Sen. Pat Toomey Has a Great Idea on How to Freeze the Debt Ceiling Without Risking Default

Sen. Pat Toomey - Those words sound really good! -  has not bought into the "sky is falling" mentality that Obama, Democrats, and others within the Obama administration have been expressing regarding the debt ceiling.  He even points out that it is NOT a necessity to raise the debt ceiling but in fact emphasizes that if the debt ceiling is raised and congress continues their enormous spending spree, business as usual, then the ramifications would be staggering.  Pat Toomey says there is an alternative.

He is introducing legislation "that would require the Treasury to make interest payments on our debt its first priority in the event that the debt ceiling is not raised. This would not only ensure the continued confidence of investors at home and abroad, but would enable us to have an honest debate about the consequences of our eventual decision about the debt ceiling. If we do not raise it, the government's tax revenue will enable us to fund roughly two-thirds of projected expenditures, including interest payments. Without the ability to borrow the other third, spending cuts would be sudden and severe: Projects would be postponed, some vendor payments would be delayed, certain programs would be suspended, and many government employees might be furloughed. Default would easily be avoided, but these cuts would certainly be disruptive. That's why I hope we can avoid this scenario." 


Pat Toomey points out: 


The recent surge in spending, both in absolute dollars and as a percentage of our GDP, has driven us to record deficits and an explosion of debt. The growth in discretionary spending has been the most dramatic, but in the future mandatory entitlement spending will be the deficit driver. Congress must address both in order to put the government back on a sustainable fiscal path.

The vote on whether to raise the debt ceiling—and, if so, by how much—is our best opportunity to insist that any increase in our nation's debt be coupled with concrete steps toward fiscal sanity. Congress should make increasing our debt contingent on immediate cuts in spending and effective reforms of the spending process that helped get us into this mess.

For too many years, Congress has ignored or exacerbated the looming fiscal crisis created by overspending. Last fall's elections were largely a call to finally deal with this imminent threat, and the vote on the debt ceiling is Congress's opportunity to begin making real progress. We can do so without jeopardizing the full faith and credit of our country—and we should.

I agree with Pat Toomey. This out of control spending must stop!  It also sounds like Afghanistan is on the correct path now.  With the coordinated effort of both our troops and Afghanis hopefully this positive trend will continue. 

Laura Bush Says Afghanistan Must Embrace Women's Rights

The haunting portrait of a young, disfigured Afghan woman on Time magazine's cover this summer issued a stark reminder that the stakes in Afghanistan are high -- and that the consequences of failure are brutal, especially for women.

On Friday I met with Bibi Aisha in California, where, thanks to the compassion of many individuals and organizations, she is receiving reconstructive surgery and beginning the long road of healing. The visible scars of her disfigurement will heal with time, but moving beyond the emotional and psychological trauma of her torturous mutilation may be more difficult.


Bibi Aisha's story and the prevalence of intimidation and violence against Afghan women raise important questions for those working to establish this young democracy. Will Afghanistan embrace and protect the rights of all people? Or will it be a nation that allows the oppression of women to continue unabated?

These questions are central to the challenges confronting those who seek peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan today.

Nine years ago, many around the world learned of the severe repression and brutality against women that was common in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Girls were forbidden to attend school. Women were imprisoned in their homes and denied access to doctors when they were sick. And Afghanistan had the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world.

Today there are encouraging signs of progress: More than 6.2 million students are enrolled in Afghanistan's schools, and 35 percent of them are girls. Afghan women serve as government ministers and lead as provincial governors. Women have been elected or appointed to the National Assembly. Afghan women work as entrepreneurs, educators, lawyers and community health workers. And their work is essential to the growth of the Afghan economy.

Yet serious challenges remain. A culture of fear still silences women. In many rural areas, those who dare to teach receive letters threatening not only their own lives but their children's as well. And though the Afghan constitution guarantees 25 percent of seats in parliament to female legislators, assassinations of prominent women have driven many from public life. Among those who remain, many are muted by fear.

CONTINUED

Should General McChrystal Stay or Go?

In a Rolling Stone's article, General McChrystal's aides let loose on Obama, Biden, and everybody who is anybody on Obama's national security team.  Its obvious that General McCrystal wanted his discontent and observations with the way in which this war is being handled leaked out to all the civilian mishandlers in Washington.  It seems to me that General McCrystal started out with high hopes for a turnaround in Afghanistan but soon realized that he was placed in an impossible situation that has ended up endangering our soldiers' lives all for the sake of fghting our enemy "fairly".  When has giving our enemy an unfair advantage ever been the same as fighting a war fairly?  When has forcing our soldiers to fight with one arm around their back ever produced a win in a war?  Never.  This article shows how the new rules of engagement are helping our enemy and harming our troops who are risking their lives overseas so that we may remain free.

'Young officers and enlisted soldiers and Marines, typically speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs, speak of “being handcuffed,” of not being trusted by their bosses and of being asked to battle a canny and vicious insurgency “in a fair fight.” '

Here are a couple hghlights from the Rolling Stone's article:

Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. "I never know what's going to pop out until I'm up there, that's the problem," he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner.



"Are you asking about Vice President Biden?" McChrystal says with a laugh. "Who's that?"


"Biden?" suggests a top adviser. "Did you say: Bite Me?"


Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn't go much better. "It was a 10-minute photo op," says an adviser to McChrystal. "Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. Here's the guy who's going to run his fucking war, but he didn't seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed."


I think that McCrystal's resignation could be the proper outcome in this situation, especially since Obama acts like a whiny child when it comes to his being criticized in any way, and after this article I can't see Obama and General McCrystal working together comfortably and cohesively for the betterment of the Afghan War.  While some political pundits are asserting that General McCrystal's lapse in judgement rises to the level of Mac Arthur's insubordination Ken Allard gives some insight why appearances are deceiving.  But, we should take into account what is best to win the War in Afghanistan.

Should The FBI Be Reading Suspected Terrorists Miranda Rights?

While on the ground at the U.S. base detention facilities in Bagram, Afghanistan Congressman Mike Rogers(R-MI) discovered that FBI agents are reading Miranda Rights to terror suspects.
The Department of Justice Dan Boyd has confirmed this.

Boyd stated:
"There has been no policy change and nor blanket instruction issued for FBI agents to Mirandize detainees overseas. While there have been specific cases in which FBI agents have Mirandized suspects overseas, at both Bagram and in other situations, in order to preserve the quality of evidence obtained, there has been no overall policy change with respect to detainees."

This policy was started under the Bush administration.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

The FBI claim to only Mirandize very specific detainees for very specific reasons.

I don't understand why the FBI is reading Miranda Rights to terror suspects who are not United States citizens. I am against giving terrorists rights that only should be afforded to U.S. citizens regardless of which administration was/is having FBI agents do it. Are we constitutionally bound to do this? Or is the FBI using Miranda Rights as a tool in order to gain information? Is this setting a dangerous precedent? Why is the FBI only mirandizing a select few of the suspected terrorists? President Obama has just recently decided that the detainees at Guantanomo Bay are not going to come to U.S. for military tribunals. Bush never considered this to be an option either. So, then why are we essentially giving suspected terrorists rights that they are not required to have by law since they are not going to be coming to the United States?