a potential deal in the debt-limit dispute was first reported today by the New York Times and was quickly denied by White House press secretary Jay Carney. Boehner said in a Twitter message that reports of a deal were “false.” Lew, leaving his session with Senate Democrats, said, “There is no agreement.”



“There is no progress to report,” Carney said at a briefing in Washington. He said the administration is “absolutely confident” an agreement to avert a default can be reached before Aug. 2, when the Treasury Department says the U.S. would exhaust its borrowing authority.



Standard & Poor’s warned there is a 50 percent chance it will lower the U.S. government’s AAA credit rating by one or more levels within three months. S&P said today that, even if Congress raises the debt limit in time to avert a default, it might lower the U.S. sovereign rating to AA+ with a negative outlook if it isn’t accompanied by a “credible solution” on the debt level.



Borrowing Costs



Such a ratings change, which could come as soon as early August, would “modestly raise” the federal government’s borrowing costs, S&P said. If the U.S. defaults on some obligations after Aug. 2, even if it pays bondholders, S&P forecast short-term interest rates would rise by 50 basis points or 0.50 percentage points and long-term interest rates by 100 basis points or 1 percentage point.



Boehner plans to meet with rank-and-file Republicans tomorrow morning to brief them on the status of the talks. Republicans insist that any debt-ceiling boost be accompanied by spending cuts and measures to reduce the long-term debt without raising taxes.



Boehner told reporters he has prepared his membership for the possibility of a compromise with Democrats to raise the debt limit, and that he believed a majority of the 240 Republicans are prepared to do so. “We have a responsibility to act,” he said.



Tax Revenue



Democrats say more tax revenue must be part of any final compromise.



“The president always talked about balance, that there had to be some fairness in this, that this can’t be all cuts,” Reid told reporters at the Capitol. “There has to be a balance, there has to be some revenue with the cuts. My caucus agrees with that. I hope the president sticks with that. I’m confident he will.”



Lieberman said Democrats “are anxious that the president is negotiating with Speaker Boehner, and that somehow that an agreement made there will be forced on the Senate.”



At the same time, a bipartisan group of six senators who revived hopes this week for a grand bargain haven’t produced details sought by leaders, making it harder to add their proposals to any debt-ceiling endgame, said two Democratic aides familiar with the deliberations.



Gang of Six



The so-called “Gang of Six” outlined a $3.7 trillion deficit-reduction plan and Obama embraced it this week. Some Republicans have endorsed it or signaled openness to considering its elements. The group was meeting with Senate leaders today to determine which of their ideas -- if any -- would offer a way out of the current conflict.



Senate leaders have also discussed a fallback plan by Reid and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to give Obama $2.4 trillion in borrowing authority. It could be combined with spending cuts and a committee charged with pushing through longer-term debt reduction in the coming months.



The two parties blamed each other for the stalemate. Reid said the House’s decision to be out of session this weekend presents “a bad picture” to Americans as the deadline nears for possible default on federal debt.



Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, responded with an e-mail saying the House had passed its plan, which would condition a debt-ceiling increase on passage of a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. Democrats say the plan can’t pass the Senate, which plans to vote on it tomorrow or July 23.



Opening Seen



Democrats seized on comments by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, as providing an opening for Republicans to accept some revenue increases.



Norquist told the Washington Post editorial board that allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire as scheduled at the end of 2012 wouldn’t violate the no-tax-increase pledge that almost all Republican members of Congress have signed.



“Not continuing a tax cut is technically not a tax increase,” he said. Congress could allow the tax cuts to expire without a vote. Democrats have called for allowing the tax cuts for high-income taxpayers to expire while permanently extending most of the cuts.



Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said Norquist’s statement is a signal that House Republicans should “step back from the brink.”



Norquist’s group issued a statement later saying that letting the tax cuts expire would amount to a tax increase opposed by the group.



Americans for Tax Reform “opposes all tax increases on the American people,” the group said in an e-mailed statement. The Gang of Six plan appears to “dramatically increase taxes on the American people.”



--With assistance from Kate Andersen Brower, Catherine Dodge, Kathleen Hunter, James Rowley, Roger Runningen, Julianna Goldman, Peter Cook, Brian Faler and Richard Rubin in Washington. Editors: Laurie Asseo, Don Frederick



To contact the reporters on this story: Julie Hirschfeld Davis in Washington at Jdavis159@bloomberg.net; Laura Litvan in Washington at bfaler@bloomberg.net



To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net



© Copyright 2011 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.





Read more on Newsmax.com: Democrats Balk at Possible Debt Deal

Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Entitlement and social security- Strong language but right on!

Thanks John Massey and friends!  John doesn't quite use language the least bit off color, but I know he agrees with the sentiments expressed below, as I do.  Our Social Security  was paid for by us, the taxpaying social security deducting proletariat.  The Non-Representatives in our Congress have violated our trusts so oftenby stealing money from the separate funds for the general fund.  We have a former speaker of the House economist like Pelosi who earnestly believes the government can stimulate the economy by giving out more food stamps.  They have been redistributingg the wealth for a long time.  o is only a better thief.
‘Entitlement’ my ass, I paid cash for my social security insurance!!!! Just because they borrowed the money, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout !! Congressional benefits , aka. free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days, now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my retirement, an ‘entitlement’ !!!!!!.....scroll down................












What the HELL's wrong with us???



WAKE UP AMERICA !!!!





Tuesday's Daily Bulletin paper, ran two articles on the front page side by side :





1- Calif's 20 Billion Dollar Budget Deficit.





2- The Calif. Supreme Court ruling that ILLEGALS can attend college and get benefits.





Why don't they just deport them when they arrive to register?





3- Last year they ran an article on the yearly costs to Calif. Taxpayers from Illegals using Hospital Emergency Rooms for their general health care -



At just one hospital the cost to tax payers totaled over $25 million a year!



Someone please tell me what the HELL's wrong with all the people that run this country!!!!!!



We're "broke" & can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless etc.,???????????



In the last months we have provided aid to Haiti , Chile , and Turkey . And now Pakistan ......home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!!



Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed income' receive no aid nor do they get any breaks while our government and religious organizations pour Hundreds of Billions of $$$$$$'s and Tons of Food to Foreign Countries!





They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives and now when it’s time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place?







We have hundreds of adoptable children who are shoved aside to make room for the adoption of foreign orphans.



AMERICA: a country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed hungry, elderly going without 'needed' meds, and mentally ill without treatment -etc, etc.





YET......................

They have a 'Benefit' for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations, ships and planes lining up with food, water, tents, clothes, bedding, doctors, and medical supplies.



Imagine if the *GOVERNMENT* gave 'US' the same support they give to other countries.



Sad isn't it?



99% of people won't have the guts to forward this.

I'm one of the 1% -- I Just Did.


‘Entitlement’ my ass, I paid cash for my social security insurance!!!! Just because they borrowed the money, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout !! Congressional benefits , aka. free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days, now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my retirement, an ‘entitlement’ !!!!!!.....scroll down................





What the HELL's wrong with us???



WAKE UP AMERICA !!!!


Tuesday's Daily Bulletin paper, ran two articles on the front page side by side :





1- Calif's 20 Billion Dollar Budget Deficit.





2- The Calif. Supreme Court ruling that ILLEGALS can attend college and get benefits.





Why don't they just deport them when they arrive to register?





3- Last year they ran an article on the yearly costs to Calif. Taxpayers from Illegals using Hospital Emergency Rooms for their general health care -



At just one hospital the cost to tax payers totaled over $25 million a year!



Someone please tell me what the HELL's wrong with all the people that run this country!!!!!!



We're "broke" & can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless etc.,???????????



In the last months we have provided aid to Haiti , Chile , and Turkey . And now Pakistan ......home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!!



Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed income' receive no aid nor do they get any breaks while our government and religious organizations pour Hundreds of Billions of $$$$$$'s and Tons of Food to Foreign Countries!





They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives and now when it’s time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place?







We have hundreds of adoptable children who are shoved aside to make room for the adoption of foreign orphans.



AMERICA: a country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed hungry, elderly going without 'needed' meds, and mentally ill without treatment -etc, etc.





YET......................

They have a 'Benefit' for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations, ships and planes lining up with food, water, tents, clothes, bedding, doctors, and medical supplies.



Imagine if the *GOVERNMENT* gave 'US' the same support they give to other countries.



Sad isn't it?



99% of people won't have the guts to forward this.

I'm one of the 1% -- I Just Did.

Charles Krauthammer- the half trillion dollar plan- JWR

Jewish World Review July 22. 2011 / 20 Tamuz, 5771



The Half-Trillion Plan



By Charles Krauthammer


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
The debt ceiling looms. Confusion reigns. Schemes abound. We are deep in a hole with only three ways out: the McConnell Plan, the G6 Plan and the Half-Trillion Plan.



— The McConnell essentially punts the issue till after Election Day 2012. A good last resort if nothing else works.



— The G6, proposed by the bipartisan Gang of Six senators, reduces 10-year debt by roughly $4 trillion. It has some advantages, even larger flaws.



— The Half-Trillion raises the debt ceiling by that amount in return for an equal amount of spending cuts. At the current obscene rate of deficit spending — about $100 billion a month — it yields about five months’ respite before the debt ceiling is reached again.



In my view, the Half-Trillion is best: It is clean, straightforward, yields real cuts, averts the current crisis and provides until year-end to negotiate a bigger deal. At the same time, it punctures President Obama’s thus far politically successful strategy of proposing nothing in public, nothing in writing, nothing with numbers, while leaking through a pliant press supposed offers of surpassing scope and reasonableness.



As part of this pose, Obama had threatened to veto any short-term debt-ceiling hike. Which has become Obama’s most vulnerable point. Is the catastrophe of default preferable to a deal that gives us, say, five months to negotiate something more significant — because it doesn’t get Obama through Election Day?



Which is why Obama is already in retreat. On Wednesday, press secretary Jay Carney showed the first crack by saying the president would accept an extension of a few days if needed to complete an already agreed long-term deal.



Meaning that he would exercise his veto if that larger deal required several months rather than several days? Call his bluff. Let the House pass the Half-Trillion. Dare him to put America into default because he deems a short-term deal insufficiently grand. After all, it dovetails perfectly with parts of the G6, for which the president has expressed support and which explicitly allocates roughly the same amount of time — six months — to work out the grander $3 trillion to $4 trillion deal.



The G6 conveniently comes in two parts. Part One puts immediately into effect, yes, a half-trillion dollars in cuts, including a more accurate inflation measure (that over time greatly reduces Social Security costs) and repeal of the CLASS Act (the lesser-known of the two new Obamacare entitlements, a fiscally ruinous, long-term-care Ponzi scheme).



Part Two of the G6 is far more problematic. It mandates six months of committee negotiations over the big ones — Medicare, Social Security, discretionary spending caps and tax reform. Unfortunately, the Medicare and Social Security parts are exceptionally weak — no mention of any structural change, such as raising the eligibility age to match longevity. As for the spending caps, I wouldn’t bet my dog’s food bowl on their durability.



On tax reform, the G6 calls for eliminating deductions, credits, exclusions and exemptions to reduce rates across the board. The new tax rates — top individual rate between 23 percent and 29 percent — would bring us back to Reagan levels (28 percent). This would be a good outcome, but the numbers thus far are fuzzy and some are contradictory. Moreover, those negotiations have yet to begin.



In principle, however, if the vast majority of the revenue raised by closing loopholes goes to rate reduction, and if the vast majority of the net revenue raised comes from the increased economic activity spurred by lowering rates and eliminating inefficiency-inducing loopholes, the trade-off would be justified. We shall see.



What to do now? The House should immediately pass the Half-Trillion Plan, thereby putting something eminently reasonable on the table that the president will have to address with a serious counterproposal using actual numbers. If the counterproposal is the G6, Republicans should accept Part One with its half-trillion dollars in cuts, consumer price index change and repeal of the CLASS Act, i.e., the part of the G6 that is enacted immediately and that is real. Accompany this with a dollar-for-dollar hike in the debt ceiling, yielding almost exactly the time envisioned in the G6 to work out grander spending and revenue changes — and defer any action on Part Two until precisely that time.



The Half-Trillion with or without the G6 Part One: ceiling raised, crisis deferred, cuts enacted and time granted to work out any Grand Compromise. You can’t get more reasonable than that.



Do it. And dare the president to veto it.

Dick Morris- 'Gang of Six' Sellout

The new Gang of Six proposal brewing in the Senate is a total sellout which promises to usher in a vast new round of new taxes. Not just closing of loopholes, but real live taxes we will all have to pay.




The proposal is based on the recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson Deficit Reduction Commission as modified by the "Gang of Six" US Senators. It plans to raise $1 trillion in new tax revenues. While the gang is vague on the details of the new taxes, the Bowles-Simpson Commission was quite clear - it proposes the virtual elimination of all tax deductions, certainly for taxpayers with joint incomes of over $200,000 and possibly for everyone. The revenues it would generate from eliminating or sharply curtailing the mortgage interest, charitable, and state and local tax deductions are set to generate $1 trillion of new revenues over ten years and to finance a vague and unspecified hoped for cut in the top tax bracket.



The elimination or significant curtailment of these deductions would have a ruinous economic impact.



Cutting out the mortgage interest deduction would cost American taxpayers almost $100 billion a year. It would decimate the already moribund real estate sector and would make their current homes unaffordable for millions of homeowners by changing the financial rules in the middle of the game.



Restricting or eliminating the state and local tax deduction is, in effect, to levy a 25-35 percent surcharge on state and local taxes - income and property - hammering people who live in high tax states. The cost in jobs and state revenues are likely to be staggering.



Limiting the charitable donation deduction is the unkindest cut of all since it hurts precisely the poor people Obama and the Democrats say they most want to help. They apparently only favor help to the poor when it comes through the government and buys their votes.



But the most dangerous part of the proposal is that to establish a commission to monitor the deficit reduction measures to assure that they unfold as planned. Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has been pushing this idea for more than a year now hoping to equip the commission with automatic authority to cut spending and to raise taxes without legislative authorization. It would allow a tax increase without requiring any member of Congress to vote for it.



The House has taken a bold and important step in passing the "Cut, Cap and Balance" plan to deal with the deficit. By cutting spending, capping it as a proportion of GDP, and passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, the House Republicans have put the perfect plan on the table. They should not blink in the face of the Senate proposal but should stand up and demand that their leadership not be gulled into signing on to any variation of the Gang of Six plan.



One hopes that the Republican voters in the states the Republican accomplices of Conrad represent remember their decision to cast their lots with the Democratic members of the Gang to derail the House proposal and to add momentum to this monstrous deal. They are: Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. They all deserve a primary when they run again.


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