67th Rant: Approaching The Fiscal Cliff

As I had mentioned during the Debt Ceiling Debacle in my 20th Rant last year, this clip from Jerry Maguire where Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) tells Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) to show him the money is quite fitting of what the American people (mostly from the Tea Party) are trying to tell the Democrats and Obama. Now, with it being 21 days, 16 hours, and 15 minutes until the new year, we are barreling toward the fiscal cliff and about to go over. Therefore, the American people are not only telling the Democrats but also the Republicans to do something to prevent us from going over the edge. Yesterday, President Obama had met with House Speaker John Boehner (Republican from the 8th Congressional District in Ohio and also Schmuck of the Week on Red, Right, and Blue for December 8, 2012) for the first time since the election to speak on a way to prevent us going over the fiscal cliff. You can find a good piece about the fiscal cliff from Robert Stacy McCain of The Other McCain.

We have not had a national budget in almost 1400 days, and every budget Obama had posited before Congress had not had a positive vote in the Senate, with even the Democrats opposing the Obama budget. When asked when the Senate would put forth their own budget. Max Baucus (Democrat from Montana who is Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee) and Harry Reid (Democrat from Nevada who is the Senate Majority Leader) both said that they are not required to put out a budget. These two are the main reasons why the Congress is in total disarray. The House had already passed a budget (thanks to Budget Chairman and 2012 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan of Wisconsin’s 1^st Congressional District) for the past three years and sent it on to the Senate, but Reid would not bring it to the floor for a vote.

Day after day we are inching closer not only to the fiscal cliff but also toward socialism. There is a saying that elections have consequences, and we are seeing it happening every second with Obama just sitting around fiddling. The last time a leader fiddled while his country was collapsing was Nero back in AD 64 when Rome was burning. The words of Alexander Tytler are ringing true.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

"From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence:

"From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage."

Every day we are sinking back again into bondage. Right now we are in the selfishness to apathy or the apathy to dependence stage. We need to tell Obama, Boehner, Reid, and the other politicians to batten down and do something to fix this nation’s debt and prevent us from going over the fiscal cliff, or their time in charge will end in 2014 (all 435 House members including Boehner and 33 senate seats including 20 held by Democrats) and we the people will elect Congressmen and Senators who will actually know how to fix the economy.

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