Gov. Tim Pawlenty discusses entitlement reform, 2012, and the president’s agenda on Fox & Friends, April 13, 2011.
Two potential Republican Presidential Candidates took off in two different directions recently concerning the budget deal that John Boehner came up with Democratic leaders. Mike Huckabee endorsed it and Tim Pawlenty criticized it. I find myself leaning towards Pawlenty in this case because I really do not appreciate the way they can call $38 billion a cut when actually it is a cut out of the projected growth in government.
Last Saturday night on the Huckabee Show, Mike Huckabee stated:
The Democrats originally wanted no cuts, then they put 4 billion on the table then 6 billion, then 33 billion before settling on 38 1/2 billion… Now to get more than first offered (by the Democrats) seems a victory to me, but not to some who want it all or nothing. Let me give you a dose of reality. Democrats control 2 of the 3 moving parts of this deal, the Senate and the White House. The Republicans only control the House. You don’t have to be a math major to understand that Republicans will not all they want. We got far more that the President and Harry Reid wanted them to have…. The more important battle is going to be about the more bold and ambitious plan crafted by Congressman Paul Ryan which doesn’t trim a few billion, but trillions of dollars of federal spending and then balances the budget in a decade.
According to the NY Times article, “Pawlenty criticizes budget agreement,” April 13, 2011:
Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota who is exploring a presidential bid, said Wednesday that he opposed the spending agreement that was reached late last week between President Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner. Even though it averted a government shutdown, Mr. Pawlenty said the $38 billion cuts in this fiscal year were insufficient.
“The more we learn about the budget deal,” Mr. Pawlenty said, “the worse it looks.”
In a statement after the president’s speech, Mr. Pawlenty said the administration’s plan to cut spending “was nothing more than window dressing.” He also used the moment to align himself with other fiscal conservatives and some members of the Tea Party movement who said the deal did not go far enough.
It is the latest rightward move from Mr. Pawlenty, who is scheduled to speak at weekend Tea Party rallies commemorating Tax Day.
Mr. Boehner has been widely praised for his work on the budget agreement that came less than two hours before the government was set to shut down late Friday. He was not mentioned in the statement released by Mr. Pawlenty on Wednesday.
“The fact that billions of dollars advertised as cuts were not scheduled to be spent in any case makes this budget wholly unacceptable,” Mr. Pawlenty said. “It’s no surprise that President Obama and Senator Reid forced this budget, but it should be rejected. America deserves better.”
It has been 150 years since the beginning of the Civil War that started in April of 1861 at Ft Sumter.
(Something below I pulled off the internet)
Thursday, November 1, 2007
The Appeal of Masonic Research
Lying nearly forgotten in the archives at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas, are the personal papers of John Grimes Walker. Walker was a naval officer who fought in the Civil War – later going on to become an admiral. He was born in New Hampshire, and relocated as a young man to Iowa – his uncle was governor of the state – before attending Annapolis on the eve of war. Wichita State purchased his personal papers at auction in the 1970’s, and the collection – consisting of ten folio-sized boxes – comprised the correspondence and personal stamp collection of the admiral, who was an avid philatelist and by all appearances a faithful correspondent.
But Walker was also at the center of a mystery. During the war, he was the second, and last, captain of the U.S.S. Baron De Kalb, the mysterious Masonic Ironclad.
At a Masonic speaking engagement recently, I came upon a photo of this ship – part of the Union’s brown-water navy – which bore a Masonic emblem between her stacks. I was not aware of any other ship, tank, aircraft or other implement of war so decorated, and I decided to investigate the matter for the Scottish Rite Journal. This post is a preview of that article which will appear in SRJ in the near future.
The U.S.S. Baron De Kalb was named in honor of Baron Johann de Kalb, a German officer who served as a major general in Washington’s Army during the American Revolutionary War and a Freemason. The ship was laid down in 1861 and was originally named the U.S.S. St. Louis. Upon the discovery that another ship, operating off the East coast, had already been named St. Louis, she was re-christened U.S.S. Baron De Kalb September of 1862.
De Kalb was the first “City” class gunboat, a class of ironclads that are sometimes referred to as “Pook turtles” after their designer, Samuel M. Pook. In addition to the De Kalb, the Carondelet, Cincinnati, Louisville, Mound City, Cairo, and Pittsburgh were built and these 500 ton workhorses were the backbone of the Federal river fleet. Armed with two 8 inch smooth bore cannon, four 42 pounder rifles, and seven 32 pounder smooth bores, De Kalb was a formidable foe, but a slow one. Sporting armor plate in excess of 100 tons, her top speed was a stately nine miles an hour. De Kalb saw action on the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Yazoo, and the Mississippi rivers during her tour of duty before she was finally sunk by a rebel mine below Yazoo City on July 13, 1863.
After several hours sorting through stamps and postcards, old letters and financial records, I had very little to show for myself. In the ninth box, however, I came upon a folder bearing the notation “Code book.” Inside the folder was a small notebook about the size of a pack of playing cards, bound in blue leatherette. It was dated July 15th, 1859, and Grimes had written his name on the inside cover.
“That is an old code book,” the reference assistant told me, “probably a military code.”
I looked through it for a moment and then contradicted her.
“It’s not a military code,” I said, “it is a Masonic cipher.” And to prove it, I read off a few of the more innocent sentences which had the effect of a parlor trick. This discovery was of limited value, however. Although I now had proof that Capt. Walker was a Mason, I was still no nearer to any contemporary evidence proving that the mysterious symbol between De Kalb’s stacks was anything to do with Masonry.
The search continues, however; and the astonishment of the reference librarian was a thing of palpable joy.
The Daily Hatch 