As predictable as the sun rising in the east, Obama will pursue reconciliation in order to facilitate passage of his radical bill which will steal our freedom and rights, fiscally bankrupt our country and destroy the best healthcare system in the world.
We must stop Obama and his radical, elitist minions from this government take over of our healthcare system that a large majority of Americans oppose ... and which Obama and Congress will never have to be subject to.
We urge you to call and email your Senators and Representatives, voicing your vehement opposition to this legislation.
Unreconciled
Investors Business Daily 03/03/2010
Health Reform: As promised, the White House has unveiled the latest tweaks in its plan to take over the U.S. medical care system. Both parties in Congress should beware: You vote for it, you own it.
Survey after survey, including our own IBD/TIPP Poll, shows that Americans firmly oppose more government control over health care. Yet President Obama's new reform plan does just that.
He and other Democratic leaders seem willing to ignore both the voters and the well-founded doubts of opponents to ram a plan down our collective throats — making the grand bet that Republicans, even if they retake Congress in November, will have neither the political clout nor the guts to undo the damage.
Worse, they cynically manipulated us into this situation. Last week, at the much-ballyhooed health care "summit," the president pretended to take ideas from Republican foes to "improve" his wildly unpopular plan. But it was just window dressing.
On Wednesday, the president made clear he'll use the budget reconciliation process to get his radical plan through with as few votes as possible. In short, he'll pass a bill that takes control of 17% of the economy without any GOP support.
So much for bipartisanship.
Worse still, this requires the House to vote up or down on an already-passed Senate bill, with only a vow from the Senate and Obama that they'll go back later and "fix" all that's egregiously wrong with the measure.
So, neither House members nor the citizens they represent will really know what's in the bill until after it's passed. Is this what the White House and Democratic leaders meant last year when they repeatedly promised "transparency" in health reform deliberations?
Still more troubling, no one seems to know the plan's true cost. Obama puts it at $1 trillion over 10 years. But just this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed a "much smaller" bill, while Majority Leader Steny Hoyer insists there is no "scaled-back" version.
Who's right? We'll just say this: Because of accounting tricks that front-load costs but delay benefits, the real price of ObamaCare is more like $2.5 trillion over a decade. This will require massive tax hikes on the middle class, rationing of care by government bureaucrats and deep cuts in Medicare.
The president also said on Wednesday: "The proposal I've put forward gives Americans more control over their health care by holding insurance companies more accountable." Not true.
Americans will be forced to buy health insurance — something we believe is unconstitutional. By adding 31 million new buyers to the health care market and requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions, private insurance prices will inevitably soar. That will force businesses to drop coverage for millions of workers.
"I don't know how this plays politically, but I know it's right," Obama also said. But he knows darn well his scheme is highly unpopular, and that resorting to reconciliation is the only way he'll get the main item on his presidential agenda passed — even if it ends Democrats' control of Congress.
Surely moderate Democrats and Republicans won't be swayed by talk of joining in a "historic opportunity." Their constituents clearly see the flaws in this government takeover of the best health care system in the world, and a vote in favor of it will likely bring their political careers to a sudden end.
Obama and many Congressional Democrats aim to pass government run healthcare no matter what the cost, financially or politically. They are arrogantly and relentlessly pursuing this despite the vehement opposition of a large majority of Americans. In fact, both they and the fifth column news media have added the contemptuous tactics of calling Americans who oppose it dumb, ignorant, and too stupid to understand the complexities of the bill. Of course, they have made many other derogatory claims.
As we have mentioned numerous times, THIS IS NOT TRULY ABOUT HEALTHCARE. Obamacare is a crucial piece in the puzzle that will further co-opt the individual’s rights and transfer it to an all powerful and controlling central government. It is a confiscation by legislation of an additional 16% of our economy which would mean that nearly 50% of it is directly owned and controlled by the government.
Have you noticed how many czars and other officials selected by Obama ardently support communism? This is not by accident. It is part of the overall plan.
The rhetoric of Obama and select Democrats regarding healthcare reform are complete lies. There is no cost savings with this plan. In fact, their claimed costs probably underestimate the total 10 year costs by well in excess of three to four trillion dollars. Look at estimates of other federal programs and check out how they turned out. Most were off by a factor of three to ten times.
Unbelievable!
The following expose by Thomas Sowell eloquently and cogently examines the relevant issues and information regarding government controlled healthcare, truths, facts and political motivations.
Other Nations' Health Systems Are Overlooked
By Thomas Sowell 03/03/2010
What is most like Alice in Wonderland in medical care reform is the fact that it is being discussed in the abstract, as if there are not already government-run medical care systems in this country and elsewhere.
Yet there seems to be remarkably little interest in examining how government-run medical care actually turns out — medically and financially — whether in Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration hospitals in this country, or in government-run medical systems in other countries.
We are repeatedly being told that we need to have a government-controlled medical care system because other countries have it — as if our policies on something as serious as medical care should be based on the principle of monkey see, monkey do.
By all means look at other countries, but not just to see what to imitate. See how it actually turns out. Yet there seems to be an amazing lack of interest in examining what government-controlled medical care produces.
While our so-called health care "summit" last week was going on, British newspapers were carrying exposes of terrible, and often deadly, conditions in British hospitals under that country's National Health Service. But this has not become part of our debate on what to expect from government-controlled medical care.
Such scandals are an old story under the National Health Service in Britain, one repeatedly producing fresh scandals that their newspapers carry but ours ignore.
In addition to a whole series of National Health Service scandals in Britain over the years, the government-run medical system in Britain has far less high-tech medical equipment than there is in the United States. Neither in Britain and Canada nor in other countries with government-run medical care systems can people get to see doctors, especially surgeons, in as short a time as in the United States.
It is not uncommon for patients in those countries to have to wait for months before getting operations that Americans get within weeks, or even days, after being diagnosed with a condition that requires surgery. You can always "bring down the cost of medical care" by having a lower level of quality or availability.
But again, you may never learn any of this by following most of the American mainstream media. It is not that they don't make comparisons between medical care in different countries. But they tend to feature news that will promote government-controlled care.
One of the statistics they spin endlessly is that life expectancy in some countries with government-controlled medical care is higher than in the United States. What they don't tell you is that, in some of these countries, all the infants that die are not included in infant mortality statistics, as they are in the United States.
More important, both political and media supporters of government-controlled medical care consistently confuse medical care with health care.
Much, if not most, of health care depends on what individuals do in the way they live their own lives — including eating habits, alcohol intake, exercise, narcotics and homicide. A study some years ago found that Mormons live a decade longer than other Americans. But nobody believes that Mormons' doctors are that much better than other doctors. When you don't do a lot of things that shorten your life, you live longer. That is not rocket science.
Americans tend to have higher rates of obesity, narcotics use and homicide than people in some other countries. And there is not much that doctors can do about that.
If those who make international comparisons were serious, instead of clever, they would compare the things that medical science can have a great effect on — cancer survival rates, for example. Americans have some of the highest cancer survival rates in the world, and for some particular cancers, the very highest.
When you can get to see a doctor faster, and get treatments under way without waiting for months while the cancer grows and spreads, you have a better chance of surviving. That, too, is not rocket science.
But it is also something that you are not likely to see featured in most of the media, where people are promoting their own pet notions and agendas, instead of giving you the facts on which you can make up your own mind.
By action and words on myriad occasions, Obama has indicated that the Constitution cramps his style. Exuding arrogance and narcissism, he readily indicates that he will blatantly disregard its restraints and promulgate whatever legislation he so desires, whether it be the Federal government takeover of healthcare, industries or even firearm and munitions restrictions.
Obama has shown particular disdain for and has challenged with legislation the First, Second, Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments. We, the American people, need to be eternally vigilant and vigorously oppose his each and every attempt to abrogate our Constitutional rights and freedoms.
Obama must be stopped!
Obama vs. the 10th Amendment
by Chuck Norris 03/02/2010
Not surprisingly, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released last Friday revealed that 56 percent of Americans think the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to their rights and freedoms.
Particularly apropos here is the feds' health care violation of the 10th Amendment, which is part of our Bill of Rights and was ratified Dec. 15, 1791. The amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Thomas Jefferson explained the pre-eminence of this amendment in 1791: "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
The point is that based on the 10th Amendment, when it comes to legislating and controlling our health care, the federal government doesn't have a constitutional leg to stand on. And even its past violations of the 10th Amendment by implementing government health care services have proved to break more national legs than they have to mend them. The proof is in the pudding. How many times does it have to be pointed out to Washington? Medicare is going bankrupt. Medicaid is going bankrupt. Case closed.
The government is inept to run America's health care system. And now it wants to expand its programs (its health care business) to oversee what equates to one-sixth of the gross national product? What rational board anywhere in the world would rightly appoint a CEO who had a string of miserable business failures and major corporate bankruptcies in his dossier?
I agree with Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University Medical Center, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who put it best in their article a few months back, titled "Alternatives to government health takeover." They said this: "We think it's critical that power shifts to the American consumer and away from government, employers and insurers, as evidence shows medical care prices come down when patients pay directly.
Government should offer tax relief, such as refundable tax credits, to encourage private health insurance purchasing -- especially for low-income families. Similar ideas, like those in the Patients' Choice Act ... are important for Americans to consider. We would do well also to consider creative ideas such as changing federal payments to state-based medicaid plans to individual vouchers or expanding health savings accounts, as has been done in South Carolina."
Returning the onus of solving health care issues to families, local communities and states would not only return a balance of power to our federal government but also help with America's economic recovery and build up communities at the same time.
The abuse of federal political power to intervene in areas such as Americans' private health care could exist only in a nation that no longer holds its leaders accountable to its constitution and that has governmental leadership that regards itself as above its people and its constitution. Sadly, I was listening to an interview the other day in which President Barack Obama described the U.S. Constitution as "an imperfect document ... a document that reflects some deep flaws ... (and) an enormous blind spot." He also said, "The Framers had that same blind spot."
In so doing, the president established a rationale and justification for disregarding the Constitution. Even worse, he placed himself above the Constitution and those "blind Framers," who just couldn't see the big picture as he does today. After all, he's the constitutional scholar, and the Framers were just, well, the creators of the document!
Our 44th president would do well to learn from America's third president, Thomas Jefferson, himself a source greater than any living constitutional lawyer. Imagine Jefferson sitting there at the health care summit, a ripe sage at roughly 80 years of age. After listening to all the clamoring of both Republicans and Democrats, he politely but sternly utters these words, which he also wrote to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson in 1823: "The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers. They (did not learn from the past), nor (were they) aware of the slipperiness of the eels of the law. I ask for no straining of words against the General Government, nor yet against the States. I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by the constitution for the limitation of both; and never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold as at market."
Quite consistent with their arrogant and imperious rhetoric, it appears that Obama and Pelosi will pursue the “nuclear option” in attempting to pass Obamacare. This, of course, is in direct opposition to the preferences of the majority of Americans and lucidly illustrates that this is not truly about healthcare as they ostensibly claim. It is about the government repealing the rights and freedoms of the individual American to make their own decisions about healthcare and instead granting full control to the Federal government. It is an ideological power play that will be a suicide mission if they go forth with their plans.
Voters should remember this come Election Day and dethrone all these Democrats.
White House: Simple up-or-down vote on health care
By Jim Kuhnhenn Mar 1, 2010
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House called for a "simple up-or-down" vote on health care legislation Sunday as Speaker Nancy Pelosi appealed to House Democrats to get behind President Barack Obama's chief domestic priority even it if threatens their political careers.
In voicing support for a simple majority vote, White House health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle signaled Obama's intention to push the Democratic-crafted bill under Senate rules that would overcome GOP stalling tactics.
Republicans unanimously oppose the Democratic proposals. Without GOP support, Obama's only chance of emerging with a policy and political victory is to bypass the bipartisanship he promoted during his televised seven-hour health care summit Thursday.
"We're not talking about changing any rules here," DeParle said. "All the president's talking about is: Do we need to address this problem and does it make sense to have a simple, up-or-down vote on whether or not we want to fix these problems?"
DeParle was optimistic that the president would have the votes to pass the massive bill. But none of legislation's advocates who spoke on Sunday indicated that those votes were in hand.
"I think we will get to that point where we will have the votes," predicted Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a member of the Senate Democratic leadership. "I believe that we will pass health care reform this spring."
In a sober call to arms, Pelosi said lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public. "We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."
Pelosi said it took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, "and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill."
It's unclear whether Pelosi's remarks will embolden or chill dozens of moderate House Democrats who face withering criticisms of the health care proposal in visits with constituents and in national polls. Republican lawmakers unanimously oppose the health care proposals, and many GOP strategists believe voters will turn against Democrats in the November elections.
Pelosi, from San Francisco, is more liberal than scores of her Democratic colleagues. But she generally walks a careful line between urging them to back left-of-center policies and giving them a green light to buck party leaders to improve their re-election hopes.
Her comments seemed to acknowledge the widely held view that Democrats will lose House seats this fall - maybe a lot.
They now control the chamber 255 to 178, with two vacancies. Pelosi stopped well short of suggesting Democrats could lose their majority, but she called on members of her party to make a bold move on health care with no prospects of GOP help.
"Time is up," she said. "We really have to go forth."
Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-ranking Republican leader in the House, made it clear Republicans see a Democrats-only bill as an election-year issue.
"If Speaker Pelosi rams through this bill, through the House ... they will lose their majority in Congress in November," he said.
The White House is redoubling efforts to remind voters that the Senate passed an Obama-backed health care bill in December with 60 votes. Every Republican voted against that bill. A Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts in January, however, left Democrats one vote shy of the number necessary to overcome GOP filibusters.
As a result, a new plan would call for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama. The Senate would then use budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats. Those rules prohibit filibusters.
Exactly what the legislation would look like remained a matter of negotiation within Democratic ranks. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, "is working with his caucus, the White House and the House leadership on strategy and next steps," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Sunday.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky renewed his party's demand that Obama and the Democrats start over and write a bipartisan health care bill. He said that while the reconciliation process has been used to pass legislation in the past, it should not apply to health care legislation.
"There are a number of other Republicans who do not think something of this magnitude ought to be jammed down the throats of a public that doesn't want it through this kind of device," McConnell said.
Pelosi said that "in a matter of days" Democrats will have specific legislative language on health care to show to the public and to wavering lawmakers. She predicted voters will warm up to the bill once they understand its details.
"When we have a bill," she said, "you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell."
At that point, added House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, top Democrats will make their pitch to their members.
"Within the next couple of weeks we're going to have a specific proposal and start counting votes to see whether or not those proposals could pass," he said.
Pelosi appeared on ABC's "This Week" and CNN's "State of the Union." DeParle and Cantor were on NBC's "Meet the Press," Hoyer was on CBS'"Face the Nation," while Menendez appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and McConnell spoke on CNN.
---
Associated Press writer Charles Babington contributed to this article.
The news media and “our” liberal politicians see themselves as so elitist and righteous that they are resorting to attacking the American people who disagree with their policies. They disparage us as ignorant or benighted simply because we are exercising our Constitutional (and inherent) rights to oppose their far-left positions. Democracy has suddenly become an inconvenience for them as it has made passage of their various bills which would further restrict and control our rights and freedoms and plunder more of our hard earned wealth, nearly impossible.
This is also exactly why they are viciously attacking and denigrating the Tea Party Movement, a grass roots movement that represents an angry middle America. We are sick and tired of politicians imperiously foisting expensive and irresponsibly solutions on us, ransacking ever increasing amounts of the fruits of our labor, and destroying our economy, jobs and freedoms yet they live by another set of rules (including their gold plated healthcare plan), corruptly aggrandize themselves with our tax dollars and evince a general antipathy toward the people who are suppose to be their bosses.
This must stop. These despicable, arrogant, corrupt politicians must be voted out of office ASAP!
As for much of the news media, a boycott of their products and programs can be quite effective. In the following article alone, several of these are quoted from that excoriate Americans that we can place on this list:
Times Magazine, Newsweek, New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker
To this we can add other far-left media like: MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS
Money, or the lack of it, talks. Let’s be quite loud on this issue!
Blame Americans First
Democrats lose patience with democracy.
By Matthew Continetti March 1, 2010
What’s the clearest sign the Obama agenda is in trouble? That’s easy: the string of jeremiads in the pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets of fashionable opinion. Unable to tout the administration’s successes, and worried about Republican ascendancy, liberals have assigned responsibility for the mess they’re in neither to their program nor to their methods but to larger, structural faults in American politics and society. Beginning with you.
You aren’t too bright, for one thing. After all, opines Jacob Weisberg in Newsweek, the “biggest culprit” behind “our political paralysis” is the “childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.” You simply do not know what’s good for you. “On many issues these days,” writes the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein, “the American people are badly confused.” “The people may have spoken,” writes the New -Yorker’s James Surowiecki. “It’s just not clear that they’re making any sense.” In a blog post titled “Too Dumb to Thrive,” Time magazine’s Joe Klein cuts to the chase: “It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.”
The problem, as Weisberg sees it, is that America “simultaneously demands and rejects action on unemployment, deficits, health care, and other problems.” Note the myopia. For Weisberg, the only conceivable “action” on any issue is limited to the policy preferences of liberal Democrats. No other options spring to mind.
This is nonsense. Just because the public says the economy is important does not necessarily mean it has to support a stimulus measure that has added massively to the debt without much benefit. Just because the public is concerned with rising health care costs does not mean that it has to support a bill that could alter existing health care arrangements and increase costs in the long-term. Steven Pearlstein writes that Americans “want to do something about global warming.” No they don’t. Global warming came dead last in a recent Pew survey of public priorities.
The reason health care, cap and trade, and the other blocks of Obama’s New Foundation are unpopular isn’t public ignorance. It’s that the public sees them as counterproductive—and in many cases beside the point. The people’s representatives have responded to a variety of signals, from falling poll numbers, to town hall protests, to GOP victories in -Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Which is precisely how democracy is supposed to function.
And that’s the problem, says Kurt Andersen in New York magazine. “American democracy has gotten way too democratic.” The “thoughtful, educated, well-off, well-regarded gentlemen” who designed our Constitution “wanted a government run by an American elite like themselves.” But the “populist impulse” abroad in the land today has scared legislators into obeying the people’s demands.
It was not always thus. “In the old days,” Andersen laments, “the elite media really did control the national political discourse” and “presidents and congressional leaders could pretty well manage the policy conversations” without the public trying to butt in. But there’s no going back now; “maybe our republic’s constitutional operating system simply can’t scale up to deal satisfactorily with a heterogenous population of 310 million.”
This liberal uneasiness with democracy is not new. In 2003, in The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria made the case against too much public involvement in government. In 2008, in Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Thomas Friedman dreamed of America becoming “China for a day” so that he could impose his environmental agenda on a truculent populace. In a 2009 New York Times column, Friedman wrote that a dictatorship, “when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today,” has “great advantages” over democratic systems. In the Atlantic Monthly, James Fallows writes that “whatever is wrong with today’s Communist leadership [in Beijing], it is widely seen as pulling the country nearer to its full potential rather than pushing it away.” Nevertheless, the Democrats probably aren’t going to run on “Communist China Does It Better.”
What makes the liberal jeremiads confusing is that they work at cross purposes. On one hand, you’ve got the attacks on the people’s intelligence and representative government. On the other, you’ve got the attacks on American institutions for not being representative enough. Which is it? Are the people the problem, or is their government? According to Fallows, it’s the latter: “Our government is old and broken and dysfunctional, and may even be beyond repair.”
The culprit is the Senate, which gives equal say to states with small populations and requires 60 votes to pass legislation. Fallows says these minority rights have turned the Senate “into a deep freeze and a dead weight.” “America is not yet lost,” Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times, “but the Senate is working on it.” In a Huffington Post blog, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, writes that special interests are “using the filibuster to stop legislation that would benefit the little guy,” whether the little guy likes it or not.
You can make a persuasive argument that the filibuster has been deployed too frequently in recent years, especially when it has prevented presidents, Republican and Democrat, from staffing their administrations. Nevertheless, the Senate and the filibuster are there for good reasons: to defuse momentary passions that could have unintended and harmful consequences for the country.
The system is designed to ensure broad consensus before Congress enacts major reforms. Such consensus existed during the New Deal and Great Society. And there was consensus behind certain elements of Reagan’s and Bush’s and Clinton’s programs, as well. That was not the case when George W. Bush attempted to overhaul Social Security, however. The public agreed with Bush that there was a problem, but it did not like his solution. It has had the same reaction to Obama’s proposals.
The liberal program is in disarray because liberals have failed to establish general agreement. They have found that simple majorities do not automatically translate into programmatic success. And when they are met with public opposition and institutional resistance, they do what comes naturally. They blame Americans first.
Matthew Continetti is associate editor of The Weekly Standard and the author, most recently, of The Persecution of Sarah Palin (Sentinel Books).
Her Royal Highness, Nancy Pelosi, continues to legislate like a haughty, contemptuous monarch who is dismissive of the wishes of her subjects. The American public has demonstrated many times and ways in no uncertain terms and by a 2 to 1 margin that it vehemently opposes Obamacare and government takeover of our healthcare system. We thought the previously unthinkable, odds defying upset win of Republican Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts over the Democratic challenger for the seat held by the Kennedy family for over 50 years was the final nail in the coffin. So did virtually everyone else.
Pelosi doesn’t seem to think so. Her attitude can be summed up by:
Pelosi Makes Her Case: A Majority Is 51 Votes
By Steven T. Dennis Feb. 10, 2010
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is pinning the blame on Republicans for a lack of bipartisanship in Congress and plans to bypass them if they continue to oppose efforts to enact near-universal health care.
“A constitutional majority is 51 votes,” Pelosi said in an interview Tuesday with Roll Call. “If in fact the Republicans are going to say nothing can be done except by 60 percent, then maybe we all should be elected with 60 percent. It isn’t legitimate in terms of passing legislation.”
Pelosi has been wary of publicly giving advice to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) or President Barack Obama, but it’s no secret that House Democrats have been increasingly frustrated at the dysfunction on the opposite side of the building.
“There is some unease when you talk about, well, what’s happening to the initiatives to help the American people?” Pelosi said. “Is there never anything that can be done without 60 votes?”
The shattering of the 60-vote Democratic Senate supermajority with the election of Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has revived talk among Democrats of bypassing filibusters, and Pelosi has forcefully argued for doing just that to complete work on the party’s stalled health care package.
The Speaker, who oversaw her chamber’s passage of a $1.2 trillion health care bill last fall, has repeatedly balked at White House suggestions following Brown’s election that the House merely accept the Senate’s version of the overhaul and has been pushing the Senate to adopt a host of changes through a separate, filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill.
In her interview with Roll Call, Pelosi stopped short of saying the filibuster should be done away with altogether, but she used some of her bluntest language yet to defend the use of reconciliation as something that has been used with regularity by Republican and Democratic presidents alike.
“We have set the stage for that. It’s important for us to remind the American people of the inconsistency that the Republicans have in saying this is unusual. No, five times President Bush used it. ... This is what the Republicans did to pass their bills, their tax cuts for the rich,” Pelosi said.
“It’s up to us to make sure the public knows that this is not extraordinary. And the public knows that a constitutional majority is 51. It would be a reflection on us if we could not convince people that this is not an unusual place to go.”
And Pelosi complained about the never-ending filibusters by Senate Republicans going far beyond the health care debate.
“Yes, the filibuster has its place, it may even have its place in health care — it’s a very big issue. But does it have its place on every appointment and every piece of legislation? We have over 200 bills over there that haven’t been taken up. Most of them, 70 percent of them, were passed with over 50 Republican votes in the House. ...
“We haven’t gotten as much done as we should and one of those reasons is because of what the Republicans are doing. ...
The American people have to make a judgment about the conduct of the Republicans in insisting on that on every vote, and the Democrats in the Senate have to deal with the challenge that they have.”
She declined to criticize Obama, who many rank-and-file House Democrats have complained hasn’t pushed the Senate hard enough during the health care debate.
“We want a bill,” she said. “Without the president’s leadership we would not be as close as we are. We are in the red zone.
“This is very doable. ...
“Our responsibility is to be ready for compromise, to find common ground so we can move forward with health care, and I think that we will.”
Pelosi also said she is open to Republicans presenting new ideas at the Feb. 25 bipartisan health care summit called for by Obama, but she said she’s already seen the Republican health care alternative offered on the House floor and said it only provided insurance for an additional 3 million people instead of the more than 30 million in the Democratic bill.
Pelosi also defended her party’s record on bipartisanship, saying Democrats accepted 15 Republican amendments to the House health care bill.
“Whatever the good idea comes from if it works for the American people, we are receptive to that,” she said. But she said Democrats did not plan to “throw our people to the wolves when it came to their health.”
Beyond health care reform, however, Pelosi said Democrats have shown they know how to work across the aisle. For instance, she said it was Democrats who helped President George W. Bush get some of his top priorities done including an energy package, a stimulus tax credit bill and the Trouble Asset Relief Program.
“This whole thing of bipartisanship is sort of a new thing for [Republicans], because they weren’t even for their own president on the TARP. A minority of the minority voted for that,” she said.
Still, Pelosi was confident Democrats and Republicans will align on a jobs package.
“It’s easier to find common ground because everybody wants to create jobs,” Pelosi said. “Clearly everybody does not want to have, believe that we should have universal access to quality health care for all Americans,” she said.
Is Obama so incredibly out of touch with reality? Or is he an arrogant, elitist, pertinacious ideologue who doesn’t give a damn what the American public thinks or what the facts are. Unfortunately, this is a rhetorical question - we know the answer. He evinced this same reaction and response with Obamacare.
Despite the spectacular worldwide implosion of the global warming movement’s scientific basis from interminable revelations of research fraud and data manipulation, verified data actually showing slight global cooling, and snowstorms breaking all time records, Obama still insists that there is global warming. In fact, as seen in the above video, he wants to establish a federal office that will study global warming. If this is his way of addressing the unemployment rate, he can do better!
We suspect that the abundance of verbal hot air present in Washington is being recorded by the disproportionate number of temperature probes intentionally placed there, skewing the results. Probably, the best and least costly solution for America would be for him and many of his Democrat cohorts to leave town … permanently!
Obama’s arrogance and narcissism are boundless. In the following speech replete with his requisite “I”s, “my”s, and “me”s, he firmly states that he has made untold sacrifices just so he could become “our” President. The “Messiah” or “the Chosen One” heard our prayers and answered them with a life of politics and campaigning.
Yeah, sure!
Pres. Obama Talks About the Sacrifices He's Made to Be President
In an article posted by Bob Unruh in WorldNetDaily.com on Jan. 29th, he exposed the despicable profligacy and unfettered arrogance of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. As noted:
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch, which investigates and prosecutes government corruption, show Pelosi incurred expenses of some $2.1 million for her use of Air Force jets for travel over that time.
"Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said today. "And these documents suggest the Speaker's congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else."
The unabated arrogance and contemptuousness that Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid display toward the American people is unparalleled. They are completely dismissive of the public's negative sentiments regarding Obamanocare and are scheming to pass it come hell or high water. This disdainful attitude was clearly displayed by Obama during his State of the Union address.
In the following video, there is a short clip of Nancy Pelosi voicing her plan to pass the bill by whatever means possible.
Pelosi Says She’ll 'Poll Vault' Obamacare Through Congress
It actually isn’t a slow news day. However, we wanted to expose to the voters of America another fine example of the all too common type of politician involved in ruling our country… er, representing us and our interests. Imperious. Arrogant. Condescending. Corrupt. Of course, this doesn’t even cover their intellectual deficits such as incompetence, ignorance, ideological perversions, etc.
We have seen all too many of these despicable politicians in action over the past year such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, Charles Schumer, Barney Frank, John Murtha, Alan Grayson, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Obama’s many czars and Cabinet members – for starters. Many have made it almost a career for life.
We surely don’t want to forget Pete Stark who has a litany of reprehensible tirades, bad behavior and despicable comments and sound bites over his 37 years in the House of Representatives. He is yet another Democrat who champions a Big, Powerful and Regulatory Government that knows what is best for their peon subjects.
Pete Stark Blows Up Over National Debt
And, of course, that classic outburst from the past...
Obama’s ascendancy to the Presidency was in part facilitated by a mantra which became a euphoria of hope and change of many deceived voters though millions more were not fooled. He sought to present himself as righteous, progressive, mainstream, a social and racial healer, a bastion of hope and one who would fix the wrongs the United States had perpetrated over the years. It required little insight or intelligence to lucidly see the incongruities of his rhetoric, actions and associations. What more voters are realizing and which were manifestly evident far preceding the Election, is that he is a far-left radical with little positive regard for the United States, a staunch ideologue of socialism-communism, a not so closeted racist, an abjectly inexperienced manager who rarely will take responsibility for failures, a contemptuous and arrogant individual with a narcissistic personality disorder who irresponsibly pursues hedonistic endeavors in the face of a painful and protracted recession. And there is more…
Mort Zuckerman, editor of the US News and World Report, assesses Obama’s first year in office from a liberal perspective and identifies many of these failings that have led to his precipitous fall in popularity and even more so in his policies.
The Incredible Deflation of Barack Obama
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman January 21, 2010
The air is seeping out of the Obama balloon. He has fallen to below 50 percent in the poll approval ratings, a decline punctuated by his party's shocking loss in the Massachusetts special election.
Why?
Barack Obama was undoubtedly sincere in what he promised, even if his promises were within the normal range of political exaggeration. The first trouble is that his gift for inspiration aroused expectations, stoked to unprecedented heights by his own staff, that he would solve the climate crisis on Monday, the jobs crisis on Tuesday, the financial crisis on Wednesday, the education crisis on Thursday, Afghanistan on Friday, Iraq on Saturday, and rest on Sunday. His oratorical skills were highlighted by the contrast with President Bush, who mangled words so much that his incoherence became, as
Tina Brown wrote, "a metaphor for incompetence." Expectations were spurred, too, by Obama's recognition that Americans yearned for a new kind of politics, a rejection, as he put it, of "politics as usual."
Perhaps the inevitable outcome was disappointment—and on this Obama has not disappointed. Alas, he has accelerated the deflation of hope with his extraordinary volume of public appearances. In his first six months, he gave three times as many interviews as George W. Bush, four times as many prime-time news conferences as Bill Clinton, and more interviews than both combined: 93 for Obama and 61 for his two immediate predecessors. He appeared on five Sunday talk shows on the same morning, followed the next day by David Letterman, the first-ever presidential appearance on a nighttime comedy show. In another week, he squeezed in addresses to the U.S. Climate Change Summit, the U.N. General Assembly, the U.N. Security Council, and a variety of press conferences.
His promiscuity on TV has made him seem as if he is still a candidate instead of president and commander in chief. He—and his advisers—have failed to appreciate that national TV speeches are best reserved for those moments when the country faces a major crisis or a war. Now he faces the iron law of diminishing novelty.
Despite this apparent accessibility, Obama's reliance on a teleprompter for flawless delivery made for boring and unemotional TV, compounding his cerebral and unemotional style. He has seemed not close but distant, not engaged but detached. Is it any wonder that the mystique of his presidency has eroded so that fewer people have listened to each successive foray? The columnist Richard Cohen wryly observed that he won the Pulitzer Prize for being the only syndicated columnist who did not have an exclusive interview with the president.
Poor results. But Obama's problems are more than a question of style. There is doubt aroused on substance. He sets deadlines and then lets too many pass. He announces a strategic review of Afghanistan, describing it as "a war of necessity," only to become less sure to the point that he didn't even seem committed to the policy that he finally announced. As for changing politics in Washington, he assigned the drafting of central legislative programs not to cabinet departments or White House staff but to the Democratic congressional leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the very people so mistrusted by the public. Who could be surprised that the critical bills—the stimulus program and healthcare—degenerated under a welter of pork and earmarks that had so outraged the American public in the past?
Pelosi benefited from $54 million to relocate a Bay Area wine train, not to speak of a secret deal with the drug industry lobby to preclude negotiations on Medicaid drug prices and exclude drug imports from Canada, concessions that had previously been strongly rejected by Obama. Reid favored the gambling industry by arranging an earmark for a Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas high-speed monorail, even though it won't be built for years. Some components of the stimulus did help soften the recession, yet only roughly a third of the $787 billion stimulus has been spent, and too much was spent on programs supported by liberal Democrats, which explains why so much of the stimulus money went toward education, health, energy conservation, and other activities, mostly worthy but not geared to achieving recovery and getting people back to work.
Taxpayers have thus come to see politics as usual masquerading as economic recovery. Indeed, both the stimulus and healthcare plans were voted on so quickly that the lawmakers had no time to read the bills. In both cases, the White House created the impression it was interested in passing anything, no matter how ineffectual. This was epitomized by Obama's chief of staff essentially asserting that a healthcare bill would be passed even if all it consisted of was two Band-Aids and an aspirin.
Most critically, Obama misjudged the locus of the country's anxiety: the economy. Instead of concentrating on jobs, jobs, jobs, he made the decision to "boil the ocean" and go for everything, from comprehensive health reform to global warming to a world without nuclear weapons ... and the beat goes on.
This was more than the Congress could absorb and more than the country could understand. Obama, the theoretician in a hurry, made no allowance for the normal resistance to dramatic change and the public's distaste for big government, big spending, and big deficits. He didn't seem to realize that Americans understand in the most personal terms that excessive debt has real consequences, given how many have mortgages that exceed the value of a home and credit lines that are too much to carry. Yet this was what the president seemed to be getting us into. Over 60 percent of the country believes that government spending is excessive; Obama's lowest approval ratings come from his mishandling of the present and future deficits.
Delayed stimulus. It is not as if the limited stimulus program has done the job either, since unemployment rates soared over 10 percent (compared with the 8 percent ceiling that was promised). Shelby Steele asked a good question in the Wall Street Journal: "Where is the economic logic behind a stimu¬lus package that doesn't fully click in for a number of years?" Yes, we might have just escaped a depression, but as the Econo¬mist magazine observes, voters will not thank the president for averting a depression that did not come but are "more likely to blame him for the recession that did." On top of all this, and not all Obama's fault, a financial crisis usually produces weak recoveries in jobs, so a good number of Americans are likely to remain furious at the spectacle of the financial world doing well while so many ordinary folks lose their jobs and their savings. This anger will not subside while households see net worth slump to where it was 20 years ago and debt reach close to record highs at about 130 percent of disposable income, and while the residential real estate crisis continues unabated and the official jobless rate doesn't come close to reflecting the true extent of unemployment and ... and ... and ....
The White House might have at least demonstrated that it cares about fiscal restraint and independence from the leadership in Congress, but consistently Obama has failed to veto spending while centralizing power. A majority of Americans think it a mistake at this time of economic distress to embark on a costly healthcare program. As it was, the program's apparently stalled trip through Congress turned out to be another fiasco of political corruption, with millions of dollars allocated to buy votes, such as those of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu and Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson. Anger with that process and the bill it produced helped fuel the stunning election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts.
The result is a widespread concern that progressive taxation to pay for the "nanny state" will snuff out future opportunities that Americans believe they deserve for themselves and their children. Obama misjudged the public's appetite for taxpayer-funded solutions; most people believe all the government does is waste money. In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, only 23 percent said they "trusted the government just about always or most of the time"—the smallest proportion in 12 years, and the all-important independent swing voters who decide elections now favor Republicans by 52 percent, up from 30 percent.
Unfortunately, there is not much solace in international affairs either, where, again, expectations were so pumped up. America's image is better, no doubt, but uncertainty and procrastination prevail. One major international political leader recently put it well: "Not only does the leadership of this region not think that Obama is strong enough to confront his enemies; they aren't sure he is strong enough to support his friends." The administration seems "hopelessly naive," according to one Arab foreign minister, and unable to face the full truth about Islamic terrorism. The public frustration over the administration's mismanagement of the latest jihadist attempt to blow up a plane with all its innocent travelers (on Christmas Day) was captured in the New York Daily News headline "Mr. President, it's time to get a grip!"
The consequence is that there isn't a single critical problem on which the president has a positive public rating. Only a minority of Americans now believe the president will make the right decisions for the country. Nor can he any longer take refuge in the rejoinder that "we inherited a terrible situation." Or blame it on fat-cat bankers and insurance companies.
Blaming others, including Bush, for the country's predicament is less and less persuasive. "At some point you own your presidency," wrote Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. "At some point the American people tell you it's yours."
More worrying for the administration is that while Obama gets the approval of 76 percent of non-whites, his approval among whites is down to 41 percent, according to Gallup. This is a huge change that literally puts the Democratic control of Congress at risk. The Republicans have hardly been stellar either, but there is now a renewed openness in the country to hear what they have to say. Obama's political realignment of America is over. We no longer believe that he will "change the world" and "transform the country."
This brings to mind why an adviser to President Roosevelt in the 1930s, Bernard Baruch, told electors to vote for the person who promised them less. In this way, he said, "you would be less disappointed." There is still time for Obama to change and turn things around. But the first year is the critical year, one in which the public defines the president, and it has to be said that broad swaths of the country are deeply disappointed.
As a consequence of Obama’s unwavering adherence to his radical and inimical ideologies, his glaring lack of previous executive experiences, and his prodigious and destructive arrogance and narcissism which preclude him from dispassionately assessing all angles of situations, he has set America to pay dearly this and in coming years. Exacerbating this situation further is his innate corruptness, scheming dishonesty and expressed profound disdain for America and most of its citizens (excluding the chosen minorities in specific and his constituency in general).
If you have any doubt about this, just consider all the mandated minority preferences in Obamacare and other legislation (which are racist and should be unconstitutional), wealth transfer beneficiaries, the dropping of charges against the New Black Panther Party regarding voter intimidation during the Presidential election, and even his racist tact in response to the Henry Gates – Cambridge police office incident, etc.
The following editorial enumerates some of the issues or incidents that Obama’s inept or ideologically blinded responses, attitude or inactions will ultimately lead to bad outcomes for America. Aside from a few exceptions, you won't see incisive assessments like this in the sycophantic liberal news media
Chickens Of '09 Coming Home To Roost In '10
By Victor Davis Hanson
Plenty of our chickens will be coming home to roost this year.
Take foreign relations. In 2009, the new administration assumed that George W. Bush was largely responsible for global tensions. As a remedy, we loudly reached out to our foes and those with whom we had uneasy relationships.
But so far these leaders — like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Russia's Vladimir Putin — have only interpreted Barack Obama's serial goodwill gestures as weaknesses to be exploited. They play the part of the pushy class bully, we the whiny nerd.
In the waning days of 2009, Iran has announced it has no intention of dismantling its nuclear facilities and ignored the latest Obama deadline to cease. There's no reason not to expect the theocracy to make significant strides in its nuclear program in 2010, while continuing without rebuke to beat and murder democratic dissidents in its streets.
Russia has announced plans to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons — and scoffed at our polite suggestions that it should pressure Iran to stop its nuclear development.
Venezuela brags of its own similar program to come — an act that could threaten all the neighboring democracies in the region.
The administration courted China on a much-heralded Asian tour. President Obama has even said he would be our first "Pacific president."
Unfortunately, China was not impressed. It declined our advice about reducing its carbon footprint and instead reminded Americans that we owe the Chinese people nearly $1 trillion. Expect much more of that hectoring in 2010 as our debt to China grows.
Consider also the threat of Islamic terrorism. In 2009, some in the Obama administration decided "war on terror" was too provocative a label for what might be better dubbed "overseas contingency operations." Apparently, they were thinking a kinder, gentler image would discourage terrorists.
Accordingly, the self-confessed architect of Sept. 11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was promised a civil trial in New York rather than a military tribunal normally accorded to out-of-uniform murderous terrorists. Expect a lot of soapbox speechmaking about America's sins during his testimony in 2010.
As part of our efforts to break with the Bush anti-terrorism past, President Obama also vowed he would close the facility at Guantanamo Bay by Jan. 22, 2010 — another deadline that won't be met.
But as 2009 ended, we were reminded that radical Islamic terrorists still want to kill us for who we are, and what we represent, rather than any particular thing we do.
Maj. Nidal Hasan, nursed on radical Islamic doctrine, murdered 12 fellow soldiers and one civilian at Ford Hood, Texas.
Five would-be terrorists with U.S. citizenship were arrested in Pakistan on their way to link up with Islamist militant groups. And Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was stopped in flight from Amsterdam before he could blow up an American passenger jet.
Note that all these recent terrorists were not poor, lived in the hospitable West — and cared little that the Obama administration has been critical of prior U.S. war-on-terror policies.
So, while we assured the world in 2009 that we wouldn't be overzealous in our various efforts to stop terrorists, the terrorists proved that they most certainly would be in theirs to kill us.
Meanwhile, at home we operated on the same naive assumptions. The Obama administration inherited a $500 billion deficit and expanded it threefold. Its planned mega-deficits may well grow the aggregate national debt over the next decade to over $20 trillion.
But the administration's 2009 calculations on how to service the growing red ink are based on continued cheap interest. Yet in 2010, it is likely we will see rising inflation, rising interest rates — and rising costs to the continual self-destructive borrowing.
We were given a financial break on energy prices in 2009. The worldwide recession sent oil down to about $50 a barrel.
But America did little during the year's reprieve to rush into production newly discovered domestic gas and oil fields, to tap existing finds in Alaska, or to license new nuclear plants.
By year's end, oil was creeping back up to $80. If the economic upswing continues, in 2010 it may near its old high of nearly $150 a barrel. Soon we will wish we had done something concrete in 2009 rather than offering more stale rhetoric about wind and solar power.
In other words, 2009 may seem to have ended relatively quietly. But in our foreign relations, in the war against terror, in our massive borrowing and in our energy policies, we created chickens that soon will come home to roost in 2010.
The stunning election of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate from Massachusetts should serve as a clarion call to Congressional Democrats and Obama that the American public is very angry at them over several key issues including healthcare reform, their profligate spending of our tax dollars, the contemptuousness for the voters, greater intrusions into our lives and their disgraceful conduct in attempting to pass legislation.
If these politicians continue to ignore the will of the people, it will be at their peril!
Keith Olbermann: NBC News: Brown a 'Homophobic, Racist, Teabagging' Misogynist
Can anyone really prove that Keith Olbermann delivered this rant on the news? After all, NBC News has virtually no viewers who would have witnessed it due to its countenancing of such unprofessional, vitriolic, gratuitous and partisan outbursts which constitutes its news reporting. If you closed your eyes while listening to the following video, you could actually imagine this screed being also delivered by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Charles Schumer, John Murtha, Al Franken, etc. of the Democratic Party.
Maybe Olbermann should consider applying for a job on “The View”! He might actually get along with somebody – like Joy Behar!
This exemplifies why a majority of Americans are fleeing not only NBC but also ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC ... and watching Fox News instead.
You undoubtedly have learned about the corrupt deal recently consummated between the labor unions, a major constituency of the Democratic party, and the Congressional Democrats in order to shore up their support for Obamacare. This latest outrageous perversion of power will preferentially exclude all members of these labor unions such as of the SEIU from having to pay a hefty 40% punitive tax on health insurance plans whose annual costs exceed a selected annual dollar amount. All other Americans will still be legally coerced to pay this tax PLUS be responsible for the amount the government won’t be collecting from union members!
Further adding insult to injury, it would be egregious enough if this were the only example of such corruption but IT IS NOT! This is the modus operandi of Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the Democrats. Stimulus money going exceedingly disproportionately to the Democrat supporting blue states; blatant disregard for any consideration for tort reform that could save tens of billions of dollars annually from the cost of healthcare – as payback to attorneys who almost monolithically support and contribute to the Democratic party; the Sen. Ben Nelson Nebraska Cornhusker kickback and Sen. Mary Landrieu Louisiana Purchase bribe – using our tax dollars – in order to acquire critical support for the passage of the healthcare legislation; ETC.
THIS CORRUPTION, ARROGANCE AND CONTEMPTUOUSNESS BY DEMOCRATS MUST BE STOPPED!!
We must unite in our cause and vote them out of office as soon as possible!
Another rank deal
By Rich Lowry January 15, 2010
What happens when the irresistible force of the Democratic urge to tax runs up against the immovable object of Democratic loyalty to the labor unions? Another ugly deal in a health-care bill that already was a grotesquerie of payoffs to favored politicians and interests.
The levy in question is a 40 percent excise tax on high-end employer-provided insurance plans that -- typically -- has been sold as a tax on "the rich." It's called the "Cadillac tax," a name redolent of corporate executives cackling in their Escalades over their cushy benefits.
The unions, which make it a point to negotiate generous insurance plans with their employers (to the point of bankrupting them), were chagrined to learn that for purposes of this tax, they're among the rich. They howled in terms that could have been drawn from Henry Hazlitt's free-market classic "Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics."
The excise tax is supposed to be paid by evil insurers and employers. Except in this one case affecting their self-interest directly, the unions see through the fiction and understand that the tax will trickle down onto them. How disorienting to hear unions implicitly recognize that corporations ultimately don't pay taxes, their customers and employees do.
"While the excise tax is slated to be imposed on the insurers on so-called high cost plans, the tax will be passed on to enrollees in the form of higher premiums, co-pays or reduced benefits," a coalition of public-employee unions wrote congressional leaders. "Characterizing this tax proposal as a 'Cadillac tax' is a misnomer. It hits the average blue collar and white collar employee."
The unions also bristled at a fairly typical trick of liberal taxation -- bracket creep. The Cadillac tax affects few people when it begins in 2013. Since it's not indexed to account for the ever-rising expense of health care, though, it will catch more and more people over time.
This is why New York Times columnist Bob Herbert called it "a middle-class tax time bomb," and Nancy Pelosi made an oblique reference to President Obama breaking his promise not to increase taxes for anyone making less than $250,000 a year. Obama's support for the Cadillac tax not only violates that forlorn pledge, but also directly contradicts one of his chief lines of attack against John McCain in the 2008 campaign.
McCain wanted to end the tax exemption for employer-provided insurance coverage and compensate people with a tax credit to buy their own plans -- a systematic approach to controlling costs and increasing choice. Obama's plan will increase costs and reduce choice, but he needs $150 billion in revenue over 10 years to try to make it look deficit-neutral so he's -- as he put it in his unrelenting anti-McCain ads -- "taxing health benefits for the first time in history."
But pressure from the unions has now forced the White House to agree to raise the $23,000-per-household threshold of the tax slightly and -- more importantly -- exempt insurance plans that are the product of collective-bargaining agreements until 2018. This Labor Loophole stands in the finest tradition of the Louisiana Purchase and the Cornhusker Kickback. With no possible public-policy justification, it puts the awesome power to tax and spend at the service of nakedly political ends.
Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said that taxes are the price of civilization. In this case, taxes are the price of not belonging to a group that pours countless millions of dollars into the Democratic coffers. Under the Cadillac tax, there's one set of rules for the Service Employees International Union and another for everyone else.
Obama is currently haranguing the banks so he doesn't get pegged as a "Wall Street Liberal." The more dangerous rubric for him is a "Washington Liberal," a politician knee-deep in the special-interest politics of the Beltway as he pushes an unpopular agenda of rapid government expansion. Obama's style of politics has gone from inspiring to revolting in the space of a year.
We are all aware and incensed at the unparalleled contemptuous that Congress in general and certain individuals in particular (Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, Barney Frank, John Murtha, etc.) have for the American public and even the democratic process. They are running the government as a dictatorial aristocracy, imposing legislation on unwilling citizens seemingly at times by fiat. They are cognizant of their unfettered, completely unstoppable powers which is further abetted and protected by a sycophantic far left news media (except for Fox News).
The Democrats have a super-majority in the Senate which makes any legislation they formulate filibuster proof. To add insult to injury, they will use whatever means necessary to pass their bills – heavy handed threats, illegal procedural maneuvers, specious information and interminable corruption and bribery (using our tax dollars) as we have witnessed in their attempting to pass Obamacare.
One glimmer of hope is present and it involves the special election being held in Massachusetts this coming Tuesday, January 19th to determine who will fill the vacant Senate seat previously held by Ted Kennedy. The Republican candidate for Senator, Scott Brown, an extremely intelligent, shrewd, articulate and photogenic conservative aided by prodigious grassroots support of angry voters not only from Massachusetts but also from across the country, has incredibly turned this race into a statistical tie in the nation’s most liberal state. This is a manifest indictment and rejection of the policies and attitudes of the Obama Administration and the Congressional Democrats.
We all need to give Scott Brown our firm support – financially and verbally – IMMEDIATELY! Contact everyone that you know in Massachusetts and friends who know voters there. They must be informed of the supreme importance of this election and need to vote for Republican candidate Scott Brown. Financial contributions can be made through the following websites:
As you may know, a special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s open Senate seat is being held this coming Tuesday, January 19th in Massachusetts. Though it is “local” election, for many obvious reasons it is having and will have potentially explosive repercussions and ramifications for the entire country short and long term. The voting and outcome can potentially annihilate Obama’s and Congressional Democrats’ ideological agenda of socialism, wealth redistribution, taxation and other radical legislation. Most immediately, a Republican win would kill the Obamacare bill.
The profound consequences of such a win are impossible to overstate. The Republican candidate for Senator, Scott Brown, would represent the 41st Republican Senator which would finally provide the ability to filibuster Congressional legislation rather than have Pelosi, Reid et al. contemptuously ram anything they want down the throats of unwilling and protesting Americans.
Presently in probably the bluest of blue states, a few polls have Scott Brown in essentially a dead heat with the Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. Among her supporters including financially are Moveon.org and the SEIU (Service Employees International Union). We suspect that corrupt and infamous ACORN is also working feverishly to help elect Democratic candidate Coakley
Since we all strongly care about our country, it is imperative that we help Scott Brown get elected. He has received unprecedented grassroots support from both the voters of Massachusetts as well as from Americans all across the country. Many of these voters are Democrats or Independents who are fed up with the arrogance, incompetence, profligacy, and dictatorial attitude that is endemic in Washington.
Who is Scott Brown? He is a presently a Republican Massachusetts State Senator who has represented the Norfolk, Bristol & Middlesex District since 2004. Just previous to this, he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for the 9th Norfolk District starting in 1998. He is homegrown, having graduated Wakefield High School (1977), Tufts University (1981), and Boston College Law School (1985). Politically, Brown has been described as a moderate Republican with socially moderate and fiscally conservative views. He is extremely intelligent, articulate, sensible and principled.
The following video exemplifies these traits and his refreshing attitude that he is there to serve the people and not rule over them as the Democrats in Congress have repeatedly demonstrated and verbalized.
With all due respect, it's not the Kennedy's seat, it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat.
The following are two of his political websites that you can visit to make contributions to his campaign. Even a small amount now can potentially pay dividends for all of us later if he can pull out an earth shattering win.
http://www.brownforussenate.com/
https://www.icontribute.us/scottbrown
The following article posted on www.usnews.com analyzes the present situation:
Scott Brown in Virtual Tie in Massachusetts Race as Dems Deploy
By Robert Schlesinger January 13, 2010
In the first contest of 2010, the question shouldn't be whether Democrats will win but by how much. On Tuesday, Massachusetts voters will select the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's successor. Martha Coakley, the Bay State's attorney general and the Democratic nominee, was until very recently the prohibitive favorite over GOP nominee Scott Brown, a state senator. Not only had Coakley raised $5.2 million to Brown's $1.2 million (his fundraising has increased dramatically with the new national attention), but Massachusetts is about as reliably Democratic as they come.
The race was supposed to be a yawner but has become the focus of the political world as recent polls have shown it to be a nail-biter: Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, reported over the weekend that Brown had a 48-47 lead, while a Rasmussen poll released today had Coakley ahead by a mere two points, 49-47--a virtual tie, as it is within the 3 percent margin of error. As recently as last month, political guru Stuart Rothenberg wrote that, "If Brown can crack the 40 percent mark against Coakley, it would be noteworthy," political guru Stu Rothenberg wrote last month. Tuesday Rothenberg moved the Massachusetts senate into the "narrow advantage" for Democrats column on his report.
As I reported last week, the liberal group MoveOn.org started fundraising for Coakley, warning its members that "progressive hero Ted Kennedy's senate seat--and with it any hope for passing majori progressive legislation this year" were in danger. I wrote then that , "a telling sign of serious tightening would be either of the national parties moving late money into the race." Well this week the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee bought more than $500,000 in television ads in a race that under normal circumstances would not require a national Democratic dime. In addition, the Service Employees International Union is pouring $685,000 into the race.
As the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza observes today, the race has become a good preview of the campaign themes the two parties may trot out in other races this fall, with Democrats trying to use the specter of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin to tar their GOP opponents and Republicans harping on change. Cillizza writes:
If Brown manages to win, expect Democrats to quickly dismiss the loss as an outlier due to Coakley's substandard campaign. But, privately, something close to panic may well set in if the alleged ace in the hole--linking Republicans to the Bush administration and/or Palin--doesn't come through in a state as strongly favorable to their party as Massachusetts and in a political environment that is tilting away from them on the issues of the day.
Republicans believe that Brown's candidacy is already a blueprint for how they can be competitive almost anywhere in the country in November and so, regardless of whether Brown wins or loses next Tuesday, you can expect a heavy dose of the sort of independent/status quo shakeup messages that Brown has ridden to something close to a dead heat in Massachusetts.
Given that even a narrow Coakley win will be decried as a loss for Democrats, it's hard to see much good news coming to them next Tuesday.
Obama’s lack of any substantive response for nearly 100 hours following the terrorist airplane attack on Christmas day was nothing short of arrogant, irresponsible, an egregious dereliction of his Presidential responsibilities and more fodder for impeachment charges. This was only superseded in despicableness by his interminable contemptuousness, narcissism and hedonism in continuing to play golf and basketball during these 100 hours while on vacation in Hawaii rather than issuing a timely response and by his incomparably inept, inaccurate and feckless response and attempt to mitigate the gravity of the incident.
We must impeach Obama!!
100 Hours’: Liz Cheney’s Group Blasts Obama Over Plane Bomb Response
The following editorial appearing in www.humanevents.com scrutinizes Obamacare from a constitutional perspective. No where in our Constitution is the Federal government given the authority to mandate or control healthcare. Furthermore, there are several inherent issues and requirements that are clearly unconstitutional.
Of course, many Democrats and the far left treat these issues in an arrogant, perfunctory manner. “We want this healthcare reform imposed, Constitutionality be damned” are their attitudes.
Our recommended approach: Kill the bill on the basis of Constitutionality issues which are myriad. Then, vote these corrupt imperious elitists out of office.
Obamacare's Fundamental Flaw
by Gary Bauer 01/01/2010
The Left has always had an erratic relationship with the Constitution. Liberal judges are known for discovering constitutional rights that had eluded judges for centuries. That’s because some of those so-called rights, such as the right to privacy, have no basis in the text of the Constitution but rather somewhere in its “emanations” and “penumbras.”
But the alleged right to privacy has its limits even among liberals. The Left’s judges routinely rule that the right protects abortion on demand, but its legislators have no qualms about extinguishing the right of citizens to make other private healthcare decisions free of government coercion.
While much of the healthcare debate has focused on arguments over policy, a more fundamental debate is taking place over whether the Democrats’ healthcare overhaul is even constitutional.
There is nothing in the Constitution that allows the federal government to be involved in healthcare, and the loud affirmation of this fact may offer conservatives their best chance to pull the plug on Obamacare. It would be ironic if it is in the courts, liberals’ favorite venue for forcing social change, that the rule of law were restored and the personal freedom of the American people affirmed.
The power to regulate each citizen’s health care is not listed in the Constitution among the federal government’s enumerated powers, and the 10th Amendment makes clear that any powers not specifically granted to Congress are reserved to the states.
But among liberals, for whom it is an article of faith that government-run healthcare is a basic human right that no person of goodwill could oppose, any arguments about its constitutionality are irrelevant.
When pressed to address constitutionality, liberals often point to the commerce clause. The Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate “commerce among the several states.” But that does not mean Congress can meddle in anything that affects economic activity. The Supreme Court has rejected the notion that the commerce clause allows Congress to regulate non-economic activities just because, somewhere down the road, they may have an effect on economic activity.
The most egregiously unconstitutional element of the health care legislation concerns the individual mandate, which requires each American to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty of up to $25,000 or one year in prison. The individual mandate is essential to the Left’s plan to impose government-run health care. Without it, because of the left’s insistence on barring insurance companies from denying coverage to people for pre-existing conditions, people would simply obtain insurance only when they have a need for medical care.
The individual mandate is a way to keep costs down, but there is not constitutional authorization for it. As Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has said, “…here would be the first time where our [federal] government would demand that people buy something that they may or may not want…and…that’s not constitutionally sound.”
Back in 1994, during the Democrats’ last foray into healthcare reform, the Congressional Budget Office stated that compelling individuals to buy insurance would be “an unprecedented form of federal action” because “the government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the U.S.”
Liberals often liken the health insurance individual mandate to the law requiring all people who own automobiles to have auto insurance. But it’s a flawed argument. Only state governments, not the federal government, can require automobile owners to obtain auto insurance (and two states, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, don’t).
Also, as legal scholars at the Heritage Foundation point out in a recent legal memorandum, “automobile insurance requirements impose a condition on the voluntary activity of driving; a health insurance mandate imposes a condition on life itself.”
The Heritage memo, titled “Why the personal mandate to buy health insurance is unprecedented and unconstitutional,” also notes that states require drivers to maintain auto insurance only to cover injuries to others. “The mandate does not require drivers to insure themselves or their property against injury or damage. Thus the auto insurance requirement covers the dangers and liabilities posed by drivers to third parties only…”
It would be an understatement to say that individual mandate advocates have struggled to defend its inclusion. In a series of interviews conducted by CNSNews.com, Democrat after Democrat failed to give a coherent answer about where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandate that individuals buy health insurance.
Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka said he was “not aware” of the Constitution giving Congress the authority, while Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) said he’d “have to check the specific sections,” and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) flatly admitted that he did not know.
Senator Blanche Lincoln should have taken the Nelson route but instead opined, “Well, I Just think the Constitution charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people.” And Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) dismissed the question, insisting that “nobody” questioned Congress’ authority to require individual mandate.
Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) said Congress authorization to impose an individual mandate could be found in the part of Constitution that authorizes the federal government to “provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.” But, as CNSNews.com pointed out, “health” is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.
Then there was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who simply responded “Are you serious? Are you serious?” By which she seemed to be saying, “Do you seriously think we progressives would allow constitutionality to get in the way of our half-century old goal of government-run health care?!”
There are other constitutional problems with Obamacare. For instance, if the public option provides for abortion, many Americans will be compelled to subsidize other people’s abortions, which would infringe upon the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom.
And constitutional concerns exist over exempting some states from Obamacare’s provisions. In Harry Reid’s fire sale for votes, he essentially agreed that some states would bear the brunt of the economic burden of the health care monstrosity but not others. Presently state legal experts are examining whether the constitution can force such a burden upon them.
Other constitutional issues are buried deep in the pages of the bill just now seeing the light of day. For example, in spite of recent Supreme Court decisions raising constitutional questions about racial set asides, Obamacare promises federal financial assistance to medical schools, but only if they have programs that serve “under-represented” groups based on race, sex, religion and sexual orientation.
An unintended consequence of the health care debate may be that legislators on both sides of the isle are dusting off and reading their copies of the U.S. Constitution. Conservative members of Congress should resolve in the New Year to talk more often and more loudly about the constitutional arguments against Obamacare.
If it passes, conservatives should test its constitutionality in the courts. It may well be that the jobs saved or created by the Obama Administration’s health care plan go to lawyers, not doctors.
The following video detailing the perfidy, deception, arrogance, contemptuousness and corruptness of Obama and the Democrats is eminently provocative, both emotionally and intellectually. The dramatic, percussive music redolent of the testosterone suffused "Batman Returns" themes helps deliver a powerful and serious message that should serve to galvanize outraged Americans to take productive actions to depose our imperious Democratic politicians. Maybe some of these same elitists will begin to appreiciate the magnitude of our fury and realize that they are here as our elected representatives to serve us – not rule over us!
Obama’s narcissism and gargantuan insatiable ego labeled the ObamaCare legislation as historic – in a positive sense. Yes, it is sure historic but in perverse, arrogant and contemptible way.
In the following scathing editorial of Obama and the ObamaCare legislation, Thomas Sowell, the brilliant economist and philosopher, distilled it down to raw sentiment:
What is "historic" is that this will be the first administration to show that it doesn't care one bit what the public wants or doesn't want.
In short, this is not about the public's health. It is about Obama's ego and his chance to impose his will and leave a legacy.
Ignoring The Public's Wishes Is All That's 'Historic' About ObamaCare
Thomas Sowell 12/29/2009
The only thing healthy about Congress' health insurance legislation is the healthy skepticism about it by most of the public, as revealed by polls. What is most unhealthy about this legislation is the raw arrogance in the way it was conceived and passed.
Supporters of government health insurance call its passage "historic." Past attempts to pass such legislation — going back for decades — failed repeatedly. But now both houses of Congress have passed government health care legislation and it is just a question of reconciling their respective bills and presenting President Obama with a political "victory."
In short, this is not about improving the health of the American people. It is about passing something — anything — to keep the Obama administration from ending up with egg on its face by being unable to pass a bill, after so much hype and hoopla.
Politically, looking impotent is a formula for disaster at election time. Far better to pass even bad legislation that will not actually go into effect until after the 2012 presidential election, so that the public will not know whether it makes medical care better or worse until it is too late for the voters to hold the administration accountable.
The utter cynicism of this has been apparent from the outset, in the rush to pass a health care bill in a hurry, in order to meet wholly arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines. First it was supposed to be passed before the August 2009 congressional recess. Then it was supposed to be passed before Labor Day. When that didn't happen, it was supposed to be rushed to passage before Christmas.
Why — especially since the legislation would not take effect until years from now?
The only rational explanation for such haste to pass a bill that will be slow to go into effect is to prevent the public from knowing what is in this massive legislation that even members of Congress are unlikely to have read.
That is also the only reason that makes sense for postponing the time when Obama-Care goes into action after the next presidential election.
What does calling this medical care legislation "historic" mean? It means that previous administrations gave up the idea when it became clear that the voting public did not want government control of medical care.
What is "historic" is that this will be the first administration to show that it doesn't care one bit what the public wants or doesn't want.
In short, this is not about the public's health. It is about Obama's ego and his chance to impose his will and leave a legacy.
This is not the only massive legislation to be rushed to passage in Congress and then left to go into effect slowly. The same political formula was used earlier, to pass the "stimulus" bill to spend hundreds of billions of dollars that the government doesn't have — and that may well amount to more than a trillion dollars when the interest on the debt it creates is added, for this and the next generation to pay off.
Legislation is not the only sign of this administration's contempt for the intelligence of the public and for the safeguards of democratic government.
The appointment of White House "czars" to make policy across a wide spectrum of issues — unknown people who get around the Constitution's requirement of Senate confirmation for Cabinet members — is yet another sign of the mind-set that sees the fundamental laws and values of this country as just something to get around, in order to impose the will of an arrogant elite.
That some of these "czars" have already revealed their own contempt for the values of American society in the things they have said and done only reinforces the point.
In a sense, this administration is only the end result of a long social process that includes raising successive generations with dumbed-down education in schools and colleges that have become indoctrination centers for the visions of the left. Our education system has turned out many people who have never heard any other vision and who can only learn what is wrong with the prevailing vision from bitter experience.
That bitter experience now awaits them, at home and abroad.
The elitist, arrogant, narcissistic, inept Obama vacationing in Hawaii during thwarted terrorist attack takes several days to issue a feckless statement on the incident which was factually incorrect.
He is too self-important and busy relaxing to deliver any substantive response that conveys the gravity of the global situation or his resolve to pursue dealing with terrorism aggressively
The elitist hauteur of liberal politicians, if left unchallenged, will translate into significant loss of many of our remaining rights and freedoms. Several prominent Democratic politicians including Obama have displayed arrogant and wanton disregard for the specifics of the Constitution, perverting its dictates in order to meet their ideological agenda.
One of these involves the current healthcare legislation based on their belief that healthcare is a right that they can fully control, regulate and issue mandates including forcing people to buy health insurance and forcing citizens to subsidize the care of others. Nowhere in the Constitution is the government given such authority.
Health Care Not In Constitution
Investors Business Daily
Self-Evident Truths: Sen. Dianne Feinstein says it comes under the Commerce Clause. Rep. Steny Hoyer says it's mandated by the "general welfare" clause. Despite liberal wishes, health care is not a right.
The "living Constitution" that Democrats and their court appointees have given us may be the death of our freedoms. Their constitution adapts to the times and serves the whims of the elitists. The Constitution is supposed to limit government powers. It does not allow government to do anything it feels like doing.
Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is the author of "The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever."
He writes glowingly of how President Franklin Roosevelt, unsatisfied with the Constitution the Founding Fathers wrote, proposed a Second Bill of Rights in a speech on Jan. 11, 1944.
One of the new "rights" FDR envisioned was "the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health." If health care were a right under the U.S. Constitution, FDR would not have had to propose it as one to be added.
Yet liberals believe it should be, and some believe it is. Feinstein, the senior senator from California, was asked Tuesday by CNSNews on what constitutional authority the Senate and House bills are authorized. She responded, as others have, "Well, I would assume it would be in the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. That's how Congress legislates all kinds of various programs."
Maybe so, but it's a power that has been grossly abused and distorted beyond all meaning. The Commerce Clause was intended for the regulation of economic activity across state lines that involves the production distribution or consumption of commodities. One does not go to a doctor to engage in commercial activity.
Mandates including the one to buy health insurance go over the line. "Even if the Supreme Court has expanded the commerce power, there has been one constant," noted Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "Congress was always regulating activities in which people chose to engage." He added that "rather than regulate what people have chosen to do," the mandates "would require them to do something they have not chosen to do at all."
When asked the same question, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer pointed to Article 1, Section 8, which gives the Congress the power to raise taxes in order to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." Does that give Congress the authority to buy things like health insurance?
We and others have made the point that broccoli is good for our general welfare, but can Congress make us eat it and charge us if we don't? Losing a few pounds would help us all and reduce health care costs, but can Congress mandate health club memberships? Hoyer thinks so.
This clause says nothing about the citizens of the United States, only the United States as a whole. The Constitution provides for the raising of armies to defend the country, not for whether or when women should get mammograms and who should pay for them.
Hoyer is wrong, according to constitutional lawyer David B. Rivkin: "The notion that the general welfare language is a basis for a specific legislative exercise is all silly, because if that's true, because general welfare language is inherently limitless, then the federal government can do anything."
Does the "general welfare" allow for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make backroom deals that tax other states and other citizens to benefit a single state such as Nebraska and its citizens and to literally bribe senators like Ben Nelson for their vote?
Health care is nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the only time the word "care" appears is in Article II, Section 3, which says the president of the United States "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." That includes our highest law, the U.S. Constitution.
The following article enumerates 10 immensely important issues related to the healthcare legislation in its present iteration. This is not what America needs or wants but instead, what Congressional Democrats and Obama insist on imposing on us. Meanwhile, Obama and Congress will still have their own gold plated healthcare plan with innumerable choices all subsidized at the taxpayers’ expense.
As we have iterated myriad times, this is not about healthcare. This is about increased government power, control and regulation of our lives and restrictions of our rights and freedoms. If we don’t become more vociferous, passionate and actively fight this legislation in a united fashion, the government will relentless continue to further diminish and suppress our rights, freedoms and choices.
We must do whatever it takes to reclaim our country!
10 Lumps Of Coal In The Health Care Bill
By Betsy McCaughey
For most Americans, the health reform bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing to pass will be worse than coal in their stockings. Herewith, the Top 10 List of Things You Don't Want From Health Care Reform This Christmas — But Will Get Anyway From Congress.
1. Higher premiums: If you pay for your own insurance, your premiums will cost 10% to 13% more than if the bill didn't pass, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Insurance won't be more affordable. Sixty percent of the newly insured are being enrolled in Medicaid, the public program for the poor.
2. A cost you can't afford and can't avoid: Though moderate-income families will get subsidies, buying insurance is mandatory. A family earning $54,000 will be expected to pay $9,000 (17% of pre-tax income) for the premium, co-pays and deductibles, according to the CBO. If you don't enroll, the IRS will find you and penalize you (Senate bill, p. 345).
3. A one-size-fits-all health plan: Your benefit package will be prescribed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Whether you choose basic, silver or gold, and whether you pay for it yourself or qualify for a subsidy, your benefits are the same.
Gold plans simply collect more up front and give you a lower co-pay or deductible. It's unclear how possible it will be to buy supplemental insurance. The goal is to discourage health consumption and differences based on ability to pay.
4. A sin tax on your generous plan at work: This is another equalizer to discourage some people from getting more than others. The Senate bill puts a 40% tax on Cadillac plans (p. 1,980). About one-fifth of employer-provided plans fall into that "luxury" category. The CBO predicts that employers will downgrade your coverage to avoid the tax or reduce your take home pay.
5. Government controls on your doctors' decisions: The Senate bill bars doctors from participating in the private insurance system unless they implement whatever regulations the secretary of health and human services chooses to impose to "improve health care quality" (p. 149). That broad phrase encompasses everything in medicine.
This would be the first time in history that the federal government is given power over how doctors treat privately insured patients
6. Hospitals closed to seniors: The House and Senate bills slash payments to hospitals and other institutions that care for seniors. The chief actuary for Medicare, Richard Foster, warns that cuts in the House bill are so severe that some institutions may face severe losses or end their participation in Medicare (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 11/13/09 report). Some seniors won't know where to go.
7. Bare-bones hospital care: Patients of all ages (and all incomes) will suffer when hospitals are in financial distress. Hospital budget cuts will mean shortages of nurses, equipment and cleaning staff. The president's chief health advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, argues that hospitals in the U.S. offer more privacy and comfort than hospitals in Europe, and this "abundance of amenities" drives up costs (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).
8. Future Medicare cuts: Look out baby boomers, the Senate bill establishes an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission to make automatic spending reductions in future years while insulating Congress from the political fallout. You won't get as much care as people in Medicare currently get.
9. A new social agenda: Money is allocated for adult preparation activities, including lessons on positive self-esteem and relationship dynamics, friendships, dating (and) romantic involvement (Senate bill, p.612). There are also giveaways to immigrants. The Senate bill hands low-income legal immigrants government subsidies as soon as they get here, instead of waiting the five years Medicaid requires (Senate bill, p. 274).
10. A tell-all relationship with every doctor you see: What happens in your doctor's office must be recorded in an electronic data base that can send the information to insurers and other medical offices (Senate bill, p. 62-66). Every doctor you see will have access to your medical history. See a psychiatrist? Your foot doctor will know about it.
These congressional tidings bring no comfort or joy. We must save ourselves from Congress' power now that it has gone astray.
• McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York state and founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.
In the following expose, Michelle Malkin uncovers and delineates some of the more notable examples of corruption perpetrated by the Senate this past year. Such actions are reprehensible and should not be tolerated by us. These entrenched criminals need to be ousted!
Senate Payoffs Top 2009 Tree Of Corruption
By Michelle Malkin
Democrats are right: Sleazy bribes and pork payoffs didn't start with their government health care takeover bill. They've been doling out taxpayer-funded goodies for votes all year. Harry Reid's latest Cash for Cloture deals are the culmination of a shopping spree at our expense.
Go back to January and February. The multitrillion-dollar stimulus bill was the mother of all legislative Christmas trees. The ruling party used the economic downturn to redistribute wealth from struggling Americans to favored congressional districts, phantom districts and special interests from golf-cart makers to beauty salons.
According to a new study from George Mason University, Democratic districts have raked in nearly twice as much porkulus money as GOP districts — without regard to the actual economic suffering and job loss in those districts. In fact, the researchers found that far more stimulus money went to higher-income areas than to lower-income areas.
That includes Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's backyard — where a $54 million no-bid contract was awarded to a firm with little experience to relocate a luxury Bay Area wine train due to flood concerns.
And it includes Barack Obama's home state of Illinois, which reaped the single biggest earmark — $1 billion for the FutureGen near-zero emissions "clean coal" plant earmark championed by disgraced Democrat and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin.
And it includes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's backyard — where he secured billions in high-speed rail stimulus earmarks from which he plans to fund a pie-in-the-sky public transportation line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
When taxpayers objected to business as usual masquerading as economic recovery, New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer sneered: "You lost." He jibed on the Senate floor while wagging a grabby finger, "And let me say this to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little, tiny, yes, porky amendments: The American people really don't care."
The "American people" Schumer was referring to, of course, were the privileged minority of stimulus beneficiaries — not the rest of us "chattering" dissenters stuck with the bill for those billions in "little, tiny, yes, porky amendments."
No legislation has been immune to congressional shakedown.
After the Congressional Black Caucus balked loudly enough, Democratic Rep. Barney Frank — chairman of the House Financial Services Committee — larded up the majority's Wall Street regulatory "reform" bill with $4 billion in payoffs to minority special interests — including former failed Air America radio partner Inner City Broadcasting Corp.
The cash-strapped firm is run by Percy Sutton, a New York City crony of Charlie Rangel's and Al Sharpton's. The money will come out of the ever-morphing TARP bank bailout fund — which went from a toxic assets purchase plan to a capital injection plan, back to a toxic assets purchase plan, then to a life insurance company bailout and on to an auto-supplier bailout.
Leading the charge for the Cash for Cronies of Color drive: California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, who had already extracted $12 million in TARP funds for OneUnited, a minority-owned bank that is one of her key campaign donors and a company in which both Waters and her husband own massive amounts of stock.
Which brings us to the wealth redistribution scheme disguised as health reform.
In addition to the infamous $300 million "Louisiana Purchase" for Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu and the (at least) $45 million "Cornhusker Kickback" for sellout Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Reid threw around other, less-publicized gobs of cash for cloture votes to cut off debate and ram the bill through.
He tossed in a Hospital Helper of $100 million to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., whose re-election bid is in hot water. There are bennies for insurance companies and hospitals in Michigan, and "frontier freebies" for hospitals in Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming.
Combined with Nebraska's tab, the exclusive clique's payoffs will cost taxpayers at least $1.2 billion over 10 years.
There's also an Acorn/community organizer-friendly provision for minority health bureaucracies that was sought by Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill. And there's a $10 billion socialized medicine sop to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for "community health clinics" serving in essence as universal health care satellite offices.
"We are talking about a revolution," Sanders enthused during the Senate's sneaky Sunday session.
No, revolution will come when taxpayers have a chance to kick these reverse Santa Clauses posing as saviors out of office.
The magnitude of corruption, bribery with our tax dollars and complete contempt and disregard for the wishes of the American people that occurred in the process of trying to legislate healthcare reform is essentially unprecedented in national politics. Congress’ responses to questions of Constitutionality of some of the mandates and clauses are dismissive. Obama and these Democrats are telling us: We don’t give a damn about what you want or don’t want and we will do as we please.
As we have been warming for a long time, this has become a dictatorial government that will trample over our rights and freedoms, steal and deal our tax dollars, and impose at will whatever legislation they deem important in order to satisfy their ideological goals.
We must do whatever it takes to reclaim our country!
Forever Gone
Investors Business Daily 12/22/2009
DeMint: Is health care reform even constitutional? AP Photo
Any law can be repealed, but the Democrats' radical health bill contains unprecedented language that could wreck the U.S. health system permanently. It's one of the dirtiest tricks yet.
'Page 1,020" — it may soon be a mantra for one of the most disturbing abuses of legislative power in history. In setting up an Independent Medicare Advisory Board, that page of the Senate health overhaul bill passed in the dead of night early Monday says, "It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection."
This enters the realm of "hyperlaw" or "laws on steroids."
As Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., pointed out on the Senate floor, it isn't lawmaking, but rather "creating a Senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law."
DeMint is "not even sure that it's constitutional," since it affects "the fundamental purpose of Senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future Congresses."
Clearly liberal Democratic leaders will stoop to record depths to expand the federal government's powers.
Public support plummets well down into the 30s? They don't bat an eyelash.
Mandating an individual's purchase of a private service like insurance tramples the Constitution? Just watch them do it.
Bribe Senators Tom, Dick and Ben? Here's the cash.
As John Steele Gordon noted in Commentary, the Medicaid bribe that bought the vote of Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., is so unprecedented it may not withstand constitutional muster.
According to Gordon, "one could argue that Nebraskans will be getting what amounts to a rebate on federal taxes through the backdoor of lower state taxes," which might violate Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution requiring government collections to be "uniform throughout the United States."
As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admits, "I don't know that there's a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that isn't important to them," adding that "if they don't have something in it important to them, then it doesn't speak well of them."
That is the arrogance of the mind-set dominating the legislative and executive branches: Your money is really theirs, to be handed out like a Mob-backed union boss toting a bag of cash on the waterfront.
When you put together Medicare and Medicaid recipients, government employees and contractors, and active and former military members and their dependents, over 40% of Americans receive government-subsidized health care. The Democrats' health care revolution would up that to a solid majority of our citizens.
American history shows that once an entitlement is enacted, it's next to impossible to erase. Catastrophic health care for seniors, passed 20 years ago, is the only such program ever repealed; the 1996 welfare reform severely limited that socially destructive entitlement.
The statists may now finally have bitten off more than they will be able to chew politically. If Republicans act like Republicans and convince the populist Tea Party movement not to go the suicidal third-party route, the coming public backlash will see to it that the greatest health care system in the world is not gone for good.
Look for demonstrators to start burning copies of Page 1,020 the way '60s radicals used to burn their draft cards.
The ever increasing magnitude of anger that is being generated by American citizens in response to what we see as an imperious, arrogant, dictatorial government is nothing short of remarkable. We are being treated contemptuously by a Government that disregards the will of the people, seeks to tax us to oblivion and “legally” redistribute the fruits of our labors, and aims to insinuate itself in every activity of our daily lives, restricting our freedoms and rights. Our present political and socioeconomic milieu is far more dire and repressive than what the Colonists contended with under King George just before the American Revolution.
Unfortunately, we are in the midst of a political perfect storm which threatens the whole underpinnings of our culture, rights, freedoms, and economic system. Our government has been hijacked by the extreme far left which has malevolent intentions for America. It has a super-majority that is essentially unstoppable legislatively but is also willing to employ corrupt, heavy handed tactics if warranted. Complicit in this and facilitating the situation is the vast majority of the press whose role in the past had always been to serve as a watchdog to protect the average American and keep the government more honest and in check.
Millions of Americans are not only concerned by our present situation but also by the perceived malignant intentions of our government starting with Obama on down. The rhetoric of these politicians is indisputably incongruous with their legislative actions whether it pertains to healthcare reform, the national debt or even our rights. These Democrats and radicals are actively and aggressively seeking to destroy the free America we knew and instead, transform it into a pseudo-dictatorship with the likes of Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Frank and Schumer at the helm.
It is imperative that we all understand the gravity of our present circumstances and then aggressively and pertinaciously act in whatever manner necessary to oppose and reverse this course. Unfortunately, with the Government’s relentless consolidation of power by means of unfettered legislative actions, a political solution may be difficult if not impossible to obtain.
We must do whatever it takes to reclaim our country!
The following article brilliantly, insightful and thoroughly explains why what we see as illogical actions by Obama and other “representatives of the people” are instead intentional, calculated, rational but malignant moves that can and may destroy America. This is a must read!
Cloward-Piven Government
By James Simpson
It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact.
In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then-presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. Since then, the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck television show, Bill O'Reilly, and now Mark Levin.
The methodology is known as the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and we can all be grateful to David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks for originally exposing and explaining it to us. He describes it as:
The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were two lifelong members of Democratic Socialists of America who taught sociology at Columbia University (Piven later went on to City University of New York). In a May 1966 Nation magazine article titled "The Weight of the Poor," they outlined their strategy, proposing to use grassroots radical organizations to push ever more strident demands for public services at all levels of government.
The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces ... for major economic reform at the national level."
They implemented the strategy by creating a succession of radical organizations, most notable among them the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), with the help of veteran organizer Wade Rathke. Their crowning achievement was the "Motor Voter" act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993 with Cloward and Piven standing behind him.
As we now know, ACORN was one of the chief drivers of high-risk mortgage lending that eventually led to the financial crisis. But the Motor Voter law was another component of the strategy. It created vast vulnerabilities in our electoral system, which ACORN then exploited.
ACORN's vote registration scandals throughout the U.S. are predictable fallout.
The Motor Voter law has also been used to open another vulnerability in the system: the registration of vast numbers of illegal aliens, who then reliably vote Democrat. Herein lies the real reason Democrats are so anxious for open borders, security be damned.
It should be clear to anyone with a mind and two eyes that this president and this Congress do not have our interests at heart. They are implementing this strategy on an unprecedented scale by flooding America with a tidal wave of poisonous initiatives, orders, regulations, and laws. As Rahm Emmanuel said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."
The real goal of "health care" legislation, the real goal of "cap-and-trade," and the real goal of the "stimulus" is to rip the guts out of our private economy and transfer wide swaths of it over to the government to control. Do not be deluded by the propaganda. These initiatives are vehicles for change. They are not goals in and of themselves except in their ability to deliver power. They and will make matters much worse, for that is their design.
This time, in addition to overwhelming the government with demands for services, Obama and the Democrats are overwhelming political opposition to their plans with a flood of apocalyptic legislation. Their ultimate goal is to leave us so discouraged, demoralized, and exhausted that we throw our hands up in defeat. As Barney Frank said, "the middle class will be too distracted to fight."
These people are our enemies. They don't use guns, yet, but they are just as dangerous, determined, and duplicitous as the communists we faced in the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and bush wars across the globe, and the Nazis we faced in World War II.
It is time we fully internalized and digested this fact, with all its ugly ramifications. These people have violated countless laws and could be prosecuted, had we the political power. Not only are their policies unconstitutional, but deliberately so -- the goal being to make the Constitution irrelevant. Their spending is off the charts and will drive us into hyperinflation, but it could be rescinded, had we the political power. These policies are toxic, but they could be stopped and reversed, had we the political power. Their ideologies are poisonous, but they could be exposed for what they are, with long jail sentences as an object lesson, had we the political power.
Every single citizen who cares about this country should be spending every minute of his or her spare time lobbying, organizing, writing, and planning. Fight every initiative they launch. It is all destructive. If we are to root out this evil, it is critical that in 2010 we elect competent, principled leaders willing to defend our Constitution and our country. Otherwise, the malevolent cabal that occupies the government today will become too entrenched.
After that, all bets are off.
Businessman and Examiner.com columnist Jim Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst.
With audacious dishonesty and or abysmal comprehension of economic factors, Obama claimed in an interview that the Federal Government will go bankrupt if his healthcare reform isn’t passed. He is so suffused with arrogance and narcissism that he stated this with believable conviction. All reputable studies indicate the opposite is indisputably true – we would all be better off if Obamanocare succumbed before it is implemented. Furthermore, they also revealed that health insurance premiums would be much higher under the government plan versus if nothing were done at all.
Congress with its most optimistic assessment has front loaded the fees and taxes to “pay” for the plan – collecting four years before any care (and therefore costs expended) is delivered. They attempt to show fiscal balance (and responsibility) in the first ten years by collecting 10 years of taxes and fees but just six years of care. This is just brazen but typical Congressional legerdemain. After this period even their data reveals that costs will exceed the collections. To make matters worse, experience has shown us repeatedly that the government estimates are always off a factor of three to ten or more – so the claimed $1 trillion cost becomes $3 to $10 trillion. Not chump change!
Congressional Democrats have arrogantly and unequivocally indicated in no uncertain terms that they know what’s better for the America than its citizens do and want to pass Obamacare come hell or high water and do it soon. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is seeking an immediate vote on the recently changed legislation despite the fact that no Senators have had the opportunity to read what they will be voting on. This is all in the face of strong and vociferous opposition by the majority of voters who don’t want the government running their healthcare.
The following editorial by Larry Elder clarifies some of the general issues in a straightforward manner.
Is Imbecility Covered Under Obama Plan?
By Larry Elder
Americans overwhelmingly like their health care and insurance. While they reject ObamaCare, the president and Congress insist on driving it through.
Up to 85% of us already have health insurance and are satisfied with it. Lacking health insurance is different from lacking health care — which, by law, emergency rooms must supply. Millions go without health insurance by choice.
Deduct from the number without insurance those who have access to it via entitlement programs, those temporarily without it while between jobs, those here illegally and those who could go on their parents' insurance plans by paying affordable amounts — and you're down to 10 million to 15 million people without insurance for longer than a year. This is 5% of Americans.
To address this, the president and the Democrats are this close to a complete government takeover of health care. And a takeover it is. Assuming some kind of plan reaches the president's desk, it will — at minimum — force all Americans to purchase health insurance or pay fines or worse.
It will force nearly all employers to provide health insurance or pay fines. It will tell health insurers that they must accept applicants with pre-existing illnesses and restrict their ability to "discriminate" based on factors like sex and age.
Incredibly, the president and Congress tell us that our economic recovery hinges on "health care reform" and that they can achieve it — providing millions of people with health insurance estimated to cost a trillion dollars in the first decade — while simultaneously reducing the deficit.
The plan anticipates cutting hundreds of billions from the popular Medicare programs, whose beneficiaries vote in numbers greater than any other age group. Doctors and hospitals already complain that Medicare reimbursements fall short of costs, let alone profits. Good luck with that.
"Health care reform" achieves its deficit-reducing magic by collecting taxes in the early years — building up money — while paying out very little. Only after the first four years does money go out. It also forces states to pick up part of the tab. So, voila, it actually reduces the deficit — at least in the first decade. Then what?
The Congressional Budget Office — in cost estimates full of caveats, conditions and on-the-one-hands — says that it could/might/may reduce the deficit in the second and third decades, too. Again, this assumes continued cuts in doctor and hospital reimbursements.
Despite the White House photo-op of docs in their white frocks, most physicians oppose ObamaCare. They resent further government supervision and control over their practice. An IBD poll found that 65% "oppose" ObamaCare and that 45% would consider taking early retirement or leaving their practice if the bill went through.
Given the broad opposition — most Americans, most doctors and seniors in fear of cuts in Medicare — why do it?
First, the Democrats — now in control of all three branches of government — have convinced themselves that they face a political price if they fail.
ObamaCare supporters, based on bogus assumptions and inflated numbers, argue that many, if not most, bankruptcy filings are due to health care bills. If, as President Obama asserts, "reforming" health care and economic prosperity go hand in hand, how can they abandon it?
Second, while a large majority of Republicans and most independents oppose these "reforms," Democrats overwhelming support them. They consider health care and health insurance a right — never mind the Constitution or the price tag — and think "the rich" should bear the costs.
Congressmen fear an electorate upset at a failure "to deliver" a victory over the evil, money-grubbing insurance companies.
Third, many believe in good faith that this is the "right thing to do."
This ignores the mountain of evidence that government command-and-control health care reduces quality, reduces innovation and inevitably leads to rationing. The president of the Canadian Medical Association says Canada's system — a single-payer kind, favored by President Obama — is "imploding." She calls for more competition.
Critics of our health care system say citizens in other countries enjoy longer life expectancies. But after adjusting for homicides, infant mortality due to teen pregnancies and low birth weights, obesity and other factors, the discrepancy disappears.
Our system produces the world's best results for cancer patients who go into medical care at the same time similarly situated patients enter their countries' care. Our drug companies lead the world in coming up with new life-extending and -enhancing drugs, a record at risk given new controls and taxes under the guise of "reform."
When the ObamaCare bill comes due — when the deficit explodes and the costs are "controlled" through government-directed rationing — supporters, including Obama, will long have departed Washington, leaving others to deal with the mess.
We have stated many times in previous posts that Obama and the Democrats in Congress want to impose a healthcare system on an unwilling American public that is the polar opposite of what these politicians speciously claim it to be. There will be severe restrictions on choices and availability of care with governmental rationing. Waiting times will be longer while the quality of care will plummet yet the total cost borne by each individual will significantly increase both through more expensive premiums and usurious taxation.
Congressional Democrats and Obama claim that their healthcare legislation establishes a great system for the American people. If it really is so fantastic then why are they refusing to agree to amendments that would force them to use the same healthcare system as they want to impose on us? The answer is because they know this system will be disastrous – limiting choice, rationing and restricting care, creating prolonged waiting times before receiving care and being far more costly for significantly inferior quality. Why should they have to give up their privileged premium care that is subsidized by the American taxpayer and provides them with myriad choices?
This whole healthcare reform is all about government control and nothing more. As Investors Business Daily put it:
“… health reform's purposes were advertised as cost containment and near-universal coverage. But what Democrats are set to enact will spend trillions dramatically increasing insurance premiums, and leave millions still without insurance.
In other words, their push for health reform has been based on lies. The real purpose: to gain control of America's health system.
And on top of the lies is the hypocrisy the American people have come to expect from their politicians: continuation of the nearly 50-year-old loophole providing senators and House members with a wide choice of private health plans.”
We need to continue fighting to stop this legislation as well as vigorously work at ousting these arrogant, imperious members of Congress who are ruling us rather than representing us!
Reform For You, But Not Congress
Investors Business Daily 12/04/2009
Hypocrisy: If the $2-trillion-plus government health care plan that Congress has come up with is so great, why do lawmakers refuse to live under it themselves? Their designs have been based on lies from the start.
The left thinks Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and David Vitter, R-La., have shot themselves in their feet. After unveiling last week their amendment that would force Senate and House members to cover themselves with any government health plan that passes into law, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a champion of the public option, proceeded to ask if he could sign on as a co-sponsor. Liberal Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he might want to, as well.
"Coburn and Vitter weren't counting on that kind of support," gloated Nation magazine Washington correspondent John Nichols. "If they're smart, the rest of the Democratic caucus will follow Brown's lead and sign on for the public option."
Well, when it comes to feathering their own nests, congressional Democrats are smart. And they're not about to subject themselves to anything less than the taxpayer-subsidized, gold-plated array of private coverage choices they've enjoyed for nearly a half century in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
Coburn and Vitter's idea of politicians living under a government plan "was opposed unanimously by Democrats during interviews on Thursday," the Hill newspaper reports. The paper also noted opposition from senior Republican senators such as National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn of Texas and Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, who asked: "Why would I want to put my family in that, let alone anybody else's family?"
Senators and representatives from both sides of the aisle know how good they have it under the FEHBP, the world's largest group health program. The reason Congress' own health care works so well is that it's based on consumer choice and market competition — the opposite of what it's trying to impose on everybody else.
Members of Congress and millions of federal workers may choose from hundreds of private fee-for-service plans, HMOs or preferred provider organizations, with no federal worker living anywhere enjoying fewer than a dozen options.
FEHBP members can easily switch plans if they become dissatisfied; that puts competitive pressure on insurers to provide quality and value. Surveys show that members love their coverage, which is why almost all federal employees join the program.
The FEHBP is shielded from state regulation and Uncle Sam subsidizes premiums by more than 70%. Canadian physician and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Dr. David Gratzer, whose opposition to government-run health care comes from first-hand experience, observes that "the federal government's role in the FEHBP is to pay the bills," unlike the fiscally doomed Medicare program, of which "Washington is the designer of benefits."
Today, instead of the federal takeover Democrats are rushing to enact, lawmakers could give Americans the kind of high-quality health care choices they enjoy. A simple system of vouchers would allow recipients to choose any health plan on the market. The system could be means-tested, with Medicare giving "larger vouchers to poorer and sicker seniors and smaller vouchers to healthy and wealthy seniors, using current health-risk-adjustment mechanisms and Social Security data on lifetime earnings," says Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Vouchers "would contain Medicare spending, and are the only way to protect seniors from government rationing," according to Cannon.
"The FEHBP is an excellent model for designing a system based on broad personal choice," argues Robert Moffit, the Heritage Foundation's director of health policy studies. "There is no reason," he adds, "why a reform of Medicare could not establish a similar structure for national plan options," including integrating private retiree health insurance into the system.
But instead of such common-sense reform, Americans are staring at thousands of pages of new regulations on their personal medical treatment, including a government-run option that will devastate the private coverage most Americans have and like. The inevitable result, as independent studies warn, is thousands of dollars more to pay in health premiums.
In last year's presidential campaign, health reform's purposes were advertised as cost containment and near-universal coverage. But what Democrats are set to enact will spend trillions dramatically increasing insurance premiums, and leave millions still without insurance.
In other words, their push for health reform has been based on lies. The real purpose: to gain control of America's health system.
And on top of the lies is the hypocrisy the American people have come to expect from their politicians: continuation of the nearly 50-year-old loophole providing senators and House members with a wide choice of private health plans.
On Monday, Dec. 7th, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repugnantly, contemptuously and irresponsibly compared Republican opponents of the healthcare reform with those individuals who supported slavery in the 1800’s before the Civil War. This racist and destructive vituperation should not be uttered by any member of Congress but having the Senate Majority Leader perpetrating such an offense is intolerable. He should be censured immediately and mandated to make an official retraction.
Unfortunately, the vitriol and intolerance by the Democrats of opposing points of view has become the norm with the most egregious offenders being the “leaders” of the Democratic Party including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Charles Schumer and, of course, Barack Obama . These individuals have been corrupted by power and seek to acquire absolute power over the American people. They are not legislating as in a benign democracy but rather as in an oppressive totalitarian government.
We must relentlessly work to remove these corrupt politicians from office. Vigorously support the Tea Parties and alternative candidates before we reach the point of no return which we are fast approaching
and IMPEACH OBAMA!
Reid Compares Opponents of Health Care Reform to Supporters of Slavery
FOXNews.com December 07, 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.
The Nevada Democrat, in a sweeping set of accusations on the Senate floor, also compared health care foes to those who opposed women's suffrage and the civil rights movement -- even though it was Sen. Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat, who unsuccessfully tried to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and it was Republicans who led the charge against slavery.
Senate Republicans on Monday called Reid's comments "offensive" and "unbelievable."
But Reid argued that Republicans are using the same stalling tactics employed in the pre-Civil War era.
"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over.' If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right," Reid said Monday.
"When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.'"
He continued: "When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right.
"When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."
That seemed to be a reference to Thurmond's famous 1957 filibuster -- the late senator switched parties several years later.
Reid's office stood by the remarks, with spokesman Jim Manley saying Republicans have "done nothing but obstruct health care" in the Senate.
"Today's feigned outrage is nothing but a ploy to distract from the fact they have no plan to lower the cost of health care, stop insurance company abuses or protect Medicare," Manley said.
But Republicans said they were genuinely appalled. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Reid's remarks were over the top.
"That is extremely offensive," he told Fox News. "It's language that should never be used, never be used. ... Those days are not here now."
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who on the Senate floor read from this FoxNews.com article and asked that it be placed in the record, called on Reid to return to the floor and, if not apologize, at least explain what he meant.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., suggested Reid was starting to "crack" under the pressure of the health care reform debate.
"I think it's beneath the dignity of the majority leader," Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said. "I personally am insulted."
The great British statesman and philosopher once said that “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” A close corollary to it is that “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. Unfortunately, we have this precise situation at many levels with Obama and the Congressional Democrats. In our Dec. 1st post , we compared the parallels of history regarding the British car industry and the government takeover there to our present situation with GM. Obama’s actions are mirroring the failed policies of the 1930’s that painfully prolonged the depression far beyond what would have otherwise occurred. Of course, there are many other examples.
The following describes a hauntingly similar situation to ours that transpired in Argentina and what happened when the government there did exactly what Obama and the Democrats are pursuing. The results: DISASTER!
Though this piece was written three months ago for the American Thinker, the intervening events have added even more solid validation of the perspicacious assessment of Obama, the emperor who is not wearing any clothes. Of course, you can also substitute the words readily available on the tip of the tongues of his fervent minions: “savior” or “messiah” instead of emperor.
How much more of this can we endure?
Another Failed Presidency
by Geoffrey P. Hunt Aug. 31, 2009
Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.
In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.
George Bush Jr. didn't fail so much as he was perceived to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his more conservative allies. Yet George Bush Sr is still perceived as a man of uncommon decency, loyal to the enduring American character of rugged self-determination, free markets, and generosity. George W will eventually be treated more kindly by historians as one whose potential was squashed by his own compromise of conservative principles, in some ways repeating the mistakes of his father, while ignoring many lessons in executive leadership he should have learned at Harvard Business School. Of course George W could never quite overcome being dogged from the outset by half of the nation convinced he was electorally illegitimate -- thus aiding the resurgence of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.
But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?
No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.
But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task-- all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.
In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: "For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."
Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.
Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.
Not much more needs to be said. As of November 23, 2009 Obama has played 25 rounds of golf but he can’t spend that time to make a decision on Afghanistan that is desperately required and while our brave soldiers are unnecessarily dying.
Obama is incompetent, arrogant, narcissistic, and dangerous to the well-being of America and its citizens.
If these egregious errors were due to the irresponsibility of your surgeon, he or she would lose their license to practice medicine. In contrast, politicians and lawyers (often the same animal) divorce themselves from any personal responsibility and are not subject to legal actions. Elections are too infrequent to be of immediate consequence.
So the results are ... More of the same incompetence, arrogance, greed, corruption,self-serving legislation and wasting of our money!
Obama and Congressional Democrats are disingenuously and dishonestly attempting to impose a bill of goods on healthcare that is rotten to the core on myriad fronts. Let’s focus just on the costs here. They claim that Obamacare (Pelosicare) is fiscally responsible and will not “add a dime” to the deficit. Even with the imposition of massive tax increases, unconstitutional mandates that force people to “purchase” health insurance, and front-end loaded receipts, this is an intentional audacious lie.
Using financial legerdemain, Congress and Obama have removed real costs from within the bill and simply applied them elsewhere. They still exist and are real but they don’t appear in the Obamacare bill so the costs ostensibly appear not as large. Of course, there are other tricks as well.
Furthermore, their assessment of patients’ usage of the system far underestimates reality. Add to that the government’s notorious inaccuracies of underestimating program costs by a factor of 3 to a factor of 10. Dealing now with trillions of dollars, we have the recipe for irreversible financial collapse if Obamanocare is implemented.
Given the recent and scandalous revelations that global warming is a complete fabrication “based” on sham, manufactured data to support the position, you would think that this story would garner at least some interest. Actually, this outrageous fraud perpetrated by abhorrent, ethically corrupt individuals in collusion with powerful, connected and avaricious individuals (Al Gore, Michael Moore, etc.) should be Front page news and one of the lead stories in broadcast and cable news. This is a story of trans-national collusion, corruption, scientific malfeasance, greed and aggrandizement of power involving individuals, companies, organizations and politicians. It is the Watergate of the early 21st century. Climategate.
Not unexpectedly, except for Fox News, no other major television news has mentioned this bombshell of a story. That includes ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC. Approximately five days and zero coverage. Why? Because the far left and many liberals want to believe that global warming is true – it is part of their ideology. They don’t want to destroy an important tenet which is also intimately associated with their environmental issues. Showcasing this fraud would be significantly detrimental to the environmental movement.
Once again, the overwhelming majority of the media has abdicated its responsibilities to the public. And they wonder why they are being marginalized by the American public while Fox News continues to shine, become more influential and be watched by a rapidly increasing viewership? The bottom line is that if you want the relevant, important news – watch Fox News.
What previously was thought to be unreachable levels of arrant incompetence, imprudence, recklessness and arrogance by Obama and his administration seems to be superseded on a frighteningly regular basis to new highs (and therefore, lows). His radical and destructive ideology is not only causing irreparable harm to our freedoms and rights but is also compromising our security, placing all Americans at risk, as seen with his plan to try terrorists in civil trials in Federal Courts.
At first thought many may question why this is such a big deal. The answer to this is cogently delineated in the following scathing editorial written by Thomas Sowell.
What can we do? Write your Senators and Representative requesting that they block funding for the trial(s) so that they will no be able to proceed in Federal Court and must, therefore, be adjudicated by military courts.
Deepest Bow Is Reserved For World Opinion
By Thomas Sowell
In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.
Terrorists are not even entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions, much less the Constitution of the United States. Terrorists have never observed, nor even claimed to have observed, the Geneva Conventions, nor are they among those covered by it.
But over and above the utter inconsistency of what is being done is the utter recklessness it represents.
The last time an attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a matter of domestic criminal justice was after a bomb was exploded there in 1993. Under the rules of American criminal law, the prosecution had to turn over all sorts of information to the defense — information that told the al-Qaida international terrorist network what we knew about them and how we knew it.
This was nothing more and nothing less than giving away military secrets to an enemy in wartime — something for which people have been executed, as they should have been.
Secrecy in warfare is a matter of life and death. Lives were risked and lost during World War II to prevent Nazi Germany from discovering that Britain had broken its supposedly unbreakable Enigma code and could read their military plans that were being radioed in that code.
"Loose lips sink ships" was the World War II motto in the United States. But loose lips are mandated under the rules of criminal prosecutions.
Tragically, this administration seems hell-bent to avoid seeing acts of terrorism against the United States as acts of war. The very phrase "war on terrorism" is avoided, as if that will stop the terrorists' war on us.
The mind-set of the left behind such thinking was spelled out in a San Francisco Chronicle editorial, which said that "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will be tried the right way — the American way, in a federal courtroom where the world will see both his guilt and the nation's adherence to the rule of law."
This is not the rule of law, but the application of laws to situations for which they were not designed.
How many Americans may pay with their lives for the intelligence secrets and methods that can be forced to be disclosed to al-Qaida was not mentioned. Nor was there mention of how many foreign nations and individuals whose cooperation with us in the war on terror has been involved in countering al-Qaida — nor how many foreign nations and individuals will have to think twice now, before cooperating with us again, when their role can be revealed in court to our enemies, who can exact revenge on them.
Behind this decision and others is the notion that we have to demonstrate our good faith to other nations, sometimes called "world opinion." Just who are these saintly nations whose favor we must curry, at the risk of American lives and the national security of the United States?
Internationally, the law of the jungle ultimately prevails, despite pious talk about "the international community" and "world opinion," or the pompous and corrupt farce of the United Nations. Yet this is the gallery to which Barack Obama has been playing, both before and after becoming president of the United States.
In the wake of the obscenity of a trial of terrorists in federal court for an act of war — and the worldwide propaganda platform it will give them — it may seem to be a small thing that President Obama has been photographed yet again bowing deeply to a foreign ruler. But how large or small an act is depends on its actual consequences, not on whether the politically correct intelligentsia think it is no big deal.
As a private citizen, Barack Obama has a right to make as big a jackass of himself as he wants to. But as president of the United States, his actions not only denigrate a nation that other nations rely on for survival, but raise questions about how reliable our judgment and resolve are — which in turn raises questions about whether those nations will consider themselves better off to make the best deal they can with our enemies.
In a speech delivered by Obama in Tokyo, he arrogantly called himself the “first Pacific President”. He also constantly reminds us of his firsts such as being the first African-American President and first one with a Muslim father, etc. These are all manifestations of his insatiable narcissism.
We have a few suggestions for him to add to his list of “firsts” - and these are actually true. How about claiming about being the first President to electively surround himself in government with communists, terrorists and anti-American individuals? Or being the first President whose ideologies and policies mirror those of our staunchest enemies rather than those of a free and democratic America based on a Constitution that should serve to protect and delineate personal rights and freedoms? Oh yes, and he can be considered to be the first President who finds the Constitution too confining, antediluvian and inconvenient for his radical agenda – essentially over rated in importance.
In the following video, Charles Krauthammer discusses Obama’s narcissism and the fallacy of his self-assigned appellation.
Video: Pelosi Asserts That it's 'Fair' to Jail People Without Health Insurance
The arrogance, haughtiness and condescension displayed by Pelosi and her cronies to the citizens of this country as exemplified in this video are unparalleled. Why? Because they know that they have full and effectively unopposed power in the government and the unwavering near unanimous support of the news media. They can pretty much do whatever they want with little consequence or so they think.
As Thomas Jefferson sagely noted over 200 years ago:
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny
When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Who is going to stop them?
If we want to save our country from fascism and tyranny and protect our rights and freedoms, we must immediately, persistently, effectively and aggressively oppose these corrupt, power-crazed, contemptuous politicians.
The tea parties were a good start… but Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et.al. need to start fearing us a lot more!
The following is among the most thorough but concise, cogent and eloquent articles detailing Obama’s hatred of America. It leaves no doubt as to his attitude and ideology – as if we really needed any convincing.
Of course, this all begs the question: What are we to do with a President who hates America and is dismantling it to fit the socialist/communist country that he envisions?
Impeachment?
The Man Who Despises America
By Mark Hyman
The very next paragraph is going to make the nut jobs on the far left excitable beyond belief. I am not referring to all Democrats or even a majority of liberals. I am singling out the "they've-lost-all-touch-with-reality" crowd. This includes Media Matters for America led by the admitted hit-and-run, drunk-driving serial liar. The group includes the unshaven, bathrobe-clad unemployed who live in their mother's basement and are devout followers of MoveOn.Org. It is also the bitter, aging spinster working at the New York Times, the morbidly obese documentary film maker, and cable TV news' resident drama queen who hosts MSNBC's Countdown. They are about to simultaneously suffer from brain aneurisms. So without further delay, I'll say it.
Barack Obama despises America.
When people who voted for Obama in 2008 -- including registered Democrats -- start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it "in for America," then it's clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion.
The central conviction of Obama's ideology is that America is guilty of limitless moral failures and is the chief architect of the world's ills. Obama has boundless enmity for America, its key institutions, and its longtime allies. Consider these facts.
The 30-years of Obama's post-adolescent life are radical by any measure. First, he grew up listening to the ramblings of committed Communist Frank Marshall Davis. It had such a profound effect on him that he wrote fondly of Davis in his first book. In fact, that book is replete with statement after statement about how the U.S. is deeply flawed. Most Americans believe in American exceptionalism. Not so with Obama.
Patriotic Americans would not have listened to the bigoted, anti-Semitic, hate-America rants of a fringe religious leader for 20 seconds let alone for 20 years. Yet, Obama who admitted he attended services at Trinity United Church at least twice a month for two decades called Jeremiah Wright his mentor and his moral sounding board.
Nor would most Americans cultivate a close friendship with an admitted domestic terrorist and his wife whose most notable life's accomplishments were to set off bombs that killed and maimed innocent people.
Joining Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright in organizing attendance at Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's 1995 march on Washington is beyond imaginable. Especially after Farrakhan demonstrated public support for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi during the Libyan Leader's most bellicose years against the U.S., which included Libyan complicity in numerous terrorist attacks.
Obama's view of America in national security and foreign affairs is profoundly disappointing to say the least.
Americans overwhelmingly view the men and women who saved Europe and the Far East during World War II as comprising the Greatest Generation. By his comments and actions, President Obama obviously thinks otherwise.
Obama did not honor American greatness on the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift while on his first European trip. Instead, he accused "America [of having] shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward its European allies.
He also denigrated the accomplishments of the American G.I. during World War II in the Pacific theater when he offered a thinly veiled apology for the U.S. having dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those acts brought the war to a swift conclusion, perhaps saving hundreds of thousands of lives when it appeared Japan was prepared to wage an island-by-island battle to the last man.
Obama ordered the release of the so-called CIA "torture memos," seriously damaging delicate intelligence relations with allied nations and placing at grave risk the safety of U.S. intelligence officers working overseas. The impact of his action handcuffs the ability of U.S. intelligence officials to protect the U.S. and American interests from acts of terrorism.
In a matter of weeks last spring, Obama gave deference to a variety of belligerent leaders while stiff-arming longtime American allies. First, he called for closer relations with Cuba while ignoring that nation's long list of continuing human rights abuses. Then he warmly welcomed Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at an Organization of American States summit.
Next, he failed to respond and set the record straight after Nicaragua's Communist leader Daniel Ortega listed alleged U.S. crimes and atrocities during a nearly one-hour rant at the OAS meeting. It is unsettling that in his own remarks Obama incorrectly claimed the OAS has 36 members rather than the actual 34. Ortega and the hemisphere's other Socialist leaders claim the OAS would include 36 members if Cuba and an independent Puerto Rico were allowed to join. Mere coincidence or Freudian slip?
Immediately following the OAS embarrassments, Obama ignored a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet. Obama would repeat this snub six months later before agreeing at the last moment to meet Netanyahu after the Israeli leader was en route the U.S.
In his speech before the Muslim world, Obama made the patently absurd claim of equivalency between the status of displaced Palestinians and the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. His claim that 7 million Muslims live in the U.S. is a figure inflated by as much as 700%.
In an earlier speech, Obama claimed that the U.S. is not a Christian nation, which is at odds with the fact that 79% of Americans self-identify as Christians and the nation's founders were devout Christians.
In less than six months in office, Obama apologized for Guantanamo Bay; for alleged mistakes committed by the CIA; for U.S. policy in the Americas; for America's history of slavery; for "sacrificing [American] values;" for "hasty decisions" in the war on terror; for "America's standing in the world;" for American errors in foreign policy; and for U.S. relations with the Muslim world.
He pronounced Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology acceptable and he warned Netanyahu against targeting Iran's nuclear facilities. Obama's approach to Iran is eerily similar to that of Jimmy Carter, whose actions contributed to the fall of that nation into the control of Islamic radicals.
This summer, the door to greater individual freedoms in Iran was firmly closed shut when Obama announced the U.S would not meddle in Iran's election and he offered no encouragement to democracy activists who protested the obviously stolen elections. His silence was deafening when regime security agents savagely attacked and killed countless Iranians who took to the streets.
In contrast to his deference to anti-American leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Daniel Ortega, Obama strong-armed Netanyahu on key Israeli matters. In addition to snubbing the Israeli Prime Minister's requests to meet, Obama demanded an end to Israeli settlements and insisted on the creation of a two-state Palestine solution.
Obama abandoned NATO members Poland and the Czech Republic by canceling the central Europe missile defense plan just as rogue nations North Korea and Iran make advances in nuclear and ballistic missile production. The cancellation was demanded by Moscow authorities who have adopted a more confrontational posture toward the west.
Solidarity with freedom-loving East Germans has been a staple of the American presidency for nearly 50 years. John Kennedy pronounced himself a Berliner. Ronald Reagan demanded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev "Tear down this wall!" Yet, this bricks and mortar icon of first, Soviet totalitarianism, and then, second, the end of Soviet domination did not make the cut as Obama chose not to attend the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. In the summer of 2008, Obama altogether skipped mentioning the role of the U.S. -- or even the West, for that matter -- in bringing down the wall, instead crediting "a world that stands as one."
Obama's disagreement with American values and institutions is evident in domestic issues. He has stocked his administration with wild-eyed radicals who believe foreign law trumps the U.S. Constitution (Harold Koh); include an avowed Marxist and "truther" who believes George Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attack and is also an ardent supporter of cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal (Van Jones); and include a devoted admirer of Mao Tse-tung who slaughtered as many as 75 million people (Anita Dunn). (In contrast, George W. Bush's Attorney-General nominee John Ashcroft was savaged by the news media for being an Evangelical Christian.)
Three weeks after America's first black president was sworn in, the nation's first black Attorney-General who was hand-picked by Obama, called America "a nation of cowards" for some perceived race relations shortfall. The understood meaning of Eric Holder's comments is that white people are still racists. However, the reality is the people most preoccupied with fomenting the racial divide are those who populate the ranks of the Obama Administration.
Obama's Homeland Secretary designated military veterans as terrorists-in-waiting to be equally as dangerous as other domestic terrorists including pro-lifers and citizens opposed to the flood of illegal aliens.
One of Obama's very few suggestions to cut into his $1.4 trillion budget deficit was to have servicemen and women pay for their own war injuries. He's all for providing free health care to illegal aliens but believes wounded warriors should foot their own hospital bills. In fact, the Defense Department is about the only sector of government in which Obama has proposed slashing spending.
Hours after a belligerent "African-American Studies" Harvard professor engaged in behavior unbefitting anyone let alone a professional man, Obama accused the exceedingly tolerant Cambridge police officers as having "acted stupidly" and then digressed into how people of color have been unfairly treated by white America.
Bush was prolific in quietly and privately visiting the military wounded and family of the fallen. In contrast, Obama attempted to make political capital of his one visit to Dover Air Force Base. Obama's motives were so transparent that families of 17 of the 18 fallen denied permission for Obama to engage in a photo-op alongside the returning caskets.
In May, Obama immediately issued a statement that he was "shocked and outraged by the murder" of a Kansas doctor specializing in partial-birth abortions. He called it a "heinous act of violence." Attorney-General Holder mobilized U.S. Marshals nationwide to provide protection to abortion clinics.
But Obama remained silent the very next day when two U.S. soldiers were gunned down by a Muslim extremist outside a Little Rock recruiting station. After repeated prodding for a presidential comment, the White House faxed an after-hours statement to select media outlets two days later offering a tepid remark that Obama was "saddened" without even mentioning the soldiers were murdered.
Five months later, another Muslim fanatic gunned down nearly four dozen Americans, killing 13, at the Ft. Hood army base. It was an act that demanded the most serious demeanor of the military's Commander-in-Chief. Yet, Obama referenced the massacre in the most insincere fashion just seconds after a jocular shout-out to an audience member during a public speaking engagement. It was the equivalent of attending a funeral in swimwear while en route to the beach.
The odd inadvertent comment or occasional verbal faux pas can be explained away as just that. However, Obama has a lifetime of comments and actions including 10 months as president that belie his real attitude toward the U.S. The difference between Obama and his immediate predecessors such as Ronald Reagan, the George Bushes and Bill Clinton who actually revere and honor the greatness of America and its citizens and institutions cannot be overstated.
In an article in the Los Angeles Times, they noted that: “At least one Democratic political strategist has gotten a blunt warning from the White House to never appear on Fox News Channel, an outlet that presidential aides have depicted as not so much a news-gathering operation as a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration.”
According to the report, the strategist stated that he was told by a White House official that “We better not see you on again.”
Although Anita Dunn, the White House Communications Director, denied the allegation, this threat is quite compatible with the modus operandi of the Obama Administration. It is just another in a litany of actions, threats and rhetoric to aggrandize power and silence its critics and opponents by any means necessary. Even more perversely, Obama will "let" you talk with the ruthless dictators Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro or even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - just don't be caught talking with Fox News!
Obama is using the White House as a venue for far left, anti-American influence peddling and for accruing greater power for the imposition of radical ideology on Americans. That is, of course, when Obama is there and not away playing golf or at another Democratic political fundraising event.
According to the intentionally limited information released by the Obama Administration regarding White House visitors, Andy Stern who is president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has visited at least 22 times already. The far left anti-American billionaire George Soros, of Moveon.org and more fame, has been there at least twice already.
Meanwhile, General Stanley McChrystal, who is the U.S. commander for our troops in Afghanistan and who more than two months ago had recommended an increase of troops there if we are to stand a chance to win the conflict, can’t seem to get an appointment with Obama. Our courageous troops are being killed or maimed in the conflict while Obama attends to his pleasures and anti-American ideologies.
The following editorial, written by Thomas Sowell, should serve as a clarion call to all Americans that our country, rights, freedoms and way of life are on the precipice of annihilation due to the inimical ideologies combined with contemptuous, nefarious, imperious politicians who desire unfettered power. In a very comprehensive yet succinct and persuasive manner, he states his case … which we must act on immediately and decisively before the situation becomes even more dire.
Dismantling America — Piece By Piece
By THOMAS SOWELL
Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the president, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50% or 90%?
Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — to create a situation where some papers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get lifesaving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life-and-death decisions about your loved ones?
Does any of this sound like America?
How about a federal agency giving schoolchildren material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.
How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.
We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies.
What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brownshirts of dictators than like anything American. How far the president will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.
Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America"; the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.
Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.
Among those appointed as czars by Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.
Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?
Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government — people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.
Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.
Nothing so epitomizes Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed.
That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question — and the biggest question for this generation.
Internationally, Obama has made every mistake that was made by the Western democracies in the 1930s, mistakes that put Hitler in a position to start World War II — and come dangerously close to winning it.
At the heart of those mistakes was trying to mollify your enemies by throwing your friends to the wolves. The administration has already done that by reneging on this country's commitment to put a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe and its lackadaisical foot-dragging on doing anything serious to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. That means, for all practical purposes, throwing Israel to the wolves as well.
Countries around the world that have to look out for their own national survival, above all, are not going to ignore how much Obama has downgraded the reliability of America's commitments.
Iraq, for example, knows that Iran is going to be next door forever, while Americans may be gone in a few years. South Korea likewise knows that North Korea is permanently next door, but who knows when the Obama administration will get a bright idea to pull out?
Countries in South America know that Hugo Chavez is allying Venezuela with Iran. Dare they ally themselves with an unreliable U.S.A.? Or should they join our enemies to work against us? This issue is too serious for squeamish silence.
“The latest villain in the politicians' demagogic fantasyland is private health insurance. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accused private insurers of making "immoral profits." And they're a prime target for taxes to pay for the health care revolution Congress and the White House have planned.
But in fact, as we pointed out recently in these pages, this is an industry that actually lags many others in the U.S. economy. Plenty of other sectors of private industry are doing far better.
And some of the things Washington has planned — in particular a "public option" — would leave private insurers bankrupt.”
The following editorial exposes the fallacy of the belief that insurance companies are reaping exorbitant profits. It also should serve as a warning that no dissenting or politically out of favor individual, group or industry is exempt from the demagoguery and the vicious, punitive and morally corrupt attacks by an ever more powerful neo-fascist government.
An article published in the Los Angeles Times entitled "Obama aide had stint at Freddie" exposed and explored Rahms Emanuel's employment on Freddie Mac's Board of Director's during a period that ultimately led to its collapse. His was a patronage appointment and the remuneration for his brief period was scandalous. Of course, this story has remained largely hidden. Thwarting further investigations is the Obama Administration's arrogant and unwarranted refusal to release notes from Freddie Mac board meetings despite requests through the Freedom of Information Act. This is not a matter of national security ... only a risk to another corrupt, arrogant, power hungry member of his inner circle.
"Obama aide had stint at Freddie"by Bob Secter and Andrew Zajac
Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors.
One of those board members was Rahm Emanuel, now chief of staff to President Obama. Emanuel earned at least $320,000 for his 14-month stint at Freddie Mac.
Emanuel plays a critical role in addressing the nation's mortgage woes and fulfilling the administration's pledge to impose responsibility on the financial world -- the type of responsibility that appeared to be absent at Freddie Mac.
Emanuel, 49, is a veteran Democratic strategist and fundraiser who served three terms in the U.S. House after helping elect President Clinton and serving as his White House political director. The Freddie Mac money was part of $16 million that Emanuel earned in three years as an investment banker a decade ago.
Clinton appointed him to the Freddie Mac board in February 2000.
The board met no more than six times a year. Unlike most directors, Emanuel was not assigned to any of the board's working committees, according to company proxy statements. A spokeswoman for Emanuel disputed that.
Emanuel and other new directors qualified for more than $300,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, records indicate.
During Emanuel's stint on the board, Freddie Mac executives told the board of a plan to use accounting techniques to maximize profits that the government-chartered firm was reaping from risky investments, a 2003 investigative report found.
The report by Armando Falcon Jr., director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, found that the goal was to shift earnings into the future, ensuring that Freddie Mac would appear profitable for years. Falcon noted that this action boosted executives' subsequent annual bonuses.
Falcon criticized the board for its acquiescence, saying it "became complacent" and "failed to make adequate inquiries of management and obtain sufficient information upon which to make decisions." His criticism was little noticed at the time.
The ensuing scandal forced Freddie Mac to restate $5 billion in earnings and pay $585 million in fines and legal settlements.
Many of those same risky investment practices eventually brought the firm to the brink of insolvency and led to its seizure last year. The Bush administration pledged to inject up to $100 billion to keep the firm afloat, and the Obama administration has doubled that commitment.
Freddie Mac reported recently that it lost $50 billion in 2008. So far it has tapped $14 billion of the government's guarantee and said it soon would need an additional $30 billion to keep operating.
Like its larger government-chartered cousin, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac was created by Congress to promote home ownership, though both are private corporations with shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The two firms hold stakes in half the nation's residential mortgages.
Because of Freddie's federal charter, the board in Emanuel's day was a hybrid of directors elected by shareholders and those appointed by the president.
In his final year in office, Clinton tapped three pals: Emanuel, Washington lobbyist James Free and Harold Ickes, a former White House aide instrumental in Hillary Rodham Clinton's initial Senate campaign. Free's appointment was for four months and Ickes' for three months.
Falcon found that presidential appointees played no "meaningful role" in overseeing the company and recommended that their positions be eliminated.
Former President George W. Bush voluntarily stopped making such appointments after Falcon's assessment of their uselessness.
John Coffee, a law professor and expert on corporate governance at Columbia University, said the financial crisis at Freddie Mac was years in the making and fueled by chronically weak oversight by the directors. The presence of presidential appointees on the board didn't help, he added.
"You know there was a patronage system, and these people were only going to serve a short time," Coffee said. "That's why [they] get the stock up front."
Financial disclosure statements that are required of U.S. House members show Emanuel made at least $320,000 from his time at Freddie Mac. Two years after leaving the firm, Emanuel reported an additional sale of Freddie stock worth between $100,001 and $250,000.
Sarah Feinberg, a spokeswoman for Emanuel, said there was no conflict between his stint at Freddie Mac and Obama's vow to restore confidence in financial institutions and the executives who run them. At the same time, Feinberg said, Emanuel now agrees that presidential appointees to the Freddie Mac board "are unnecessary and don't have long enough terms to make a difference."
In an interview, Falcon said that the Freddie board did most of its work in committees. Proxy statements that detailed committee assignments showed none for Emanuel, Free or Ickes during the time they served in 2000 or 2001. Most other directors carried two committee assignments each.
But Feinberg said she believed Emanuel served on committees that oversaw Freddie Mac's investment strategies and mortgage purchase activities. She acknowledged she had no documents to back up that assertion.
The Obama administration rejected a Tribune request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel's time as a director. The documents, obtained by Falcon for his investigation, were "commercial information" exempt from disclosure, according to a lawyer for the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Emanuel's board term expired in May 2001, and soon after he launched his congressional bid. He joined the House in January 2003 and was named to the Financial Services Committee, where he also sat on the subcommittee that oversaw Freddie Mac. A few months later, longtime Chief Executive Leland Brendsel was forced out and the committee and subcommittee launched hearings to sort out the situation. Emanuel skipped every hearing, congressional records indicate.
Feinberg said Emanuel recused himself "from deliberations related to Freddie Mac to avoid even the appearance of favoritism, impropriety, or a conflict of interest."
The Democrats’ plans for healthcare reform would be disastrous for Americans medically and financially as we have noted many times here before. Realizing that a vast majority of Americans are vehemently against the plans and socialized medicine in general, Pelosi and the Democrats are intent on imposing their ideological misguided legislation on us no matter what. They see it as government knows best and the greater its power and control, the better. We see it as an arrogant and corrupt power grab and abrogation of our rights and freedoms that will be a fiscal and social calamity.
We vehemently oppose the Democrats’ actions on healthcare reform and even more egregiously, their contemptuous and dismissive responses to an angry American public strongly against the legislation. Obama and Congressional Democrats have stated in no uncertain terms that they will impose this healthcare reform on us no matter what.
We have dissected this reform in previous editorials. This bill is ostensibly about healthcare but in actuality IT IS NOT. It will not lower costs, increase quality, or provide universal coverage which is the Democrat’s mantra. Instead, it will result in skyrocketing insurance costs far in excess of what would occur if nothing were done at all as well as massive increases in taxes. It will also lead to rationing, long waits, poorer quality of care, loss of confidentiality or our healthcare records, withholding of care and therapeutic options, increased morbidity and mortality of Americans, etc. Shall we go on?
In its essence, this bill is a naked, corrupt power grab by the Federal government, comprising an additional 17% of our economy under its control for a sum total of 43%. Its covert intentions are to steal additional freedoms and rights from us and make us more subservient and under greater government control. If you have scrutinized what legislation is available for public examination, read fact supported commentary and parsed the Democrats’ ideology, you will realize unequivocally that these conclusions are not paranoid rants. THEY ARE FACT BASED REALITY.
WE MUST RELENTLESS FIGHT AGAINST PASSAGE OF THIS LEGISLATION!!
The following is an extremely important and trenchant editorial posted in the October 19th edition of Investors Business Daily that sums up the current dire situation:
Dems Go Nuclear
Health Care: Democrats seem set to use the "nuclear option" to ram their government health takeover into law. Bipartisanship already looked dead; now it looks extinct.
The health care revolution the Democratic Congress has planned — with its inevitable medical rationing, thousands of dollars in increased insurance premiums, and coverage of illegal aliens — may get placed on the familiar fast track used to spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars this year.
Instead of the 60 votes needed in the Senate if proper parliamentary rules were followed, passing this reshaping of the medical system as a "budget reconciliation" measure would mean only a simple majority was needed.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., accused of cheating on his taxes, last week held a hearing to let the House version of the health reform bill be passed this way. As the Washington weekly Human Events reports, Democratic leaders "have apparently invoked the 'nuclear option' to shut out Republicans and ensure the bill is passed before the end of the year."
So all those "town hells" during the summer, where senators and congressmen were given an earful about passing secretly written thousand-page bills without reading them, will be ignored.
In the age of the Internet, Congress refuses to post for computer access the most consequential legislation in history, as far as its effect on human lives (and deaths) is concerned, before voting on it.
The people will have to wait until it's all signed, sealed and delivered before finding out exactly how this government-imposed monster will devour health care as Americans have known it for all their lives.
And why? Because both congressional Democrats and the White House are afraid of the power of the people. Just as they are both afraid to give the opposing party a seat at the negotiating table.
Rangel didn't allow Republicans to offer amendments in committee. Why not? Fear that Democrats might be embarrassed by having to reject a Republican amendment to protect Medicare, for one thing. And fear in general that the people might catch wind of a few bipartisan ideas that sound more sensible than their big government solutions.
The magnitude of what Congress is about to do is staggering. The federal government is about to begin dictating Americans' behavior regarding the most intimate and vital area of life — health.
You play ball with Uncle Sam and pay thousands and thousands of dollars for far more expensive insurance than what you're now used to, or you get slapped with fines. And as yet we don't know how heavy those fines will be — or if noncooperation with the new system will mean more than fines.
Doesn't Congress owe it to us to provide time to mull this over before it takes force?
Shouldn't the exact wording of this radical transformation of our medical system be available on the Internet for weeks before a floor vote takes place?
And shouldn't medical experts, health care providers and legal analysts get the opportunity to read every word of such a bill carefully, then give their well-considered analysis to concerned Americans?
Apparently not, according to those now running Washington.
To them, this is a rare opportunity to take a giant step toward single-payer, European-style socialized medicine. And they have no intention of letting the people stop them.
Arrogance, condescension and prevarication have become quintessential ingredients of the more powerful Democrats. Harry Reid evinced these key traits in his statements regarding healthcare and malpractice reform. The Democrats disingenuously toss about cost of healthcare reform as being around $800 billion to $1 trillion which we all know extremely underestimates the expense. In what was probably somewhat of an extemporaneous comment that inadvertently revealed more reality, Reid stated definitively the cost of healthcare reform to be more than double what other Democrats have been quoting, that is, $2 trillion dollars.
Two telling facts were exposed by his statement regarding savings with malpractice reform. One, that there is little inclination for the Democrats to address this issue despite its preeminent importance. Secondly, his deeming that the estimated saving of $54 billion per year is an “inconsequential” amount is inexcusably arrogant, disdainful and irresponsible. Since when is a billion dollars, never mind $54 billion trivial? That is our money – nearly $750 for a family of four per year!
This is the same attitude that is used when it comes to inserting pork into legislation such as the thousands of individual pork projects that were placed in the stimulus bill (aka American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or Porkulus Bill) in February. Five billion dollars here, ten billion dollars there, another fourteen billion dollars for another useless, unrelated project and pretty soon you have billions of REAL dollars REALLY wasted!
The following is the text of Harry Reid's comments as seen in the video:
"He talked about CBO saying that there would be $54 billion saved each year if we put caps on medical malpractice and put some restrictions — tort reform — $54 billion. Sounds like a lot of money, doesn’t it, Mr. President? The answer is yes. But remember, were talking about $2 trillion, $54 billion compared to $2 trillion. You can do the math. We can all do the math. It’s a very small percent."
In a modern day reprisal of the legend of “Nero fiddling while Rome burned”, our Arrogance in Chief, Obama, is doing the same with Afghanistan. Our young men and women are dying there unnecessarily and Obama shows negligible interest. Instead of aggressively addressing the deteriorating military situation there, he has chosen to ignore it, an egregious dereliction of duty. He would rather feed his insatiable narcissistic appetite for adulation, attention and control with unrelenting appearances on talk shows, publicity stops and innumerable inconsequential speeches than to make decisions of import for which he is supremely unqualified.
Army Lieut. General Stan McChrystal, a former Green Beret with superior credentials who was selected in May to be commander of the U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, made several military recommendations in writing to Obama in August in order to improve the situation and resolve the conflict. Little has been done. Despite the gravity of the situation there, Obama had spoken only once with McChrystal in over 80 days and not in person…until recently.
And what happened recently? Well, McChrystal had the “audacity” to express his feelings regarding our strategy (or lack thereof) in the war during a speech he delivered in London. He wants to fight this war appropriately and to win – a novel idea these days to the liberal Washington politicians. The Obama administration was offended and outraged with his bluntness and arranged a hasty, brief face to face meeting to issue a rebuke. In a classic case of irony, this was held aboard Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen where Obama was to deliver his narcissistic pitch ostensibly for Chicago to be selected host of the 2016 Olympics. Talking about priorities…
If nothing else, Obama has displayed great adeptness and facility in one area: LYING. His inveterate lying has evolved to the point that there appears to be a seamless transition between reality and unreality that for the public can be difficult to discern. Many times it appears that not only can’t he distinguish between the two but that he actually believes much of what he confabulates. He has truly become a “preeminent prevaricator”.
Obama suffered significant personal humiliation by Chicago’s stunning exit in the very first elimination round of consideration by the Olympic Selection Committee for the 2016 Olympics. He thought his "superstar" status and "legendary in his own mind" power of persuasion would help his city win the ultimate prize. If you read the text of the speech, it was actually all about narcissistic Barack Obama. In less than two pages, he used the word "I" thirty times and brought up his running for President, his election as President, as well as his father, wife and children. Wasn't this suppose to be about why Chicago deserved the 2016 Olympics?
Obama has been deservedly attacked on his involvement and visit to Copenhagen, the first time a sitting President has made an appearance before the selection committee.As noted by GOP consultant Brad Blakeman, a former Bush Administration official:
"It demeans the office. For the president to be reduced to the effect of the Billy Mays pitchman for the United States to get the Olympics for his home city of Chicago is just not something that Presidents do… His priorities are screwed up and the American people are seeing that this President just doesn't get the effects and importance of governing.”
Blakeman also noted that Obama spent more time wooing International Olympic Committee officials than he did in his meeting with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, before returning to Washington.
This is another example of the Obama’s pathological narcissism and arrogance, believing that his supernal charm and rhetoric are the only requisites needed to sway the masses or convince others to see it his way. It is also an inexcusable waste of at least $1.2 million taxpayer dollars that could have been better spent. And what about better spending your time on slightly more weighty matters like Afghanistan, Iraq, the economy...?
In a recent speech, Energy Secretary Steven Chu exuded the condescending, we know what’s best for you attitude that is endemic in the Obama Administration and within the Democratic Party in Congress. He stated in a speech concerning electricity that “The American public ... just like your teenage kids, aren't acting in a way that they should act" and "The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.” This persistently increasing disdainful attitude in conjunction with greater control, regulations and power over the American people is a recipe for disaster – for our rights and freedoms and must be stopped.
As IBD insightfully stated in the following editorial:
“Sadly, Chu's contempt for average Americans is nothing new in Washington, a town piled high with elitists who think their notions about how the rest should live are so important that they can force them on others.
It's seen in the rush to take over health care, the determination to punish success through taxation, the push to restructure the financial system, the taxpayer dollars plowed into alternative energy, and the chill placed on free speech and dissent. These may seem to be separate issues, but all are part of a campaign to make an independent people dependent on, or subservient to, the government.”
In a political year of previously unimaginable legislation and events, one seemingly more outrageous or unanticipated than the next, comes a shocking new revelation. The Congressional Stimulus Bill which was passed on February 13th, also known as American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, not only was not read by any member of Congress but it also was not authored by any of them or any members of their staffs except for the myriad pork projects. Yes, you read that correctly and are not in a drug induced stupor or other altered state of consciousness! In a move where calling it egregious woefully understates the case, Congress (largely Democrats) passed a $787 billion dollar stimulus bill that would spend our tax dollars without even one member reading or writing the document. The level of arrogance and contempt for the American taxpayer that this abrogation of responsibility represents is unfathomable.
Now for the clincher. If Congress didn’t write this pork laden, profligate monstrosity then who did? An amalgamation of several radical leftist interest groups called the Apollo Alliance authored this bill and did so with the intent of advancing their radical agenda. The mission statement of the Apollo Alliance identifies its goals to be to “tie elements of organized labor with community organizers and environmental groups into an outfit that would restructure American society.”
Among the members of its Board of Directors were:
Van Jones the communist of “green czar” notoriety
Wade Rathke – founder of ACORN
Gerald Hudson – V.P. of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). This is the same union presently doing much of the coercing in trying to have the healthcare reform bill passed and was involved in melees at tea party protests and town hall meetings.
What don’t the Democrats understand about the Tea Party protests? Has their imperial attitude, arrogance and contemptuousness blinded them to their responsibilities and “nominal representation” of their constituents or are their vilifying statements of the public protests their true beliefs? Any way you interpret it, the Democratic responses and commentaries have been reprehensible.
Americans are mad at their government for a multitude of reasons and want to be heard. Although healthcare reform has been a rallying point, the areas of concern are myriad. They are tired of having their tax dollars stolen from them as well as spent in a profligate manner. Exacerbating this situation is a government that considers these tax dollars to be ITS money to spend however it sees fit.
The public is fed up with the government increasingly imposing regulations and restrictions on their activities, choices, rights and freedoms yet act themselves in a hypocritical fashion. They are disgusted with a very large and ever increasing, encompassing, confiscatory, restrictive and essentially oppressive government.
The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee wants levies on insurers to pay for ObamaCare and fines for families who don't sign up. We can cut costs and expand coverage without sacrificing freedom. Read article
A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?
We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Read article
Veteran reporter, author and commentator Bernard Goldberg reports that when CBS News did its fake National Guard story on George W. Bush avoiding service in Vietnam, it knew it was a lie. Read article
It appears that Obama has actually kept one promise – though it was not really a good thing. He had indicated in no uncertain terms that the impact of 9/11 should be downplayed. So, instead of attending the memorial service in New York City for remembrance of the 2752 people who died there eight years ago, he sent Joe Biden.
What did Obama do to recognize the 9/11 attacks? He and Michelle Obama walked out on the South Lawn of the White House and observed a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. Gee, that move is very inspiring! I am sure all the victims’ families were ecstatic with that effort. Correct us if we are wrong, but isn’t this the same President who found it more important to fly to New York City at obscene taxpayer expense when the purpose was just to go out on a date with his wife?
Maybe the solution for next year (if Obama is still President), would be to have Michelle’s personal staff of 26 or more servants make arrangements for entertainment following the memorial in New York City, say a play or tours of a few museums and an expensive dinner at some tony restaurant. Now that would provide them with more incentive to visit!
Those Americans who follow more conservative or “balanced” media for their news were well informed of Van Jones, Obama’s “green jobs” czar, including his background and egregious utterances. He wasn’t some low level non-descript player buried within the governmental bureaucracy but rather one of Obama’s handpicked appointees ostensibly to aid in advancing the green movement. Furthermore, he did have some international renown on environmental issues.
We have covered his radical, hateful and racist philosophies in recent postings. He has a long and despicable history of gratuitous racism, vehement black nationalism, and anti-Americanism, is a staunch supporter of communism and is pro-Islamic. His goals also include the spread the wealth philosophy and suppression of individual rights and liberties. The hate mongering that he tries to disseminate is quite similar to that espoused by Reverend Wright.
We find it a total outrage and an abrogation of their responsibilities (though not unexpected) that the broadcast and virtually all of the print media consciously elected to ignore these stories until the last few days. This is a quintessential example of why they are becoming marginalized by a majority of the American public and are in dire financial straits. This includes such purveyors of selective partisan news reporting as CBS, NBC, ABC, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
You can be absolutely sure that if the tables were turned and this was a conservative individual whose only stain was a misinterpreted statement made years ago regarding the KKK, he would have been pilloried in the press from the moment his name became public. The NAACP, ACLU and countless black demagogues would be lining up and issuing disparaging statements and Congressional Democrats would be calling for inquiries.
Since none of these groups, media organizations or politicians could find anything wrong with Van Jones despicable, hateful, racist and anti-American rhetoric, their posture should provide further reasons why they should be marginalized and ignored in the future, not patronized where financial issues are in play, and as for politicians – fight against their re-election.
(Note : Van Jones resigned his position due to all the controversy on September 6th.)
Another video has surfaced revealing more outrageous and incendiary racist comments made by the radical, hateful, black nationalist Van Jones, Obama’s ex-czar for “green jobs”. In this video, he asserts that only Whites can be involved in mass school shooting such as Columbine whereas a black individual could never possibly and would not perpetrate such a crime. Was anyone asking that particular question? Of course not! This despicable demagogue uncontrollably exudes hate and must be removed from his appointed government position – either by resigning or being fired.
Americans are discerning a pernicious pattern Obama selecting anti-American, radical, and often blatantly racist individuals to occupy positions of power such as the czars do – and are becoming extremely disconcerted. Congressional Republicans are raising concerns about these individuals, calling for investigations of many of the czars and for the resignation or termination of Van Jones. They also have demanded that no additional czars be appointed.
Elected politicians like Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) who exude and express such an arrogant and contemptuous attitude for many of their constituents should be voted out of office at the first opportunity. They acquit themselves like royalty, behaving as if their position were a birthright rather than a job where the taxpayers are their employers.
This same disdainful attitude is endemic within the Democratic Party perpetrated by names like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, Barney Frank, Charles Rangel, Barbara Boxer, and Diane Feinstein. This will continue this behavior until they really start fearing the voters, their resurgence of power and the ultimate effects of their wrath – being voted out of office in large numbers.
Though Van Jones submitted his resignation yesterday, we still felt that this expose was important enough to post. There has been a consistent pattern of Obama selecting the most radical, hateful, anti-American and often racist individuals for influential government positions that place our rights, freedoms and hard earned wealth in constant jeopardy.
It’s almost with each passing day that another outrageous Obamanation is uncovered, adding to the countless confirmations on the perniciousness that Obama and his cronies, czars, and ideologues represent to the American people. The list of radicals that he had associations with before election was long but well known (some were listed in yesterday’s post). It is impossible for Obama to provide a truthful and rational explanation for chance occurrences of these associations without having a strong affinity with their ideologies which include vehement and vitriolic anti-American and anti-White racism, black nationalism and black liberation theology, communism, and suppression of the rights and freedoms of individuals.
Simply put, OBAMA SUBSCRIBES TO THE SAME HATEFUL AND RACIST PHILOSOPHIES AS THESE RADICALS.
The most recent radical czar to be uncovered is Van Jones, Obama’s selection as the green jobs czar. He has a long and despicable history of gratuitous racism, vehement black nationalism, and anti-Americanism, supports communism and is pro-Islamic. He sounds a lot like the vile "repudiated" Reverend Wright. No wonder Obama chose him! Van Jones' philosophy and background render him dangerous and unqualified to hold this position.
The following video was taken during the Town Hall Meeting with U.S. Congressman Brian Baird in Clark County, Washington on August 18th. It captures some of the anger that millions of Americans are expressing in response to dangerous, intrusive, fiscally irresponsible, and restrictive legislation that Congressional Democrats and Obama want to impose. Americans are tired of the disdainful and condescending attitudes of their representatives as well as their insincerity and deceptions.
We reported on July 1st that the Justice Department dropped its voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party without a substantive reason. The civil suit originally was filed in January of this year while Bush was still President and was in response to voter intimidation perpetrated by two members of this Black group wearing paramilitary garb and threatening voters at the entrance to a Philadelphia voting station. In this lawsuit, it was asserted that the New Black Panther Party and three of its members violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by threatening and intimidating voters with the weapon, uniforms and racial slurs.
Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder who is black, inexplicably dropped the case in May despite the fact that none of the three defendants filed a response to the complaint or even appeared in federal district court in Philadelphia to respond to the suit. Essentially, the case could have been won by the Government by default. Unbelievably, one of the individuals who had charges dismissed against him was a member of Philadelphia's 14th Ward Democratic Committee and a credentialed poll watcher for the Democratic Party.
There has been outrage from many in the community as well as by several Republicans yet Obama and Eric Holder continue to stonewall. Most of the news media never even reported the flagrant intimidation on Election Day and, of course, did not report the dismissal of the case. Not surprising! The ACLU is nowhere to be found. Again, not surprising. They would rather defend the criminals and terrorists.
You don’t imagine that this is reverse racism and that this was dropped because these individuals were black, do you? Nah!! Not Obama and Eric Holder. You can be absolutely sure that if two (White) members of the KKK had perpetrated this intimidation, there would have been a feeding frenzy in the liberal press for months, the scum at the ACLU would have been lining up “poor disenfranchised” black citizens to use as victims of the ruthless “Plantation mentality” subjugation, and Holder’s Justice Department would have sought the most severe penalties possible.
Decisive and effective tort reform is desperately needed in this country. Our uncontrolled legal system lottery has wreaked havoc on Americans, American industries, innovations and on healthcare and healthcare costs. Physicians frequently order tests that would otherwise be unnecessary for patient care just to cover all bases in attempting to reduce the risk of a lawsuit. This is also called practicing defensive medicine and may cost our country at least $200 billion dollars annually. Then there are the direct costs of defending frivolous lawsuits which add billions of dollars more.
There are also the indirect costs such as discouraging otherwise capable individuals from pursuing a career in medicine. Those who decide to become physicians may avoid training and later practicing in very high risk specialties such as Neurosurgery, Cardiac Surgery and Obstetrics, areas where there are already a shortage of providers. Then there are the extremely dedicated, experienced and wise physicians who have been in medicine for many years who no longer want to contend with these stresses and issues and either limit their practices to lower risk procedures or retire from medicine altogether. This translates into losing some of the best and most experienced doctors from the healthcare system, an undesirable and patently avoidable situation.
With this only being part of the total story, consider the arrogance and chutzpah that Obama had when he addressed the AMA on June 15th. Despite being cognizant of the exorbitant and unnecessary costs that liability issues add to the overall price of healthcare, he stated in no uncertain terms that tort reform was not presently a negotiable issue. Of course, this should come as no surprise to anyone as attorneys are among his biggest supporters. With one of his stated goals being to reduce the cost of healthcare cost, it is imperative that he needs to seriously and effectively address tort reform.
Yes, Michelle, you now have another good reason to be proud of your country: it’s paying for your servants so that you can continue to comport yourself like arrogant royalty. Let’s revisit that famous statement you made last year and see how much better the situation is for you today. Most Americans could only dream of being given millions of dollars at taxpayer expense without holding an official job and having every one of your whims catered to without protest. But then again this is not unlike your previous “work” experience back in Chicago.
During an almost two year deep recession with high unemployment, with millions of Americans suffering economically, and trillions of dollars of wealth evaporated, you see no reason why you should sympathize and suffer too. Instead, it seems that you are trying almost single-handedly to significantly reduce the unemployment rate by hiring at least 26 servants at taxpayer expense exceeding two millions dollars per year. The number of attendants that you “require” obliterates numerically and cost wise what any previous First Lady needed. Even Hillary Clinton who was spearheading healthcare reform had a maximum of only 13 people under her. Meanwhile, Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salaries for their personal secretaries out of their own pocketbooks. How times have changed for the better! Isn’t that what you stated, Michelle?
Does your Chief of Staff really need to be paid $172,200? That is on par with what our Senators and Congressional Representatives receive and who may work slightly harder for their $174,000. Of course, maybe “combat” pay is included in your Chief of Staff’s base salary to make working under you a little bit more palatable.
Why do five members of your staff deserve to earn over $100,000 per year? Is that really necessary during a financial crisis? Can’t you show just a little fiscal responsibility and restraint? I wouldn’t look to your husband for advice, though, as he also appears to be clueless, sybaritic and financially reckless. Instead of signing the Porkulus bill in the White House Rose Garden like past Presidents have done for other legislation, Obama had to grandstand and fly to Phoenix and Colorado, costing the American taxpayer probably in excess of $30 million dollars. That amount could have paid for a lot of school supplies for children.
Your irresponsible, arrogant, and profligate spending for your little microcosm in addition to Obama’s for both personal (remember your date in New York?) and public adulation are just more reasons that we, the American people can’t and won’t trust your husband, Obama, with the healthcare and other legislation and with our tax dollars. But there is no need to despair as there is a silver lining. You will still have your own taxpayer financed gold plated healthcare plan that the average American would lust for rather than the restrictive, convoluted, and rationed one that Obama wants to impose on us.
The president elect of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Anne Doig, stated that Canada’s health care system is “sick” and “imploding”. She also went on to say that that Canada’s universal health care system is not giving patients optimal care and that “the system that we have right now — if it keeps on going without change — is not sustainable" .
These are not strong words of support by the future leader of the Canadian Medical Association for a healthcare system that Obama and the Democratic Party are using as a model for government controlled healthcare in America. The rationing of care, long waits to be seen by a physician, and markedly increased mortality rates of many diseases compared to here, and unsustainable costs are indisputable.
So why do Obama and the Democrats want to establish a similar system here when they know it is failing everywhere it has been implemented? It is politics, wealth transfer, arrogance and greater government control over the lives of Americans.
Americans are venting their anger and disapproval of Obama’s policies and rhetoric and it is having a significant effect on the political debate, politicians and on other citizens who are beginning to express their concerns. Many voters in the middle of the political spectrum who were not impressed with McCain or were inspired with the aura, vigor and the ostensible freshness of Obama and his promises of “change that you can believe in” and therefore voted for him now feel more than betrayed and duped.Instead of the refreshing, inspired, positive, constructive and “post-racial” President, they now see a narcissistic, condescending, arrogant, hypocritical, elitist and dismissive one who adheres to outdated racial victimization demagoguery, class warfare envy, irresponsible and disingenuous fiscal policies, and immutable radical ideologies.
These inimical personal characteristics and his radical left persuasion should surprise nobody. Despite his outrageous denials of hearing anything offensive in the incendiary, racist, hateful sermons of Reverend Wright, we all know that he heard them and concurred. You don’t attend church weekly for 20 years, have him marry you and your wife, baptize your children, refer to him as an uncle like figure and donate thousands of dollars if you disagreed with his rhetoric. Any person of character and integrity would have picked themselves up and walked right out of that church and never returned after hearing one of those vile sermons . He didn’t! His overtly race based selections (Sotomayor, Eric Holder, Regina Benjamin, czars, etc.) and unwarranted involvement in local “racial” issues (Cambridge police and Afro-American Harvard professor of black studies) patently substantiate his racial bigotry and adherence to such policies.
People are very angry now with what they have seen in less than seven months and feel that it is too important to remain silent. It is imperative that all of us are very vocal in our dissent, using our freedom of free speech to effect the changes that we want, preserve our liberties as well as our hard earned incomes. We must make sure that the government answers to us rather than it impose its will and dictates on us!
Once again Obama is gratuitously attacking physicians asserting that greed motivates their decision-making. In his latest intentional deception, he claimed that family care physicians collect “$30,000, $40,000, $50,000” for amputations while the reimbursement for cognitive services such as assisting patients in weight loss, dieting and monitoring their medications is “a pittance”.
In actuality, Medicare reimburses a surgeon between $541 and $708 for a foot amputation. This intentional deception designed for political points is so egregious, irresponsible, and depraved that the President should be thoroughly rebuked for it. Aside from a few medical organizations that took offense and issued statements, the mainstream news media accepted it as dogma. The effect is that many of the public who are uninformed in such matters may be swayed by such baseless screed.
This is a President who will confabulate the most outrageous statements just for political points. This is despicably immoral and must be vigorous, loudly and inexorably challenged.
Typical of a preponderance of liberal politicians, they want unlimited ability to criticize policies or individuals that are not in concordance with their ideologies but are intolerant and take offense when the tables are turned. They inexorably attacked Bush and Cheney during their administration often with vicious, wanton and even ad hominem rhetoric that frequently exceeded tasteful boundaries. This even included Nazi symbols on images of Bush in Pelosi’s own district.
Now that they have total power, they expect the opposition to be submissive and acquiesce. Obama has told those that disagree with him to step aside and get out of his way since he has the power. They have demeaned those citizens who are vocal, protesting and attending the Tea Parties calling them un-American, manufactured angry mobs, Astroturf, tea baggers and other derogatory terms. Consistent with her arrogance and glib mendacity, Nancy Pelosi contemptuously accused the protesters of carrying swastikas when in fact no one has ever been seen on any of the videos of town hall meetings with them. Furthermore, she condoned their display in her own district when it pertained to Bush a few years ago.
There is absolutely no defensible reason that the document delineating the Obamanocare legislation is 1018 pages in length. Between this and often inscrutable legalese, how is the average American suppose to read and understand this and make an informed decision? Once again, this lucidly demonstrates the arrogance and dismissive attitude endemic in Congress and why we should demand simplification and limitation of the length of any legislation.
In the following video, Neil Cavuto explores the idea that this mammoth healthcare document could have been written in a much more comprehensible and abbreviated version.
Yesterday we examined the condescending and derogatory attacks perpetrated by Obama, Pelosi and many Congressional Democrats on American citizens who were simply exercising their right of free speech and disagreed specifically with the Obamanocare legislation. We also exhorted all Americans to “relentlessly continue to exercise their rights to dissent and free speech and vociferously voice their concerns otherwise we will lose many more of our Rights and Freedoms.”
Today, we present a scathing and insightful commentary written by Rep. Thomas Price (R. – Georgia) of these vitriolic, arrogant, and unwarranted attacks led by Obama and Pelosi. Rep. Price, who is Chairman of the Republican Study Committee as well as a physician, presents a very incisive, informed firsthand account and assessment of the deceptions, li
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