Democratic Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) says those opposing terror trials in New York City for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9/11 plotters are unamerican:

"[Republicans] see this as an opportunity to demagogue," he said. "They will seize on any opportunity to do that, and that means they'll even take a stand that's un-American."

"It's un-American to hold anyone indefinitely without trial," Moran added. "It's against our principles as a nation."

The feeble-minded Moran is demagoguing the issue even as he accuses others of the same thing. The "unamerican" opposition wants the 9/11 plotters tried, they just want them tried by military tribunals, instead of putting on media circus show trials in the Big Apple.

A CNN poll showed that 64% of Americans want KSM and friends tried by military tribunals. Who knew there were so many unamerican Americans ?

Among the unamerican Americans…..

The family of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded by KSM:

"We are sorry to learn of the Justice Department decision to try KSM in a NYC Federal Court.

We are respectful of the legal process, but believe that giving confessed terrorists a worldwide platform to publicize their ideology sends the wrong message to potential terrorists, inviting them in essence, to resort to violence and cruelty in order to gain publicity.

We believe that justice is better served if the trial of KSM, the confessed murderer of Daniel Pearl, be held in closed session."

Another unamerican American is the Democratic Governor of New York, David Paterson, who told the Daily News:

"This is not a decision that I would have made…Our country was attacked on its own soil on Sept. 11, 2001, and New York was very much the epicenter of that attack. Over 2,700 lives were lost. It's very painful; we're still having trouble getting over it. We still haven't been able to rebuild that site, and having those terrorists tried so close to the attack is going to be an encumbrance on all of New Yorkers."

In my last post on this subject, I wrote about the hundreds of family members of 9/11 victims who oppose holding the trials in NYC…what a bunch of lousy unamerican sob's they are.

To make all us unamericans feel even better, ACLU attorneys are saying it's probable that KSM and company will serve as their own attorneys during the trial. Fan-freaking-tastic !

"The chances are excellent that he [KSM] represents himself," said Ron Kuby, a defense lawyer known for taking on controversial clients.

"[KSM's] goal in the legal system is not to beat the rap. His goal is to use the legal system as a forum for his own ideas and to embrace martyrdom through that system."

"It's quite possible that these defendants will undertake to represent themselves," Ben Wizner said. "They've been trying to fire their lawyers the whole time so they can be executed."

Nothing like giving KSM his own personal soapbox, so he can serve as an inspiration to terrorists everywhere.

Noted defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz chimes in with some KSM defense strategy:

Lawyers could seize on the time it's taken to prosecute the accused terrorists, arguing that they were denied their constitutional rights to a speedy trial.

A crafty defense lawyer might also employ a tactic called "graymailing," demanding reams of classified information in the hope that prosecutors refuse to release them. That provides an opening for a lawyer to request the indictment be dismissed.

Torture is also likely to play a central role in the case.

That Mohammed was waterboarded more than 180 times by CIA investigators is no secret.

"The first thing they're going to do is challenge all of the evidence and say all of it is the fruit of waterboarding," Dershowitz said.

Some intrepid reporter somewhere has to ask Attorney General Eric Holder or President Obama if they plan to release KSM if he is acquitted. I'd love to hear the answer to that question.

Returning to Congressman Moran's statement about it being unamerican to hold detainees indefinitely without any type of trial, I'm wondering, which people are recommending such a thing ???

Well, there's THIS guy:

President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges…Such a decision allows the president to unilaterally hold "combatants" without habeas corpus — a legal term literally meaning "you shall have the body" — which forces prosecutors to charge a suspect with a crime to justify the suspect's detention. Obama's decision was buried on page A 23 of The New York Times' New York edition on Thursday…"The administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban," the Times' Peter Baker writes. "In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies."

Looks like Congressman Moran, in his overzealous haste to attack Republicans, has inadvertently called his pal Obama unamerican. Oops.

"Under our [health care reform] plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions." – President Obama, addressing a joint session of Congress on September 9, 2009. (link)

Obama spent most of this year repeating the above words, and he characterized anybody who said otherwise, namely Republicans, as divisive peddlers of "outrageous myths."

But, in what has become an all too familiar game of misdirection, the peddler of myths was Obama himself. The Stupak Amendment proved the dishonesty of Obama's previous words. Prior to that amendment to the House health care bill, health care subsidies (federal funds) would have been used to fund private health care plans that cover abortions. With the adoption of the Stupak Amendment, no federal funds would be used to fund abortions in any health care plan. The Stupak Amendment was adopted because that was the only way the Democrats could pass the health care bill in the House of Representatives. Without it, they were 10 votes short.

Once abortions were REALLY not covered under ObamaCare (as opposed to Obama and other Democrats only pretending they weren't covered), the debate moved to the Senate, and a firestorm erupted in the Democratic party between the pro-choice liberal wing and the pro-life moderate/conservative wing. The pro-choicers argue that the Stupak Amendment is a sea change on abortion rights, restricting federal funds that were available under the previous Hyde Amendment. And the pro-choicers seem to be right. It is a sea change. The Hyde Amendment forbids use of federal taxpayer dollars to fund Medicaid abortions except in cases of rape, incest or threat to the mother’s life, but it also allows states to use their own Medicaid money (90% of which comes from federal funds) to fund other abortions, which about 17 states currently do. The Stupak Amendment negates that federal funding, as I understand it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The Dems find themselves between a rock and a hard place. If the pro-life wing prevails, about 40 Democrats say they won't support the health care plan. If the pro-choice wing prevails, they lose support from the pro-lifers. In either case, the Democratic filibuster-proof majority evaporates, and with almost all Republicans against ObamaCare, the current health care reform bills could die over the abortion issue split.

In light of this dilemma, Obama seems to support the pro-choice position, even though he's making split-the-baby (no unfortunate pun intended) comments on the issue. Here's Obama saying, um, something, to ABC's Jake Tapper today:

You know, I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill. And we're not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions.

And I want to make sure that the provision that emerges meets that test — that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions, but, on the other hand, that we're not restricting women's insurance choices, because one of the pledges I made in that same speech was to say that if you're happy and satisfied with the insurance that you have, that it's not going to change.

There. Hope that clears things up. According to Obama, we're not going to have federal funding for abortions. Except when we do. I think. Or not.

Once upon a time, when I was nineteen years old, I read J.R. Tolkien's 1100-page Lord Of The Rings trilogy in about a week. I only accomplished that because I was in the hospital in traction at the time, and didn't have anything else to do. It was either hobbits or soap operas. I was thankful for the hobbits.

But what if, instead of Lord Of The Rings, I had undertaken to read the 1990-page House health care reform bill, filled with the wonders of it's arcane legalese ? Would I have been able to read and comprehend all the ramifications of that in one short week ? Very doubtful, but that's what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi expects her congressional representatives to do. Pelosi wants a vote on the health care reform bill on saturday, eight days after it was written. Could it be that Pelosi and company want a quick vote because they desire to pass the bill before people really figure out what's in it ? That has been the modus operandi of the liberal Democrat wing all year regarding health care reform. Remember that President Obama wanted a bill passed by july, but the bluedog Democrats and Republicans stopped that mistake from happening. Ironically, the longer congressional Democrats work on health care reform bills, the bigger and more convoluted they get (it ain't easy to cater to so many special interests at once). The House health care bill is now over a trillion dollars, above Obama's low, low bargain cost ceiling of $900 billion, not that it matters. We shouldn't believe anything Obama says about health care anyway. You know he'll sign anything called health care reform that gets to his desk, no matter how bad it is, just so he can claim victory.

Hey, here's an idea. Let's have Nancy Pelosi give a couple hour long press conference about the House health care reform bill on saturday, so Americans can find out exactly what the Democrats are trying to pass (assuming Nancy even knows) ? 'We The People' and all that. That would be quite helpful, and very transparent of the Dems, seeing as how they never quite got around to having the health care negotiations on CSPAN, as candidate Obama falsely promised. Obama also falsely claimed he wouldn't force people to buy health care insurance, but that's pretty much the centerpiece of ObamaCare now. Our dishonest prez has even taken to telling such outrageous and obvious lies about health care reform that it takes an entire liberal media not to notice them. Here's one from yesterday, per the Washington Times:

The president said that AARP, the nation's largest seniors organization, has signed on to the House bill because it knows that the legislation will "strengthen Medicare, not jeopardize it. They know it will protect the benefits our seniors receive, not cut them," Mr. Obama said.

Um, the House health care bill cuts $472.8 billion from Medicare, Mr. President. That's a real whopper you just told. What's next ? Will you tell us that round thing in the sky at night isn't the moon, it's actually the Obama logo ? I'm sure only the "naysayers" who are responsible for "the failed policies of the past" would disagree with you, like those Fox "non" News people with their "viewpoints." (Side question – have you ever met a person who didn't have a viewpoint, outside of the comatose ?)

In the President's defense, he probably hasn't read the House health care bill either, so maybe he doesn't know about the cuts, or maybe he puts his hands over his ears and yells "na, na, na, na" when his staff members try to inform him. Obama leaves the petty details to others. He's just there for the big picture stuff. He's busy fundamentally transforming America (into a shell of it's former self). Obama makes the grand proclamations, like "reform health care," or "close Guantanamo Bay," or "limit carbon emissions." He can't be bothered to figure out how to do any of those things. After all, Obama has never run a country, state, county, city, or township before. He's never run a business, never managed employees. He doesn't have any expertise in health care, military, economic, or environmental matters. He never even accomplished much of anything in hist short Senate career, or even during his years in the Illinois state legislature. He was one of those guys who votes "present," so as not to be pinned down to a position. Obama is the entry-level president who charmed the media in 2008 with the sound of his voice, his sappy inspirational rhetoric, and his historic nature. That, and the fact he is a liberal Democrat. The media LOVES that, even though America really doesn't. That's why Obama hid behind all that tripe about post-partisanship. Obama is as far from post-partisan as can be. He's hyper-partisan. He can barely speak without denigrating his opposition and blaming everything on them. He's also utterly without shame, and, as I've outlined quite a bit on this blog, will tell any lie at any time, with absolute conviction. On the rare occasions when a journalist actually gets to ask him about one of his falsehoods (like Stephanopolous did when asking if the health care mandate was a tax), Obama flashes that winning smile and then acts like the journalist just crapped in his own pants by asking such a silly question, one that only the "tired opposition" or "entrenched special interests" would ask. Obama is dishonest and then acts like we're idiots for pointing out that he's being dishonest. Sorry, Mr. O, but you ain't that slick, even if you and your adoring media have fooled many into believing you are.

Uh, what was I talking about ? Oh yeah, health care reform. Sorry I roamed a bit off topic there. It's just that I'm getting tired of all the deceptions coming from the White House, as the Democrats try to pass bigger and better boondoggles off on the rest of us.

When the Republican party scored big gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia yesterday, emerging victorious in those two blue states that voted for Obama only one short year ago, I couldn't help but think of all the pundits and talking heads who giddily predicted years and years of GOP'ers scrounging for food in the political wilderness after Obama's historic 2008 victory and the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress. 'The political landscape has shifted forever !' proclaimed these sages of punditry (who almost all happen to be Democrats). 'The Reagan Revolution is over ! The GOP is marginalized !,' intoned these bellwethers of bombastic buffoonery (who almost all happen to be Democrats).

As it turns out, forever isn't a very long time when it comes to politics. The Republicans won almost everything yesterday. They even won the one race they lost. I'll get back to that in a minute.

Despite being outspent by a margin of 3-to-1, and despite President Obama bringing his star power to bear by campaigning for his opponent, Republican challenger Chris Christie defeated the Democratic incumbent governor of New Jersey, the billionaire Jon Corzine. New Jersey has been a solid blue state for years, so this was a major 'get' for the GOP. In Virginia, a traditional swing state, the Republicans won the governorship by a landslide. They also won the Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General races by landslides. In New York city, Republican Michael Bloomberg (or is he an Independent now ?) won a third term. My liberal television station du jour (I chose to watch CNN attempt to explain the voting results away), kept saying that the wealthy Bloomberg "bought the vote." Notably, I never heard CNN say a word about the wealthy Democrat Corzine attempting to buy the vote in New Jersey, which is one reason I'm referring to them as my liberal television station du jour.

CNN came up with a variety of rationalizations in an attempt to explain away yesterday's GOP wins. Here are the top few:

1) The Democrats weren't energized like they were in 2008. They have a post-Obama hangover.
2) The opposition party always wins the year after a presidential election.
3) These are only local races with no national significance, and no significance in 2010.
4) Crazed wingnuts like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the Tea Partiers have whipped the conservatives up into conniptions, causing them to turn out at the voting booth (and may I add, we're lucky nobody was hurt).

What CNN seems unable to grasp are the actual facts. The economy stinks, Obama is running the deficit through the roof, Americans are against ObamaCare, Americans don't want a bunch of new taxes during a recession, Americans don't want their electricity bills to go up, Americans are alarmed at all the government expansion and overreach, joblessness is around 17%, etc, etc.

Now let me get back to the one significant bright spot for the Democrats in yesterday's elections, if you can call it a bright spot (CNN certainly tried to make the claim). In New York state's 23rd congressional district, Democrat Bill Owens defeated Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman and Republican party candidate Dede Scozzafava in what can only be termed a comedy of errors by the Republican keystone cops in New York. The GOP really had to bollux things up to lose this race. The 23rd district had been controlled by Republicans for a century. All the GOP had to do was nominate an actual Republican and this race was theirs, but they couldn't even manage that much. Instead, they stuck Scozzafava on the ballot, a Democrat in Republican clothing. Predictably, most Republicans didn't like her, though Newt Gingrich proved he cares more about party power than principle by backing her. Shame on Newt. Scozzafava faltered badly in the polls and unknown third party candidate Hoffman surged into the lead as several prominent Republicans supported him. The Republicans still would have won the race with Hoffman, but then Scozzafava dropped out and stabbed the stumblebum GOP in the back by supporting the Democrat Owens. With Scozzafava dropping out so late in the race, her name still appeared on the ballot, and enough party line Republicans voted for her to hand the race to the Democrat. Just brilliant, GOP. Just brilliant. Owens wins without a majority of the vote, even though the majority of the voters were against him. I only hope the Republican party bosses in New York stay away from sharp objects, or they might hurt themselves.

In a mind-numbing bit of illogical gymnastics, CNN claimed the Owens win illustrated that the GOP can't win with far right candidates like Hoffman. I kid you not. Here's Hoffman, who has never run for political office in his life, who is not anywhere close to being a polished politician (which is a plus in my book), running as a third party candidate against a career Democrat, with a Republican candidate scraping off critical votes and endorsing his opponent, and Hoffman still almost pulls it off, losing by only 3-4 points. And CNN decides Hoffman is one of the wingnut fringe. Such "analysis" makes CNN the wingnut fringe, if you ask me. Larry King couldn't say Hoffman's name without referring to him as "far right" or "wingnut," due to Hoffman's affinity for the Tea Party movement. Hoffman, btw, stands for fiscal responsiblity, reducing the debt, low taxes, etc. You know, all those "wingnutty" ideas that all sane people favor.

I'm just glad I didn't watch MSNBC. Has that station accused any Republicans of stealing elections yet ? If not, give them time. I'm sure they will, as soon as Keith Olbermann finds out there was a Republican working for the Board of Elections somewhere in New Jersey.

There's an old political truism that says you don't raise taxes during a recession. The reason is, raising taxes during a recession tends to make the recession worse. They used to call that – economics.

But that was before the Age Of Obama and Pelosi, where economic rules no longer apply. Obama and Pelosi just love to raise them some taxes, recession or not. It's full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes with those two. The enormous 1990-page House health care bill is no exception. Following are the taxes contained in that bill, courtesy of Americans For Tax Reform:

Employer Mandate Excise Tax (Page 275): If an employer does not pay 72.5 percent of a single employee’s health premium (65 percent of a family employee), the employer must pay an excise tax equal to 8 percent of average wages. Small employers (measured by payroll size) have smaller payroll tax rates of 0 percent (<$500,000), 2 percent ($500,000-$585,000), 4 percent ($585,000-$670,000), and 6 percent ($670,000-$750,000).

Individual Mandate Surtax (Page 296): If an individual fails to obtain qualifying coverage, he must pay an income surtax equal to the lesser of 2.5 percent of modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) or the average premium. MAGI adds back in the foreign earned income exclusion and municipal bond interest.

Medicine Cabinet Tax (Page 324): Non-prescription medications would no longer be able to be purchased from health savings accounts (HSAs), flexible spending accounts (FSAs), or health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs). Insulin excepted.

Cap on FSAs (Page 325): FSAs [Flexible Spending Accounts] would face an annual cap of $2500 (currently uncapped).

Increased Additional Tax on Non-Qualified HSA [Health Savings Accounts] Distributions (Page 326): Non-qualified distributions from HSAs would face an additional tax of 20 percent (current law is 10 percent). This disadvantages HSAs relative to other tax-free accounts (e.g. IRAs, 401(k)s, 529 plans, etc.)

Denial of Tax Deduction for Employer Health Plans Coordinating with Medicare Part D (Page 327): This would further erode private sector participation in delivery of Medicare services.

Surtax on Individuals and Small Businesses (Page 336): Imposes an income surtax of 5.4 percent on MAGI over $500,000 ($1 million married filing jointly). MAGI adds back in the itemized deduction for margin loan interest. This would raise the top marginal tax rate in 2011 from 39.6 percent under current law to 45 percent—a new effective top rate.

Excise Tax on Medical Devices (Page 339): Imposes a new excise tax on medical device manufacturers equal to 2.5 percent of the wholesale price. It excludes retail sales and unspecified medical devices sold to the general public.

Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting (Page 344): Requires that 1099-MISC forms be issued to corporations as well as persons for trade or business payments. Current law limits to just persons for small business compliance complexity reasons. Also expands reporting to exchanges of property.

Delay in Worldwide Allocation of Interest (Page 345): Delays for nine years the worldwide allocation of interest, a corporate tax relief provision from the American Jobs Creation Act

Limitation on Tax Treaty Benefits for Certain Payments (Page 346): Increases taxes on U.S. employers with overseas operations looking to avoid double taxation of earnings.

Codification of the “Economic Substance Doctrine” (Page 349): Empowers the IRS to disallow a perfectly legal tax deduction or other tax relief merely because the IRS deems that the motive of the taxpayer was not primarily business-related.

Application of “More Likely Than Not” Rule (Page 357): Publicly-traded partnerships and corporations with annual gross receipts in excess of $100 million have raised standards on penalties. If there is a tax underpayment by these taxpayers, they must be able to prove that the estimated tax paid would have more likely than not been sufficient to cover final tax liability.

That's thirteen new taxes in all, which are supposed to generate $540 billion in new revenue over 10 years to pay for health care reform (though it seems little is actually being reformed with this health care "reform." Mostly, we're just creating a big new welfare program combined with a government mandate for all to purchase health insurance). There is a public option in the House bill, but it is not one which ties reimbursement rates to Medicare rates. It allows for providers to negotiate reimbursement rates. The other interesting thing about ObamaCare is that the health care taxes begin immediately, but the benefits don't kick in for four years or so. That's how ObamaCare "doesn't add one dime to the federal deficit." Ten years of taxes pay for six years of benefits. You aren't supposed to notice that, just as you aren't supposed to notice that ObamaCare cuts over $400 billion from Medicare to pay for itself, something that has never been accomplished before in the history of Medicare. Historically, it's been the Democrats who said Republicans were trying to kill grandma by proposing much smaller Medicare cuts than ObamaCare proposes. Now it's the Democrats proposing the cuts, and the Republicans are the ones saying the Democrats are trying to kill grandma. Things have come full circle. Go figure.

Many of these new taxes will be either implemented against the middle class or passed down to them (non-insurance penalty, tax on medical devices, employer taxes, limits on FSA's and HSA's). This reminds me of something President Obama said on the campaign trail last year:

I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

Sure Barry, whatever you say. The One broke that pledge a couple weeks after being inaugurated by raising the tax on cigarettes, and now he wants to break it again with health care reform. Then he wants to break his pledge again with cap and trade, which would be a huge tax increase that filters down to every American household. Various other Democrats want to tax sodas, gasoline, fast foods, heating oil, cigarettes some more, expensive health care plans (Senate health care plan), and anything else they can dream up. Democrats are engaged in the game of 1,001 ways to raise your taxes without you knowing they've raised your taxes.

And all this during what Democrats themselves term as the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Gee, what could possibly go wrong ?

Hey, I know. We can just keep passing $800 billion stimulus packages every single year, basically forever. That will "create or save" lots of jobs. Then everything will be just fine.

Just kidding. That would be a recipe for destruction, as any fifth grader could figure out. The problem is, that seems to BE the actual economic plan of the Democrats, at least until those millions of green jobs kick in sometime in the next couple decades.

That Obama sure is a good public speaker though. There's that.

Let's get the crazy train rolling at high speed right off the bat with this first quote…

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.” – Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse (link).

Let me get this straight. After years and years of Democrats attempting to undermine President Bush at every turn in the War On Terror, er, I mean the Overseas Contingency Operation, including attempts to lose the Iraq war, a DNC spokesman now has the nerve to say Republicans have thrown in with the terrorists because some Republicans opined that Obama didn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize (which he most assuredly didn't, as Obama himself even said). Wow-freakedy-wow-wow. Words fail me. I literally can't think of a negative adjective strong enough to convey how wrong this remark is. I can't even think of a way to equate an opinion on the Nobel Prize with throwing in with terrorists, but evidently Brad Woodhouse can.

And Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) seems to agree. I expect this stuff from dolts like Keith Olbermann or the other lib-nuts on MSNBC, who routinely compare Republicans to jihadis, but not from Democratic Senators or the DNC.

Also, somebody better hip Woodhouse to the fact that the Obama administration has decided the Taliban isn't our enemy any longer. Or Hamas either, for that matter. I bet that'll do wonders for the morale of our troops who've been fighting against the Taliban and dying in Afghanistan for the last seven years. Acceptance of the Taliban is also a major step backwards for human rights, especially from a President who just won the Nobel Peace Prize here on Planet Orwell. Sigh. Is the world turning on it's ear, or is it just me ?
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Next up is this very conscientous Democratic Senator, who is fully committed to doing his job:

"I don't expect to actually read the legislative language [of the health care bill] because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life." –Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE)

Yes, being a Congressman is soooo hard, and now they expect Sen. Carper to read AND understand the legislation he's voting upon ? What's a poor Senator to do ? Study or something ? I presume Carper's state of confusion over the legislation won't prevent him from voting "Yea" on the health care bill. You just don't see integrity like Carper's anymore. On second thought, yes you do, all the time on Capitol Hill, and that's the problem.
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Now we move on to another patriotic Senator, John Kerry (D-NVA). Here's what Kerry said about cap-and-trade legislation:

"Let me emphasize something very strongly as we begin this discussion. The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6 percent reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14 percent."

Yeah, baby ! We're fundamentally transforming America !!! If we can only make this recession a lot worse, and make it last forever, we can help the environment ! And golly gee, if we go into a full-fledged permanent Great Depression II, maybe we can even reach the Kyoto emission standards ! Victory is at hand ! Yes We Can ! Yes We Can ! Yes We Can, Destroy The Economy !!!! C'mon, everybody sing !

"Obama ! mmmm mmmm mmmm."

I can't stand it. Where did I put that hammer ?

When seeking solutions to health care, who better to look to than our own Hollywood celebrities ? These celebrities have become very wealthy in our capitalist system, and they live in big mansions. Who better to speak out against the evils of insurance company profits (average 3.4% profit margin) than super-profitable celebs ? I only wish film director/child rapist Roman Polanski could have been added to the following Hollywood public service announcement. Many celebrities support him too. You know the old saying in Hollywood, "each Oscar received entitles you to one child rape." What can I say ? Hollywood celebrities are just better than the rest of us.

Alas, I have bad news for our celebs. The Democratic-led Senate Finance Committee just voted down the health care reform public option. How did that happen ? It must be Bush's fault.

But the celebrities aren't the only ones who can make public service announcements these days. The folks over at PJTV have their own PSA, that looks very much like the one above from Hollywood and moveon.org. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect……..satire of the Hollywood satire.

Obviously, there's something wrong with those PJTV people, who must be listening to Glenn Beck. We better kick Beck off the air before a Rwanda-type civil war breaks out in America, as Hollywood celeb Bette Midler said. Yes sirree. Genocide and civil dissent are EXACTLY THE SAME THING. PJTV is probably paid by the insurance industry. What a bunch of right-wing extremists, expecting people to actually PAY for health care services. What can they possibly be thinking ? We don't pay for things in America anymore. That's a failed idea from the past. Ask a celebrity, they'll tell you. Or just shell out some dough and go see a Hollywood movie to forget all your woes for a couple hours. Maybe then you won't even notice the economy shed another 263,000 jobs in september. Not to worry, though. Will Ferrell is doing fine.

First, we had months of fretting about "death panels" after Sarah Palin used those two words in a Tweet on Twitter (who come up with these silly internet names anyway ? "Google," "Yahoo," "Twitter." "I taut I taw a puddy tat." Do we have any grownups on the web ?). Then we had the dustup about covering illegal immigrants, resulting in the infamous "You Lie!" comment from Joe Wilson (R-SC).

Now it's come to this. Here's Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), allegedly summing up the Republican Health Care plan. This is about as dumbed down as it gets.

There you have it. For everyone out there who didn't know the GOP plan before, you know it now. It's 1) Don't get sick, 2) And if you do get sick, 3) Die quickly.

This sets the new low bar in dumbed down political rhetoric. Rep. Grayson's Florida constituents must be mighty proud of electing him to office right about now. Predictably, GOP'ers in Congress were outrageously outraged over Grayson's inane remarks. GOP'ers thought they were the only ones allowed to make stupid "they want to kill your grandma" type statements.

When GOP members demanded an apology for the remarks, Grayson said the following on the House floor, "“I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America.”

It's a "holocaust" now ? Suddenly, Moammar Qadhafi's speech in front of the U.N. is starting to sound coherent by comparison. Forget about finding grownups on the web. We need a few more grownups in Congress.

I searched the internet looking for the Republican "Die Quickly" plan, but I'm sad to report I couldn't locate it. All I could find was this plan, this plan, and this plan, in addition to some current state plans like Massachusetts' RomneyCare, or Cover Florida from Governor Charlie Crist.

Of course, we can always listen to twits like Alan Grayson instead, as he attempts (successfully) to get his 15 minutes of fame.

"For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." - President Barack Hussein Obama, narcissist, addressing the United Nations, September, 2009.

I'm sure glad Barry came along and fixed the character and cause of this nation after 232 years of American villainy, aren't you ? On the bright side, at least he didn't call pre-Obama America "The Great Satan." And our President spoke these words in front of an audience that included the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Moammar Gadhafi, and a slew of other human rights violators (many of whom are on the Orwellian UN Human Rights Council).
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"Since Americans can only be prodded into doing something with money, we need to tax crappy foods that make us sick like we do with cigarettes, and alcohol." - pot-smoking comedian Bill Maher, September, 2009.

Unbelievably, Maher calls himself a Libertarian. In reality, he's just another authoritarian left-winger. Someone should familiarize Maher with the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It's none of Bill Maher's business who smokes, drinks, or eats what, which Maher would quickly realize if someone took his weed away. Maher's "libertarianism" extends only to his desire to get high. What a hypocrite.
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"Is capitalism a sin ?" - Leni Riefenstahl Award-winning, Castro-loving filmmaker Michael Moore, in a trailer from his forthcoming movie, Capitalism, A Love Story.

The answer from Moore's questionee is "yes," by the way, capitalism IS a sin. Hugo Chavez couldn't have said it better.
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"President Obama didn't make much news on his round of five Sunday talk shows … with one notable exception. The President revealed a great deal about his philosophy of government and how he defines a tax increase. It turns out the President thinks a health-care tax is not a tax if he thinks the tax is for your own good. … Mr. Obama was asked by [ABC] host George Stephanopoulos about the 'individual mandate.' Under Max Baucus's Senate bill that Mr. Obama supports, everyone would be required to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty as high as $3,800 a year. Mr. Stephanopoulos posed the obvious question about this kind of coercion when 'the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't [buy insurance]. … How is that not a tax?' 'Well, hold on a second, George,' Mr. Obama replied. 'Here's what's happening. You and I are both paying $900, on average — our families — in higher premiums because of uncompensated care. Now what I've said is that if you can't afford health insurance, you certainly shouldn't be punished for that. That's just piling on. If, on the other hand, we're giving tax credits, we've set up an exchange, you are now part of a big pool, we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's…' 'That may be,' Mr. Stephanopoulos responded, 'but it's still a tax increase.' (In fact, uncompensated care accounts for about only 2.2% of national health spending today, but that's another subject.) Mr. Obama: 'No. That's not true, George. The — for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore…' In other words, like parents talking to their children, this levy — don't call it a tax — is for your own good. … Mr. Obama complains that 'My critics say everything is a tax increase,' as if that is his political problem. His real problem is that the individual mandate really is a tax, but the President doesn't want voters to think of it that way, because taxes are unpopular." –The Wall Street Journal, September, 2009.

Yes, of course, Obama's penalty for not having health insurance is a tax, no matter what he wants to call it. Obama probably wouldn't consider his cap-and-trade proposal a tax either, but that's exactly what it is. The creative subterfuge being engaged in by Democrats these days is to pass tax increases without calling them tax increases. Instead, they are called penalties, mandates, fees, carbon allowances, etc. Does this stuff actually fool anyone ? (except for liberals, that is). I hope not. Obama isn't "helping the little guy" one bit, in case anyone hasn't noticed (and the media sure hasn't). He's only raising the little guy's expenses, through both direct and indirect means. This brings to mind Ronald Reagan's quote about the most terrifying words in the english language – "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
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"We understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act. And we will meet our responsibility to future generations." - Barack Obama, speaking at the UN climate change conference, September, 2009.

"Responsibility to future generations," eh ? More than a tad ironic, coming from the President who is running up the debt faster than every other administration in history combined, thereby irresponsibly ruining the prospects of future generations.
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"It doesn't smell of sulfur here anymore. It smells of something else. It smells of hope." - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, addressing the UN, September, 2009.

The "sulfur" smell was Bush, whom Chavez called "the devil" at last year's UN meeting. The "hope" smell is Obama. It's sure nice that we've won over Chavez, don't you think ? Yes, he may be a tyrannical nut who nationalizes industries, shuts down opposition media, and puts opposition political figures in jail, but that's the socialist way. Because Chavez's version of "hope" would be hope of a worldwide socialist revolution, I wonder what it is he likes so much about Obama ??? I can agree with Chavez on this much – something smells alright.

President Bush tried to cut Medicare spending several times to trim the deficits and offset rising health care costs. Each time, he was vilified by the Democrats, and Democrats voted as a bloc against those cuts, defeating them every time. In 2008, they even overrode a Bush veto to stop Bush from implementing Medicare cuts. The various sizes of the proposed Bush Medicare cuts were between $35 billion over five years, $105 billion over ten years, and $278 billion over ten years.

Now, it's all somehow different. President Obama is calling for $622 billion in Medicare/Medicaid cuts over ten years, far more than Bush ever proposed, and the Democrats have suddenly come to the realization that the Medicare entitlements are unsustainable, threatening to bankrupt the nation, and will drive the deficits through the roof. I assume the Democrats came to this realization the same day Barack Obama became President Of The United States. The same Democrats who opposed Bush's Medicare cuts are perfectly fine with Obama's much larger Medicare cuts. While I'm glad the Democrats have finally awakened somewhat to the reality of the entitlement crisis, their hypocrisy is deafening.

Watch this video, and then tell me if PARTISAN POLITICS isn't the reason behind everything in Washington, D.C. Check out the blather coming from Kennedy and Kerry in particular:

Hard to believe, isn't it ?

Not only are the Democrats proposing huge Medicare/Medicaid cuts in their health care reform bills, but they are trying to pretend their Medicare cuts aren't really cuts at all (the 'pay no attention to the man behind the curtain' defense), and they are trying to silence and threaten those who point out the obvious, that yes, Medicare cuts really are cuts, and will impact patients.

Humana, a large private Medicare Advantage insurer, sent out letters to it's customers, pointing out that Medicare Advantage services will have to be curtailed under the Democratic health reform bills. The noble Obama administration, staunch defenders of the Constitution, leapt into action against Humana, ordering it to cease and desist engaging in all that, um, free speech. Then the government launched an investigation of Humana. Democrats denounced Humana as liars, and when some Republicans pointed out an inconvenient truth, that Humana was right, Democrats went into Pavlovian mode and started demonizing Republicans as handmaidens of the insurance industry. What a creepy and shameless bunch these Dems have become.

Even more inconveniently for the Democrats, the Congressional Budget Office backs up Humana and the Republicans. The CBO says Medicare benefits will be cut. Combined with the previous CBO statements – that Medicare premiums will rise under ObamaCare, that overall health care costs will rise under ObamaCare, that Medicare prescription drug prices will increase by 20% under ObamaCare, and that ObamaCare isn't paid for and will add to the deficit, it appears the Democrats are merely trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes.

The silver lining to all this is, there really isn't a health care reform bill yet. There are a series of bills (all deeply flawed), so there's still time to change the wrongheadedness in the bills. We all want to do something to reform health care, but we don't want to do the WRONG thing. We don't want to make the health care system even worse. The Democrats are looking to finish up and vote on ObamaCare in a couple weeks. Time is running out.

I disagree with President Obama on several policy areas – health care reform, government spending, his $9 trillion in projected deficits, the stimulus package, cap and trade, EFCA, to name a few. I attended the 9/12 Tea Party rally to protest these policies.

According to many liberals, that makes me a racist. Even former President Jimmy "stagflation" Carter said so. Here's what the Peanut Man said during an NBC interview:

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American. I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way and I've seen the rest of the country that shared the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time … and I think it's bubbled up to the surface, because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country."

Carter is out of his mind, but this is interesting, because when I attended the 9/12 D.C. rally, along with around 100,000 other people, NOBODY brought up the issue of Obama's race, which leads me to believe his race is NOT the issue. What was clear at the 9/12 rally was that Obama's expansive big government policies are the issue, along with the expansive big government policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Yet, Jimmy Carter thinks it is "overwhelmingly" about race. Oh, well. You can't fix stupid. The Peanut Man is entitled to his opinions, and he does have his supporters. For example, Osama Bin Laden is a big fan of Carter's latest book about Israel.

Another nominee for the Stupid Hall Of Fame is Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who is currently under investigation for her husband's ties to a bank that received federal bailout money. I brought up Waters on this blog before, when she was tallking about nationalizing the banks. I disagreed strenuously with Mrs. Waters about that. Because Waters is black, I guess I'm a racist again, according to the liberal anti-free speech Thought Police.

Here's Commissar Waters talking about the Tea Parties, according to The Hill:

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said that it's not enough for African-Americans to levy allegations of racism against the right-leaning protesters, and that the media must look into their views.

"I want those people talked to; I want them interviewed," Waters told the liberal Bill Press Radio show in a podcast. "I want journalists to be all over those rallies and the marches with the birthers and the teabaggers."

"What I'm looking for is the very people who carry the signs who are referring to the policies in very, very strange ways like 'Obamacare' and 'Barry Obamacare with Kennedy,'" she said. "What I've been interested in is hearing from those people that everybody's referring to — everybody on the Mall, in the rally."

So, not only should we protestors be smeared as racists, we should be investigated too. Our brains should be probed for using racist terms like…."ObamaCare" ????? Huh ? I don't quite get the racist element in that term. What about "HillaryCare" ? Was that racist too ? Notice that Waters herself has no qualms about using actual defamatory terms like "teabaggers" to slur her opposition. We've gone through the looking glass, folks. The inmates are running the asylum. Up is down. This is crazy.

After all this insane race baiting, I have to agree with Pete Wehner of Commentary Magazine, who says liberals are having a nervous breakdown:

It’s fascinating to watch how furious liberals have become despite Obama’s being president and Democrats’ controlling the Senate and the House by wide margins. This period should be—they expected it to be—years of milk and honey for them. But events and reality have intervened. They see the Anointed One, Barack Obama—their “sort of God”—failing. He is not only a mere mortal but also a deeply flawed one.

They see support for Obama’s effort to nationalize our health-care system collapsing. They see the American people rising up against his brand of liberalism. They see Republicans with all the intensity on their side. They see GOP candidates leading in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races. They see the popularity of their majority leader, Harry Reid, cratering. They see the Republican party drawing almost even with Democrats on issues like health care—and surging ahead of Democrats on many other issues. They see a dangerous loss of support for Obama among independents and the elderly.

We’re only eight months into the Age of Obama—the period in which he promised to unite our divided country, heal our wounds, and bind up our divisions—and Obama’s critics are now routinely labeled as unpatriotic, racists, liars, mobsters, evil mongers, practitioners of un-American tactics, and more. As Obama’s failures mount up, it will only get worse. The volume will only get louder. And the charges will only get more desperate and incendiary.

It will be an ugly and sad thing to witness. Nervous breakdowns often are.

Also, to paraphrase Wehner, all this time we thought liberals were merely suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Now we are finding out they are just deranged, period.

During President Obama's latest health care reform campaign speech before a joint session of Congress, he pretended to throw a bone to Republicans with a weak call for "demonstration projects" on medical tort reform. Rather odd, when you consider such demonstration projects have already been done, and have been done for years.

"Whole states are demonstration projects," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas. "Texas passed tort reform in 2003 and … insurance premiums went down 30 percent. California passed tort reform and premiums went down 40 percent. Let's enact tort reform. Let's not just try that with demonstration projects. We already know it works. Let's put it into law." (link)

Tort reform with settlement caps has already been proven to be effective, both in decreasing the amounts of malpractice liability insurance paid by doctors (these are the premium decreases Rep. Smith is talking about), and in increasing the number of doctors in states with effective tort reform, particularly in areas of medical specialization. President Obama surely knows this, so holding out a carrot to Republicans by calling for demonstration projects is disingenuous. While the President is correct that tort reform is not a "silver bullet," we should be making all efforts to reduce the costs of health care, and this is one. Even if it only saves 5%, that's 5% less than we're paying now. It makes no sense not to pursue it if cost containment is the overarching goal, as the President says.
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After Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) improperly shouted out "you lie" at the President during the aforementioned Obama health care reform campaign speech, several Democrats and mainstream media members (but I repeat myself) saw it as Wilson genuinely disagreeing with the President about whether illegals would be covered under ObamaCare. Ah, I'm just kidding. They don't ever give Republicans credit for legitimate thoughts. What they really saw was what they always see when a right winger disagrees with the President – RACISM. That's the left's silver bullet.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), said that people will put on "white hoods and ride through the countryside" if emerging racist attitudes, which he alleges are subtly supported by Rep. Wilson, are not rebuked. Wilson's racist attitudes were indeed subtle, because Wilson didn't say anything at all racist. In fact, rather than call Wilson's alleged racist attitudes subtle, why don't we call them what they really are – imaginary ? And how about we rebuke Hank Johnson for making the false accusation ? I won't hold my breath.

Deranged liberal N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd said she heard "You lie, BOY" when Wilson made his remark. I suggest Ms. Dowd start immediately on a strong course of anti-psychotic medication, because she's having auditory hallucinations. I only hope Ms. Dowd's dog doesn't start telling her to kill people. The Son Of Sam had a big problem with that.

Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, who suspects racism is behind nearly everything, said of the Wilson comment, "I suspect that Obama's race leads some of his critics to feel they have permission to deny him the legitimacy, stature and common courtesy that are any president's due. I can't prove this, however."

Yes, it IS hard to prove something when there's no evidence for it, Mr. Robinson, but I notice that doesn't stop you from making the accusation. Of course, no Democrats EVER questioned the legitimacy of the Bush presidency, except for every day for 8 straight years, and no Democrat EVER treated President Bush with disrespect (lol). Robinson went on to bemoan the fact that "there's no way to compel people to search their souls for traces of conscious or unconscious racial bias." See, Republicans are so racist that THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW IT. It's unconscious on their part, like so many of Eugene Robinson's columns.

Liberals see Rep. Joe Wilson, a white male, a Republican, and a southerner, and they just can't help themselves, they jump to the conclusion that he's a racist without the slightest evidence. There's a bias at work there alright, but it isn't coming from the Republicans. It's coming from the liberals.

While I'm on this subject, why do you think media outlets like MSNBC and CNN continually point out that most of the Tea Party protesters in D.C. last weekend were white ? Why does that even matter ? It only matters to them because they are dishonestly pushing a racist element to the protests. You'd never hear MSNBC imply racism over the fact that 96% of blacks voted for Obama, yet almost nightly you hear smirking MSNBC fools like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow talking about how so very white the Tea Party and townhall protesters are. I have news for them. There's nothing wrong with being white, just as there's nothing wrong with being of any ethnic background. This is nothing but bottom feeding demagoguery from MSNBC, and it's shameful.

Btw, when is MSNBC going to get some black hosts ? Maybe we should give Olbermoron and Madcow a dose of their own medicine and kick them off the air for a little diversity. We can replace them with people who can actually think.

If all you've got is to call people racist, based upon nothing, you ain't got a thing. You're just an idiot. I'm sick of it. If you want to know who is holding this country back from getting beyond race, I just told you who. It's the very people who are obsessed with dividing us up along racial lines for political gain. This is 2009, not 1955. We've moved on, even if so many liberals have not.

One thing I've never been able to understand in the health care reform debate is why the Republican idea to allow health insurance companies to compete on a nationwide basis isn't incorporated into the health care reform bill(s). President Obama stresses competition as the primary reason for the public option, but every thinking person knows the private sector can't compete with the federal government. If we want competition in a free market, competition must be between those IN THE FREE MARKET. The government isn't part of that.

The reason we don't have a functioning free market in health care is due to the government itself. Ann Coulter's recent column explains it pretty well:

The only reason you can't keep — or often obtain — health insurance if you move or lose your job now is because of … government intrusion into the free market.

You will notice that if you move or lose your job, you can obtain car and home insurance, hairdressers, baby sitters, dog walkers, computer technicians, cars, houses, food and every other product and service not heavily regulated by the government. (Although it does become a bit harder to obtain free office supplies.)

Federal tax incentives have created a world in which the vast majority of people get health insurance through their employers. Then to really screw ordinary Americans, the tax code actually punishes people who don't get their health insurance through an employer by denying individuals the tax deduction for health insurance that their employers get.

Meanwhile, state governments must approve the insurers allowed to operate in their states, while mandating a list of services — i.e. every "medical" service with a powerful lobby — which is why Joe and Ruth Zelinsky, both 88, of Paterson, N.J., are both covered in case either one of them ever needs a boob job.

If Democrats really wanted people to be able to purchase health insurance when they move or lose a job as easily as they purchase car insurance and home insurance (or haircuts, dog walkers, cars, food, computers), they could do it in a one-page bill lifting the government controls and allowing interstate commerce in health insurance. This is known as "allowing the free market to operate."

(Note to liberals – Just because it's Coulter saying it doesn't mean it's not true. What I quoted here is ALL true.)

The government has intruded into health care time and again, forcing costs up every step of the way. We have a tightly controlled and mandated health care market, and then the same government agents who created this environment complain about a lack of competition and high prices, when they WON'T ALLOW TRUE FREE MARKET COMPETITION.

The Republicans don't have many good ideas about health care reform, but they have a few. National free market health insurance competition is a good one. So is allowing individuals to make their health care insurance 100% tax deductible. So is tort reform. If President Obama wants the bipartisan bill that he says he does, why aren't any of these things included ?

What we are heading for now is one of two worlds, either 1) a health care reform bill with a public option that will destroy the private insurance industry, resulting in a government insurance monopoly, or 2) a health care reform bill without a public option, and with no cost controls in place for private insurers. This would be a huge giveaway to the insurance companies.

Neither of these options is acceptable, and in both cases, the government will be FORCING people to buy health insurance. Some choice.

The government should go back to the drawing board. There's no reason a real bipartisan bill cannot be produced that bends down the health care cost curve and gives us a free market as well. What the government should do is oversee the free market, not trample all over it. We should have a bill that doesn't allow insurers to eliminate pre-existing conditions, that doesn't allow insurers to drop or deny coverage, and that doesn't allow insurers to profit excessively, but as free citizens in a free country, we should have the right to get the health insurance coverage that WE want, not what the government dictates for us.

“Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.” - Senator Barack Obama, in a 2006 floor speech preceding a Senate vote to extend the federal debt limit.

Ah, how I liked THAT Barack Obama back in 2006, when he was railing against the irresponsible fiscal policies of President Bush and his GOP-led Congress. I even went out and bought Obama's book, The Audacity Of Hope. Obama seemed different. He was the post-partisan, responsible voice for change. Obama's book turned out to be pretty light on substance, but his rhetorical fluorishes promised a new kind of politics that could bring left and right together for the betterment of the country.

Too bad it was all rubbish. Obama's idea of bipartisanship is to have Democrats write all the bills, to ignore all Republican suggestions, and to have Republicans sit quietly in the corner and go along with whatever Obama and the Dems want. When Republicans refused to do that, an absolute certainty, Obama and company then demonized them as the "failed policies of the past," the "party of no," "racists," "dividers," "rightwing domestic terrorists (my personal fave)," and so on and so forth.

Speaking of the failed policies of the past, Democrats voted as a bloc against raising the federal debt limit back in 2006, when Obama was allegedly so concerned about shifting bad policy choices onto the backs of our children. Since then, after the Democrats took over Congress and eventually the White House, the debt limit has been raised three times. Now the Senate needs to raise it again, because we are going to exceed the current $12 trillion debt limit next month. We're going to have to keep on raising it too, because both the White House and Congressional Budget Office agree that Obama and the Democrats are going to add another $9 trillion to the debt (and the Dems have lots MORE groovy new spending plans they haven't implemented yet.) Apparently, Obama isn't quite so concerned about the burdens our children will have to bear anymore. Instead, he has declared open season on their futures. Ironically, it's the young people who seem to support Obama the most. Go figure. It's like falling in love with your executioner.

The rest of the world has taken notice of America's massive financial irresponsibility and is proposing changes. China wants to back away from buying U.S. debt, alarmed over massive American money printing (backed by nothing). China sees rampant U.S. inflation coming as soon as the recession ends. Can't argue with them there. The UN wants to move to a new world currency other than the dollar for similar reasons. The dollar just hit a new low for the year, and we're still hemorrhaging jobs at an alarming pace, with unemployment at a 26-year high. In addition, the FHA, which has taken over as the new securitized subprime mortgage lender of choice after the private lenders stopped making those boneheaded loans in the wake of the housing meltdown, is coming perilously close to not meeting it's 2% reserve requirements, as the economy continues to tank and foreclosures continue to rise. A new bailout for the FHA, perhaps ? Hey, why not ? What's another $100 billion these days ?

So naturally, with all this "good" news abounding, our Vice President, Joe Biden, recently declared, "The recovery act has played a significant role in changing the trajectory of our economy." Sure, Joe, whatever you say. Everything's going great. Keep creating your own reality. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

When all is said and done, the plans of the Democrats are the same as they always are, and as simple as the directions on a bottle of shampoo – Spend. Tax. Repeat.

The children be damned.

First of all, good riddance to Van Jones, President Obama's former Green Jobs Czar. As I wrote previously, he is a radical loon who doesn't belong anywhere near the White House. I'm glad he resigned (or was forced to resign. We may never know). I'd be more than happy to never write about him again, but some comments from Democrats subsequent to Jones' resignation, together with Van Jones own resignation statement, compel to bring him up one more time.

Let's start with liberal radio talker Alan Colmes, who said "Van Jones is a mainstream liberal." Wow. Let's hope not. If Van Jones is a mainstream liberal, then a mainstream liberal is a radical Communist revolutionary race-mongering anti-semitic 9/11 Truther who thinks white polluters are targeting minority populations, who thinks whitey is spraying toxins on illegal immigrants, who thinks the entire American capitalist system should be overthrown, who thinks Republicans are a**holes, who thinks all wealth should be redistributed, who thought the Rodney King race riots were righteous, and who supports Mumia Abu Jamal, the cop killer. If Van Jones is a mainstream liberal, this country is in even deeper trouble than I thought. I better step up my attacks on liberals. Granted, I have heard pretty much all the above sentiments echoed by liberals, but I thought it was mainly confined to the lunatic fringe of liberaldom, the acolytes so blinded by propaganda that they can't see what divisive hatemongers like Van Jones are promoting, which is nothing less than the destruction of the very system that made America the world's pre-eminent economic, scientific, and military power (note to liberals – if you were offended by this reference to American exceptionalism and feel urged to rebut it, YOU are one of the lunatic fringe).

Next up is former Vermont Governor and former DNC Chairman Howard Dean, who said Van Jones' resignation was a "loss for the country." A loss for the country ? What country, Cuba, Venezuela, or what ? Certainly not this one.

Then there is the laughable resignation statement made by Van Jones himself:

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy , opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."

And, of course, by "vicious smear campaign," and "lies and distortions," Jones means – accurate, direct quotes of Jones exact words, with accompanying videotape and corroborating written proof. Jones is literally saying, "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes ?" Classic.

The only remaining questions are:

How did Van Jones ever get to the White House in the first place ? Isn't there supposed to be a vetting process ? Will the "most transparent administration in history" bother to answer these questions ? I'd be amazed if it does. What I expect we will get is more of the usual non-answers from Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, combined with the type of blather spewed by Obama's professional spin-doctor David Axelrod on Meet The Press. Check out Axelrod's changing responses to David Gregory's questions about Van Jones:

MR. GREGORY: Van Jones, who's been an adviser to the White House on environmental policy, resigned overnight because of some inflammatory comments he's made over time, including a petition he signed that blamed the government for the 9/11 attacks. Was this an issue that got to the president? Did he personally order that he be fired?

MR. AXELROD: Absolutely not. This was an, an–this was Van Jones' own decision. You know, he is internationally known as an advocate for green jobs. And that's the basis on which he was hired. He said in his statement that he didn't want his comments to become a distraction from the issue, which is so important to the future of our economy and communities around the country. And I commend him for making that decision.

MR. GREGORY: Was he the victim of a smear campaign as he alleges?

MR. AXELROD: Well, look, this is a–you know, the politician environment is, is, is, is rough and so, you know, these things get magnified. But the bottom line is that he's showed his commitment to the cause of creating green jobs in this country by removing himself as a, as an issue and I think that took, that took a great deal of commitment on his part.

MR. GREGORY: But was the president offended by what he said?

MR. AXELROD: I haven't spoken to the president about this. As you know, this, this thing has bubbled up in the last few days, and frankly, my conversation with the president have mostly been about health care, which is where our focus should be right now.

MR. GREGORY: Do you find it–what he said objectionable?

MR. AXELROD: Well, I haven't read all of, of his comments, either, David. Again, I'm focused on how we get health security for all Americans, how we get this economy moving in the right direction. We've pulled back from the abyss of a potential collapse and now we have to build for the future and get people back to work. I think those are the things that we should be focused on and that's what I am focused on.

Notice that Axelrod said "absolutely not" when asked if the President ordered Van Jones to be fired, but then in a later question said he hadn't even spoken to the President about Van Jones. Sounds like that "absolutely not" from Axelrod is an "official version" rather than a statement of fact, though it's always difficult to tell when, if ever, Axelrod is being honest. After that, Axelrod pretended to not even know what objectionable statements Van Jones made, in order to weasel out of answering another question. Like I said, spin is what David Axelrod does. He's not even very good at it (but better than Robert Gibbs, who is the Scott McClellan of the Obama administration, or worse), if you ask me, but he gets by with it, because the media never presses him very hard on much of anything.

In any case, bye bye Van Jones. Get your weak-ass crap outa here, and don't let the door hit you in the backside on the way out. Maybe there's an opening for a Communist Green Jobs Czar in China. You can apply at culturalrevolution.com.

One of the most disturbing things about Barack Obama is not Obama himself, but rather some of the people around him, including several people he has put into positions of authority. I've already detailed the radical nature of a couple Obama administration personnel, Science Czar John Holdren and FCC Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd. Holdren has a number of crazy beliefs, among them being the idea that the U.S. Constitution doesn't entitle people to have children. Holdren declared “neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce" in his 1977 book, Ecoscience. Evidently, Holdren missed the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence – "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." In Holdren's defense, he only attended MIT and Stanford. Maybe they don't teach the basics at those elite schools. I don't know. I could only afford to go to Podunk University in Backwater, USA (so I am oppressed and demand reparations ! Just kidding. My inner whiny liberal took over for a second there). Yet, somehow I know the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution better than Holdren does. I must have read about it on a bathroom wall somewhere, or maybe at a gun show.

Mark Lloyd is another elite. He was a professor at Georgetown and a visiting lecturer at MIT prior to becoming a Hugo Chavez-loving Nazi hell-bent on destroying free speech on America's airwaves. Here's a quote from the well-educated Professor Lloyd:

“It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. . . . This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. . . . At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.”

Yes, Mr. Lloyd, it certainly IS clear that your focus is not free speech. That's why you should take the Che poster down from the wall of your office, clean out your desk, and go peddle your commie crap someplace like Cuba or Venezuela, but not here. Not in this country. We still call this the land of the free, not the land of government diktat.

Another Communist in the Obama administration is the eminent Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar. Mr. Jones went to Yale, so he's a real smart fellow, just like the other radical nutjobs I've mentioned. Jones claims to have been radicalized by the Rodney King verdict. By his own words, that drove him to embrace Marxism. I can't say I follow Mr. Jones' logic there, but like I said, I'm not one of the elite. To me, embracing communism because of a perceived American civil rights injustice is like jumping out of an airplane in flight because you don't like your seat. It's a hysterical and moronic overreaction. Maybe Jones doesn't realize that, under Communism, YOU DON'T HAVE ANY CIVIL RIGHTS to begin with. What a boob, er, I mean, deep thinker. Liberal groups have been claiming that Jones radical Communist days are behind him, but here's Van Jones in April, 2009:

"This [green] movement is deeper than a solar panel! Deeper than a solar panel! Don't stop there! Don't stop there! We're gonna change the whole system! We're gonna change the whole thing. We're not gonna put a new battery in a broken system. We want a new system. We want a new system!…And our Native American sisters and brothers who were pushed and bullied and mistreated and shoved into all the land we didn't want, where it was all hot and windy. Well, guess what? Renewable energy? Guess what, solar industry? Guess what wind industry? They now own and control 80 percent of the renewable energy resources. No more broken treaties. No more broken treaties. Give them the wealth! Give them the wealth! Give them the dignity. Give them the respect that they deserve. No justice on stolen land. We owe them a debt…What about our immigrant sisters and brothers? What about our immigrant sisters and brothers? What about people who come here from all around the world who we're willing to have out in the field, with poison being sprayed on them, poison being sprayed on them because we have the wrong agricultural system. And we're willing to poison them and poison the earth to put food on our table, but we don't want to give them rights and we don't want to give them dignity and we don't want to give them respect?…We're really entering a third wave of environmentalism in the United States. The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color communities."

Sounds to me like Jones is still a radical, and a race-baiter to boot. Whitey is poisoning people of color ????? We need to change the whole system ? Into what, Mr. Marxist ? Glenn Beck has been on a tirade against Van Jones for awhile now, and a group Van Jones founded, Color Of Change, has been trying to get Beck kicked off the air (which kinda proves Jones is a Communist. That's what Communists do, silence the opposition. They aren't about the free and open exchange of ideas, in case anyone hasn't figured that out yet).

The next commie-loving race-baiter on the radical hit parade isn't a member of Obama's administration, but her stupidity merits recognition. Her name is Diane Watson, Democratic Congresswoman from California. This woman LOVES her some Fidel Castro, and is so lost in identity politics that she can't even think straight. Dig it:

"You might have heard their philosophical leader. I think his name is Rush Limbaugh. And he said early on, “I hope that he fails.”…And remember: They are spreading fear and they are trying to see that the first president that looks likes me fails [Watson is black]…. just want you to know: People look at the United States as a country that has changed its way and has elected someone from Kenya and Kansas, I’ll put it like that. And they’re saying, “We thought you would never do that.” So we don’t want to have this young man, and he just turned 48 — we want him to succeed, because when he succeeds, we regain our status. We regain our status….

It was just mentioned to me by our esteemed speaker, “Did anyone say anything about the Cuban health system?”

And lemme tell ya, before you say “Oh, it’s a commu–”, you need to go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place. And I want you to know, now, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. [APPLAUSE]

And you know, the Cuban revolution that kicked out the wealthy, Che Guevara did that, and then, after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation, and they found…well, just leave it there (laughs), an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro…"

First of all, Ms. Watson, we are allowed to oppose Obama's policies, even though he looks like you. His skin color is completely irrelevant, except to those like yourself who are too blind to see anything else. These race-based comments are really just attempts at thought suppression. There's no other way to view them.

About Cuba, yes, please, let's "go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place." I believe the generally accepted term for it is OPPRESSION, along with a health dose of POVERTY, as happens with all Communist states. Cuba is a police state. Fortunately, the Democratic primary challenger for Watson's congressional seat doesn't share Watson's myopic view of Cuban health care. Let's vote him into office.

The final person on today's list is Cass Sunstein, Obama's Regulatory Czar. This guy is an intellectual heavyweight. He's a former Harvard Law Professor, and an expert in constitutional law, environmental law, and behavioral economics. I'm not certain how radical he is, because he's a complex man, but he has at least some very confused ideas. Here are a few of his elite ramblings:

“Much of the time, the United States seems to have embraced a confused and pernicious form of individualism. This approach endorses rights of private property and freedom of contract, and respects political liberty, but claims to distrust ‘government intervention’ and insists that people must fend for themselves. This form of so-called individualism is incoherent, a tangle of confusions"

This is quite the straw man argument. I don't know of a single person who doesn't think the government has a legitimate role to play. Government is uniquely qualified for certain roles, and those were laid out in the very beginning by the Constitution. What I distrust is GOVERNMENT INTRUDING INTO EVERY ASPECT OF SOCIETY, as it has been doing by gradual degree for my entire lifetime. And Mr. Sunstein, individualism is not "pernicious." Railing against it is.

"A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government"

This is Sunstein endorsing the Fairness Doctrine in order to control political speech. Looks like we have another nut who doesn't believe in free speech.

I just LOVE this next Sunstein quote. Love it.

“In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live?… Without taxes there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public fisc. … There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day …”

Did we earn our own money ? Um, YES.
Did we earn it by our own efforts ? YES.
Could we have inherited it without probate courts ? YES.
Could we save it without bank regulators ? YES. (We could even save it without banks).
Could we spend it without public officials ? YES.

Sunstein sounds like the typical government drone, who thinks absolutely everything is derived from government. Wrong.

"Without taxes there would be no liberty," says Sunstein. To an extent, this is true, because taxation supports the government, which exists to secure our liberties. As George Washington said, "Freedom is not free." I think everyone agrees with that much. But should we "celebrate tax day" when our resources are stripped from us to pay for everything under the sun that the government can dream up, waaay beyond securing our liberty ? I think not. Should we celebrate pork barrel spending, special interest handouts, bailouts of the big corporations, the ripoff of our own Social Security system, private jets for congresspersons, trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities ? That would be NO. "Celebrate tax day," indeed. I'd almost as soon celebrate the day burglars broke into my home and stole my television, stereo, and my wife's jewelry. I never once thanked those burglars for helping to redistribute my wealth, nor will I thank the government for stealing my paycheck for unconstitutional purposes. Government exists to secure our liberties, not to rip them away.

At a townhall meeting, former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Howard Dean was asked why tort reform is not included in ObamaCare. Then an amazing thing happened. Dean came very close to telling the truth. I was stunned. The truth ? Did Dean get DNC clearance for that ? I hope he doesn't get flagged as an Obama enemy. Here's Dean's answer:

“Here is why tort reform is not in the bill. When you go to pass a really enormous bill like that the more stuff you put in, the more enemies you make, right? And the reason why tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth. Now, that’s the truth.”

Bingo. Tort reform is not included in ObamaCare because the Democrats don't want to take on the trial lawyers. The only thing Dean didn't reveal was WHY the Dems don't want to take on the trial lawyers. The reason is because the trial lawyers pay the Democrats not to take on the trial lawyers. The lawyers are big-time Democratic campaign donors, so the Dems are content to only demonize the insurance companies and the doctors in order to pass ObamaCare. Trial lawyers get a pass, even if it makes YOUR health care insurance more expensive.

Health care is a right, you know, and it's evil to profit from it. That's what the Dems keep telling us, anyway.
====
Speaking of health care and flagging enemies, there is another right-wing nutjob spreading malicious myths about ObamaCare. No, not Palin. This time it's Representative Betty Markey, a Democrat from Colorado. Here's what Markey told a gathering of her constituents, from Coloradoan.com:

Some people, including Medicare recipients, will have to give up some current benefits to truly reform the nation's health-care system, Rep. Betsy Markey told a gathering of constituents in Fort Collins on Wednesday.

Markey has repeatedly said during the August congressional recess that Medicare spending needs to be reined in to help pay for reforming the broader health-care system.

"There's going to be some people who are going to have to give up some things, honestly, for all of this to work," Markey said at a Congress on Your Corner event at CSU. "But we have to do this because we're Americans."

Reduce Medicare benefits ? Uh, oh. That runs contrary to the official Dem health care narrative, which states that 47 million more people will be insured for less money than it costs now, and with absolutely no reductions in health care services or availability ever, ever, ever. Markey should be called down to Principal Obama's office real soon. Between Markey and Dean, a little too much inconvenient truth is leaking out. How's a President supposed to fundamentally transform America with such loose lips ? Did the weekly Democratic talking points memo get lost in the mail, or what ? Darn that government-run post office. The Dems should have used Federal Express instead.
===
On the crazy right-wing extremist violence front, the windows were smashed out of the Denver Democratic Party headquarters, prompting Democratic officials to immediately cast blame on Obama health care opponents (the astroturf mob, aka, regular older American citizens). From the Colorado AP News:

Democratic leaders initially said that the window shattering was an act of political vandalism, possibly by opponents of health care reform…State Democratic Chairwoman Pat Waak continued to say that it was an act of vandalism prompted by the heated debate over President Barack Obama's health care reform…"I stand by my statement that I think there are people opposed to health care reform and there has been a lot of rhetoric that has prompted an atmosphere that I don't think is constructive," Waak said Wednesday. "It's such a polarizing issue. It shouldn't be."

It turns out that the vandalism was done by one Maurice Schwenkler. The problem is, Schwenkler isn't a right-winger. Schwenkler is a former Democratic campaigner and a gay rights transgender activist who opposed Obama's anti-gay rights positions. Schwenkler is a left-winger. Darn. The facts keep getting in the way of that liberal narrative about right-wing violence over health care townhall meetings. The official score is now……Left-wing acts of violence – 2, Right-wing acts of violence – 0.
===
The lack of right-wing townhall violence doesn't stop liberals from whining about it, though. On wednesday night's Countdown With Keith Ubermoron on MSLSD, Olby named Congressman Wally Herger from California the Worst Person In The World when Herger called a man at a townhall meeting "a great American" after the man shouted out from the crowd that he was "a proud right-wing terrorist." The man is not a terrorist, of course. He's a veteran, and was openly mocking those on the left (like Olbermann) who describe townhall protesters using pejorative terms like "terrorists," a "mob," "racists," etc. Olbermann is either too stupid or too dishonest to acknowledge the difference. Btw, on the previous linked video, Olby also goes after Glenn Beck for tearing into Van Jones (an acknowledged communist and Obama's Green Jobs Czar). Olby said "Glenn Beck is crap," because Beck didn't divulge that Van Jones group, Color Of Change, is the group that is pressuring advertisers to drop Beck's show. In reality, it's Olbermann who is crap, because Beck has divulged that information, not to mention the fact that Beck went after Jones BEFORE Jones' group starting going after Beck, so Olby has his cause and effect reversed. Keith Olbermann IS the worst person in the world. Why anyone would watch Olbermann's dishonest crap show is the only thing that mystifies me (but I'd never try to pull his advertisers. That's crap too). In Olby's defense, of the three stories he brought up during his moronic Worst Person trilogy, he did get ONE factually correct, even though his snarky histrionics on that story were way overblown too. Seriously, liberal readers, do you watch that show ? If so, why ? All you are getting there is propaganda, half truths, and outright lies.

(Note to liberals – I'm not sticking up for Glenn Beck here. I'm sticking up for the facts. Note the difference. I thought Beck was wrong to call Obama a racist too, but he doesn't deserve to lose his show over it).

I mentioned in my last post that President Obama was supporting offshore oil drilling in America.

But only in SOUTH America, not here. Following are the details of that support, from the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount

So, we're lending Petrobras $2 billion or more. Sure, why not ? The good old USA is loaded ($11.6 trillion in debt) and our economy is doing so darn good (2.2 million jobs lost this year).

Here's a little information about Petrobras, the Brazilian state-run oil company. In 2008, Petrobras made an $18 billion profit. No wonder they need money from Uncle Sam. $18 billion is hardly enough to buy bread. Plus, poor Petrobras has been hit hard by the recession. Their profits are down 20% this year. For the first half of 2009, Petrobras has only made $7.4 billion in profit (link).

So, we're lending $2 billion or more to a foreign oil company that has made $25.4 billion in the last 18 months alone. I'm sure that makes sense somehow, but my little brain can't fathom it, even if big-time financier and left wing slush-funder George Soros can. Soros repositioned his holdings in Petrobras just days before the U.S. loan guarantees to Petrobras were announced. Soros sold 22 million shares of common stock and bought 5.8 million shares of preferred stock, which pay higher dividends. I'm sure Soros didn't have any inside information though. That would be, you know, illegal, and there's nothing at all shady about George Soros.

It would be nice if the USA had it's own offshore oil to invest in, wouldn't it ? We don't know exactly how much we have (lots), because nobody is looking for it. Offshore drilling has been banned off the East and West coasts for years, thanks to the environmentalists and other left wingers like Barack Obama.

I guess the new White House mantra is…….

Drill baby drill, but only in Brazil.

I sure hope we get a President someday who cares about America.

NORTH America, that is.

- One nice thing about Bill Clinton's presidency was that you could oppose his policies without being called a racist (mostly).

- People who think Bush went into Iraq to enrich Halliburton have no right to complain about the Birthers.

- When you go looking for "code words" for racism, aren't you just making stuff up ?

- When I talk about Obama's huge first year deficit ($1.8 trillion) on this blog, why do liberals always bring up Bush's deficits to excuse Obama's ? (Note to libs – By doing that, you aren't countering my argument. You are only making the argument that Obama is worse than Bush).

- Obama can offer health insurance to 30-45 million more people with health care reform, or he can reduce health care costs, but he can't do both at the same time.

- Obama's health care reform offers less choice, not more choice.

- Only Democrats think Rush Limbaugh is the head of the Republican party.

- Why is it that when liberals call conservatives racists nearly non-stop, nothing ever happens to those liberals, but when Glenn Beck calls Obama a racist one time, 20 advertisers are pressured into dropping their ads from Beck's show ?

- The only point being made by those people who are carrying guns outside events at which the President is speaking is that the gun carriers are oblivious morons.

- Is there any doubt at all that House Democrats are seeking the financial records of health insurance companies in order to demonize those companies ?

- Why is it okay for Congress to buy private jets with taxpayer dollars, but it's not okay for CEO's to fly private jets to Washington D.C. after being bailed out with taxpayer dollars ?

- Why would we want the federal government, an organization that is nearly $12 trillion in debt (and counting), to run our health care system, which represents 17% of our economy ?

- The "Obama is Hitler" signs must stop, because Obama is not like Hitler – he's much more like a combination of Saul Alinsky and P.T. Barnum. (Note to liberal media – that Obama-Hitler "I've Changed" sign you idiots at MSNBC, NBC, and CNN keep attributing to right wingers came from a Lyndon Larouche group, a communist group. Is even a tiny bit of journalistic integrity too much to ask ?)

- Speaking of Saul Alinsky, doesn't Obama's playbook seem awfully close to Alinsky's Rules For Radicals (pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it) ?

- MSNBC is such a biased organization that they actually edited out the fact that it was a black man who was carrying the AR-15 outside an Obama event, so MSNBC could peddle it's racist angle to the story.

- In the interesting political poll of the week, Gallup polling showed that conservatives outnumber liberals almost two to one when it comes to political ideology, yet Democrats have a sizeable lead over Republicans in party affiliation. (In other words, conservative doesn't always equate to Republican. I can identify with that).

- If you want to know why the health care public option was in, then it was out, then it was back in again….it's because up to 100 House Democrats said it better be back in again.

In the last nine months, our federal government has bailed out big business left and right. Wall Street, banks, insurance companies, car companies. The federal government serves as a backstop for big business. Big business also happens to be the ones with the deep pockets, lobbyists, and campaign cash to help get the politicians re-elected. It's a cozy little quid pro quo of the nation's power brokers. The elite taking care of their own. The government has also bailed itself out by sending huge chunks of cash to state governments via Obama's stimulus bill. Those government jobs were "saved," even as us schlubs in the private sector lost our jobs. It seems ALL the big boys in our country are "too big to fail," and the enormous bailout price tag is put on the national credit card for some future taxpayer schlubs to worry about. That's a sweet deal for the big boys in and out of government. Their risk is alleviated. Their past sins, which led to these dire financial straits in the first place, are absolved. The taxpayers serve as the sin-eaters and the pain-eaters. Btw, the federal employees health care plan is top-notch. Thank you very much, schlubs.

But with all this bailing out of the big boys, something critical has been forgotten.

70% of the jobs created in this country come from small business. How are we treating our small businesses, the ones who create the lion's share of employment opportunities ???? Let's take a look.

The liberal solution to every conceivable financial woe comes down to basically three words – "tax the rich." Then the liberals spew out inanities about how the top income tax rates used to be MUCH higher, like 70% or 90% (as if that's a good thing). What they don't tell you is that small businesses are scooped up along with the wealthy as liberals cast their tax nets, trolling for rich people. The reason for this is because 75% of small businesses are sub-chapter S corporations, who file their business taxes under the individual income tax code. When the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, causing the top tax rate to increase by 4.6% to 39.6%, small businesses (the job creators) have to pay those increased taxes too. That leaves less money available to successful small businesses for investment, growth, wage increases for it's employees, and/or new job creation.

Reversing the Bush tax cuts is far from the only anti-small business measure being proposed. As part of the ObamaCare reform, the House Committee has propsed a surcharge tax for anyone making over $1 million per year, raising the top income tax rate to 45%. Last month, freshman Democrats in the House (who apparently have a lot more economic sense than many veteran Democrats in the House), sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) objecting to the measures, which they say will hurt small businesses. Here is a portion of that letter:

While the Ways and Means Committee states that the proposed surcharge in H.R. 3200 will only impact 4.1 percent of small businesses, we are concerned that this does not paint a complete picture. According to the Internal Revenue Service's 2002 Statistics of Income, 64 percent of households filing income tax forms with AGI above $250,000 filed as an S corporation or a partnership or filed a Schedule C sole proprietorship tax form. Further, of all small businesses, 75% are S-Corporations where the business income is passed through to the business owners' individual tax return, increasing the chances that it will be impacted by the proposed surcharge.

So, the Ways and Means Committees' 4.1% number of small businesses being affected is an outright lie. No surprise there. I'm only surprised when they don't lie. The letter goes on:

The proposed surcharge will also have a direct negative impact on manufacturers, another industry essential for our recovery. As manufacturers are capital intensive businesses, their taxable income is often higher (nearly 70 percent of the manufacturers that pay at the individual rate have an average taxable income of $570,000). Manufacturing machinery can cost of $1 million and many owners have to save for years to expand and buy new equipment. Yet those profits saved each year would be hit by the new surcharge, which could lead to reduced investment.

Especially in a recession, we need to make sure not to kill the goose that will lay the golden eggs of our recovery…Combined with state taxes, many successful small businesses — the very kind of business that should lead in creating new jobs and help us emerge from this recession — will be taxed at over 50 percent.

A 50% tax rate on job creators……Dumb-da-da-dumb-dumb. Small business can't thrive in such an environment.

The freshmen House Democrats go on to explain how, at a 50% tax rate, small businesses would also be at a huge disadvantage to the big corporations and multinationals, who would still be paying the lower 35% business tax rate. What an unbelievable coincidence. The big boys, after being bailed out and immunized from failure at the taxpayer's expense, and after all their lobbying and campaign contributions, get FAVORABLE TREATMENT FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT over the biggest job creators in the country, small business.

Btw, the letter also mentioned that $21 billion of the stimulus package funds are going to small businesses, the biggest job creators in the country. That comes out to about TWO PERCENT of the $787 billion Obama stimulus total. Do any of you STILL think that was a stimulus package ???? It wasn't. It was mostly just an extraordinarily large appropriations spending package, aka, pork. That's why it hasn't and won't work.

Let's also not forget that cap-and-trade is looming on the horizon, so Obama can "skyrocket" those energy costs for small businesses too. Then, if Card Check passes, the Big O can just drive a lot of small businesses out of business via unionization and it's unaffordable wages and mandates on business. Peachy.

Back to health care reform. The President is trying to sell the health care plan as being pro-small business, but a proposal in the House calls for employers with a total payroll above $250,000 to offer health insurance to their workers or face a surtax of as much as 8 percent. A Senate committee version would require all businesses, except those with fewer than 25 employees, to provide health coverage or pay a $750 fine per year for each worker. I've heard there will be a tax credit for businesses to provide health care (that doesn't help struggling businesses, which are many these days), but if these plans are pro-small business, I'd sure hate to see what anti-small business would look like.

That's why the business community, with the exception of those big and favored few who will prosper under Obama's plans (like Big Pharma or GE) is scared to death of Barack Obama, and is fighting back. I can't blame them. Anti-business craziness abounds.

I guess my only remaining question would be – is Obama trying to destroy this country on purpose, or is he just too stupid to know any better ?

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) computed the day of the year when all the costs of government at all levels are paid for. ATR calls it Cost Of Government Day. This year, that day fell on August 12, 2009. It has taken from January 1st until now to pay for all the costs of federal, state, and local government, plus the regulatory burdens imposed by the government. This year's Cost Of Government Day was almost a full month later than it was in 2008. The biggest reason for the change was the recession, which sparked a massive Keynesian government spending spree (TARP, stimulus, etc). Another reason is the unchecked growth of unfunded entitlement liabilities (Medicare, Social Security, etc).

This year, the cost of government consumed 61.34% of national income. Working people toil 224 days of the year to pay for their government. You can view the Cost Of Government Day report for 2009 here. It makes for some very interesting and disturbing reading.

Put in it's simplest terms, this means that we are becoming slaves to incremental government tyranny. ObamaCare and Cap-and-Trade are some of the next steps in that planned process.

The breakdown of Cost Of Government Day is as follows:
- We work 111 days to pay for federal spending.
- We work 49 days for state and local spending.
- We work 42 days for federal regulations.
- We work 23 days for state and local regulations.

Cost Of Government Day varies from state to state, of course, because each state and locality has a differing burden. The state with the least burden (most free) in 2009 was Alaska (where that radical Sarah Palin governed. No wonder liberals hate her). Predictably, the states with the highest government burdens (least free) were liberal states, with Connecticut being the highest, followed by New Jersey, New York, and California. Liberals LOVE to give their hard-earned money to the government (well, actually, they love to give other people's hard-earned money to the government). Liberals exhibit a plantation mentality, with the government playing the role of master, and the liberals playing the happy slaves whose every need is met by Massuh (at the price of their liberty and free choice). This somehow makes sense to them, though I can never understand WHY it makes sense to them. I run from it like I'm headed for the Underground Railroad.

When you're working 7-8 months per year just to pay off the government burdens, it's only natural that you will be poorer than you'd be otherwise, but somehow liberals can never figure this out either. They are always clamoring for more and more government spending, taxation, and regulation. It's their version of Stockholm Syndrome. They loves them some Massuh. Massuh is SO very good and kind. Massuh is SO very smart.

In an irony so thick you could cut it with a knife, liberals, the willing slaves, call people "racists" when they resist the big government takeovers being planned by President Barack Obama. They actually think it's racist to want to be free from government tyranny, all because Obama's skin is black. They can't see past that singular, irrelevant fact. At this point, crying racism is nothing more than the liberal Pavlovian response to freedom. They can't help it, and they don't understand what the rest of us are so upset about. They don't get that most people don't want to become wards of the state. They are completely baffled when people don't want the government to takeover every aspect of their lives, so they use "racist" as a sort of intellectual firewall. Go figure.

Back to the Cost Of Government Day report. One of the many myths the report destroys is the idea that Obama's stimulus package was actually an economic stimulus package. It wasn't. It was mostly just a bunch of big government appropriations spending under the guise of stimulus, along with spending to prop up, guess who? – the government ("never let a crisis go to waste"). Here's the breakdown of spending in the alleged stimulus package:

- $90 billion for “State Fiscal Relief;”
- $71.3 billion for the Department of Labor, Health and
Human Services and Education (including $16.6 billion for
Student Financial Assistance, $13 billion for Education for
the Disadvantaged, $12.2 billion for Special Education and
$9.7 billion for National Institutes of Health);
- $61.1 billion for Transportation, Urban Development and
Housing (including $27.5 billion for Highway
Construction);
- $57.3 billion for Assistance for Unemployed Workers and
Struggling Families (including 39.2 billion for
Unemployment Compensation);
- $53.6 billion for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund;
- $50.8 billion for Energy and Water (including $16.8 billion
for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy);
- $26.4 billion for Agriculture, Rural Development and Food
and Drug Administration (including $20 billion for the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program);
- $25.1 billion for Health Insurance Assistance;
- $20.8 billion for Health Information Technology;
- $15.8 billion on Commerce, Justice and Science (including
$4.7 billion on the Broadband Technology Opportunities
Program);
- $10.6 billion on Interior and Environment (including Clean
Water and DrinkingWater State Revolving Funds);
- $7.9 billion on Defense and Homeland Security;
- $6.7 billion on Financial Services and General Government
(including $5.4 billion on the Federal Buildings Fund);
- $4.3 billion on Military Construction and Veteran Affairs.

Another interesting item in the report is how the tax burden of the various states affects the population and prosperity of those states. The report states that between 1997 and 2007, the ten states with the highest tax burdens lost 3 million citizens and $82 billion in income. During the same period, over 2.6 million people moved to the states with no income tax, bringing in about $98.5 billion in income. Hmmm. Those no income tax states must be racist.

Maybe the most important thing to remember about President Obama's first year in office is this – in 2009, taxpayers are confronted with a federal budget that raises spending to over $9,000 for every man, woman and child in America—forever. That's $36,000 for a family of four. EVERY YEAR. And our President has only just begun to "change" America. Change into what, I shudder to think.

In conclusion, keep going to those Tea Parties and townhall meetings. Keep telling your Congressperson what you think. The only ones who can stop this tyrannical government (and it started long before Obama arrived on the scene) is we, the people. Ignore all the name-calling you endure from the leftist slaves and their pet slave media. They are the problem. You are the solution.

Sorry I've been away from the blog this week, but AT&T inadvertently knocked out my phone lines. I couldn't get online until yesterday.

When the AT&T repairman was restoring my connection to the outside world, he noticed a copy of Ron Paul's book, Revolution, sitting on my coffee table, and we struck up a political conversation. He asked if I was a Republican. I said no, I was a fiscal conservative and a Libertarian, with a few exceptions (such as national security). The repairman asked me what the difference was between a Republican and a fiscal conservative. I replied that most Republicans were just kidding about fiscal conservatism, and I wasn't. Then the repairman asked me if I had heard Barbara Boxer (D-CA) insulting the American people who attended the townhall meetings on health care. That led to a 15 minute conversation that ended only because the repairman had another service call to make. It turns out the repairman was a 13-year military veteran. He was also one of the most intelligent people I've talked to lately. This "regular guy," much like myself, was very concerned with the health care reform that is winding it's way through the halls of Congress. Much like myself (and lots of townhall attendees), he thought the Democrats were being quite dishonest about their health care reform plans. He was also quite unhappy that many Democrats are treating Americans like we are a bunch of thuggish nitwits.

But it's even worse than being treated like a thuggish nitwit. Those Democrats aren't even giving us credit for being able to form our own opinions. They act like we are a bunch of mindless autobots being sent out to do the bidding of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the Republican National Committee. That's why the Dems and their pet media speak of the contentious health care townhalls being an "astroturf" movement (fake grassroots). They pretend we are puppets, speaking words put into our simple minds by others. They pretend we do not exist at all as individuals capable of individual reasoned thought. It's based upon the old military tactic of dehumanizing the enemy. It's easy to kill or ignore what's not viewed as human. Ohio Democratic Representatives Tim Ryan and John Boccieri have both stated that they ignored the flood of e-mails and phone calls from Americans concerned over health care because they thought it was just manufactured outrage, ginned up by Fox News and others. These two are both literally saying they could care less what their own constituents think. This raises the question – who are they representing, if not Ohioans ?

Here is a sampling of Democratic responses to the health care townhall meetings:

"I think they're astroturf. You be the judge. They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to town meeting on healthcare" – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

Swastikas ? Has anyone seen this yet ? I haven't.

“I just want to show you what Astroturf really is.They’re taking their cues from talk show hosts, Internet rumor mongers, and insurance rackets." – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

Yes. I can't tell you how many calls I get from insurance companies telling me to stop health care reform. Oh, wait, yes I can. NONE. Of course, my phones were out for a few days. Maybe the insurance guys were trying to call me then.

"These guys don’t care about you. They care about YouTube. We can spot a ringer.” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin.

Is there a lot of money in getting on YouTube ? I think America's Funniest Home Videos pays better, and that's where Durbin belongs.

“Organized mobs across the country are intimidating lawmakers, disrupting events, and silencing discussions about the change our country needs.” – an Obama campaign aide in an e-mail to Michigan supporters.

"Organized mobs ?" What, now Obama's health care reform opponents are like Al Capone ? The "mob" narrative is being played over and over by the Democratic honchos. Watch this commercial being aired by the Democratic National Committee, appropriately named 'Enough Of The Mob':

Mob. Mob. Mob. Mob. Mob. Got it ? And one Birther thrown in for good measure.

Dehumanize. Illegitimize. Radicalize. That's the Dem strategy. Do anything but respond to the actual issues being raised at these townhall meetings.

Now for Barbara Boxer's comments:

"I saw some of the clips of people storming these townhall meetings. The last time I saw well-dressed people doing this was when Al Gore asked me to go down to Florida to recount the ballots…this is all organized…you in the media have to take a look at this. It's all planned to hurt our President and change the Congress"

Who are these "well-dressed people" ? If you look at any of the townhall meeting clips, you'll see a bunch of people wearing t-shirts, shorts, halter tops, ball caps, etc. I didn't see any Brooks Brothers suits there, except for those worn by some of the Democratic speakers.

The massive irony here is, look at who our President is – Barack Obama, the community ORGANIZER. Organizing people toward political ends is his stock in trade. Even if the townhall meetings WERE organized by some GOP operatives and/or the insurance industry, which, of course, they AREN'T, how can Democrats have the nerve to complain about it ? Obama has encouraged the exact same behavior throughout his career. He was the chief trainer for ACORN, for god's sake. ACORN comes out enmasse to protest anything they don't like. And they shout people down, chant slogans, even break into foreclosed homes to take them over. Have you ever heard a peep from the White House or the Democrats condemning ACORN'S behavior ? Nope. Not a one.

And if you really want to see how liberals act when they are hearing something THEY don't like, just observe how conservative speakers on college campuses are shouted down, how the liberal audiences throw things at the speakers, etc. Here's one of many such examples. I picked this one because it happened at Obama's alma mater, Columbia University, where the protesters stopped the Minutemen from speaking. This makes the health care townhalls look like sunday church services by comparison:

Btw, this is the same Columbia University that sat and listened respectfully to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speak. Liberals know who the real enemy is.

The latest Quinnipiac poll shows that 52% of Americans disapprove of Obama's handling of health care reform. Only 39% approve. That's an awful lot of astroturf manufactured phony outrage, I'd say. The "mob" (aka, America) appears not to agree with the Democrats.

So, pipe down, Dems. Your kabuki theater on health care townhall meetings is fooling no one, and it's angering a lot of us. Not to mention that you used the exact same tactics regarding the Tea Party protests. We're onto you. The only thing fake here is the Dems fake outrage.

Barney Frank (D-VT) wants the federal government to decide how much Wall Street executives (and all other executives of private companies) are paid. Barney also wants the government to decide how they are paid. Legislation to ban incentive-based pay for private corporations has been approved by the House Financial Services Committee.

I don't know where in the U.S. Constitution the federal government thinks it obtains the authority to do this, but, hey, we don't use that musty old Constitution thingy anymore anyway. The notion of limiting centralized governmental power (federalism) envisioned by the founding fathers is as outdated as bell bottomed jeans. These days, we seem to be climbing all over ourselves to give the federal government all the power it wants (totalitarianism). The statists are on the march, making all the same false promises the statists always make, the false promises that never quite seem to materialize (FYI – health care reform = forcing all Americans to buy health care insurance and then having the government determine what medical procedures you are allowed to have, in case you haven't figured that out yet).

Here is Barney's rationale for limiting executive pay:

"The problem with executive compensation is essentially, from the systemic standpoint, that it gives perverse incentives," said Frank, a Democrat. Without penalties for bad bets, the system means "heads you win, tails you break even," he said.

Perverse incentives. That means people shouldn't be rewarded for driving their companies into the ground. They should be held accountable instead. I think we can all agree with that, if not with the idea that the federal government should dictate people's salaries. That is so……Soviet.

Let's continue with these ideas of accountability and perverse incentives. As of July 31st, 2009, the federal debt stood at $11,617,400,889,464.57. That's over $11.6 trillion. As soon as I write these words, they are outdated, because the national debt is now higher. The debt has increased by $3.89 billion PER DAY since September 2007. In addition, the federal government is projected to run nearly a $2 trillion deficit in 2009. We paid $451 billion in interest on the federal debt in 2008. This year it will be much higher. The interest on the debt is money flushed down the toilet (or sent to a foreign government, like China) that could easily pay for any imaginable health care reform we could dream up. Instead, our federal government has burdened every American citizen with roughly $38,000 in debt. The federal government is the poster child for incompetence.

This means the federal government, if viewed as a corporation (FedCorp), would be the worst run corporation in the entire history of the world (with the possible exception of those defunct Soviets we're trying to emulate). So, how are we holding FedCorp accountable ? Why, we're about to hand the entire health care system over to them !!! We're going to reward the worst company ever, FedCorp, by handing it control over 16% more of our economy. Talk about perverse incentives. This is equivalent to handing the entire energy sector over to Enron. FedCorp has shown NO ability to be responsible managers of taxpayer dollars, so, naturally, let's keep giving them ever more and more. That's the ticket. And never mind that the part of health care FedCorp already controls, Medicare/Medicaid, has such massive unfunded liabilities that it is threatening to destroy our economy down the road. If not addressed, the unfunded entitlement liabilities will hit our economy with such an economic tidal wave that the current recession will look like a ripple in a pond by comparison.

While we're on the subject of salaries, FedCorp is holding itself accountable for it's putrid mismanagement by…..giving all FedCorp's civilian employees a 2.9% pay raise in 2010. This is after Congress voted itself a 2.8% pay raise in January 2009, with the country in the depths of the recession. Apparently, accountability and perverse incentives don't apply to FedCorp, only to that horribly greedy entity known as the private sector (the sector that produces all our goods and services). FedCorp is spitting directly in your faces, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. YOU tighten your belts. THEY get raises.

There are so many examples of the federal government throwing away taxpayer dollars that I could never list them all. This post would be a thousand pages long if I tried. Go to the website YouDontKnowJack to see some examples of how just one Congressman, Jack Murtha (D-PA), aka, the King Of Pork, throws YOUR money around to his cronies and special interests. It's disgusting.

And it wasn't that much better when the Republicans were in charge. During the Bush years, with Republicans controlling Congress, government spending STILL skyrocketed. Federal spending went from $2 trillion to $3 trillion per year during Bush's tenure (and those guys were supposed to be conservatives ??? I don't think so). The only way the Bushies were conservative is if you compare them to Obama and the Democrats, who are trying to match Bush's 8-year federal spending increase total ($1 trillion) in their FIRST YEAR. If Bush was the frying pan, Obama is the fire. I find myself longing for the return of Bill Clinton and his Republican Congress. At least those guys realized the economy was EVERYTHING. Those guys look like geniuses compared to Bush and Barry, and even Clinton ran net deficits and added $1.5 trillion to the debt. Things have been so bad since then that Clinton and his GOP'ers seem like the good old days.

Our federal government is so far out of control that I barely know where to start. This post is only a drop in the bucket in trying to describe it. FedCorp is like a bunch of crack addicts with our money. They can never get enough. With an addict, there's only one cure. You have to MAKE them stop. WE have to make them stop. WE have to get rid of the whole bunch of them. WE have to vote them all out of office and start over. That's the only way WE can make a difference, the only way WE can make the federal crackheads stop. Barring that, WE are screwed. Barring that, America, the land of the free, will very soon be OVER. There is only so much money that FedCorp can spend. There are only so much taxes that FedCorp can take from us. We're on the express train to poverty as long as this continues. Wake up, America. Your country is disappearing before your very eyes.

President Obama is a fiscal hawk. I know that might sound strange to some of you (the sane ones), seeing as how Obama passed an $800 billion stimulus package, a record breaking, pork-laden $410 billion Omnibus bill, and a record breaking $3.55 trillion budget during the worst recession in 70 years. Yes, Obama will have a $1.8 trillion deficit his first year in office and is projected to run up more deficits than every other President in history COMBINED. Yes, we have committed up to $24 trillion to fight the recession, and Obama is trying to spend an additional $200 billion per year or so on health care reform, and he's only been in office for SIX MONTHS, for chrissakes….

But Obama is a fiscal hawk. Check it out. He has made good on his promise to trim $102 million from the federal budget. That's right. $102 Million with an 'M', as in, a drop in the ocean when Obama is spending trillions at the same time.

Yes We Can !

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag actually had the nerve to say the following words about Obama's pathetic budget cuts, "These savings reflect the president's belief that even small savings can add up."

Too bad we don't use firing squads anymore.
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Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) takes his job very seriously. He would never shirk his sworn duty to the American people. Here's Conyers at the National Press Club, talking about reading bills:

"What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?"

That's right, Conyers. How can they expect an important man like yourself to actually read and comprehend the legislation you are about to pass into law ? It's not like that's your job or anything…..wait a minute. It IS your job, you arrogant chunk of cow flop. That's why you're in Congress, and here you are, brazenly spitting directly in the faces of the people who elected you.

Why don't we use firing squads anymore ?
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Ohio Senator George Voinovich (he's still in office ? Who knew ?) is unhappy that the southerners are taking over the GOP:

“We got too many Jim DeMints (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburns (R-Ok.). It’s the southerners. They get on TV and go ‘errrr, errrrr.’ People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?’”

Yes, it's too bad that Ohio doesn't have, like, a Republican Senator to whom Ohioans can relate. Ohio only has Voinovich.

What's wrong with southerners, anyway ? The Civil War is WAAAAAY over.
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Republicrat Arlen Specter (D-PA) is another man of conviction on Capitol Hill, and his voting record proves it. The last time Specter was up for re-election, in 2003-4, he was a Republican. Specter voted with Republicans 85% of the time back then. Now it's 2009-10, and Specter is up for re-election again. Back in April, Specter found himself hopelessly behind in the Republican primary polls, so, being a man of honor and conviction, Specter switched parties and became a Democrat. Congressional Quarterly did a study and found that since he switched parties, Specter now votes with the Democrats 85% of the time. Presto-change-o. Will the real Arlen Specter please stand up ? Then again, how about Arlen Specter, whoever he is, sits down ? It seems the only conviction Specter has is the conviction that he should be re-elected to office at all costs.
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On the health care reform front, the CBO has scored a TKO on the House health reform bill. President Obama said he would not sign a health care reform bill that added to the deficit (thank God. It's bad enough to implement tax increases in the middle of the worst recession in 70 years), and the CBO has shown that the House bill doesn't cut the mustard. Keith Hennessey has put the numbers into graphic form:

Looks like it's back to the drawing board for the House, unless John Conyers is too busy to drive to work, of course.

Following is President Obama's entire speech about health care reform wednesday night, along with my explanatory comments enclosed in brackets. Consider this is a public service. Note – I mostly comment on things I disagree with, or on things that set off my bs detector. Not always, but mostly.

Without further ado, here's our President (clap, clap, clap).
—
Good evening. Before I take your questions, I want to talk for a few minutes about the progress we’re making on health insurance reform and where it fits into our broader economic strategy. [Great, because I'm pretty confused about it]

This debate is not a game for these Americans, and they cannot afford to wait for reform any longer. [If Obama's health care reform is passed, the public option won't go into effect UNTIL 2013] They are counting on us to get this done. They are looking to us for leadership. And we must not let them down. We will pass reform that lowers cost [the CBO estimates it will cost $1.5 trillion MORE], promotes choice [choose the GOVERNMENT OPTION !!!!], and provides coverage that every American can count on. And we will do it this year. And with that, I’ll take your questions.
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I'm sure glad the President cleared all that stuff up for me, because now I really, um, well, it cost what again?….I don't quite underst…if the, uh,……rats, I'm still confused. Did he say anything new at all ? As always, the details remain elusive. I have an idea. How about the Prez and Congress get together, work out a plan, and THEN tell us what it is in clear terms we can understand. Spare me the campaigning, Mr. Obama. You're ALREADY the President.

To think, I could have watched my DVR'ed episode of HBO's True Blood instead.