I've researched through all their BS rhetoric but have yet to identify a republican with balls -- one who's priority is America first beating Obama second.

Talk about obsession -- reminiscent of the attitude that tore this country apart whey back 160 years or so ago.

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"with one in 10 proposed closures coming from Arkansas"

Is there any way of finding out how many USDA offices Arkansas has relative to other states? Could we have more than our share when compared to other agricultural states? Are there other offices near to the ones slated to close?

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When they cut the House salary and expense budgets by 50%, then I will take all their comments with some idea that they may be true. Every, repeat EVERY, agency has a core of customers who are going to be hurt by cuts. But when you won't admit that the issue is income and not out-go, then you better start with your own budget first before you start impacting citizens.

BTW, the Founders, didn't have big staffs and they wrote their own letters (by hand). They also didn't scoot all over the world on breaks and they certainly worked more than 2-1/2 days a week on average. Cut the House and Senate benefits as they hours they are working indicates that they are part-timers and the Chamber doesn't want part-timers to have any benefits so the bosses can have their 2nd and 3rd homes (or in Romney's case, isn't it 15 or so).

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Republicans have been bashful at offering spending cuts for years. It is truly sad. http://haltingarkansasliberalswithtruth.co…

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Speaking of Republicans, was Huntsman REALLY "drunk as a skunk" last night giving his speech? My To-Do was full, unfortunately, and I missed it.

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USDA offices serve big farmers and land owners. This hits the Republican's core voters/contributors a little harder than say, closing a homelss shelter for Vets.

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The problem of spending isn't republican or democrat or independent---it is within all of us. We think that government spending comes from the 'money tree' and doesn't eventually cost all of us. It is a Washington and Arkansas problem. There is no free lunch. We either curtail government spending at all levels or we saddle our children and grandchildren with a debt that they can not afford which condemns them to a third world standard of living.

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Sherlock, we could make a dent (possibly almost solve it) if we raised tax rates to Clinton era levels, stopped the foreign adventurism, and adopted a universal health care policy like many of our European friends who spend half as much per person, cover everyone, and have better outcomes. Even the editor of that libertarian rag, Reason, touts the French medical system. He has been a beneficiary of the French way as his wife is French.

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The USDA office closings are tied to closings of Farm Service offices; and it looks like the counties listed are some of the more populous ones in the state. Farm Service offices hand out farm subsidies...Republicans are overacting on this one. This is just a consolidation of offices, not a cut in subsidies to farmers. Subsidies will continue to flow like mana for those 'poor' farmers/landowners.

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Yes, we could do what the Europeans did and end up just like them. They are broke and begging for money to keep from defaulting on their debt. Severe austerity measures have been imposed with increased taxes and they still are in desperate straits. Is that where you want us to go? Do you want to be a begger nation bankrupted by entitlements that can't be paid for? In Greece, the pharmacies are begging for aspirin supplies.

Emulating Europe when we know where that will eventually take us is a form of insanity.

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Sherlock, we spend gargantuan amounts on the military and a second rate health care system without getting much bang for our buck, so to speak. If we had saner policies about both we wouldn't find ourselves staring into an abyss.

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Pursuing a 'European model' as you advocate with what we know is a form of insanity. When you know the outcome and continue down that road regardless of that reality then you have committed yourselves and your children to beggar status. The FIRST and FOREMOST responsibility of government is security not social welfare. If your enemies are increasing as a threat and you decrease your defenses then you invite disaster. We learned that at Munich and Pearl Harbor. Well, some of us learned that!

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The problem with conservatives is they are a bunch of paranoid, fraidy cat bed wetters. How do they ever summon the courage to get out of bed every morning, lest they trip on the feet in their infant pajamas and break their necks?

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The GOP must realize “All of Washington must do more with less." is the same as saying "All of AMerica must do more with less". That is, Washington controls funds that affect real people. Blanket, Mindless cutting alone will cause jobs to be lost and canceled services to adversely and uneccessarily affect real people.

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We account for half the world's military expenditures. We cannot afford to continue that. Especially when we are not willing to raise taxes to pay for it. I would like to see that put to a vote:

___ FOR or ___AGAINST forcing US citizens to pay for half of the world's military spending.

Raising taxes back to Clinton levels would boost this economy, take us out of recession and decrease the deficit. That is why Congress doesn't want to do it -- because it would make Obama look good.

The problem for Congress is that running the country down in order to make Obama look bad is backfiring big time.

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Or, if the GOP just said the services of the USDA offices are not called for in the original constitution then that would out them back in good standing with the baggers.

For that matter, overhead costs on federal controls over electronic prohibition on internet child porn, federal funding to clean up meth labs, or federal funding to fix road lighting on I-10 in LA outside N.O. are all not specifically called out in the constitution. There's more savings for the baggers.

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@Sherlock, the solution is increased taxes and better spending control. The "European model" did not have those two elements. Heck, some nations in Europe didn't collect all the taxes due them for decades - Italy. That I think was the cause of that European model's nation financial problems.

You talk about not saddling our future generations with debt, I think more about not leaving a hollowed out society of nothing for them.

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Social security is as necessary as national security. We all subscribe to the need for national security because it affects all of us. The absence of it affects all of us adversely. Social security, affordable health care, food security, descent places to live - does not affect everyone. Those it does not affect are either selfless and indifferent to it or not.

Those that appreciate resources that afford basic human care and dignity appreciate the need for an effective and efficient system of services that provide things like affordable health care, housing and food programs. More people will need some level of these servies at some time than those that won't.

I believe a society helps to provide for those with needs. I don't mind that my tax dollars go toward WIC programs, helps to subsidize health care,.. Because I believe that my fellow citizens having been fed, well educated and in good health are better contributors to society than the opposite. To turn a blind eye to those in need and globally label them as at fault or not deserving assistance is wrong headed, immoral, short sighted and a lazy attitude.

I'd rather law makers abolish waste within the programs and foster efficiency in the program instead of cutting the programs themselves. Those two actions alone will save money.

I believe too many Republicans don't subscribe to the same beliefs I have and its why I generally don't support them.

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One half of one per cent.
0.5%

would more than balance the federal budget if that one half of one percent tax were applied to financial transactions.

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You can't throw entitlement checks at the enemy. Your responses ignore the reality of entitlement spending that is on an unsustainable trajectory per the Administrator of Medicare and Medicaid. If you ignore these realities then you are being illogical and subservient to ideology.

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I believe our huge military presence around the world creates as many enemies as it foils, Sherlock. That presents us with a real Catch-22, doesn't it? How do we wind down that presence safely? Political fear mongering certainly doesn't help. It does keep the MIC on the gravy train though.

We need to adopt that British slogan from WWII, "Keep calm and carry on." Some how the Brits managed it through the bombings of WWII and later the bombings which the IRA seemed to pull off with regularity in London and other places in England.

The irrational fear of the American people leads to all sorts of horrors like the Patriot Act. It seems like at least the younger generation (look at the Ron Paul supporters demographic) are starting to do a cost benefit analysis and have decided its not worth it.

Look at what happened to the old Soviet Union. In spite of what conservatives believe, it was not Ronald Reagan who brought them down. They spent themselves into penury with military budgets they couldn't afford. Do we want to go down that road? I don't.

This is not a call to support Paul. His other ideas are so wackadoddle that they outweigh his one good idea, but we need to rethink our foreign and military policies.

I re-read E.O. Wilson's "The End of Nature" over the holidays. He lays out a plan in the final chapter. It is amazing how cheap it would be to solve our environmental and resource problems. It is especially cheap when compared to what we spend on a bloated military. As I have written here before, even the Pentagon is concerned about resource wars, fights over border rivers, and issues of public health and food security related to global climate change. Unfortunately, their solutions are weighted toward military actions and reactions---kind of like treating a patient with pain killers as he lays dying.

I'm ready for a "brave new world that has such people in it"---not the drunken sailors that amazed Miranda in "The Tempest", but a world of people willing to learn and change and cooperate to build a better place for all the generations to come.

Why won't you join us, Sherlock? Come on in, the water's fine.

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I honestly don't know where to begin. There is so much here that I could address but I believe that my last premise pretty much sums it up. If the obvious isn't obvious then what is the logic of discussion? Even obama sees the threat in the Western Pacific and he is a hard core leftist. Maybe when the Chinese make moves that no one can ignore, we can mobilize the Departments of Education, EPA and H&HS to oppose them? I shall sign off due to the obvious uselessness of any other effort.

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I don't see something as an entitlement if I paid into it. I see it as a claim.

If the problem you have is someone receives something they didn't pay into, then call it abuse if you think that's what it is.

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It IS striking when getting what we paid for becomes an "entitlement."

If you want to see real entitlement, tell Big Oil they don't get subsidized by our taxes, or tell Wall Street they aren't getting bailed out. The screams would be heard around the world.

Until then, we ought to stop classifying Grandpa as some kind of spoiled child for receiving the social security he paid into all his life.

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We can fix Social Secuirity for the next century by making all income subject to the Social Security tax, not just the first $105K. We can do the same for Medicare. There is no reason why bankers and those getting muti-million bonuses can't pay taxes on them. If paying 8% or so in taxes on $50 million dolars make you homeless, you are too dumb to handle money. Right now, the lowest incomes levels in the country are subsidizing the rich.

The issue in Greece and Italy, like here in the US is that there were and are millionaires who get by paying little or no taxes to support the country that allowed them the infrastructure to make their money. If it is inherited money, Waltons, Stephens, etc., it is just the luck of the draw that they aren't homeless down by the river. At least it continually confirms the fact that the ReTHUGlicans aren't very "Christian" but are actually Pharisees.

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". . . Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. . . . Is there no other way the world may live? . . ."

Who said it SHolmes?

". . . The FIRST and FOREMOST responsibility of government is security not social welfare. . . ." SHolmes. So we know it wasn't you. Perhaps another wimpy liberal willing to sacrifice you to the forces of socialism and communism???

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SHolmes,
You might of heard of him. He once was a President . . . a Republican President, but in comparison to the Rethuglicans of today, he probably is to you another wimpy liberal willing to sacrifice you to the forces of socialism and communism . . .

Oh, his name was Dwight David Eisenhower and the speech was on April 16, 1953.

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Eisenhower was the last good Republican president. He's spinning in his grave now that he's associated with Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush and the current occupants of the Kooky Klown Kar by proxy.

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Richard Nixon put forward a healthcare reform plan more far reaching than both Clinton's plan and "Obamacare".
Nixon honestly wanted all Americans to have reasonable healthcare.
Nixon's Plan For Health Reform, In His Own Words
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/20…

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I am always amused when leftists start fawning over Reagan and Nixon but Eisenhower! I'll make you a deal. You can have Eisenhower if we can revert back to 1953 - 1961. Is that a deal?

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Holmes, can we get Eisenhower income tax rates?

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Ah, You've heard of him then, SHolmes.

It's amusing when you and your buddies are faced with concepts and quotes by Republicans who actually thought and didn't just parrot the conditioned ideological sound bites favored by your current "sunshine" conservative intellectuals and candidates.

I am a moderate, which is certainly left of your current stance . . . since if you turn further right you'd have to look forward to a regression to your longed-for paleolithic if not cretaceous times. One of these days you might realize that like Eisenhower, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, etc. it isn't illegal to THINK! . . . yet . . . I hope for your sake you do.

As for fawning over, President Nixon, President H. W. Bush and President Reagan, while there were actions and policies that happened during their administrations that were a benefit, I won't be fawning over men who lied to their constituents and Congress and failed to uphold their oath of office, similar to how I don't fawn over President Obama.

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Dotholliday, I was hoping that Obama would be a great president when I voted for him. He had the potential to be one and blew it.

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Yes, MarcKyle64, I agree. I have made my withdrawal of my support from him very clear in the past weeks.

His continued lying and failure to uphold his oath of office have made him persona non grata for my vote.

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