In the following editorial, David Limbaugh details the unprecedented level of arrogance and condescension spewing from members of the Obama Administration. Their demeanor is one of a ruling elite in an autocracy rather than of a representative government serving at the pleasure of the public.
Then add to this unabashed racism of black on white and unequal justice and what results is a noxious mixture that will be destructive to our country.
Unprecedented Arrogance
David Limbaugh 7/2/2010
The Obama administration grows more arrogant, cavalier and fundamentally dishonest every day. Just in the past few days, we've seen a number of troubling examples. Frankly, sometimes it's hard to keep up.
In a speech in Wisconsin, Obama was bragging about how wonderful the terrible economy is. You'll recall that during both of President George W. Bush's terms, Democrats, including Obama, castigated him for destroying the economy, despite the existence of empirically verifiable robust growth during some seven of those eight years.
Now that Obama has been in office for a year and a half and his economy is failing by all objective measures, he and his Democrats demand, once again, that we ignore the empirical evidence in front of our faces and bow down to them in reverent gratitude for ensuring that things are not worse than they are.
Everyone knows Obama promised -- he was hardly tentative about his prediction -- that if the nation followed him over the cliff with his harebrained "stimulus" scheme, unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. When unemployment soared above 10 percent, he insisted we be patient to allow his plan to work. Now that it stubbornly remains in the high 9s, he tells us that if he hadn't implemented his stimulus bill, the economy would be much worse (12 or 13 or 15 percent), so we not only are forbidden from criticizing him for this disaster but also must genuflect because only three of the four wheels of the economy are teetering over the edge of the cliff.
He said, "There may be some roads that not only were repaired but also were ... linked up to create a new industrial park that would facilitate long-term economic development beyond this immediate crisis."
Can you imagine the reaction of the liberal media had a Republican president uttered such gibberish? There "may be some roads"? How's that for a non-statement? That were linked up to a new industrial park to facilitate long-term growth? How about some facts here, Mr. Intellectual? Then again, how can you blame him for citing nebulous "facts" and failed economic theory when neither the real facts nor the economic evidence substantiates his claims.
He also said that every economist who's looked at it has said that the recovery did its job. Would someone please get this man a link to The Heritage Foundation's website or any other credible conservative think tank or economist? Time and time again, Heritage scholars have not only argued but also demonstrated why Obama's economic policies don't work in theory and haven't worked in practice. As noted many times before, they have not helped avert a crisis, but have exacerbated already bleak conditions. Sure, all economists agree with him, just as all Americans agree with his socialistic policies.
Moving on, in the past few days, we've also heard from former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams, who has confirmed -- from the belly of the beast -- our worst suspicions about Obama and Eric Holder's Justice Department's dismissing a slam-dunk case for voter intimidation against New Black Panther Party members for racial reasons. This is an egregious trampling on the rule of law, an outrage that would subject any Republican president to charges of high crimes and misdemeanors, a scandal of the first order for which this administration isn't even bothering to develop "plausible deniability."
Next, we read about Obama's reaction to Sen. Lamar Alexander's reasonable suggestion that any energy discussion between the president and a "bipartisan" group of senators should include a focus on the oil spill and BP. Obama said, "That's just your talking point," and flat-out refused to discuss the subject. Is he king or what?
Finally, we've also witnessed this week another outburst from that paragon of smugness, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, whom I criticized earlier for mocking members of the press corps for their legitimate questions in lieu of attempting to answer them in good faith.
This time, this little smarmy nerd-thug mocked Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona for claiming Obama told him in a private meeting he would not secure our borders because it would disincentivize Republicans from supporting his effort to pass "comprehensive immigration reform" (read: amnesty). Gibbs accused Kyl of changing his story and basically arguing with himself on the matter, even though Kyl has not retreated an iota from the only relevant assertion: that Obama made the statement in question. Watch the video in which Gibbs clearly intends to create the false impression Kyl had vacillated on his charge and tell me with a straight face we're not dealing with an entirely unprecedented level of arrogance in this White House.
Oblivious to historical equivalents, benighted and belligerent, Obama and Congressional Democrats fervently continue to pursue and implement disastrous policies on the American public which will have apocalyptic effects on our country.
It seems to be an unimaginable possibility to have so many incompetent, arrogant and uninformed people in one place. Unfortunately, they are the ones passing and imposing irresponsible and reckless legislation.
The Last Refuge Of The Incompetent
Investors Business Daily 07/01/2010
Unemployment checks, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday with a straight face, create jobs "faster than almost any other initiative you can name." AP
Leadership: With their own economic policies in complete disarray, Democrats have turned to a tried-and-true tactic: Blame the opposition for your failure. It may be too late — their incompetence is starting to show.
Recent events, along with the continued bleeding of the U.S. economy and Wall Street, underscore the desperation of the party in power to escape responsibility for its failures.
Case in point: The president, speaking in Wisconsin on Wednesday, lashed out at Republicans: "We already tried the other side's ideas. We already know where their theories led us. And now we have a choice as a nation."
We must have missed the Democrats' attempt to enact broad-based tax cuts, for instance, to boost the economy like they did each time they've been tried in the past. Truth is, "the other side's ideas" have been studiously ignored in our financial crisis and recession.
Unemployment remains close to 9.7% and, based on even White House estimates, is unlikely to improve much. Vice President Joe Biden himself has noted that, under current Democratic policies, "there's no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession."
Of course, he too blames the GOP, though his party has controlled Congress since 2006 and its earlier policies, such as the Community Reinvestment Act and the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were responsible for the 2007-08 financial meltdown.
Democrats like to style themselves as the party of the little guy. But small businesses are going bankrupt in droves while unemployment among black males is averaging 16.3% — well above last year's 14.8%. In March, 1.8 million African-American men were without work — the most on record.
Now we see signs the economy's improvement may soon stall — and perhaps even slide backwards. On Thursday, we learned that June auto sales dropped 4.3% while May pending home sales plunged 30%. Consumer confidence has fallen sharply, and financial markets are in a tailspin.
Also this week, the Congressional Budget Office reported that federal debt by year-end will soar to 62% of GDP — highest since World War II, when the U.S. went deeply into the red and killed off the private economy in order to beat the Nazis.
Worse, the CBO said debt will hit 87% of GDP by 2020, rise above its record peak of 109% by 2025 and hit a stunning — and financially ruinous — 185% by 2035.
CBO chief Doug Elmendorf told the White House's deficit commission this week that those rising levels of debt, fueled by uncontrolled federal spending, might lead to "higher interest rates, more foreign borrowing, less private investment and lower income growth, if not a full-blown fiscal crisis."
While there's been modest job growth this year, business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable warn that government policies of higher taxes and big spending will squeeze future private-business sales.
Without private-sector growth, there will be no recovery and no sustained rebound in job creation. Compassion for the little guy comes from understanding this very simple point — not from pointing fingers and mouthing vacuous economic platitudes.
The fact is, $700 billion in TARP bailouts, $862 billion in economic "stimulus," $70 billion in auto industry aid, $1.2 trillion in Fed money-printing and $146 billion spent on bailing out insolvent government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have done nothing to restore our economy's vigor.
This is among the most incompetent series of economic policy moves in U.S. history — all the more unforgivable because similar Keynesian pump-priming was tried during the Great Depression and in the 1970s, failing miserably each time.
On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said unemployment checks create "jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name."
We are not making this up. This is what passes for economic wisdom in the Democratic Party.
The current mess is a result of policies in place now — not those put in place years ago. Watching this nightmare unfold, and then listening to our leaders blame the opposition, is getting more grotesque by the day.
This is Democratic Congressman Pete Stark of California
He is just one more example of the arrogance, condescension and disdain that the Democrats have for the American people. They comport themselves as royalty and treat the public as guttersnipes.
This must not be tolerated by us. We need to clean house of these cancers - starting in November.
The Obama administration “accidentally” revealed on June 18th that the federal government will be filing a lawsuit against Arizona challenging the constitutionality of its new illegal immigration law, S.B. 1070. Given their already selected position, the fact that Obama didn’t have the courtesy to inform Arizona’s governor as promised and that this information was released in a back handed way, we feel this was a despicable and arrogant move on his part.
Of course, that comes as no surprise as such is his modus operandi with those he disagrees with except, of course, our enemies.
We encourage Americans to donate money to defend this legal challenge. Hopefully, Arizona can ultimately sue the federal government for legal costs (and punitive damages?).
The state should also sue to recoup the billions of dollars that Arizona taxpayers have paid to deal with all facets related to illegal immigrants.
Facing Federal Lawsuit, Arizona Governor Stands Her Ground on Immigration Law
FOXNews.com June 19, 2010
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer refused to flinch after Obama administration officials confirmed Friday that they plan to file a lawsuit challenging the state's anti-illegal immigration law.
In a statement issued late Friday, Brewer called Obama's decision "outrageous" but "not surprising."
"Our federal government should be using its legal resources to fight illegal immigration, not the law-abiding citizens of Arizona," she said.
Meanwhile, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said his office plans to withdraw as the state's lawyers in legal challenges to the law, leaving Brewer's attorneys to defend it. Brewer had complained that Goddard's criticism of the measure raised doubts about his ability to defend it.
Brewer said with Goddard out, "I will ensure the immigration laws we passed are vigorously defended all the way to the United States Supreme Court if necessary, where this reasonable law will ultimately be found constitutional."
The law takes effect July 29 and requires officers to question a person's immigration status if there's a reasonable suspicion that he or she is in the country illegally.
At least five legal challenges have been filed to the law since April.
The lawsuits generally allege that Arizona's law will lead to racial profiling and argue that it's the federal government's responsibility to regulate immigration.
On Friday evening, Brewer's defense team asked a federal judge to throw out the suit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups that challenge the law's constitutionality.
Obama officials confirmed plans to file their lawsuit after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview with a TV station in Ecuador earlier this month that the administration would challenge the law in court, though officials had long said the issue was under review.
Administration officials initially would not confirm Clinton's statement. But an official told Fox News on Friday that while the review is still underway, the decision has already been made that a Department of Justice suit will be filed. The administration at this point is just building its case.
Another official said there are still "substantial" issues to address and work out before the Justice Department knows that it has a strong enough case to file a lawsuit. The official said the department intends to file suit, but that any court action is contingent on the final review.
Clinton's announcement was met with outrage Thursday by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the law. Brewer told Fox News she's ready for a fight.
"What a disappointment," Brewer told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren on Thursday, saying she was shocked the administration would make such an announcement on foreign TV without giving Arizona officials the news first.
"We are not going to back away from this issue," Brewer said. "We are going to pursue it, we're going to be very aggressive," Brewer said. "We'll meet them in court ... And we will win."
She added: "The population of America agrees with Arizona."
We noted in Danger In Our Own Land, how the federal government States has essentially ceded southern Arizona to Mexico due to the rampant, uncontrolled violence associated with the drug trafficking and human smuggling. Because of the abdication of its Constitutional responsibility to secure the borders of the United States by Obama and Congress, Americans are faced with such a dire situation.
Of course, the violence and crime doesn’t end here. It is then dispersed all across the country so that this is not just a local problem for Arizona.
In order to begin to better protect itself and its citizens, Arizona passed S.B. 1070 which deals with the illegal immigration but not directly with border security. Arrogantly, duplicitously and irresponsibility and with prevarication, Obama will challenge the Constitutionality of the law – that is, file a lawsuit against Arizona.
He won’t send the military or national guard to actively protect the borders.
He refuses to take constructive steps to create a barrier at the border. In fact, he terminated the ongoing building of a fence along the border which had been effective.
No, Obama will destructively deal with the issue and increase the vulnerability of Arizonans and Americans in general.
Wouldn’t it be nice if he was forced to live in these areas for a few week period of time.?
We actually then may get two major problems solved…
Five Federal Lands in Arizona Have Travel Warnings in Place
Joshua Rhett Miller FOXNews.com June 18, 2010
Imagine the federal government closing a section of the Lincoln Memorial because it was under the control of Mexican drug lords and bands of illegal immigrants.
That scenario is playing out as reality in southern Arizona, where parts of five federal lands -- including two designated national monuments -- continue to post travel warnings or be outright closed to Americans who own the land because of the dangers of "human and drug trafficking" along the Mexican border.
Roughly 3,500 acres of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge -- about 3 percent of the 118,000-acre park -- have been closed since Oct. 6, 2006, when U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials acknowledged a marked increase in violence along a tract of land that extends north from the border for roughly three-quarters of a mile. Federal officials say they have no plans to reopen the area.
Elsewhere, at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which shares a 32-mile stretch of the border with Mexico, visitors are warned on a federally-run website that some areas are not accessible by anyone.
"Due to our proximity to the International Boundary with Mexico, some areas near the border are closed for construction and visitor safety concerns," the website reads.
On another page titled "Border Concerns," the website warns that visitors should be aware that "drug smuggling routes" pass through the park.
"If you see any activity which looks illegal, suspicious, or out of place, please do not intervene," the website reads. "Note your location. Call 911 or report it to a ranger as quickly as possible. Each year hundreds of people travel north through the park seeking to enter the United States."
Visitors are also warned to be mindful of illegal immigrants within Ironwood Forest National Monument, a 129,000-acre federal parkland in the Sonoran Desert.
"All suspected illegal activities should be reported to [the Bureau of Land Management] or local law enforcement authorities," Ironwood Forest's website reads. "Visitors should stay safe by avoiding contact with persons exhibiting suspicious behavior or engaged in dangerous activities. Drive with caution and look for fast-moving vehicles and pedestrians on back roads."
Dennis Godfrey, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management's Arizona office, said roughly a dozen signs were posted earlier this month along the Sonoran Desert National Monument advising that travel in the area is not recommended due to "active drug and human" smuggling. The signs are not far from where a Pinal County deputy was shot and killed during a confrontation with marijuana smugglers in April and the fatal shooting of two men suspected to be drug smugglers.
"It is a corridor for smugglers of all types," Godfrey told FoxNews.com.
Similar signs have been posted at the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and the Coronado National Forest, which covers nearly 1.8 million acres in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
Estimates of exactly how many acres of federal land are closed due to safety concerns near the border were not immediately available, but at least one lawmaker told FoxNews.com that the policy of "ceding" federal land to drug and human trafficking is unacceptable.
"This is one of those things that the Department of Interior does not want to publicize," said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, ranking Republican on the House Parks and Public Lands Subcommittee. "These bad actors are now being channeled into federal lands along the border because it's so easy to make that access. The situation is getting worse on federal lands and will only get worse until we make some proactive activity to change the status quo."
"Frankly," Bishop continued, "the status quo is failing. We are failing to control our borders."
Bishop, who has introduced legislation that would remove environmental restrictions the Department of Interior imposes on U.S. Border Patrol agents, questioned the message sent by federal authorities by closing off part of the Buenos Aires Refuge.
"That is a ludicrous message," he said. "That policy in unacceptable. That strikes of running a policy of appeasement to drug cartels instead of fighting back. Someone has to say that not one inch of American property will be given to the bad guys and not one death is acceptable."
It is becoming increasingly clear even to the more ardent supporters of Obama, that he is not what they thought he was. When "tingle up my leg" rabidly liberal Obama deifier, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, expresses extreme disappointment and profuse criticism, you know Obama's support is becoming tenuous.
Obama's utter ineptness and bungling of the BP oil spill crisis has been the final straw for many liberals and progressives who were vocal supporters. For the majority of Americans who want to turn the country around, his free falling support provides hope for a critical change of government (to Republicans) in November with the elections.
The Mortal Politician
Cal Thomas June 10, 2010
There is a scene in the film "Superman II" where the Man of Steel chooses to give up his powers and become mortal for Lois Lane, the woman he loves.
A major part of President Obama's attraction, especially to the many young people who voted for him, was his supposed difference from other politicians. To those naive worshippers, he seemed so above it all, a super-apolitical man.
The president's declining poll numbers reveal the disillusionment that has begun to sink in among the politically unsophisticated. They are starting to realize that not only is this president not above politics, but that he, in fact, practices the lowest form of the profession known as Chicago-style politics.
In a commencement speech to graduating seniors at Kalamazoo Central High School, the president exhorted, "Don't make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes, but for your failures as well. ... It's the easiest thing in the world to start looking around for someone to blame."
Wise words. Too bad the president doesn't practice what he preached to the graduates.
In remarks last November when he visited Norfolk, Va., the president said, "When I showed up after Inauguration, they had left a big mess on the floor. So I got a mop and I started cleaning up their mess." In fact, he has been spreading the mess around, causing a bigger mess.
In March, the president said, "By any measure, my administration inherited a fiscal disaster."
Repeatedly to the point of denying his own shortcomings, the president has blamed the Bush administration for virtually every problem that has confronted him. Seeking to explain the Massachusetts Senate victory of Scott Brown, the president told ABC News last January, "People are angry and they are frustrated not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."
Even the BP oil spill, which he says is his responsibility, isn't really, you see. Earlier this month, the president said, "When Interior Secretary Ken Salazar took office ... he found a Minerals and Management Services agency that had been plagued by corruption for years."
The president has blamed the Bush administration for a $1.3 trillion deficit, though his administration and a liberal Democrat Congress that keeps spending and borrowing money we don't have, created much of it.
The president's decline in popularity goes beyond blame. He also does not tell the truth. Recall during the debate over government health care his repeated assurances that if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it. But Politico reports, "Part of the health care overhaul due to kick in this September could strip more than 1 million people of their insurance coverage, violating a key goal of President Barack Obama's reforms."
And Politico continued, "Employer groups say the ban could essentially wipe out a niche insurance market that many part-time workers and retail and restaurant employees have come to rely on."
And, "Depending on how strictly the administration implements the provision, the ban could in effect outlaw the plans or make them so restrictive that insurance companies would raise rates to the point they become unaffordable."
Critics of Obama's health reform law predicted exactly that, but the president accused them of misleading the public. Who is misleading whom?
There is a point in every presidency when the public discerns when a president is succeeding, or whether he is in over his head and is failing. That point is rapidly approaching for President Obama. It is not good for the country to have a failing president, especially this early in his term, but that is a conclusion being reached by more than conservative talk show hosts. It is one now increasingly shared by a disappointed public.
There is something very, very wrong with this picture:
Obama attacking the Arizona immigration law in a speech given on the White House lawn with visiting Mexican President Felipe Calderon who then proffers his own criticisms of the law.
So we have the President of the United States assailing one of the states and then countenancing and applauding a foreign head of state who does the same.
This is not Presidential nor is it rational under standard circumstances. No sane, patriotic head of state trash talks his own country nor does he allow a foreign leader to do so. And Obama did so blithely, persistently and as a matter of fact.
This behavior is one of a dangerous and nefarious leader which Obama is. Such actions should be considered not just in bad taste but bordering on sedition particularly when combined with his body of work.
OBAMA MUST BE IMPEACHED AND REMOVED FROM OFFICE!!
White House, Democrats Applaud Mexican President Slamming Arizona Law
FOXNews.com May 20, 2010
WASHINGTON -- As Mexican President Felipe Calderon ripped Arizona's new law clamping down on illegal immigrants in front of Congress on Thursday, Democrats and White House officials rose to their feet to cheer, including Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Janet Napolitano -- two officials who have confessed to not even reading the law.
And that isn't sitting well with officials from states along the border.
"It was extremely disappointing to have a foreign head of state on the floor of the U.S. Congress exhibiting willful ignorance" over the new law, Arizona House Speaker Kirk Adams told Fox News.
"But I'll tell you what's even more galling is to have members of the White House staff standing and applauding something that is absolutely wrong," he said. "Arizona's law does not introduce racial profiling. Quite the contrary."
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said "those who encourage criticism of the Arizona law are on the wrong side of the American people."
"When you peel back the inflammatory rhetoric and the baseless accusations of those who oppose the Arizona law, you find that Arizona has taken a reasonable, constitutional approach to dealing with a problem that the federal government hasn't," he said.
Despite confessing to not reading the law, Holder and Napolitano are among those who have criticized it, saying the law would promote racial profiling and may be unconstitutional.
In the first address to Congress by a foreign national leader this year, Calderon delivered a message Thursday that the two countries must cooperate to improve security along the often-violent border and control the flow of immigrants into the United States.
While Republican lawmakers welcomed Calderon's call for improved relations between the two countries, they jeered his lecture on how to fix the U.S. immigration system and his criticism of Arizona's new law.
"I think it's inappropriate for him to come in and criticize our law," Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told Fox News. "When we go down to Mexico, we don't do that to the Mexicans."
"The Arizona law is not the problem," he added. "The problem is the growing violence down the border and securing the border and the Obama administration enforcing federal law."
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee's immigration, refugees and border security subcommittee, said it was "inappropriate" for Calderon to "lecture Americans on our own state and federal laws."
"Arizona's immigration law has been amended to make clear it does not authorize racial profiling by law enforcement," he said.
In his remarks Thursday, Calderon said he is "convinced comprehensive immigration reform is crucial to securing our border."
"But I strongly disagree with the recently adopted law in Arizona," he said. "It's a law that not only ignores reality, but also introduces racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement."
Calderon said his "government does not favor the breaking of the rules" and that he respects the right of any country to "enact and enforce its own laws."
"But what we need today is to fix a broken and inefficient system," he said. "We favor the establishment of laws that work and work well for all."
Smith said he was "disappointed that President Calderon did not use this opportunity before us to talk about what more Mexico will do to discourage illegal immigration and improve conditions so that good, hardworking Mexican citizens will want to stay home instead of coming to America."
"The economic and tax reforms that President Calderon discussed are important, but they are not enough to curb the flow of illegal immigration," he said in a written statement. "Instead, President Calderon continues to mischaracterize and criticize domestic policies of the United States. It is not right for the president of another country to come here and criticize our nation or our states for wanting to stop human smuggling and drug trafficking, or secure our border."
Calderon's state visit comes at a time of renewed furor over the flawed immigration system from Mexico into the United States. From border security troubles to questions about how to deal with the millions of illegal migrants living in the United States, the immigration debate remains politically vexing, frustrating and volatile.
Obama is lobbying lawmakers to get moving on legislation that would seek to deal with the security, employment and citizenship issues at once. He concedes, however, that he does not yet have the Republican support he would need to get such a complex deal done. Whether any progress will happen this year is unclear.
Stoking the matter is a new law approved by Arizona lawmakers and set to take effect July 29 unless derailed by legal challenges. It requires police, in the context of enforcing other laws, to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are in the United States illegally.
Calderon calls that discriminatory, and Obama agrees the Arizona law could well be applied that way. He has ordered a Justice Department review.
Calderon also told Congress Thursday that the fight against narcotics traffickers along the border can only succeed if the United States reduces its demand for illegal drugs. Calderon called on Congress to reinstate the assault weapons ban. "The Second Amendment is not a subject open for diplomatic negotiation, with Mexico or any other nation," Cornyn said.
He said the United States must stop the flow of assault weapons and other arms across the border.
The Mexican leader found an ally at the White House Wednesday, where Obama is pressing lawmakers to take up legislation that would deal with security, employment and citizenship issues.
The following essay captures so well the essence and dangers of Obama Delusion Syndrome. The damage done if Obama were just another nameless inconsequential loser would be minimal. Unfortunately, he is the President of what was once the greatest country ever. His delusional disorder together with his narcissistic personality disorder, and some outside political help have in a little more than a year wreaked severe and incalculable damages to our rights, freedoms, attitudes, America’s security, economy and future and have poisoned relationships with our long standing allies and have emboldened our sworn enemies to exploit our increased vulnerabilities.
Not a pretty picture! This must not be allowed to continue.
Obama Delusion Syndrome
Kevin McCullough April 18, 2010
Few things are less tasteful than arrogance amongst the empowered. Few things are sillier than believing one's own praise. Few people are more misguided than those who teach false doctrine, and few pose more danger than those who willfully deceive in order to gain power.
On all four points President Obama stands head and shoulders above us all.
It seems, however, that he saves his ugliest bit of guile, disdain, and self-exultation for when he is forced to deal with "We The People." For as much as he would like to believe it to be the case, he is not higher than us, but rather our servant. And though he bristles at the notion that anyone should be allowed to instruct his behavior or review his job performance, in November of this year the voters of America will do both.
Realizing this, if I were one of President Obama's advisors, I would caution him greatly on his continuing smug and arrogant defiance of the voters, especially as they express their thoughts on the greatest domestic crisis we face nationally: the economy.
This week, when addressing Democratic supporters who paid him (at least his party's campaign fund) between $250-$1250 dollars to hear him speak, the President dropped the curtain and let another shade of his true colors show.
Last year, when the tea parties began forming and the first of what would be over 5000 of them took place across the nation, he claimed to have barely been made aware that they were there. He claimed so despite the fact that the most watched cable news company reported live from gatherings that ranged from thousands to hundreds of thousands of attendees. (Attendance at these events was a fact that the White House would directly misguide people concerning throughout the year of 2009.)
But this year, instead of playing dumb, the President took a different tactic: arrogance and marginalization. Speaking to people who paid big money to hear him, he said, "I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you."
Thank you? For what, exactly, Mr President?
Since unemployment, which you pledged to never let grow past 8%, has been near 10% for the better part of your Presidency, should we thank you for the stimulus bill you passed that has made underemployment worse in dozens of states?
You do know Mr. President, don't you, that under President Bush nearly one in twenty families worked but did not have enough to make ends meet, but under you that percentage has, for the duration of your time in office, held fairly steady at one in five families?
Or should we thank you for the federal takeover of private industry, and the artificial propping up of some companies, while the indiscriminate failures of others went unheeded?
Perhaps we could thank you for removing the terms "terrorist, war on terror, and islamic radical" from federal usage in any official reference. After all, refusing to label what the terrorists really are, or worse yet their true intentions will create a more peaceful world... right?
Perhaps we can thank you for your repeated attempts through the Health Care Reform bill, your still-not-dead Cap & Trade legislation, and, coming soon, your legislation to normalize illegal aliens to put repeatedly harsh burdens upon the small businesses of America. After all small businesses only creates 2 of every 3 new jobs in the nation.
Mr. President there is also the matter of how you treat our allies. You assumed a posture, from the moment you were sworn into office with our closest ally Great Britain, and most recently our most important ally in the middle east Israel, to treat them with contempt. Yet you smilingly shake the hands of dictators, accept their socialist dogmas as gifts, and even tell them that your own nation is a bad player in world affairs, even though if it were not for your nation--America, most of the freedoms on the planet presently enjoyed would be non-existent.
President Obama, it has become clear to anyone with an ounce of objectivity, that you are engaged in a great delusion.
A delusion that sees your own policies as euphoric, when in reality they are significantly dangerous. It is a delusion that seems to think our allies are bad, and our enemies are good. A delusion that even has given you the "right" to arrogantly mock and marginalize those of us who know the law: that you work for us.
Mr. President how are we supposed to see "hope and change" in your actions that mock our needs, priorities, and desires?
In reality we'd prefer you to focus on attempting to heal the sick economy, restore our standing to one of respect amongst our allies and fear amongst our enemies, and in nearly every other area keep the long reach of government out of our lives. Then we'd have reason to thank you!
Unfortunately for us all, it is doubtful your delusion will allow you to see the need.
In another reprehensible example of Obama’s arrogance, Messiah complex and unrestrained hedonism, instead of attending the state funeral of Polish President Kaczyńskis who was killed in a horrific plane crash, Obama played a round of golf.
That’s right!
Poland is a stalwart ally and strong pro-democracy country and Obama couldn’t avail himself to show even the minimum of diplomatic etiquette.
Leaders from many other countries including Russia found ways to attend but not Obama. No, golf was far too important – even more than being respectful to an important ally.
Russia has earned good will points and consideration for reconciliation with their attendance at the funeral. Conversely, Obama’s conspicuous absence and concurrent hedonistic actions can only be interpreted as his intentional public derogation of Poland which portends poorly for future relations at least while he is still President.
Liberal politicians and the news media have been intentionally, misleadingly and wrongly using the term “sedition” when talking about conservatives and their protests against the federal government. That term, however, is immensely appropriate for Obama as well as Pelosi and Reed. These individuals are intentionally destroying our country in myriad ways and should face appropriate charges and actions. Impeachment of Obama would send the appropriate message.
They’re in essence traitors and should be treated as such.
Obama goes golfing instead of attending Kaczyńskis' funeral
April 18, 2010
The Icelandic volcano travel debacle left an open spot in the US president's schedule
US President Barack Obama went golfing at the Andrews Air Force Base yesterday, it was reported, just hours after Poles had laid their late president to rest.
"On a cool but sun-drenched day, the president and three golfing companions head[ed] to Andrews Air Force Base on Sunday to play 18 holes. It is the 32nd time Mr. Obama has played golf since taking office Jan. 20, 2009, according to CBS Radio's Mark Knoller," reported the Washington Times on Sunday.
In an article posted on its website, the newspaper also reported that while US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden had taken the time to visit the Polish Embassy to sign a book of condolences, President Obama had not yet taken the time out to do so.
The plumes of volcanic ash that ruined travel plans throughout Europe last week kept other world leaders away from the funeral, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy - though there was no word as to whether they too had taken to the links.
Other world leaders found ways to attend the funeral, including Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, who made an 18-hour drive, while Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus travelled by car and train. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych also attended.
The late president's close friend, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, also managed to attend, flying in from Georgia through Rome.
Rush enumerates a quite impressive collection of Obamanations in this tongue-in-cheek thank you which was in response to Obama arrogantly asserting that the Tea Partiers should be thanking him for their taxes. Really!!
Rush: We Will Really Thank You in November, Mr. President
With ever increasing arrogance, Obama actually believes and stated that Americans should be happy about paying their income taxes and should be appreciative that he “lowered” them for a vast majority of Americans. We know that he is still smoking but maybe they are not regular cigarettes and are the cause of his hallucinations. Otherwise, he is a liar or has completely lost touch with reality. (Actually, both of these are irrefutably true!)
Taxes not only haven’t been reduced for productive Americans but will be increased massively almost immediately. He surely has increased the number of Americans not paying any taxes to 47%. Outrageously and unacceptably, 40% of Americans now actually receive money (get paid) from the government rather than pay any taxes as a consequence of a multitude of handouts including earned income tax credits.
Productive Americans are forcibly supporting the lazy. And this will only worsen with Obama’s reckless ideology.
We have become slaves.
THIS MUST BE REVERSED!!
Obama's Mockery of Tea Party Stirs Tax Debate
Major Garrett April 16, 2010 FOXNews.com
Political strategists debate President Obama's mockery of the Tea Party Movement.
For 20 seconds on Thursday, President Obama basked in applause from donors in Miami when he mocked the nationwide Tea Party rallies that caused an eruption of angst on Tax Day.
"I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you," Obama said to a group of Democratic supporters who shelled out between $250 and $1250 to attend.
But it remains unclear who will get the last laugh: the president or the Tea Party?
"What the president said last night was arrogant and smug and a perfect example of why the Tea Party is so intense and so organized" said Republican strategist Terry Holt
Democratic strategist Peter Mirijanian defended Obama's statement by saying if you take a look at the middle class voters, contrary to protesters' claims, you'll see that their income levels and their taxes have actually not gone up.
Larry Summers, the president's top economist, blogged for the Huffington Post that in 2009 the middle class and poor were showered with $173 billion in tax cuts, resulting in average federal refunds of $3,000 -- up 10 percent from the previous year.
This largess, the White House says, has arrived via payroll tax refunds, college tuition relief, and the first-time homebuyer credit, and energy-efficiency credits.
But Tea Partiers are protesting against deficits, debt, and taxes, not to mention the tax implications of financing
the mounting federal debt: $12 trillion and rising.
"The protests on Tax Day is one thing to stage," Mirijanian said."It's another thing to mobilize and vote. That's the true test."
Tea Party members also fear a drift toward socialism -- a trend a majority of the country also sees.
The latest New York Times / CBS news poll shows 92 percent of Tea Party members fear moves toward socialism. Fifty-two percent of 1,580 adults surveyed saw the same drift but 38 percent did not.
Americans by the millions vehemently oppose what our Federal government is doing to America. Obama and Congressional Democrats are essentially perpetrating a bloodless coup including abrogating many of our rights and freedoms while legislating numerous ways to take more of our hard earned money. Adding insult to injury, they also denigrate us at any opportunity possible.
Such arrogant elitism along with fiscal recklessness and a host of other issues has precipitated the genesis of the Tea Parties, increasingly outraged and vocal opposition by even average Americans who previously had no interest in politics.
Obama, the Democrats and the news media arrogantly portray those Americans who use their democratic First Amendment right to peacefully oppose their radical policies as fringe elements, racists, terrorists and many other derogatory epithets.
We must continue and even elevate the decibel level of discourse and disagreement.
One individual who is garnering increased recognition both in Florida where he is running for Congress and across the country is Lieutenant Colonel Allen West. He is a successful self-made man who is outstanding public speaker - motivating, intelligent, well informed and sincere.
And the antithesis of Obama’s robotic, cold and monotone ones.
Below are two videos of Lt. Col. West in Action. A third video captures the typical media race baiting but with the individual responding with the quintessential answer.
Congressional Candidate Lieutenant Colonel Allen West speaking at the America Freedom Tour in Fort Lauderdale, Florida Oct. 21, 2009
Lieutenant Colonel Allen West West Palm Beach Tea Party Speech April 15, 2010
White NBC Reporter Confronts Black Man at Tea Party Rally
Such a question intending to degrade this individual and the Tea Parties is reprehensible and entirely typical of the far-left biased and corrupt news media.
They would never think to ask a white person a similar question if they largely surrounded by crowds of blacks - it would be considered to be racist. A clear double standard.
Obama: 'Whether We Like It or Not, We Remain a Dominant Military Superpower'
Obama’s reprehensible statement is, unfortunately, consonant with his myriad previous derogatory or apologetic ones regarding the United States. This is a person who should never been the President of this country or of any other country, for that matter, with that attitude.
The political leader of any country should want to maximize its stature, reputation, strength, etc. in the eyes of the world. They all do and have done so except for Obama. We can’t recall any other modern day example of a country’s leader relentlessly denigrating his/her own country.
Obama is a colossal embarrassment to the United States and its citizens. His behavior is intolerable and not conducive to being President and he should be removed from office ASAP.
Obama: America a Superpower 'Whether We Like It or Not'
FOXNews.com April 15,2010
In a little-noticed remark at the close of the two-day nuclear security summit in Washington, D.C., this week, President Obama suggested the United States was somehow burdened by its military might.
President Obama speaks at the conclusion of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington April 13. (AP Photo)
Being a superpower ain't all that, at least according to President Obama.
In a little-noticed remark at the close of the two-day nuclear security summit in Washington, D.C., this week, President Obama suggested the United States is somehow burdened by its military might -- a comment that drew a stern rebuke from his former rival in the presidential campaign.
Obama was responding to a question Tuesday about how the summit would play into peace-making efforts in the Middle East when he addressed the downsides of -- by virtue of America's world stature -- being obligated to intervene in international conflicts.
"It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them," Obama said. "And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure."
The remark got little attention in mainstream coverage of the summit, but was picked up on several conservative blogs, which panned the president for suggesting Americans had grown weary of superpower status.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., slammed the leader of the free world Thursday, calling the remark a "direct contradiction to everything America believes in."
"That's one of the more incredible statements I've ever heard a president of the United States make in modern times," McCain, a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, told Fox News. "We are the dominant superpower, and we're the greatest force for good in the history of this country, and I thank God every day that we are a dominant superpower."
The following hilarious, creative and hard edge and incisive video is a must see if you are disgusted with what Obama and Congressional Democrats have done to healthcare specifically and to our country in general. It is wholely therapeutic – and is performed to classic Stones.
Few in Hollywood are Conservatives and even rarer are those who are outspoken on these beliefs. One of those individuals is Jon Voight. Given that most people associated with Hollywood are supporters of the far-left and with many zealots among them, opening admitting that one is a Conservative often is a career killer.
Jon Voight was a guest on the Mike Huckabee show on April 10th, 2010. On the show he read an open letter to America and to Barack Obama where he discussed the future of America and the need for us all to get involved in our individual states Tea-Party movement in order to save our nation.
The following is the text of the letter:
“In one year, the American people are witnessing the greatest lie that is cleverly orchestrated by President Obama and his whole administration. The lie is a potent aggression that feeds the needs of people who either have not educated themselves enough to understand the assault upon us all or the very poor and needy who live to be taken care of.
President Obama feeds these people poison, giving them the idea that they are entitled to take from the wealthier who have lived and worked in a democracy that understands that capitalism is the only truth that keeps a nation healthy and fed. Now the lie goes very deep and President Obama has been cleverly trained in the Alinsky method and it would be very important that every American knows what that method is.
It is a socialistic, Marxist teaching and with it, little by little, he rapes this nation, taking down our defenses, making new language for the Islamic extremists. The world looked up to us as a symbol of hope and prosperity now wonders what will become of the entire world if America is losing its power.
The American people who understand exactly what is taking place have come together in the thousands, vowing to try to stay together as a unit of love and freedom for all men and women, from all walks of life, shivering to think that this once great nation will be a third world country.
This will be the first president to ever weaken the United States of America. President Obama uses his aggression and arrogance for his own agenda, against the will of the American people when he should be using his will and aggression against our enemies.
Every loving American for peace and truth and the security of our nation must come out and join the Tea Parties in their states. The opposition will continue their tactics; they will lie and plant their own bullies amongst us. Everyone must pay close attention to who stands next to them. We can weed out the liars and agitators.
Let us all stay in Gods light. Let no man put asunder. We can and we will prevail. God bless us all!”
On foreign policy and the recently promulgated nuclear policy, Obama is as inept, misguided and impotent as could be possibly imagined.Our enemies worldwide know it and are exploiting these monumentally abysmal policies.
As for our allies, given Obama's disrespect and arrogance, we have significant problems as well.
The following essay on Obama was written by Alan Caruba in January, just before completeing his first year in office and before the passage of the pernicious healthcare reform legislation. It has gone viral on the internet but was incorrectly attributed to another individual and claimed to have been published in the Wall Street Journal.
It eloquently and concisely captures the essence of Obama’s “charmed” and choreographed life where he exploited advantages uniquely available to him along with serendipity to become President. He has a track record of zero significant accomplishments and little practical worldly experience but does serve as a paragon of narcissim. In many ways, he is the Paris Hilton of politics.
Unfortunately, he is now the President of the United States.
Obama's Make-Believe Life
By Alan Caruba January 2, 2010
I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he’s led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.
In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? “Dreams of My Father” was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The “Audacity of Hope” followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a “communist with a small ‘c’” was the real author.
His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley’s formidable political machine at his disposal.
He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?
He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed “cool” in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.
And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska. It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984’s Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.
The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.
Now, nearly a full year into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.
Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to “wish away” some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain.
The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign “world tour” were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.
Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party’s hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.
Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an “obstreperous” Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against “jumping to conclusions” about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted “Allahu Akbar.” The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber “an isolated extremist” only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.
He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America. He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.
The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.
Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual’s life.
When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.
We laugh at the ventriloquist’s dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America?
In a little over 14 months, Obama has displayed an unparalleled combination of incompetence, dishonesty, arrogance and narcissism that far exceeds that of any previous President. Placing the assessment in perspective, this excludes his far-left/radical ideological positions which would then position him in a faraway galaxy.
Another reason for Jimmy Carter to smile. There is actually a President that is worse than he was.
In this brief period of time, Obama has offended or disrespected nearly all of our close allies – from Great Britain and Israel to even Poland. Other countries with whom we have had close ties in the past don’t trust us because of what he has been stating and doing (such as Honduras). Our enemies and less than friendly countries such as Russia, China, Venezuela and Iran, see Obama as extremely weak and vulnerable.
These flaws and weaknesses are manifestly apparent to most. Conservative commentator, Burt Prelutsky, wrote the following in his column:
"I sincerely hope that when the president goes in for his annual check-up, the doctors at Bethesda will do a brain scan. Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran."
This wasn’t written in response to Obama’s reprehensible treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu during his recent visit to the White House. It was actually posted last year, on June 12, 2009.
Rightful Anger
Investors Business Daily 03/25/2010
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., warned that politicians should “be very careful ... that our rhetoric doesn’t incite to violent...
Health Reform: Should Americans feel ashamed for being angry that those who rule Washington thwarted the popular will? No more than colonial Americans at the trampling of their freedoms.
If the president and the leaders of his party in Congress think the American people are going to roll over and play dead after the biggest government power grab in history, they don't know this country.
And if they think those on the side of economic freedom will be intimidated by their attempts to caricature them as a bloodthirsty mob of Timothy McVeighs, they underestimate the powers of a free people.
A new CBS News poll finds that 62% of Americans want Republicans to keep fighting the Democrats' health legislation even now that it has passed.
Only 16% believe the new law will "mostly help" them.
Democrats are portraying that majority as a violent minority, being inflamed by the speeches of GOP congressmen and Sarah Palin. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., in an appearance on the CBS "Early Show" on Thursday, warned that politicians should "be very careful ... that our rhetoric doesn't incite to violent acts."
Does that include the rhetoric of former House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., who this week told a Detroit radio show that "it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people"?
Control the people?
This is a country that went to war over onerous taxation by the mother country. We took up arms and sacrificed our sons "to dissolve the political bands" that attached us to King George, and "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God" entitled our Colonial forebears.
Dingell has again earned his longtime nickname, the Truck. But it will take more than a couple of hundred congressional eighteen-wheelers to turn the Spirit of '76 into roadkill.
Where were Hoyer and his colleagues, now so concerned about inflammatory rhetoric sparking violence, a couple of years ago?
As Victor Davis Hanson points out, "write a book in which you muse about killing George Bush, and its Knopf imprint proves it is merely sophisticated literary speculation; do a docudrama about killing George Bush, and it will win a Toronto film prize for its artistic value rather than shock from the liberal community about over-the-top discourse."
Knopf's defense was that it was "not the first time a novelist has chosen fiction to express their point of view about American society or politics." Newmarket Films' defense of its computer-rejiggered news footage depicting Bush being assassinated was to call it "quite a compelling political thriller. In many ways it is sympathetic to George Bush."
Nor do you even have to go back years ago.
Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy on Monday said of the Tea Party protesters: "I want to spit on them, take one of their 'Obama Plan White Slavery' signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads."
Politically motivated violence is to be condemned as long as America can peacefully be kept free.
Our bet is that as Americans increasingly feel the impoverishing effects of last Sunday's big step toward socialized medicine, they will indeed repeal it — without firing a single shot.
It seems that wherever one looks at in the Obama Administration, there are quixotic ideologues and corrupt, arrogant, contemptuous, radical and inept individuals. Rather than serving the public, they are elitists that see the American public as their servants. Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are quintessential examples but unbelievably, may not be the worst offenders. This dubious distinction goes to Attorney General Eric Holder. Not enumerated in the following editorial was his galling and indefensible dropping of voter intimidation charges by the Dept. of Justice against two individuals of the New Black Panther Party who were already prepared to plead guilty. His racism appears to be the only motivation behind this action which he refuses to elaborate on.
The Self-Righteous Haplessness Of Eric Holder
By Michael Gerson 03/18/2010
Attorney General Eric Holder is controversial on the left for preserving much of the Bush administration's legal structure for conducting the war on terror. He is controversial on the right for overturning portions of that structure in ways that seem both clueless and reckless.
But Holder is the most endangered member of the Obama Cabinet for a different reason: Just about everything he has touched has backfired. The list is oddly impressive.
First, there was the decision to release Bush-era interrogation memos and reopen the investigation of CIA interrogators after they already had been cleared by career prosecutors. Holder assumed that these actions would rally public outrage. Instead, he started a national security debate he has pretty much lost.
Seven former CIA directors — serving under Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43 — sent Holder a letter warning that his actions could "help al-Qaida elude U.S. intelligence and plan future operations." Holder opened a serious, ongoing rift between the Department of Justice and the intelligence community.
Trial Of The Century
Second, there was Holder's repudiation in the matter of John Yoo and Jay Bybee — the Bush administration lawyers who provided the legal justification for enhanced interrogations. Holder appointees had determined the two lawyers guilty of professional misconduct. But the Justice Department's senior career attorney cleared Yoo and Bybee of the charge, embarrassing Holder in the process.
Third, there was the handling of the underwear bomber case. It is fortunate that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab eventually resumed cooperation. It is also evident that Holder's decision to Mirandize him after 50 minutes was hasty and based on minimal consultation with intelligence officials. Holder treated a national security judgment as a purely legal one.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair later told Congress: "That unit (the High Value Interrogation Group) was created exactly for this purpose — to make a decision on whether a certain person who's detained should be treated as a case for federal prosecution or for some of the other means. We did not invoke the HIG in this case; we should have."
In fact, Blair was unaware that the High Value Interrogation Group did not yet exist.
Fourth, there is the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and the civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 conspirators in Manhattan. Under Holder's direction, this process has collapsed.
There is no serious plan to close Guantanamo. Holder has been unable to articulate reasons why some terrorism cases are referred to civilian courts while others are tried in military tribunals. And his groundwork for a "trial of the century" was botched in almost every respect.
The White House, having lost faith in Holder's ability to manage terrorism trials, has assumed direct control of the process. Civilian trials for the 9/11 terrorists now seem unlikely anywhere in the U.S.
But backing down on that commitment will have a cost. "If this stunning reversal comes to pass," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, "President Obama will deal a death blow to his own Justice Department, not to mention American values."
While a military trial for KSM would hardly be a mortal blow to American ideals, Holder's initial announcement has created a political expectation on the left that may be impossible to fulfill.
Finally, there are the Supreme Court briefs filed by Holder that he failed to disclose to Congress during his confirmation — likely to be the focus of a congressional oversight hearing in which Holder will testify on Tuesday.
Public Blunders
Holder's spokesman says this omission was inadvertent. But one of those briefs opposed the detention of Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, leading Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., to wonder, "Are we expected to believe that then-nominee Holder, with only a handful of Supreme Court briefs to his name, forgot about his role in one of this country's most publicized terrorism cases?"
Holder's briefs preview his later decisions on the underwear bomber and KSM. Few in Congress or the White House have leapt to defend Holder's convenient omission.
Add to all of this a series of public gaffes. America is a "nation of cowards." The possibility of capturing Osama bin Laden alive "simply does not exist."
Sometimes haplessness can provoke sympathy. But Holder mixes ineptness with self-righteousness. Critics of his questionable choices, he says, "cower." They lack "confidence in the American system of justice."
But there is another possibility. Perhaps Holder's critics — in Congress, in the country and even within the White House — just lack confidence in his judgment.
• Gerson, a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group, was head speechwriter and a policy adviser for George W. Bush from 1999 to 2006.
Unfortunately, the degree of adherence to baseless ideology by Obama is only exceeded in magnitude by his ignoble narcissism that passage of healthcare reform will cement a deified legacy. As a consequence and facilitated by other far-left, corrupt, like minded elitist individuals like Pelosi and Reid, America’s economy in addition to its healthcare will suffer irreparably. We will all pay the immense price in freedom, rights, choices and ability to advance from our individual efforts.
We need to fight to overturn or annul this legislation.
Let the second revolution by the American people begin …
Health Overhaul's Assault On Business
Investors Business Daily 03/19/2010
Taxes: If ObamaCare becomes permanent, no one will suffer more than U.S. businesses. They'll face higher taxes, more regulations and a higher cost of capital. But don't take our word for it. Go ask Caterpillar.
The heavy-equipment giant reckons its insurance costs will go up 20%, or $100 million, the first year after the health care system is overhauled, and may go even higher. Multiply that by literally tens of thousands of companies nationwide, large and small, and you can see how costs will soar.
"We can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors," said Greg Folley, a Caterpillar vice president. "We are disappointed that efforts at reform have not addressed the cost concerns we've raised throughout the year."
If you don't care how this affects businesses, you should. Some 15 million people in this country don't have jobs — and another 12 million work part-time but want full-time positions.
If America's major employers are hit with huge, government-mandated cost increases during an economic downturn, do you really think they'll hire more when the economy starts growing on its own again? Of course not.
Despite this, the White House predicts its plan will "cut costs" for businesses. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even makes the bizarre prediction that passage of health reform will lead to 400,000 new jobs "immediately," and millions more down the road.
Such claims don't hold water because health reform includes $569.2 billion in new taxes, at last count 160 new bureaucracies and regulations, and 16,500 new IRS agents to collect all those taxes. Tax hits on businesses and industries include:
• $52 billion on companies that do not provide what the government deems "acceptable" or "affordable" insurance for workers.
• $60.1 billion on health insurers.
• $27 billion on drugmakers and importers.
• $20 billion on makers and importers of medical devices.
• $2.7 billion on the tanning industry.
And of course the companies themselves don't pay. You do — both as a consumer, through higher prices, and as an employee, through lower wages.
As the Tax Policy Center, a center-liberal think tank, noted recently, "Economists generally believe that the burden of payroll taxes is borne by workers in the form of lower wages, regardless of whether the tax is levied on the employer or employee."
But that's not the end of it.
A new Medicare tax on capital gains, dividends and other investment income has been raised from 2.9% to 3.8%. Supposedly, this is a tax on the "wealthy," those with $200,000 or more in income. It's really a tax on small business, entrepreneurs and investors.
This provision will push the top cap-gains rate from 15% to almost 24%, while the dividend rate will rise from 35% to 43.4%.
This amounts a big new tax on the very people who are most likely to own or start a new business and hire workers. Health reform will tax large numbers of job creators out of business — and no one in the White House seems to know, or even care.
But it will have an enormous impact. As a result of the Obama-Care taxes on successful individuals and companies, investment in new companies will slow, and old companies will face a higher cost of capital. New jobs will be created offshore in places such India and China.
Economist Steve Entin of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation estimated the Medicare tax would reduce GDP by 1.3%, capital formation by 3.4% and after-tax incomes of those who don't pay the tax directly by 1.2%.
And those estimates came when the tax was "only" 2.9% — not the 3.8% it is in the current bill. So the economic losses would in fact be even larger than Entin estimated.
Because of these taxes and other faults in the plan, a group of 130 economists last Thursday sent President Obama a letter imploring him not to sign the bill, saying that it would be a job-killer.
"In our view," the economists wrote, "the health care bill contains a number of provisions that will eliminate jobs, reduce hours and wages, and limit future job creation."
Health reform's taxes and huge new costs will lead to semi-permanent stagnation in the U.S. economy, marked by higher unemployment and lower standards of living.
Is this how Americans see their future? Based on the Tea Party movement and growing anger at the government for seizing control of the economy's high ground, we doubt it.
The only real question is, are the White House and Congress listening?
The preliminary estimates publicized by the Congressional Budget Office have no basis in reality. Though we don't know exactly how they arrived at their artificially low number, it was unquestionably affected by the incomplete and deceptive information that they were provided with. Of course, this does not account for bald faced fraud perpetrated by the Democrats in attempting to reduce the ostensible costs with maneuvers such as removing the Medicare fix costs from the legislation.
Five Reasons The CBO Figures Are Phony
Ed Carson 3/18/2010
The Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary “score” says the health care overhaul will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years, saving $138 billion over that time. But the CBO must assess legislation as written, rather than whether it will actually be carried out. Or, as the Economist put it, “The CBO is required to pretend to believe many impossible things before breakfast.”
1. Medicare cuts
The Senate health care bill relied heavily on unprecedented cuts in Medicare spending increases. If implemented, this would have a huge impact on seniors’ care. But Congress has always balked at Medicare cuts. (See No. 3).
2. Delayed start
To make the budget math work, Democrats plan on delaying the start of subsidies and other costly provisions for several years. (The bill spends just $17 billion through 2013). The true 10-year cost is far higher.
3. The “doc fix” is excluded
The Sustainable Growth Rate imposes automatic cuts in Medicare payment rates to doctors.
For several years, fearing a revolt by doctors — and seniors — Congress has suspended those cuts. The original draft of the House health care bill included a permanent “doc fix.” But that ballooned deficits, so Democrats dropped it, even though everyone knows Congress isn’t going to slash doctors’ rates. The CBO has estimated a “doc fix” would cost $247 billion over 10 years.
4. Student loans are included
Doctors’ payments are excluded from the health bill, but major student loan program changes are included? Yep. The reconciliation bill will end student loan subsidies to lenders. The CBO says this will save $19.4 billion over the first decade, accounting for virtually all of the $19.8 billion in deficit reduction from the health care reconciliation bill. Reconciliation bills must cut the deficit by at least $1 billion. So, without the non-health care items, the health care reconciliation bill would not pass muster.
5. It’s a CLASS act
In the Senate health bill, a new, voluntary long-term care insurance program called CLASS accounted for some $72 billion of the deficit reduction. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program is supposed to be deficit-neutral long-term. But Democrats are counting the upfront premium surplus in the short term and ignoring the significant operating deficits after 2029. Update: Democrats also are counting on projected additional Social Security revenues from payroll taxes on higher wages in lieu of lower health benefits. Again, those benefits have to be paid out.
But wait, there’s more! Let’s assume that the cost savings materialize as planned. It still makes the long-term fiscal outlook worse. Why? Democrats are using up a lot of tax hikes, spending cuts and upfront payment just to get barely better than deficit-neutral. That leaves future lawmakers less scope to bring the nation’s finances into order.
On a related note, Democrats continue to maintain the health bill would extend Medicare’s solvency by several years. But they plan to use those as-yet-unrealized Medicare cost savings for a huge new entitlement and to reduce the overall deficit.
Both Harry Reid and Ahmadinejad of Iran may very well pursue the nuclear option. They also despise the citizens of their respective countries and will impose whatever legislation and controls that they deem fitting regardless of their citizens' sentiments.
It is difficult if not impossible to find a period of time in our history where our government is as corrupt and hell-bent on abrogating the freedoms and rights of its citizens. This is the anathema of a one party rule without countervailing opposition. What we are witnessing is a revolution by corrupt and unconstitutional legislation perpetrated by “our” government which must be stopped.
The next few days are the most critical for all of us. We urge you to call, e-mail and fax Senators and Representatives across the country and give them a piece of your mind. Then in November, these corruptocrats need to be ousted wholesale.
Not Even A Vote?!
Investors Business Daily 03/16/2010
Health Reform: Using a parliamentary trick ironically known as the "self-executing rule," Democrats plan on passing their massive health bill without voting. In November, they'll learn just how "self-executing" it was.
Just when you thought Washington couldn't get more corrupt, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this week seems intent on trampling representative government itself. Unable to get the votes to pass their U.S. health care revolution, she and her fellow Democratic leaders have figured out a way to pass it without a vote.
The "self-executing rule" has been "used to adopt concurrent resolutions correcting the enrollment of measures or to make other technical changes to legislation," according to the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress.
It's "a two-for-one procedure," as the CRS describes it, because the House of Representatives always must pass a rule, written by the House Rules Committee (where Democrats hold a 9-to-4 majority), setting the terms of debate on a particular piece of legislation. In this case, it's been rigged so that if the rule passes, the legislation passes too.
The trick has been used before, as cited by the CRS, on obscure measures like the prohibition of smoking on airline flights in 1989, an employee verification program regarding illegal aliens in 1996, the blocking of the use of statistical sampling for the 2000 census until federal courts could determine its constitutionality, and an IRS overhaul in 1997.
But never on anything approaching such landmark legislation.
Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, is among a number of legal scholars who believe this Slaughter Solution, named after House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., "would stand a very good chance of being tossed out by the U.S. Supreme Court."
In the 1998 Clinton v. City of New York ruling on the line-item veto, liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for a 6-to-3 majority, "laid a likely road map for how the court might rule on a challenge to the constitutionality of the Slaughter Solution," according to Ridenour.
Stevens made note of "three procedural steps" that must be taken before a bill becomes law: The "exact text" must be "approved by a majority of the members of the House of Representatives"; the Senate must approve "precisely the same text"; and the same text must be "signed into law by the president. The Constitution explicitly requires that each of those three steps be taken before a bill may become a law."
Indeed, Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution couldn't be clearer: "The votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively."
Michael McConnell, a former federal judge and director of Stanford University's Constitutional Law Center, writing in the Wall Street Journal this week, declared the trick unconstitutional because "this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form." Talk radio host and Landmark Legal Foundation President Mark Levin warned of its use sparking "the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War."
The president, the speaker and the rest of those involved in one-party rule in Washington may think they know what's good for the American people better than the people do.
Do they also think they know better than the framers of the Constitution and their naive ideas of one man, one vote?
If anything could swell the ranks of the populist Tea Party movement and make it friendlier to Republican candidates this November, it's executing the "self-executing rule."
The Democratic leadership has not ruled any tactics off limits in its quest to obtain enough votes necessary to pass their healthcare reform legislation. They have resorted to ad hominem attacks even on fellow Democrats, slander, threats, bribes, illegal or questionable parliamentary maneuvers and other corrupt deals.
All of this is being perpetrated despite a furious and rejecting American public who oppose Obamacare by nearly a 3:1 margin. The contemptuousness, elitism and arrogance of Obama, Pelosi, Reid and others is essentially unparalleled in American History.
These individuals must be stopped and Obamacare should never see the light of day. What these politicians are doing is facilitating a legislative theft of our rights, freedoms and wealth that may be permanent. It is a heinous scheme that is leading us closer to an ideological totalitarian regime under the guise of a “representative” government.
House Democrat Takes On Party Leaders
Lee Ross March 13, 2010
In a surprising and fascinating look at the behind-the-scenes negotiations of proposed health care legislation on Capitol Hill, a prominent Democrat says the actions of his party's leaders in recent days represents a "pretty sad commentary on the state of the Democratic party."
If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is holding out hope that Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) will replicate his "yes" vote on health care reform she can probably forget it. In a wide-ranging swipe at his party's leaders, Stupak told an interviewer that he is a definite "no" vote on a health care bill that is expected to reach the House floor next week.
A single vote could make the difference in the fate of the legislation but Stupak says other pro-life Democrats who had been part of his coalition fighting for specific language on abortion funding have given up the fight. "It's almost like some right-to-life members don't want to be bothered. They just want this over," Stupak told National Review's Robert Costa in an article [1]published on-line Friday. If that's the case, Democratic leaders may be able to prevail without Stupak's support.
The Michigan Democrat's vitriol for House leaders shines a bright light on the normally secret negotiations. "They're ignoring me," Stupak asserts while concluding that the final bill will not have the stronger abortion-related language that he's long supported and was able to force in the first bill the House passed late last year.
"[E]ven if they don't have the votes, it's been made clear to us that they won't insert our language on the abortion issue," Stupak says. "I really believe that the Democratic leadership is simply unwilling to change its stance. Their position says that women, especially those without means available, should have their abortions covered."
Stupak offers an interesting take on why party leaders don't want his effort to succeed. "If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That's one of the arguments I've been hearing," Stupak says. "Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue - come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we're talking about."
Stupak believes that if a final health care bill passes without strong language on abortion funding, it will effectively freeze out pro-life Democrats in the future. He says he will remain a Democrat but predicts that any effort to change the abortion language would have to wait "until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this." You read that right, a Democrat looking forward to a Republican take-over of Congress!
Stupak's prominence and apparent resolve on this issue has increased the political heat on the nine-term Democrat. "This has really reached an unhealthy stage," Stupak says. "People are threatening ethics complaints on me. On the left, they're really stepping it up. Every day, from Rachel Maddow to the Daily Kos, it keeps coming. Does it bother me? Sure. Does it change my position? No."
A Friday posting on Daily Kos has this headline: "Women ROAR BACK against Stupak/Pitts!" It targets Stupak and Congressman Joe Pitts (R-PA) and is a fundraising appeal for Stupak's primary challenger. "If you were pissed when Joe Wilson shouted YOU LIE at President Obama I want you to channel that same sort of anger and aim it in support of Connie Saltonstall..."
Earlier this week, MSNBC's Maddow took direct aim at Stupak saying his efforts were designed to do nothing more than get him on television. "Abortion rights only for rich ladies. That's Bart Stupak's principled crusade," Maddow said.
Stupak does not name names in his attack on party leaders but in a radio interview Thursday, Stupak recounted a conversation he had with House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), a central figure in the health care debate. Stupak said Waxman told him that Democratic leaders "want to pay for abortions." In a statement to Fox News, Waxman said “My position has been clear and consistent. I do not believe health reform should be used to change current law, which prohibits federal funds from paying for abortion.”
Even with overwhelming public sentiment against his plan, Obama arrogantly refuses to budge or listen. He just keeps making demands and derogatory statements against the Republicans and the American people.
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.
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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.
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Even with overwhelming public sentiment against his plan, Obama arrogantly refuses to budge or listen. He just keeps making demands and derogatory statements against the Republicans and the American people.
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