Here are some highlight quotes from the endorsement:

In one very telling episode, Murphy spent virtually his entire endorsement interview with our editorial board taking shot after shot at the challenger while answering none of our questions. It was, in a word, a “terrible” performance.

But let’s cut to the chase here. When you get beyond the nasty rhetoric and innuendo, what you have is this: Murphy, a loyal soldier in Barack Obama’s Democratic army who has voted consistently to advance the president and his party’s agenda, versus Fitzpatrick, who believes that agenda is wrong for America and promises to vote to undo a lot of it.

Fitzpatrick can be expected to work on behalf of a different agenda. We feel strongly that that’s what America needs.

Make sure you find the time to research the candidates (the commercials are full of mis-representations on all sides) and vote on November 2nd.

• Philly.com – Murphy, Fitzpatrick face off in Eighth Congressional District debate
• Thomas Jefferson Club – Round Four – Murphy vs. Fitzpatrick
• Intelligencer/Courier Times – Murphy, Fitzpatrick draw rowdy crowd

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• When the income tax was instituted in 1913, it only applied to the top 1% of wage earners. 
• When the Alternative Minimum Tax was implemented in 1970, it was supposed to target only 155 tax payers.

You can bet that these tax increases will eventually affect more than just the top 2%.  You can read more about taxes here.

In the computer programming world, there is a term of “Spaghetti Code”.  I found the following definition (here’s the link):

Spaghetti code is a derogatory term for computer programming that is unnecessarily convoluted, and particularly programming code that uses frequent branching from one section of code to another. Spaghetti code sometimes exists as the result of older code being modified a number of times over the years.

Our tax and legal code has also become “unnecessarily convoluted … as the result of … being modified a number of time over the years”.  This is undeniable.  Even the representatives writing the laws no longer read them, because of their complexity, and don’t even know how conform to them (they can’t properly do their own tax returns).  As new legislation is passed, they create  new organizations, that overlap with existing ones.  The legislation becomes more and more complex, inter-twined and lengthy (ex. Health Care Reform).  Our presidents, both Republican and Democrat, need to appoint more and more Czars to help them navigate the mess that our government has created.

So, what do you do with Spaghetti Code?  You restructure and simplify to make the program more efficient (both operationally and effort required for future modifications).  We need our representatives to bite the bullet and restructure our government to make it even slightly viable.  It would also be nice if they also re-evaluated the constitutionality of the “code” as they restructure.

What really bothers me is the talk of John Boehner being the next Speaker of the House like it is a foregone conclusion.  This is politics as usual.  If there are 40+ new Republicans elected, people obviously want change.  The current practice of choosing the Congressional leadership, including committees, also needs to change.  We need the best leaders not the ones who are “due” or have the most seniority.  Our government is heading in the wrong direction and is in drastic need of new leadership and new practices.  So, if Boehner is the best person, then he should be the next Speaker.  If not, our Congressional representatives should pick the representative who is.

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The following was posted here on Mike Fitzpatrick’s Facebook page.  This sounds like a private debate, that will be aired on Comcast Network.

===========================================================================================================

Murphy makes up facts, unable to provide plan on economy

PHILADELPHIA, Pa.– In their first face-to-face encounter of the fall campaign, Mike Fitzpatrick trounced incumbent Congressman Patrick Murphy during a taping of Larry Kane’s Voice of Reason earlier today.During the debate, Fitzpatrick pressed Congressman Murphy on  record unemployment that more than doubled during his time in Congress.

Unable to provide any plan for economic recovery and job creation, Murphy feebly claimed that the massive $787 billion stimulus bill he championed last year has helped the economy. Additionally, to hide his record of increasing joblessness and deficit spending, Murphy grossly misstated and made up facts during the thirty-minute debate.

Murphy claimed that during the eight years of the Bush Administration, during two of which Murphy was also a member of Congress,  America lost 8 million jobs.  In fact, according to a Wall Street Journal study published in January of 2009, there was a net gain of 3 million jobs between January 2001 and January 2009.  “Congressman Murphy has never been particularly good at counting jobs,” Fitzpatrick said, “unemployment is high enough, but now Patrick Murphy is trying to make 11 million more jobs disappear.”

Additionally, Murphy claimed that the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted by a Republican Congress. In reality, NAFTA was enacted in 1993, when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress.  It was later signed into law by then President Bill Clinton, also a Democrat.  “This is just a further example of how Congressman Murphy is willing to bend the truth to suit his political needs,” Fitzpatrick said, “unfortunately for Congressman Murphy he can’t hide the fact that unemployment is at 9.6% and he has no plan to reduce it.”

The debate is scheduled to air on the Comcast Network station on Sunday, September 12th at 9:30 PM and Wednesday, September 15th at 5:30 PM.

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• Polling and Political Wrap, 8/26/10 (dailykos.com)