PT's Randomness

    So the word on the street is that Sen. Bond crossed over to the dark side in voting to move the Immigration Bill forward in the Senate. I would beg to differ on that one. I think he made a wise choice voting to move the bill forward in exchange for a promise that his amendment to the bill would be voted on later on. Why waste any more time stalling this bill? Just move the thing forward to the next stage where amendments to the bill will be voted on. The American people don't want this bill. I heard a Gallup Poll said something like 3% of Americans favor this thing, that's not even the 14% that still believe in our Congress.

Labels: political, tyranny of tolerance

    Why is it that towards the close of the legislative session in Jeff City, lawmakers were scrambling to vote on items nullifying items they voted for earlier in the session? I find it wonderful that my tax dollars went towards not only paying them to goof off the first time, but then to fix what they screwed up. Some people seem to think that term limits are the problem. I just think they care too much about playing politics and not enough about the issues.

Here's my take on some issues that passed:

SB22: Allows firefighters in St. Louis and other cities with failing schools to live outside their home cities, subject to the approval of the city's board of aldermen. Grants cities the authority to allow diners to bring their pets to outdoor restaurants
--Interesting how those two issues relate to each other. The firefighter part I am definitely ok with, the pet part is just odd.

SB389: Authorizes the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, or MOHELA, to spend $350 million on college construction projects. Also consolidates the state's two largest scholarship programs and seeks to cap tuition increases.
--One of the biggest issues of the session. I am glad we can skim profits from an organization set up to provide money for tuition so, that we can build some buildings



2007 Session Highlights

Labels: law, political

    Apparently a part of the MOHELA bill would allow former Sate Legislators with at least 8 years of experience in the Missouri General Assembly and a Bachelor''s Degree to be college professors. The bill would say that you couldn't hold their lack of a graduate degree against them. Of course, certain college professors now are against the plan because it would blow the lid on their cushy jobs now.

KC Star Link

Labels: law, political

    Check out my original post below and read the comment. Would the person who posted these please email me. I am interested in finding out more about your experiences with this.

Labels: economics, law, political

    Edgar Emery (R) is sponsoring a bill in the Missouri House of Representatives that would require the Missouri Department of Revenue to develop plans to implement a state sales tax in place of state income taxes. Awesome idea.

Bill Summary

Wikipedia entry on the "Fair Tax" movement

Fairtax.org

The blog covering the "Fair Tax" movement

Labels: economics, political, rant, recommendations

    Students, parents, and I think a School Board member are still sitting in Mayor Slay's office protesting his support of a state takeover of the St. Louis Public School District. They have given a list of demands to Mayor Slay, which you can view here. I love how they say:

"Explain in writing why you are treating our district differently then other districts"

I didn't realize there was a comparable school district in the St. Louis area that was as dysfunctional as the SLPSD. I am pretty sure the SLPSD brings a new whole meaning to the term "dysfunctional".

I was under the impression that one of the main reasons for the sit-in was fear that the state yanking the District's accreditation would keep some students from going to college or getting scholarships. The University of Missouri-Columbia and several other schools have already come out and said that it wouldn't affect admission.

Pubdef.net is probably the best place for coverage of the ignorant protest. The best video has to be this one where the Post-Dispatch reporter (at about the 4 min mark) tells one of the students that they are lying about the University of Hawaii pulling a girl's scholarship. True, it probably wasn't the best way for the reporter to bring that fact up, and it probably wasn't the most solid way to research the accusation, but it makes for a funny end to the video.

Labels: insanity, political, rant

    This article from the Kuwait News Agency cites statistics released by the Multi-National Force -Iraq Combined Press Information Centre in saying that deaths of United States soldiers are down 60% from a similar period a month ago in Baghdad. The decrease in deaths is attributed to an increased security force. Take this as you see fit.

Labels: military, political

    Apparently Democrats want to add about $10 billion in pork projects to the $100 Billion Iraq emergency funds bill. Here is an article about it. And here are some tasty tidbits on what they want:

$4 billion to farmers in the great plains for disaster drought relief.

--I guess some farmers need to pimp out their farm equipment. Somebody's John Deere is gonna be rolling on dubs blasting some 50 cent.

$1.2 billion to citrus and avocado farmers in California

--C'mon, did you really think Pelosi wouldn't get something out of this?

$1.3 billion for hurricane relief to the Golf Coast. This is on top of the $3.4 billion already requested by Bush

--$4.7 billion??? I didn't realize we were rebuilding New Orleans entirely out of gold.

I really wish that in real life I could expect someone to borrow money in order to give me a handout.

Labels: political

    Rumor is that John McCain (R-Arizona) announced today that he officially is running for the presidency. I say it's a rumor because I just read it on Drudge that someone who was at the Late Show taping earlier today reported that McCain said it. The show will be broadcast later tonight.

I think Mitt Romney still gets my vote. It's the closest thing we have to putting Bill Paxton in the White House.

Labels: political

    State Rep. Talibdin El-Amin (D-St. Louis) is sponsoring a bill in the Missouri House that formally apologizes for slavery. This article from the Post-Dispatch contains this gem from Rep. El-Amin:

"It's a necessary step to move us past slavery and into a position of progress and healing."

    How long has it been since slavery happened in Missouri? We all should know by now that slavery was a bad idea. Will this apology really mean anything? Have people been waiting for this apology to realize slavery was wrong? If you've been sitting around waiting for this apology, you've got problems.

Labels: political

    Would someone please give Mexico some cheese to go with their whine? Now they are complaining about workers building a border fence that are straying up to 10 yards into Mexico.

Isn't it enough that we hold up their economy by letting millions of their citizens earn money here and send it home?

Isn't it enough that we take a lot of their scumbags and other violent criminals?

Isn't it enough that we listen to them when they want us to prosecute our law enforcement officers?

Labels: border patrol, political

    Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, has been announced as the commencement speaker for Webster University this May. The commencement is scheduled for May 12 at the Edward Jones Dome. No word on if this is marked in her schedule with an eraseble pen or not.


PD story

Labels: political

    Claire McCaskill will be in Columbia, MO Friday, Feb. 23. She has extended an invitation to all Springfield area supporters via her website, here. I guess Columbia area supporters will have to wait until McCaskill schedules a reception on the SMS campus to see her. Is this a sign that her office is still not up to speed? Maybe she shouldn't have taken that vacation during freshman orientation week.

Labels: political

    Here is a link to The Smoking Gun's posting of Rudy Giuliani's standard speaking contract. When he spoke at Oklahoma State recently, he was paid $100,000 plus his flight cost of around $47,000.

Labels: political

Mitt's Wikipedia bio

Mitt's announcement speech text

Mitt on immigration

Mitt on health care

Labels: political, romney

    I keep thinking of Barack Obama as an empty suit. I don't think he really stands for much unless someone tells him what to stand for. Maybe a more accurate description would be "present", in reference to his appreciation for that neutral vote he liked to cast while in the Illinois legislature.

Read the article from Real Clear Politics

Labels: obama, political

    Several times I have called the office of Sen. Claire McCaskill to inquire about whether she has made a statement regarding the case of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. Twice, I have been given the excuse of "well, we are still trying to get our office up and running" or something to that effect. Yesterday, I felt the need to call them on this. I told them I find it funny that the office would use this excuse when Sen. McCaskill would probably have her office set up if she hadn't taken a vacation during freshman orientation. I know it was low of me to use that, but seriously that's a cop out excuse for her office to use.

Labels: political

    Read this article on Tom Coburn, the Republican Senator from Oklahoma, and try telling me I am wrong.


Here is his Wikipedia entry

Labels: political

    Considering Hillary Clinton's comments Friday on Iraq, here are some other things I am sure she will do once she is President:

End the obesity problem in the U.S.

End world poverty and hunger

End AIDS

End our dependence on foreign oil.

End the feud between Donald Trump and Rosie, during her lunch break from bringing peace to the Middle East

Fix the education system in the U.S. Not just a part of it. The whole system.

End our dependence on oil for good. She will singlehandedly develop and manufacture an engine that runs on all the B.S. the Democrats put out.

Labels: political

    So, what the hell happened in Somalia? Some of you may have heard a bit on the news about the U.S. conducting air strikes in Somalia and thought "Uhh, did they mean Iraq?" I didn't know what the heck was going on either until I started listening to Crane Durham on Nothing But Truth tonight. Crane was talking with Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, who is pretty much a genius and has a book coming out soon.
    Here is what I gathered is going on. Somalia didn't have a real government for about 16 years and now they have a very young transitional government just getting started. A group called the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) is fighting their way across Somalia. They were trying to overtake the town where the government was holed up but underestimated what they were up against. The Ethiopian military had devoted a huge percentage of its forces to protecting the Somalian government and had enlisted the military expertise of the United States to help. The Ethiopians successfully fought off the ICU forces with some help from U.S. helicopters. The ICU is connected with Al Qaeda.
    Apparently now there is a feud going on between the Pentagon and the U.S. State Department. Davved just dropped that one. The problem is that the Pentagon wants to give money to the transitional government to help defeat the ICU. The State Department wants to give the money to Somalia little by little to dictate how they will handle things. For some reason the State Department wants the Somalians to sit down and talk with the ICU, at least the ones who are still alive. Yeah, and while we are at it how about we sit down and talk with Iran. We should just have a big tea party with AhmadenaNUTJOB, Kim Don Small Dong, Fidel Castro.

Links

Daveed writing about this on January 9

Forget it. Here's what I got searching for Somalia on Pajamasmedia

Labels: military, political