I just want to let my readers know that I have purchased my own domain and am in the process of switching the blog to a new server. This will allow me to have more freedom to do things with the site, things that can not be done with a blog on the wordpress.com site. The new domain and server should be up and running later tonight or in the morning, depending on when the DNS nameserver change takes effect. When it does, you can find My Take at the embeded link and the switch should be relatively painless for me and you, my readers. Please stay tuned, because My Take isn’t going away, it’s just switching gears.
I think I have failed to do this announcement, but my blog has moved to a self-hosted blog at My Take.
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Mike Huckabee was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered this evening and he had this to say about why the Republican Party lost the election.
The former Arkansas governor says Republicans lost the presidential election this year, along with roughly 27 House and Senate seats, because “people want there to be an effective government, not just one that rhetorically remains pure.”
He had this to say about the $700 billion bailout that has not done what Henry Paulson and Congress said it would do.
Huckabee says the GOP must adhere to traditional Republican platforms, including its stances against abortion and same-sex marriage. The party, he says, also needs to practice more fiscal restraint, particularly when it comes to policy issues such as the recent economic bailout.
The Republican Party should not have supported it, Huckabee says.
“It’s not about being nay-saying. It’s about saying ‘yes’ to the taxpayer and not just saying ‘yes’ to the tax-taker,” he says.
“These bailouts are a disaster. They’ve not stabilized the markets — and why should they when the government starts picking who’s going to live and who’s going to die in the marketplace?”
Well said, Governor Huckabee. You can listen to the entire interview here.
Even though the general consensus of the public and the Senate seems to be against a bailout of the Big Three auto companies, certain members of the Senate seem determined to pass a compromise. Carl Levin, D-Mich and Kit Bond, R-MO called a news conference today to announce the plans. From FOX News:
Warning of economic disaster, Democrats and Republicans from auto industry states reached a deal Thursday on an alternative package that would temporarily divert money from a fuel-efficiency loan program to cover the Big Three’s immediate costs. But it was unclear whether it could draw enough support to pass.
The White House is steadfastly against any bailout of the auto industry, as well as people like Mitt Romney. I have asked this question before and I will ask it again. Where do the bailouts stop? How many companies do the American taxpayers have to bailout before we say enough is enough?
As if our economy needed more bad news, we know now that new unemployment claims have jumped to a 16 year high, at 542,000. The four month average is at a 25 year high, at 506,500 new claims. This news can mean nothing but bad news for our economy. In addition to being bad for the people who have lost their jobs, it will also cause a ripple effect that will be felt across our nation’s economy. From The Associated Press:
The figures likely will cause some economists to increase their projections for the unemployment rate this year. Many already expect unemployment to reach 7 percent by early next year and 8 percent by the end of 2009.
If you haven’t noticed, our nation has a penchant for predictions. This doesn’t seem to matter if you are talking about sports, politics, or our economy. Having said that, pay close attention to the stock market today. I will almost guarantee you it will drop like a rock, just on the news of the high unemployment claims. With Wall Street already below 8,000, it appears to be poised to go below 7,882, which was the low on October 10. (There I go with a prediction of my own.)
The only good thing I have seen come out of this is the price of oil and by proxy, gasoline. Oil dropped briefly beneath $50 per barrel yesterday and I am seeing gasoline prices at $1.69 in Fort Smith, Arkansas. That is a good thing, but as my wife said last night, I believe I wouldn’t mind fuel prices going a little higher, if it meant that our economy was climbing out of this recession. The trouble is, we are in the middle of spending $700 billion on bailing out different companies and so far, we have seen nothing for our taxpayer dollars. I am afraid the worst is yet to come.
Chip Saltsman has stepped up his campaign for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee by sending the members a letter, in which he lays out his plan for rebuilding the Republican Party and regaining the losses we suffered on November 4, 2008. Because the letter is rather long, I will not repost it in it’s entirety, but rather use a few excerpts. You can download the entire letter here and you can read a couple of other posts about it at The Tolbert Report and at Trucker Randy.
One of the most important things Chip mentions in his letter is the fact that despite the win by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, all is not lost. Read the rest of this entry »
I have refrained from writing an article about Mike Huckabee and the release of his new book, “Do The Right Thing”, simply because I have yet to read the book. From the excerpts I have read, it appears Huckabee was honest in telling us about his campaign and how it all went down, from taking his campaign from darkhorse, to winning eight states, to finally bowing out after the Texas loss to John McCain. The release of the book and his subsequent book tour has led a lot of blogger, pundits, etc. to speculate that Huckabee is already mounting his Presidential campaign for 2012. It remains to be seen if that is actually true, whether he will actually run again, but it amazes me at the resistance I am already seeing against the man. Yes, he does have a lot of supporters, more than most people would give him credit for, but he also has his detractors and most of them simply do not want Mike Huckabee to run for President. Read the rest of this entry »
I have touched on this subject in an earlier article, but it looks like pressure is mounting to supply bailout money to General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Chrysler. Just like happened with the original bailout plan by Henry Paulson, we are being told the time to act is now. The Big Three may not even be able to make it through December if help is not supplied. Even as President Bush and some GOP lawmakers resist the plan to give an extra $25 billion to the automobile industry, on top of the $25 billion in emergency loans approve in September, top executives from the Big Three, along with the head of the United Auto Workers union (UAW), were meeting with the Senate Banking Committee in an effort to push the bailout plan forward. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s not surprising that Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe has once again came out strongly against any further bailouts by Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury. He was very much opposed to the original bailout plan and now that we have $350 billion down the tubes, he is trying to prevent the rest of the bailout money from being spent, with nothing to show for it. From Senator Inhofe’s website:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) introduced legislation to amend Section 115 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) to require an affirmative vote on the part of Congress to approve Treasury’s plan for the remaining $350 billion and require a freeze on any remaining funds of the first $350 billion, stating, “It is imperative that we not allow that amount of money to be added to a deficit approaching $1 trillion this year without any input from the legislative branch.”
In a speech on the Senate Floor, Senator Inhofe went on to say, “Congress completely abdicated its responsibility by signing a truly blank check over to the Treasury Secretary. However, the lame duck session of Congress offers us a tremendous opportunity to change course. We should take it.”
“Though there are still significant challenges in financial markets, it appears that the threat of financial crisis spinning so out of control that we face another Great Depression-which was the original justification for the grant of such sweeping authority-has subsided. Has the need to allow one person to control hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and spend as he sees fit subsided as well? I’ve never seen in my entire career of public service anything like the spectacle we are now witnessing. Is it unreasonable to ask whether or not the additional $350 billion should not be added to a deficit approaching $1 trillion? Congress should have a debate.”
Here, here, Senator Inhofe. You speak the truth. It is not unreasonable to question the original bailout plan and the way it is being implemented. We have already spent $350 billion and have nothing to show for it. If we leave it up to some of the people in Washington, we will see another $350 billion go poof and we will still have nothing to show for it. As citizens and taxpayers of the United States, we need to demand a change in the way our government is being ran. We need more people like Jim Inhofe, who are willing to dig in their heels and say enough is enough.
Thanks to Tam, over at Bare Thoughts for alerting me to this article.
When President Bush, Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, and Congress first got together and decided some of these companies needed a bailout, at our expense, there were very few people who stood up and said no, this isn’t the way to go. Both Presidential candidates said yes, but people like Jim Inhofe, Senator from Oklahoma, and Mike Huckabee said no. Now that the bailout has passed Congress and is clearly not doing the job of reviving our economy, it seems that everyone and his dog has their hands out for federal money. Not only companies, but also cities and states. South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford, is an exception and he states his case very well in an article in The Wall Street Journal. Read the rest of this entry »
Someone is really going to have to explain this one to me. First, we started off by bailing out individual companies, supposedly for the good of the economy. Our government told us we had to do it because the consequences would be dire if we didn’t. Then we went to the banks and we know the three major automobile manufacturers have their hands out as well. I thought that would be the icing on the cake, but it looks like the cities of America are topping even that. According to The Associated Press, mayors of three major cities are asking for their fair share of the $700 billion bailout. Read the rest of this entry »
When it became apparent several weeks ago that our economy was in much more serious trouble than the experts first believed, Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, came to Congress and said he needed $700 billion to fix the problems our economy faced. It was a “need to do it right now” moment and after first losing the vote in the House of Representatives, he finally managed to get his program passed by the House and Senate. As of yesterday, it appears the plan has not accomplished what they said it would do. According to Bloomberg, the Secretary has scrapped his plan to buy troubled assets from banks and has other plans for the rest of the bailout money. Read the rest of this entry »
We are all very familiar with the questions about Barack Obama’s relationship with William (Bill) Ayers, the Vietnam era radical terrorist who has said he wishes he could have done more during his time of rebellion. As if planting bombs in his own country was not enough. More familiar are the denials by Obama that he was not friends with the man, that he barely knew him, and that he was just a man who lived in his neighborhood and worked on education issues. Well, now that the election is over and Obama has won, Bill Ayers has released a paperback version of his 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days, and the afterword of that memoir tells a different story than Obama did, during the campaign. The Chicago Tribune has an excerpt from that afterword. Read the rest of this entry »
As you can see, I have made a few changes to My Take and I would like your opinion about how it looks. You can see the previous theme at PA Pundits. I am not a professional blogger, but I do want My Take to be easy to read and navigate. Please vote in the polls and leave a comment, if you are so minded. To all my readers, I value your feedback.
Former campaign manager for Mike Huckabee, Chip Saltsman, has declared his interest in the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and according to Marc Ambinder, from The Atlantic, Huckabee is throwing his support behind Saltsman. Sarah Huckabee, Huckabee’s daughter has this to say in an email.
My dad is definitely supporting Chip for RNC chairman. My dad has had the privilege of working with Chip and knows what he is capable of and shares his vision on how to move the party forward and will be working hard to help him get elected.
Also joining the push to elect Saltsman as the RNC chairman is GOP Catholics. They have this to say about Mike Huckabee and Chip Saltsman.
If the GOP is to be succesful in defeating Barack Obama the next time around we need new leadership and not someone who would give us the same stolid results as Bush cronies Ken Mehlman and Mike Duncan.
Saltsman was able to turn a candidate (Mike Huckabee) with no money and even less national recognition into a force to be reckoned with in the 2008 Republican primaries, defeating multi-millionare Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucus.
Perhaps the reason Huckabee was ultimately unsuccesful in his attempt to win the nomination, though, was the fact that his campaign was largely ignored by the institutional leadership of the GOP, in favor of the continual cascade of frontrunners like Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, and McCain.
We know how they all fared.
Instead of admitting its mistakes and gathering around Mike Huckabee to prepare for 2012, the RNC is whipping itself up into a frenzy over newcomers Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal and even Mitt Romney–everybody except Mike Huckabee.
Does the GOP want to defeat Obama or does it want to keep on losing???
Retaining leaders from the past will not bring our party new (and better) results.
The Republican Party certainly needs a nudge in the right direction, if not an all out shove. I can’t think of a better pair of men to do that than Mike Huckabee and Chip Saltsman. If Chip can do what he did with Huckabee on very minimal campaign budget, just think what he could do with the full blown war chest of the Republican Party. The battle for 2012 starts now.
