Lies, Coverups, Affairs, and Secession – Wingin’ It Wednesday

On this edition of ”Wingin’ It Wednesday”, our panelists Carol Ross, Warren Caudle, and Mike Stagg  joined “Mornings With Ken and Bernie” to discuss an interesting week in the news.

Here’s what the panel had to say:

1. Your thoughts on the resignation of Gen. David Petraeus as head of the CIA.

Warren started us off:

Where do you start where do you end with this thing? The real gist of this is that men are always men. This shows how really inept the people are who are leading these different groups and agencies.

I go back to old days. I can promise you in the old days this would have been taken care of. It never would have gotten out of hand.

Mike Stagg added:

The Edwin Edwards rule doesn't apply here. The "dead girl, live boy" rule doesn't apply to the CIA.

The whole thing is so weird. Petreaus and the guy designated to become the head of NATO got involved in a custody dispute.

It's just, what are these people doing? Don't they have enough work to do? It just shows incredibly poor judgment by all these people, particularly the military guys. It's bad judgement up and down the line.

Petreaus had the most effective media operation of any general in recent history. That was what his reputation was built on. Apparently he didn't bring these people to the CIA, guess he couldn't get clearance for them.

Carol Ross countered:

See, it's working. What are we talking about? - sex scandal. What is this really about? - Benghazi.

At the heart of this problem is Benghazi. None of this would have come to light had it not been for Benghazi.

When it looked like this whole house of cards was falling apart, then they through him under the bus as a distraction from what's really going on…which is Benghazi. When he became a liability and it looked like even if he resigned or was fired he would have to testify to congress, his credibility had to be destroyed.

What he did I do not condone, the timing is what is suspicious here. We have layer upon layer of lies here, and at the heart is Benghazi.

 

2. More than 16,000 people have signed a petition asking that Louisiana be allowed to secede from the Union.  What do you think of this?

Mike began:

It's kind of amusing.

I remember when Al Gore was challenging the election results in Florida, that whole sore-loserville thing. We have election ever 4 years and you win, you lose, and you live with it.

Secession? - come on. The state of Louisiana thing, the idea is "lets secede and cut off the oil", but we'd lose $1.75 for every $1 in federal tax we'd send. We'd end up making just enough money for Governor Jindal, well I guess he'd be President Jindal then, he'd have just enough money to make one last flight out of State before they shut the whole thing down.

 

Carol countered:

I think, if this is what makes them happy and gets them involved and learning about how this country works…great. But instead of wasting time on this, why not waste time on an impeachment petition, thats something worth wasting your time on.

30 states now have joined this coalition, and Louisiana was first out of the box.

But again, it's not going anywhere, we have a great country, we just need to get rid of the guy who's in charge of it right now.

Waren commented:

This is one of those things that's pretty silly.

First of all, would anybody go in with Louisiana on this deal? Probably not. And if we did, Governor Jindal/President Jindal; I can see him out there now touting the "Republic of Louisiana".

The big problem is when the Republic of Louisiana closes off the Mississippi River to commercial traffic, and then we have to deal with the 82nd Airborne and 2nd Marine Division, it won't be like the old movies. Governor/President Jindal or not, it's not going to be a pretty deal.

3. Can we expect any resolution to our financial crisis with 70 new members in Congress?

Carol began:

I don't know about the 70 new members, but we still have the same president and he's the one who blocked it the last time so why would he expect a different result now? The president walked away from the first debt reduction commission, the Simpson-Bowles commission, and they loved during the election to hang all that around Paul Ryan's neck, but remember there were 4 democrats who did not vote for Simpson-Bowles

Talking about debt reduction without talking about serious reform of these major entitlements is absolutely feudal, and it's a cynical exercise by the Obama Administration.

Mike Stagg countered:

First of all, there is no "fiscal cliff". This actually is a serious of steps.

What will happen on January 1st is that the Bush Tax Cuts will go away., then the Republicans will be able to vote for tax cuts on the middle class without having to vote on tax cuts for the wealthy. There is no "cliff". That's the main misnomer of this thing.

It doesn't happen all at once. The trick is that Republicans have made this death claim that they've got to have these cuts on the wealthy or the world will end.

Warren commented:

I believe the Republican party is still in control of the House, and congress writes the budget. Congress is responsible for all of this.

I will say that it's very easy to take care of our financial crisis, and that's to grow our financial economy. The way to grow this economy is to get ride of our encumbering tax code, but guess what, neither side wants to do that; because the only real power that congress has is manipulating the tax code. That's why we've got sixty thousand lobbyists in Washington spending TONS of money on them, changing a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

If you really want to look at something, go look at the IRS and all these changes to the tax codes every day. It's like thousands of changes every day. That's where congress gets their money to run on.

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Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think about today’s Wingin’ It Wednesday topics. Who got it right, who got it wrong, and who was way off? Let us know in the comment section.