Yes, our mathematically-challenged President actually made this claim. Check out the following video:

For the record – if your employer pays $400 per month currently for your health insurance, and ObamaCare reduced that premium by 100%, your employer wrould then be paying ZERO. At 3000%, your employer would be paying you.

This President will obviously say or do ANYTHING to get his health care reform bill passed. The facts are now 3000% irrelevant.

As the Democrats move perilously close to destroying America's health care system, a surprising source has stepped forward to expose more of the fatal flaws with ObamaCare….Obama's second cousin (once removed), Dr. Milton R. Wolf, a radiologist from Kansas.

Dr. Wolf must not have received Obama's message that the time for talk about ObamaCare is over. Apparently, neither has the President, who has been touring the country talking incessantly about how the the time for talk is over.

Obama's cuz makes several crucial points about ObamaCare in an essay published in the Washington Times.

1. ObamaCare will kill people.

America has the finest health care delivery system in the world. Let's not forget that and put it at risk in the name of reform. Desperate souls across the globe flock to our shores and cross our borders every day to seek our care. Why? Our system provides cures while the government-run systems from which they flee do not. Compare Europe's common cancer mortality rates to America's: breast cancer – 52 percent higher in Germany and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom; prostate cancer – a staggering 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway; colon cancer – 40 percent higher in the United Kingdom.

Look closer at the United Kingdom. Britain's higher cancer mortality rate results in 25,000 more cancer deaths per year compared to a similar population size in the United States. But because the U.S. population is roughly five times larger than the United Kingdom's, that would translate into 125,000 unnecessary American cancer deaths every year. This is more than all the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, cousins and children in Topeka, Kan. And keep in mind, these numbers are for cancer alone. America also has better survival rates for other major killers, such as heart attacks and strokes. Whatever we do, let us not surrender the great gains we have made. First, do no harm. Lives are at stake.

2. ObamaCare will result in less access to health care.

The justification for Obamacare has been to control costs, but the problem is there is little in Obamacare that will do that. Instead, there are provisions that will ration care and artificially set price. This is a confusion of costs and price.

As one example, consider the implications of Obamacare's financial penalty aimed at your doctor if he seeks the expert care he has determined you need. If your doctor is in the top 10 percent of primary care physicians who refer patients to specialists most frequently – no matter how valid the reasons – he will face a 5 percent penalty on all their Medicare reimbursements for the entire year. This scheme is specifically designed to deny you the chance to see a specialist. Each year, the insidious nature of that arbitrary 10 percent rule will make things even worse as 100 percent of doctors try to stay off that list. Many doctors will try to avoid the sickest patients, and others will simply refuse to accept Medicare. Already, 42 percent of doctors have chosen that route, and it will get worse. Your mother's shiny government-issued Medicare health card is meaningless without doctors who will accept it.

Obamacare will further diminish access to health care by lowering reimbursements for medical care without regard to the costs of that care. Price controls have failed spectacularly wherever they've been tried. They have turned neighborhoods into slums and have caused supply chains to dry up when producers can no longer profit from providing their goods. Remember the Carter-era gas lines? Medical care is not immune from this economic reality. We cannot hope that our best and brightest will pursue a career in medicine, setting aside years of their lives – for me, 13 years of school and training – to enter a field that might not even pay for the student loans it took to get there.

3. ObamaCare will exacerbate existing problems with our health care system, not fix them.

I believe there is a better way. The problems in the American health care system are not caused by a shortage of government intrusion. They will not be solved by more government intrusion. In fact, our current problems were precisely, though unintentionally, created by government.

World War II-era wage-control measures – a form of price controls – ushered in a perverted system in which we turn to our employers for insurance and the government penalizes us if we choose to purchase insurance for ourselves. You are not given the opportunity to be a wise consumer of health care and compare prices as well as quality in any meaningful way. Worse still, your insurance company is not answerable to you because you are not its customer. It is answerable to your employer, whose interests differ from your own.

Insurance companies have been vilified for following the perverse rules that government has created for them. But it gets worse. The government, always knowing best, deploys insurance commissioners across the land to dictate what the insurance companies must provide, whether you want it or not, and each time, your premiums increase. Obamacare will make all of this worse, not better.

One of America's founding principles is our trust in the people and their economic freedom to rule their own lives. We should decouple health insurance from employers and empower patients to be consumers once again. Allow them to determine the insurance plan that best meets their families' needs and which company will provide it. This will unleash a wave of competition that will drive costs down in a way that price controls never have. Eliminate the artificial state boundary rules that protect insurance companies from true competition and watch as voters demand that their state insurance commissioners get the heck out of the way. Innovative companies will drive down costs similar to how Geico and Progressive have worked for automobile insurance. And it won't cost taxpayers a trillion dollars in the process.

This free-market approach has worked for everything from high-definition TVs to breakfast cereals, but will it work for medicine? It already is. Take Lasik eye surgery, for example. Because patients are allowed to be informed consumers and can shop anywhere, doctors work hard for their business. Services, availability and expertise have all increased, and costs have decreased. Should consumers demand it, insurance companies – now answerable to you rather than your employer – would cover it.

ObamaCare will raise your insurance premiums, raise health care costs overall, incentivize doctors to NOT provide health care to the patients who need it the most, reduce access to health care, deter innovation in the health care field, incentivize people to NOT enter the health care field at the same time it increases demand by creating a huge medical welfare state, raise taxes, reduce the number of doctors who will accept Medicare patients, insert the government even more as a middleman in the health care market, distort the free market, force all Americans to purchase health insurance…

Other than that it's great.

Dr. Wolf sums up his opposition to ObamaCare by wishing his cousin success in office:

I wish my cousin Barack the greatest of success in office. But I feel duty-bound to rise in opposition to Obamacare. I must take a stand for my patients, my profession and, ultimately, my country. The problems caused by government will not be solved by growing government. Now that this new era of big-government takeovers has spread to our health care system, it's not just our freedoms or our wallets that are at stake. It's our lives.

I wonder how liberals are going to demonize Dr. Wolf. We shall soon find out, I'm sure.

Quote Of The Day: "we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what is in it" – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
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Burning Fiscal Issue: "he's trying to pawn himself off as a fiscal conservative. And yet just in recent weeks, two weeks ago it has come out in news accounts he had a Republican Party of Florida credit card that he charged $130 haircut, or maybe it was a back wax — we are not sure what all he got at that place." – Governor Charlie Crist (R-FL), talking about U.S. Senate primary challenger Marco Rubio, who is leading Crist by 32 points in the latest poll.
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A New York Corruptocrat State Of Mind: Recent scandals in New York…Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Gov. David Paterson, Rep. Charlie Rangel..and now, I give you Rep. Eric Massa, who recently resigned from Congress amid year-long allegations of improper sexual contact with male staffers. This guy is some piece of work. In recent days, Massa said he wouldn't seek re-election because he had cancer. Then he resigned immediately when the sexual allegations came out. Then he said he was pressured out by Democrats because he was against ObamaCare (ObamaCare isn't liberal enough for Massa). Then he went on Glenn Beck's show and said he did grope and tickle a male staffer. Then he went on Larry King's show a few hours later and said he didn't grope anyone. Massa called Obama's Chief Of Staff Rahm Emanuel "the son of the devil's spawn," and described the following nude shower scene, with Emanuel allegedly threatening Massa that he better vote for ObamaCare or else – "I am showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me." The White House denies the incident ever occurred. When Larry King asked Massa if he was gay, Massa refused to answer, saying the question was an insult to gay people. If you are interested in this bizarre tale, The Washington Post has a pretty good take on it here.
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ObamaCare To Bring Down Deficits, Part Red Sea: Here's President Obama singing the merits of health care reform, from Fox News:

"Our cost-cutting measures mirror most of the proposals in the current Senate bill, which reduces most people's premiums and brings down our deficit by up to $1 trillion dollars over the next decade because we're spending our health care dollars more wisely," Obama told an audience at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa., a suburb north of Philadelphia.

Obama was so proud of these cost-saving numbers in the latest version of health care reform, he delved into a bit of Washington-speak to back them up.

"Those aren't my numbers," Obama said to the rising applause of the estimated 1,300 in attendance. "They are the savings determined by the Congressional Budget Office, which is the nonpartisan, independent referee of Congress for what things cost."

Sorry, Mr. President. You're numbers are a wee bit off. The actual ObamaCare deficit reduction estimate from the CBO over the next decade – $132 billion. The real deficit increase estimate over the next decade after all the Democrats smoke and mirrors accounting tricks are stripped away from ObamaCare -$460 billion. (link)

Nice try, Obama.
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Canadian Socialist Health Care Paradise: Because almost every pro-ObamaCare Democrat under the sun has come out with some American health care horror story in order to further their cause via emotion rather than logic, I have one such story from that wonderful government-run Canadian health care system, where everyone is covered for everything and life is beautiful all the time (or so say liberals). From the Toronto Sun, this article is titled 'Sick Man Faces Bankruptcy Or Death':

Kent Pankow lives in Edmonton, in a province and a country that is trying to either kill him or bankrupt him.

No sense mincing words.

Suffering from brain cancer, Kent Pankow was literally forced to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. for lifesaving surgery — at a cost to family and friends of $106,000 — after the health-care system in Alberta left him hanging in bureaucratic limbo for 16 crucial days, his tumour meanwhile migrating to an unreachable part of the brain, while it dithered over his case file, ultimately deciding he was not surgery worthy.

Now, with the Mayo Clinic having done what the Alberta Cancer Board wouldn’t authorize or even explain, but with the tumour unable to be totally removed, the province will now not fund the expensive drug, Avastin, that the Mayo prescribed to keep him alive and keep the remaining tumour from increasing in size — despite the costs of the drug being totally funded by the province for other forms of cancer.

Kent Pankow, as it turns out, has the right disease but he has it in the wrong place.

Had he lung cancer, breast cancer, or colon cancer, then the cost of the drug — $4,555 per treatment, two times a month — would be totally covered by Alberta’s version of OHIP.

But he doesn’t.

And so he is not only a victim of brain cancer, he is also a victim of arbitrary discrimination.

Our supposedly universal federal health care system, the pride of most Canadians and the political struggle of America, is only as good as the length of the waiting line and whether you have the right disease at the right time.

After writing more than 150 letters to everyone from the prime minister to virtually all health authorities both federal and provincial, and being ignored in return, Kent Pankow’s wife, Deborah Hurford, decided to finally go public.

Btw, Canadian official Danny Williams, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, chose to have his heart surgery in the United States. Williams said, and I quote, "This was my heart, my choice and my health…I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics." So much for Canada's universal health care paradise.

Exit question – Is MORE bureaucracy really the way we want to go with health care in America ? With ObamaCare, that is exactly what we will get.

"The status quo is not acceptable….What is really scary, what is really risky, is to do nothing." – President Obama, talking about health care reform.

President Obama and the Democrats are pretending America's choices on health care reform are either – A) Pass ObamaCare, or B) Stick With The Status Quo.

To us another Obama catchphrase, the President is presenting us with a "false choice." In a year of debate on the issue of health care reform, I haven't heard one person in Congress say we should stick with the status quo and do nothing. That is not the debate. The debate is over what is the best way to reform health care in this country to lessen costs and provide access to health insurance for every American who wants it.

Obama and company believe massive government intrusion, forcing all Americans to buy health insurance, massive tax increases, and kicking massive subsidies back to the insurance companies for tens of millions of Americans is the way to go. Obama, like so many liberals, believes having the government intrude more between the doctor and patient, along with insurance companies intruding between doctor and patient, along with the legal tort system intruding between doctor and patient, along with your employer intruding between the doctor and patient, is somehow going to result in a better, more cost-effective health care system. I simply don't get it.

I believe just the opposite is true. I believe the more middlemen there are between the doctor and patient, the more the individual is relieved of all responsibility for his/her own health care costs and choices, the more out of control our health care system will become.

With the President set to release his latest health care plan today, I'd like to present some different solutions, that might at first seem radical to some when compared to the status quo, but they aren't radical. They're just different than Obama's big government takeover plans. I'm going to accept the goal of insuring every American citizen, and this alternative plan will do that. I call this the Returning Your Health Care To You plan. Because this is only one short post, I'll only cover the major points broadly. I don't have time to produce a 2,400 page document (nor would I want to, and it isn't necessary to reform health care).

1) Make health insurance premiums tax deductible, up to $4,000 annually per individual or $8,000 per family. This would be in the form of a refundable tax credit, and would adjust for health care inflation/deflation.

This would apply to all Americans, whether they were working or not. For non-working Americans, this would serve as a subsidy, but it would go to the individual, not to the insurance company, as would happen with ObamaCare. The deduction must be used to purchase health insurance, or you won't get it. This measure wouldn't force anyone to buy insurance, but it would strongly incentivize them to do so. This should solve the problem of so many Americans being uninsured, and it will serve as a defacto wage increase for every American.

2. Employers will no longer be responsible for health insurance for workers.

Because step #1 puts the burden of health insurance back where it belongs, on the individual or the family, there is no reason for employers to insure workers. This has great benefits. Employers will no longer be burdened with the growing health care costs that keep them from being competitive in the marketplace. They will be able to hire more workers, LOTS more workers. This will fix the unemployment problem, which in turn will generate more tax revenue for the government. Secondly, it solves the existing problem we have with unemployed workers not having access to insurance, because insurance now follows the individual instead of the job. You won't lose your health insurance just because you lose your job. With employers relieved of paying for health insurance costs, worker take-home pay will increase again.

3. Eliminate health insurance "pools."

It is discriminatory for some people to be able to pool together and receive a lower group insurance rate while others are unable to do so, and are forced into paying higher rates. The "pool" of the insurance companies will be all it's customers, and all customers will pay the same insurance rate for the same level of coverage. With all customers paying the same rate, the insurance company will be incentivized to see that it's more unhealthy customers, the ones with the highest risk factors, seek preventative health care measures which will result in overall lower payouts for the insurance companies. Absent "pooling," insurance companies will also be incentivized to offer their lowest possible price to everyone, lest they lose business.

4. Tort reform with lawsuit caps.

To lower health care costs and defensive medicine costs. I've covered this before, so I won't go into detail here.

5. Nationwide insurance competition.

To lower costs. This shouln't even be debatable. We don't tell Walmart it can't operate in Oklahoma, and we don't tell Applebee's it can't operate in Ohio. This is a free country. In order to do this, we probably will need some minimum insurance guidelines to come from the feds. The feds will NOT, however, mandate what will and will not be covered under an insurance policy, with two exceptions – people cannot be denied for pre-existing conditions and people cannot be canceled if they run up high medical costs. Insurance companies will not be allowed to deny any U.S. citizen coverage.

6. More choices of insurance coverage, not less.

The current ObamaCare boondoggle would tell insurers what they must cover. This is the wrong path. Insurers will cover anything, but we need a variety of types of coverage instead of a one-size-fits-all model. For example, some people might prefer catastrophic-only coverage with high deductibles and pay for all their routine medical care themselves (I'm one of these). Others may want everything and anything covered. There may be several levels in between. There should be a variety of choices available instead of the government dictating coverage.

7. End Medicare.

If you didn't notice, since everybody is going to get a health care tax credit, we don't need Medicare anymore, because seniors will get the tax credit too, and they will be paying the same insurance rates that a healthy 25-year-old would pay. I just solved the long-term unfunded liability problem that threatens to bankrupt the country.

How much will my health care plan cost ? Well, I'm not the CBO, and I've only worked on this for a couple hours this morning, but I guess-timate that the tax credits will cost roughly $1 trillion ($4,000 x 250 million adults in the U.S.) if everybody signed up. That's a lot of money, but by eliminating existing government health care plans, I estimate we'd save about $600 billion of that, leaving about $400 billion to raise via reducing federal spending or raising taxes. Because raising taxes is counterproductive, especially in this struggling economy, I'd suggest the federal government reduce spending by $400 billion. If this sounds impossible or radical, consider that Barack Obama RAISED federal spending by far more than that in his first year in office, and wants to raise it a lot more to pass ObamaCare. We could reduce federal spending by $400 billion just by eliminating Obama's spending increases SO FAR.

Obama's plan is what sounds radical to me. My two-hour effort today addresses unemployment, addresses the unsustainable long-term unfunded entitlement liability problem, reduces the size of government, stimulates the economy, makes our businesses more competitive, doesn't raise taxes, provides health insurance for any American who wants it, creates jobs, and increases worker wages. Does Obama's disaster of a plan do ANY of that ? Nope. What Obama's plan does is vastly increase the size of our already unsustainable federal government and adds to our collective tax burden, which makes everyone POORER over the long run.

Obama and the Democrats are just wrong. They don't get it. Obama's so-called "change" is just more of the same thing that has gotten America into the fiscal problems we face today. We HAVE to defeat ObamaCare. There is a better way, and the majority of Americans know it.

I suppose I should write about yesterday's bipartisan health care summit, although I'm not sure exactly why. Nothing was accomplished. Nothing changed. Republicans believe the existing comprehensive health care reform bills should be scrapped and a more incremental approach should be taken. Democrats believe the whole health care shebang should be changed with one 2,400-2.700 page bill. We already knew these things going into the historic health care summit, and that's where things stand today. What both sides do agree upon is that we need health insurance reform of some kind.

Btw, the only reason I'm calling the health care summit 'historic' is because CNN referred to it that way about 5,000 times yesterday. I'm not sure what was so historic about it, except for the fact that it occurred. By that definition, everything that happens is historic. By that definition, I'm writing a historic blog entry right now. However, I don't think I'll be notifying the Smithsonian of my efforts. I'm not that impressed with myself, and I wasn't that impressed with the health care summit. It wasn't exactly the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation. Those are things I consider historic. I suppose if one hadn't paid any attention to the nearly year-long health care debate, and then watched yesterday's summit, it would have been illuminating. For anyone who has been paying attention, it was just more of the same. I'm trying to think of anything I learned that I didn't know before, and I can only think of one thing. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said if we took away all the profits of all the insurance companies, it would pay for 2 days of health care, leaving the other 363 days of the year still to be paid. I didn't know that before.

There were some ironic moments in the summit. The despicable Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) tried to claim that none of the Democrats were talking about using reconciliation to pass the health care reform bill, in response to Lamar Alexander urging Democrats not to use it. After Reid's denial that the Democrats were considering using reconciliation, several other Dems voiced their tacit approval of the tactic, including the President hiimself, thus disproving Reid. You always can tell when Harry Reid is lying…his lips move.

President Obama and Senator Alexander got into an argument over whether the Senate health care reform bill raises or lowers premiums. Alexander pointed out that CBO scoring shows premiums will be 10-13% higher than they were before health care reform. Obama said no, they would be 14-20% lower. Who was correct ? Alexander was correct, but there are some qualifications. If a person could keep the exact same private insurance they had now under ObamaCare, that person's premiums would be lower, as Obama claimed. However, under ObamaCare you CAN'T keep the exact same insurance you have now. That's the idea behind reform. Under ObamaCare, there would be all kinds of new government regulations (such as coverage of pre-existing conditions and a ban on recissions) which would drive your insurance premiums higher, as both the CBO and Alexander pointed out. You would get better coverage with ObamaCare, but it will cost more. Also, a lot of individual people would get cheaper coverage due to the subsidies under ObamaCare, but that doesn't drive down the overall cost, it merely transfers the burden from one person to another. The overall cost of ObamaCare is far higher than what we have now, but it will cover 30 million more people. As Obama said himself, covering all those people will cost money.

While I'm on the subject of cost, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) obliterated the Democrats dishonest cost estimates and deficit reductions claims for ObamaCare, as follows:

"The Majority Leader said the bill scores as reducing deficit by $131 billion over the next 10 years.

First a little bit about CBO: I work with them every single day; very good people; great professionals. They do their jobs well. But their job is to score what is placed in front of them. And what has been placed in front of them is a bill that is fill of gimmicks and smoke and mirrors.

Now what do I mean when I say that?

First off, the bill has ten years of tax increases and ten years of Medicare cuts to pay for six years of spending. The true ten year cost when subsidies kick-in? $2.3 trillion.

The bill is full of gimmicks that more than erase the false claim of deficit reduction:

- $52 billion of savings is claimed by counting increased Social Security payroll revenues. These dollars are already claimed for future Social Security beneficiaries, and claiming to offset the cost of this bill either means were double-counting or were not going to pay Social Security benefits.

- $72 billion in savings is claimed from the CLASS Act long-term care insurance. These so-called savings are not offsets, but rather premiums collected to pay for future benefits. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad has called these savings, A ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.

Additionally, the nearly half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts cannot be counted twice. Medicare is in dire need of reform in order to make certain that we can ensure health security for future seniors.

Using Medicare as a piggy bank, it raids a half trillion dollars from retirees health coverage to fund the creation of another open-ended health care entitlement.

The Presidents chief Medicare actuary says up to 20% of Medicare providers may go bankrupt or stop taking Medicare beneficiaries as a result. Millions of seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage will lose the coverage they now enjoy.

Objections to the policy aside, you cannot use these savings twice to both extend the life of Medicare and to pay for other spending. The half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts are either to extend the programs solvency or to reduce the cost of this deficit but not both as its authors claim.

When you strip away the double-counting of Medicare cuts, the so-called savings from Social Security payroll taxes and the CLASS Act, the deficit increases by $460 billion over first ten years and $1.4 trillion over second ten years.

Finally, one of the most expensive and most cynical of the gimmicks applies to Medicare physician payments, the so-called Doc Fix.

By your own estimate, the Doc Fix adds an additional $371 billion to the cost of health care reform. With the price tag beyond what most Americans could handle, the Majority decided to simply remove this costly provision and deal with it in a stand-alone bill.

Ignoring this additional cost does not remove it from the backs of taxpayers. Hiding spending doesnt reduce spending."

After this de-pantsing of health care reform costs, the President immediately changed the subject to Medicare Advantage. No Democrat offered a shred of evidence to counter Ryan. Good job, Rep. Ryan. The truth will set you (and us) free.

In general, I noticed that the Democrats tended to offer emotional pleas for health care reform, while Republicans tended to offer more logical solutions. A slew of Democrats told what I call 'poor little Jimmy' stories, about how poor little Jimmy needed a kidney transplant or something, and the mean old insurance company wouldn't pay for it, or poor little Jimmy's parents couldn't afford health insurance because Jimmy's dad lost his job, etc. Democrats specialize in using the sad story as a weapon. It's like they are saying Americans should go along with absolutely anything the Democrats propose, because the Democrats are so GOOD, so moral. This kind of anti-logical thinking can be dangerous, because if we bankrupt our country or destroy our health care system in the process of "fixing" health care insurance, we'll have even more 'poor little jimmy' stories than we have now. We can't think only with our hearts. We must think with our heads as well. I'd love to be able to wave a magic wand and have everybody get comprehensive health insurance that will cover everybody and everything for ten cents per month, but it just isn't realistic. As they say, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

In summary, if you look at health care reform as a moral obligation, a right, then you might favor ObamaCare, the costs be damned. If you look at it as a massive increase in entitlements when the country is already suffocating under the weight of existing entitlements, if you look at it as increasing taxes on our struggling economy and imposing new burdens on our already struggling businesses, if you look at it as another massive increase in the size of big government, then you are probably against ObamaCare. The polls show the majority of people are against ObamaCare (but for health care reform in general). This lends some popular support for the Republicans 'back to the drawing board' suggestion.

If you missed the health care summit, the Washington Post has a transcript here.

Back in October, the CBO estimated that enacting medical tort reform legislation with a $250,000 cap on damages for pain and suffering, along with a $500,000 cap on punitive damages, would save $54 billion over ten years. That's $54 billion in savings on Medicare/Medicaid alone, because the CBO estimates only government costs. If you add up the savings to the entire health care system, which the CBO estimates as 0.5% of health care costs, that comes to a savings of $11 billion per year, or $110 billion over a decade. The savings figures could be higher or lower depending on the damages caps. Other studies have shown the costs of defensive medicine associated with fears of malpractice lawsuits to be responsible for 18-28% of medical tests and 13% of hospitalizations. The actual cost savings with legitimate tort reform could be much, much greater than the CBO estimates.

Because the high cost of medical care is the core problem with the American health care system, and because those high costs are part of the reason our government is on an unsustainable path to bankruptcy, why would we NOT enact tort reform when it can save us so much money ? This shouldn't be a partisan issue. It's a common sense issue. It seems insane not to incorporate tort reform into ObamaCare, yet it is not there. The President has given lip service to the idea a few times, but he has never once vocalized a preference for caps for medical damages awards, never once said what those caps should be. If Obama truly wants to "bend down the cost curve," as he says repeatedly, tort reform is one sure way to do it.

Enter the trial lawyers, longtime campaign contributors to the Democratic party. Lawyers donated over $178 million to Democrats in the 2008 election cycle. 76% of lawyer donations went to Democrats. The trial lawyers and their back-pocket Democrats defeated former President Bush's attempt at medical liability reform in 2003 (Democrats voted unanimously against it), and the lawyers have successfully lobbied against tort reform in the current healthcare reform bills. The trial lawyers are now pressing Obama not to give in to significant tort reform in his upcoming meeting with Republicans on February 25th. From The Hill:

“I would hope this [tort reform] would be an area we just don’t go,” said Linda Lipsen, vice president for public affairs at the American Association for Justice, the trade group for trial attorneys.

Lipsen said. “The last thing Congress should be doing is eliminating people’s rights when the real issue is safety in hospitals.”

I wouldn't call $250,000/$500,000 awards for damages ($750,000 total) "eliminating people's rights" exactly. I'd say the lawyers are much more concerned about their big incomes being negatively affected. If the trial lawyers are sooo concerned with people's rights, if they are sooo worried about the people, maybe they could lower the 30-40% of the damages that they skim off the top of medical malpractice awards. Ask former Democratic VP candidate/presidential contender/ambulance chaser/lying-adulterer-while-his-wife-had-cancer/lying-paternity-denier John Edwards how he fared defending people's rights. He got very, very rich in the process. Maybe we don't need THAT. What we have here is lawyers living in mansions defending lawyers living in mansions. What we need is tort reform, then maybe we wouldn't have all those shysters trolling for clients with expensive television ads. Maybe then the lawsuits that were brought would be valid lawsuits, and we wouldn't be wasting billions more healthcare dollars on frivolous lawsuits. Americans WANT reform, even if the trial lawyers and their back-pocket Democrats do not.

Here's more from The Hill:

As recently as Tuesday, Obama floated the possibility of offering an olive branch to Republicans on malpractice reform as a gesture of bipartisanship. “I've said from the beginning of this debate I'd be willing to work on that [tort reform],” Obama remarked during a press briefing.

The White House announced on Friday that it will post a detailed health reform proposal online before the Feb. 25 bipartisan health summit, which Gregg was not invited to. It is unclear if that plan will be Obama’s own proposal or a merged version of the House and Senate-passed bills.

Obama says he is ready to "work on" tort reform, but he will arrive at the February 25th bipartisan health care meeting with a detailed health care reform plan already laid out.

Um, where is the bipartisanship there ? We don't need some nebulous Obama promise to "work on" tort reform. We already know Obama's promises don't mean much. We need tort reform (and other cost-saving measures) to be enacted, period. And if Obama arrives at the healthcare reform meeting with a detailed plan already in hand, what is there to be negotiated ? It sounds like that meeting will only be Obama challenging Republicans to back what he has already proposed, and him attempting to make Republicans look obstructionist if they don't. I hope I'm wrong about that, but if history is any judge…….I'm not.

"We've got to be non-ideological about our approach to [economic policy]. We've gotta make sure that our party understands that, like it or not, we have to have a financial system that is healthy and functioning. So we can't be demonizing, uh, every bank out there. We've got to be the party of business, small business and large business, because they produce jobs." –Barack Obama

I'm not sure whether to be happy that Obama has mastered the obvious by realizing that businesses produce jobs, or to be appalled that he has to remind Democrats that we need a healthy financial system whether the Dems LIKE IT OR NOT. What is the alternative to a healthy private financial system of banks ? The alternative is the government nationalizing the banking industry, aka, socialism. It therefore comes as no surprise to find that a majority of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism, according to a Gallup poll. Perhaps Obama is saying we must deal with these nasty private business entities until the Great Socialist Revolution sweeps all those evil businesses away. Which leads me directly to the next quote….

"This is a democracy. Look, I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant, you know, academically approved approach to health care [that] didn't have any kinds of legislative fingerprints on it. And just go ahead and have that passed. But that's not how it works in our democracy. Unfortunately what we end up having to do is to do a lot of negotiations with a lot of different people. Many of whom have their constituents' best interests at heart." –Barack Obama

Here we have the President complaining about our representative government, bemoaning the fact that he can't just pass his healthcare reform from above by royal decree. No, instead The Enlightened One has to deal with the unwashed masses, the interests of the common folk. Ewww. Darn the luck, there are actually people out there who don't agree with Obama (LOTS of people). Obama says he'd L-O-V-E to just sweep the interests of all those people aside. Our President may be a Constitutional law grad, but he doesn't seem to like the Constitution very much. The founders designed things precisely so a wannabe dictator like Obama could be held in check. L-O-V-E those founders.

"…if Congress decides we're not going to do it [healthcare reform], even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not. And that's how democracy works. There will be elections coming up, and they'll be able to make a determination and register their concerns." — Barack Obama

I hate to break it to you Barry, but elections are already making determinations about you and your healthcare reform. Those elections were held in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. The Democrats lost them all. The Dems even lost Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, and Kennedy was their patron saint of healthcare reform. And now, the first post-primary poll of the election for Obama's former Senate seat in Illinois has Republican Mark Kirk with a 46% to 40% lead over Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. The people are speaking, Barry, you just aren't listening. The latest Rassmussen poll has 58% against ObamaCare and only 40% in favor. But the actions of Obama and the Democrats are helping one group of people significantly – the Republicans. Politically dead a year ago after betraying so many conservative principles, Republicans are now even with the Democrats in the november House elections. The Washington Post reports:

Asked how they would vote in the November House elections, Americans split evenly — 46 percent siding with the Democrats, 46 percent with the Republicans. As recently as four months ago, Democrats held a 51 to 39 percent advantage on this question.

As the old saying goes, nothing helps put Republicans in office more than putting liberals in charge of things. Americans quickly recognize their mistake. Obama has done more for Republicans than they ever could have hoped for in their wildest dreams. Obama has given them life.

On to the terrorism front:

"I think that the most important thing for the public to understand is we're not handling any of these [terrorist] cases any different than the Bush administration handled them all through 9/11." –Barack Obama

Wait a minute here. Hasn't Obama spent the last two years telling us Bush fouled everything up ? Now all of a sudden he's using Bush to defend himself ??? Also, Bush didn't have the military commissions option available on 9/11. Obama does have them available. The whole idea is to keep IMPROVING how we handle terrorists.

The last quote isn't an Obamanation, but it's worth listing here:

"The Iranian nation, with its unity and god's grace, will punch the arrogance [of the Western powers] on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11) in a way that will leave them stunned." –Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Hmmm. That sounds like a threat, and February 11th is tomorrow. Hey, are the Iranians making it snow ? Stay tuned. Maybe Obama can propose more talks with Iran, without preconditions, of course. After all, it only takes a few words from Obama to change the world. Obama thinks so, anyway.

Republican Scott Brown's improbable Senate victory in the bluest of all blue states, Massachusetts, has sent the Democrats reeling. Their reflective navel-gazing has begun. I look at this as a wakeup call for the Democratic party. Will they now "get" it, or will they remain in denial ? Will they continue pushing policies the American people do not want ? If so, they will continue to isolate themselves, and they will continue to lose, as they have in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia this year.

It's too soon to make that call, but early indications are not promising. This morning I heard Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary, say the Dems just need to "retool their message." Wrong. That's not it. The people understand the message of the Democrats all too well. That's not the problem. The problem is, the people don't agree with the Democrats message. I heard MS-NBC's Norah O'Donnell blame the loss on Coakley not taking the campaign seriously enough. That's waaay wrong. Nobody takes a Senate seat lightly, and Martha Coakley certainly didn't. O'Donnell then said Coakley lost due to anti-incumbent sentiment. That's a pretty bizarre statement, considering Coakley wasn't the incumbent.

The excuses will continue, but Coakley lost because the American people are turning against all the divisiveness, the catering to special interests, the corruption, the partisan business as usual, and the wasteful big government arrogance of Washington D.C. Scott Brown tapped into America's dissatisfaction, and the silent majority (independents) went with him, overcoming the Democrats 3-1 voter advantage over Republicans in Massachusetts. Nowhere is the dissatisfaction of the American people more evident than in the Tea Party protest movement (which the Democratic party has arrogantly denigrated to the nth degree), and Scott Brown got that support, by saying things like this, from his victory speech:

Most of all, I will remember that while the honor is mine, this Senate seat belongs to no one person and no political party – and as I have said before, and you said loud and clear today, it is the people’s seat…When I first started running, I asked for a lot of help, because I knew it was going to be me against the machine. I was wrong, it was all of us against the machine… I go to Washington as the representative of no faction or interest, answering only to my conscience and to the people.

I certainly hope Scott Brown means it when he says he will represent no faction or interest, but rather the American people. We shall see. He's certainly right that it is all of us against the machine. This government is, after all, supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people. It's not supposed to be for Goldman Sachs, the health insurance companies, the lawyers, the unions, or any other particular special interest. We are all in this together. We should pursue policies that are responsible for the nation as a whole. That means, first – national security. Second – fiscal responsibility.

Brown also tapped into the disagreement the American people have with some of the policies of the Democrats, and to this, the Democrats SHOULD take heed (and the Republicans too, for that matter):

In every corner of our state, I met with people, looked them in the eye, shook their hand, and asked them for their vote. I didn’t worry about their party affiliation, and they didn’t worry about mine. It was simply shared conviction that brought us all together.

One thing is clear, voters do not want the trillion-dollar health care bill that is being forced on the American people.

This bill is not being debated openly and fairly. It will raise taxes, hurt Medicare, destroy jobs, and run our nation deeper into debt. It is not in the interest of our state or country – we can do better.

When in Washington, I will work in the Senate with Democrats and Republicans to reform health care in an open and honest way. No more closed-door meetings or back room deals by an out of touch party leadership. No more hiding costs, concealing taxes, collaborating with special interests, and leaving more trillions in debt for our children to pay.

In health care, we need to start fresh, work together, and do the job right. Once again, we can do better.

I will work in the Senate to put government back on the side of people who create jobs, and the millions of people who need jobs – and as President John F. Kennedy taught us, that starts with an across the board tax cut for individuals and businesses that will create jobs and stimulate the economy. It's that simple!

I will work in the Senate to defend our nation’s interests and to keep our military second to none. As a lieutenant colonel and 30-year member of the Army National Guard, I will keep faith with all who serve, and get our veterans all the benefits they deserve.

And let me say this, with respect to those who wish to harm us, I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation – they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.

Raising taxes, taking over our health care, and giving new rights to terrorists is the wrong agenda for our country. What I've heard again and again on the campaign trail, is that our political leaders have grown aloof from the people, impatient with dissent, and comfortable in the back room making deals. And we can do better.

They thought you were on board with all of their ambitions. They thought they owned your vote. They thought they couldn’t lose. But tonight, you and you and you have set them straight.

Dissent is the lifeblood of any democracy, which the Democrats should pause to consider before they viciously and falsely attack the Tea Party movement, and last night in Massachusetts, dissent won. Big time.

This morning on the Blog Of Mass Destruction, my friend the Reverend, a liberal by anyone's standard, reminded me that Thomas Jefferson was the founder of the Democratic party……..as if the current Democratic party bears any resemblance whatsoever to the one Jefferson represented. It certainly does not, and I'll leave you with the following Jefferson quote to explain exactly why not:

"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government." – Thomas Jefferson

Does that sound like any current Democrat you know ? Not by a country mile. The current Democrats see almost no bounds for the government (except maybe in granting terrorists the full civil rights of American citizenship). They want the government to intrude on everything and everyone. THAT is the problem, and that is the Massachusetts and Tea Party message.

We hope the Democrats are listening.

There is an interesting Senate election taking place in Massachusetts, one that could have major implications on whether or not the massively unpopular ObamaCare health reform legislation is unilaterally rammed through by the Democrats in Congress. The special election is tomorrow, when either the Democrat, Martha Coakley, or the infidel, er, I mean, the Republican, Scott Brown, will take over the seat vacated by Ted Kennedy's death. Normally, a Republican would have as much chance of winning that Senate seat as a black man would have of becoming a Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, but something is up in Massachusetts, a state that is bluer than blue (and sadder than sad, as Crystal Gayle would sing). Even though only 12% of Massachusetts voters are Republicans, while 37% are Democrats, the Republican Scott Brown has a narrow lead in the polling. The election could go either way.

How could this be happening, in Taxachusetts of all places ? That's a poser, alright. There is no doubt that Coakley is the better choice. Here she is being interviewed by a reporter for the Weekly Standard:

That's the reporter on the ground in the bottom right hand corner of the photo, after he was pushed down by a Coakley thug while daring to ask the rightful heir to Ted Kennedy's throne a couple questions. Clearly, Coakley is a woman of the people, kinda like Evita. No word yet on how many pairs of shoes Martha Coakley owns.

Coakley also has a clear grasp of the issues, as exemplified by her groundbreaking statement that there are no more terrorists in Afghanistan. Apparently, Coakley believes that the rising number of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan in 2009 were all committed by disgruntled postal workers or something. I really can't say.

A Coakley attack ad even misspelled the word Massachusetts. The Coakley version was 'Massachusettes.' Dan Quayle could not be reached for comment on his 'potatoe' farm. I'm waiting for Coakley to become a national joke for the next twenty years, but that probably won't happen. After all, Coakley is not an infidel, er, I mean, a Republican, so the standards are different.

Trying to prove how her ethical standards rival those of her predecessor, Senator Kennedy, Coakley even has her own version of Chappaquiddick. In the Coakley version, nobody lost their life, which gives her an ethical leg-up on Kennedy, but Coakley did knowingly seek to keep an innocent man in prison for political gain. That man's name was Gerald Amirault, who was falsely imprisoned for sexual abuse. Here was Coakley's contribution:

And that’s where ambition-driven District Attorney Martha Coakley enters the picture. By 2001, no person with two brain cells to rub together believed that the prosecution of the Amiraults was anything other than a travesty of justice. But Coakley, placing more value on defending the infallibility of her office and on appearing tough on crime than on seeing that injustice be rectified, embarked on a public-relations crusade to keep Gerald Amirault behind bars. As a result, Gerald languished in prison for another three years.

Nice. That's who we want in the Senate, a person who puts political aspirations above justice. Come to think of it, Coakley will fit right in.

The Democrats are so worried that Scott Brown might pull off a miracle upset in Massachusetts (Brown is up 5 points in the latest poll) that they sent in their big gun – none other than the light-skinned President with no negro dialect unless he wants one, Barack Obama. The President described the situation:

"Understand what's at stake here: It's whether we're going forward or going backward," Obama told a crowd of 1,500 at Northeastern University. "As much progress as we've made, I can't do it alone."

Beyond the silliness of Obama's 'my way or the highway' position on health care reform, this is a bit of a curious strategy for Obama to take, seeing as how Massachusetts voters are firmly AGAINST ObamaCare (by 15 points), as is the rest of America.

It is the consensus that Scott Brown has decisively won the debates with Coakley, in part explaining how Coakley went from over 30 points ahead in november to trailing now, a stunning turnaround. It seems once people looked past the word 'Democrat' on Coakley's resume, they didn't much like what they saw, even when the debates contained such fair and unbalanced question as the following one from the fairly unbalanced moderator David Gergen, who acted as if Scott Brown was, as I said before, an infidel. Here's the arrogant question from Gergen, along with the complete takedown of Gergen in the answer from Republican Scott Brown:

CNN senior political analyst David Gergen had to be reminded of this fact [that Democrats are not entitled to Senate seats] Monday as he moderated a debate between the two candidates for Massachusetts's open Senate seat. He asked Republican candidate Scott Brown whether he'd be willing to "sit in Teddy Kennedy's seat and [say] I'm going to be the person who's going to block it [liberal health care policy] for another 15 years."
But Brown, refusing to take for granted Gergen's blatantly left-wing premises, responded instead: "Well, with all due respect it's not the Kennedys' seat, and it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat."

Obviously, the infidel Brown doesn't think like a liberal. He doesn't know about the Democrats entitlement mentality. He has the audacity to think the voters should decide.

All I can say is, if Brown wins, thereby breaking the filibuster-proof majority of the Democrats in the Senate, then we'll see just how democratic the Democrats really are, and we'll see how many of them will risk losing their own Congressional seats to pass an ObamaCare bill against the wishes of the American people. Should be interesting. The economic woes of Massachusetts are causing many there to wake up, and they've been trying to shake off that Taxachusetts label. In addition, Massachusetts has seen firsthand what happens when the government mandates universal health coverage, promising to lower premiums and reduce costs. RomneyCare in Massachusetts has accomplished neither, and even Mitt Romney himself says it would be a bad model for the country to follow.

This column is dedicated to the folks who believe ObamaCare, with it's alleged 31 million more people being covered by health insurance, and with it's 2,500 pages of myriad rules, regulations, and taxes being implemented on business and the citizenry by Congress…..will somehow make health care LESS expensive. To all such folks, I bestow upon you the Reality Deniers Of The Year award.

The ObamaCare debacle is so massive and will ravage such a huge slice of our economy that I should have bestowed the Reality Deniers Of The Decade award on the aforementioned people, especially when the previous decade ended only a few days ago, right ?

Except the previous decade didn't end a few days ago, no matter how often we hear the news media say it did. That's something we believe that just isn't so. Because there was no year zero on our calendar, the first year A.D. was year one. That means means a new decade doesn't start until year 11. Our next decade starts on january 1, 2011, not 2010.

That's a small thing, but columnist Walter Williams mentioned it in his latest article, in which he tackled another thing we believe is true but just isn't so. I've even bought into this false belief myself, more than I should have. The belief is that America doesn't make anything anymore, that we've lost our manufacturing sector. This belief comes from all the losses of manufacturing jobs in this country over the last thiry years. The job loss is true, but much of that loss is due to technological advances in industry that make manufacturing less labor intensive. From the Williams piece:

According to the Federal Reserve, the dollar value of U.S. manufacturing output in November was $2.72 trillion (in 2000 dollars). Today's manufacturing worker is so productive that the value of his average output is $234,220. Output per worker is three times as high as it was in 1980 and twice as high as it was in 1990. For the year 2008, the Federal Reserve estimates that the value of U.S. manufacturing output was about $3.7 trillion (in 2008 dollars). If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate economy, with its own GDP, it would be tied with Germany as the world's fourth richest economy. The GDPs are: U.S. ($14.2 trillion), Japan ($4.9 trillion), China ($4.3 trillion), U.S. manufacturing ($3.7 trillion), Germany ($3.7 trillion), France ($2.9 trillion) and the United Kingdom ($2.7 trillion).

With a manufacturing sector that produces more revenue than the entire GDP of all but two other countries, it sure seems we still make things here in the U.S., lots of things. It just doesn't take as many people to make them. Are we to roll back our technological advances just so we can employ more people ? I don't think so. Such a move WOULD sound the death knell for our manufacturing sector. Just as advances in the agricultural industry over the last century made farming far less labor intensive, so it is with manufacturing today. We could go the China route and pay manufacturing workers slave wages to produce cheap goods, but that isn't a desirable solution either. What we must do is adapt to a changing world. That is always going to be what we have to do to succeed. Instead of saying 'America doesn't make anything anymore,' it would be more accurate to say 'America doesn't make everything anymore.'

The next belief some hold that just isn't true is about the Guantanamo Bay prison. Even President Obama believes closing Gitmo will lessen the fervor of terrorists to attack us. Obama says Gitmo is a key recruiting tool of the jihadist movement. This is absolute nonsense. In order to share Obama's feeling, you have to believe that the simple act of moving the terrorists from Cuba to Illinois will somehow make the terrorists respond, "okay, things are alright now." This is absurdity taken to the nth degree. We'll still be holding the terrorists in prison, it'll just be in a different place. The idea that this will somehow appease the Islamic jihadists is inane. Do you really think they care WHERE Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his like-minded brethren are being held by the U.S. ??? It's the fact WE ARE HOLDING THEM that they care about. The fact we are fighting them in the first place is what they care about. The closing of Gitmo will have zero effect on the recruitment of jihadists. ZERO. ZILCH. NADA. Of course, we could always release more terrorists to Yemen or some other country sympathetic to the jihadists, as we've been doing, in the hopes it will appease the terrorists. That WOULD have an effect on terrorist recruitment. It would go UP by the number of terrorists we released, and it already has. Our lax policies have already resulted in over 70 terrorists going back to the jihadist fight against us. Brilliant policy, eh ? Let's try to appease ruthless murdering religious extremists who wish to establish dominance over the entire world. I'm certain that will work (NOT).

My final belief that just isn't so is about enacting more government entitlements in a country already $12 trillion in debt, that can't pay for all the unfunded entitlements already in existence, and with a government that invariably robs us blind, as it has with Social Security. That is completely insane thinking, but liberals think it's the right way to go, because they somehow believe it's "compassionate." (to bankrupt the entire nation).

But you've all heard me rant on about that enough already, so I'll spare you the details this time. Peace out.

Here's the distinguished gentleman from Montana, Democratic Senator Max Baucus, excoriating Republicans for not going along with ObamaCare, and sounding like he just got back from a long lunch with the Jagermeister Girls.

It appears Democrats weren't kidding when they said health care reform was done in the spirit(s) of Ted Kennedy.

Next up on the Dem agenda – Universal Bar Tab Coverage.

Maybe Baucus is drowning his sorrows over the heat he's taking for giving his girlfriend a $14,000 raise, taking her on a taxpayer-funded trip to Southeast Asia, and nominating her for a U.S. attorney job.

And always remember, Dems define bipartisanship as – the Democratic agenda is implemented and Republican ideas are ignored, just as it was with health care reform, which was crafted in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) office with only Baucus and a couple other Democrats knowing what was in it until just before the Senate vote. Reid even bribed several Democratic Senators with taxpayer funds to obtain the needed 60 votes. Then when Senator Jim Demint (R-SC) introduced an amendment to stop using earmarks to buy votes on other legislation, guess who opposed it and shot it down ??? That would be the DEMOCRATS, who voted instead to continue the culture of corruption.

No wonder Baucus had to get a buzz on to make that speech on the Senate floor. His conscience, if he has one, would have prevented him from making it sober.

Rassmussen Reports conducted an interesting poll that included Tea Party candidates on a generic congressional ballot. The results of the three-way race ???

Democrats – 36%
Tea Party – 23%
Republican – 18%
Undecided – 22%

More results from the poll:

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.

Among Republican voters, 39% say they’d vote for the GOP candidate, but 33% favor the Tea Party option.

This shows that non-Democrat voters prefer the Tea Party movement to the GOP. Pretty interesting when you consider the Tea Party isn't even a political party and has no candidates for office. The Rassmussen poll was more of an ideological exercise than anything else, but it reflects the mood of the public. Unaffiliated voters prefer the Tea Party movement to both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans barely beat the Tea Party among REPUBLICAN voters. In addition, Rasmussen's daily presidential tracking poll showed that only 55% of conservatives consider themselves Republicans. This is what happens when Republicans abandon conservative principles, as they did during the Bush presidency, but many Republicans and most of the mainstream media (who want the Democrats to win) are still promoting the silly idea that the GOP needs to move to the center to become successful. I'd say the polling shows precisely the opposite.

There is some good news for the GOP, however. They are leading the Democrats on the Rassmussen generic congressional ballot by 44% to 37%. This is more a reflection of dissatisfaction with the policies of President Obama and the Democratic Congress than any endorsement of the GOP in my opinion, especially regarding the health care reform effort moving it's way through Congress. Public issue polling backs up this assertion, as follows:

November 24th Rassmussen ObamaCare poll - 56% opposed, 38% in favor.
November 18th Quinnipiac ObamaCare poll - 51% opposed, 35% in favor.
RealClearPolitics (average of all polls) on ObamaCare – 49% opposed, 40% in favor.

Obama's overall approval rating has been steadily dropping since his inauguration, and Quinnipiac had his approval rating at 48% recently, the first time Obama has dropped below 50% approval.

The RealClearPolitics poll of Congressional Job Approval - 27% approve, 64.3% disapprove.

My utopian solution would be to dismantle the Republican party and replace it with something better, a lot better, but I know that's not going to happen anytime soon, if ever. Democrats and Republicans set the rules for political candidates, and they design those rules to heavily favor Democrats and Republicans. The game is rigged to perpetuate a two-party monopoly (I guess "duopoly" would be the more correct term).

Bottom line message to both Democratic and Republican politicians….we don't like you very much.

Message to liberals – Encourage a third party to blossom around the Tea Party movement (instead of calling them crazy racist nutjobs. Liberals only discredit liberals when they resort to such tactics). That would split the vote and allow liberals to crawl through the divide to victory, even though liberals poll the lowest of all, far lower than conservatives and moderates.

1. How can President Obama hold a jobs summit and not invite the Chamber Of Commerce ? That's like holding a football game and forgetting to invite the offense.

2. How can the unemployment rate drop from 10.2% to 10% when 11,000 more jobs were lost in november 2009 ?

3. From 1776 to 1913, the value of the dollar increased by 13%. In 1913, the Federal Reserve was implemented. Since 1913, the value of the dollar has dropped by 92%. Why do we have a Federal Reserve ?

4. Why would the President announce a withdrawal date of july 2011 from a war that is not yet won ?

5. Why would President Obama call the november 2009 jobs report "the best jobs report since december 2007" and talk about White House administration officials hugging each other in joy over the good news, when the november unemployment rate is 10% and the december 2007 unemployment rate was 4.9% ? FYI – the january 2008 unemployment rate was also 4.9%.

6. Why are the extramarital affairs of golfer Tiger Woods a big news story ?

7. If the Federal Reserve prints money out of thin air, backed by nothing, in order to, say, lend $85 billion to AIG, and then AIG pays back that money from profits, isn't the net effect nothing but a devaluation of the dollar ?

8. Isn't a devaluation of the dollar nothing but a hidden tax on the assets of all Americans ?

9. If a citizen continually spends more money than he/she makes, he/she will go bankrupt. How is it any different when the government does the same thing, except that the government will take all the citizens down along with it ?

10. Why would we hand health care over to government control when the part of health care the government does control (Medicare/Medicaid) is already so far in the red ?

11. How can the Obama stimulus possibly be working when it is based upon money borrowed or printed out of thin air, backed by nothing, and is therefore entirely artificial ? (See questions #3, #7, and #8).

12. If question #11 is too confusing, perhaps this will help simplify the matter. Does a man up to his neck in credit card debt improve his financial situation by getting more credit cards ?

13. What is wrong with asking the President of the United States to produce his original birth certificate ?

14. Is there any major Obama policy that is supported by the American people ?

15. Why don't we just put Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in front of a firing squad and save everyone a lot of time and money ?

16. How do tax increases ever help the private sector economy ?

17. Shouldn't there have to be at least one act of Tea Party-related violence (from the Tea Party side) before the media denounces the crazy, violent, extremist Tea Partiers ?

18. On the same subject, why is it considered crazy and extreme to be in favor of fiscal responsibility, liberty, and the U.S. Constitution, as the Tea Partiers are ? What does that say about the state of our country ?

19. On the jobs front, which Obama policies are pro-business ?

20. Why are Democrats now in favor of cutting Medicare, when they've been against Medicare cuts for four decades ?

One of the most useful strategies known to politicians is some variation on the CHANGE theme, one of the keywords in President Obama's 2008 campaign. The electorate almost always desires CHANGE, because politicians almost always foul things up, making CHANGE almost always sound great. I'm hard-pressed to think of a politician who ran on an "I'll keep things exactly the same" platform. If there ever was one, he/she probably lost the election. Here are a few of the CHANGE-based campaign slogans used by politicians through the years:

- Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago ? – Ronald Reagan, 1984, (CHANGE from Jimmy Carter).
- A Chicken In Every Pot. A Car In Every Garage - Herbert Hoover, 1928, (CHANGE that will get you more stuff).
- Back To Normalcy - Warren G. Harding, 1920 (CHANGE from WWI).
- A Time For Greatness - John F. Kennedy, 1960 (CHANGE for the better).
- It's Time To CHANGE America - Bill Clinton, 1992 (general CHANGE)
- To Begin Anew - Eugene McCarthy, 1968 (start the CHANGE all over again)
- CHANGE We Can Believe In - Barack Obama, 2008 (CHANGE, and this time we mean it !)

The CHANGE theme isn't unique to the USA. In 1957, Nikiti Kruschev's CHANGE vision for the Soviet economy was called Catch Up And Overtake America (take heed, leftists. If Marxism was so great, the Soviets wouldn't have needed to "catch up." They never did, btw. They collapsed instead).

CHANGE works with the voters, and obviously, it worked for Obama. He was more CHANGE-believable than John McCain (one of McCain's campaign slogans was also CHANGED-based – Reform. Prosperity. Peace). McCain was a Republican following a Republican administration, and there was also that awkward photo of McCain hugging President George W. Bush. McCain didn't seem as CHANGE-ey as Obama, plus Obama is half-black, giving him many CHANGE bonus points. Clearly, the CHANGE guy who would "fundamentally transform America" and "CHANGE the way Washington D.C does business" was Obama. Our new prez was going to get rid of the lobbyists and special interests, and all that.

But something funny happens after the elections are over. The new President actually has to run things, and CHANGE becomes nothing more than a word. That is illustrated quite well by the way President Obama has conducted health care reform. Listen to this description of how Obama handled the health care discussions, and then tell me how CHANGE-ey it sounds to you. From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's top aides met frequently with lobbyists and health care industry heavyweights as his administration pieced together a national health care overhaul, according to White House visitor records obtained by The Associated Press.

The records, obtained Wednesday, disclose visits by a broad cross-section of the people most involved in the health care debate, weighted heavily toward those who want to overhaul the system.

The list includes George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Health Plans; Scott Serota, president and CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association; Kenneth Kies, a Washington lobbyist who represents Blue Cross/Blue Shield, among other clients; Billy Tauzin, head of PhRMA, the drug industry lobby; Richard Umbdenstock, chief of the American Hospital Association, and numerous lobbyists.

The AP in early August asked the White House to produce records identifying communications that top Obama aides…The records list the kinds of people usually involved in Washington policymaking: business, union and trade association executives, lobbyists and political strategists. Wednesday's disclosure was significant because of Obama's campaign promise to change business as usual in Washington, and because he voluntarily released records showing the access of special interests as the administration crafted national health care policy.

Earlier this year, the White House announced agreements under which hospitals and the drug industry promised cost savings in return for the overhaul's expected expansion in the number of insured patients. The arrangements were hammered out in private meetings, drawing comparisons to Vice President Dick Cheney's secret talks with the energy industry as he helped President George W. Bush draft a national energy policy.

White House officials met repeatedly with the American Medical Association, which has pushed hard — over the objections of some physicians — for the health overhaul and a corresponding pay hike for doctors.

It pretty much sounds like the same old, same old to me. The Obama administration gets a couple points for releasing the records of these private meetings (Bush fought against such releases during energy policy discussions), but remember that Obama promised to hold the health care hearings on C-SPAN, which he did not do. Another broken promise.

This special interest catering is why we have health care bills that raise costs instead of lowering them, that mandate coverage for Americans to vastly increase the business of the insurance companies, that don't allow the negotiation of significantly lower drug prices, that guts Medicare Advantage in order to increase AARP's Medi-Gap insurance sales, that allows Medicaid prices to be negotiated with the AMA, and that don't include tort reform (to benefit trial lawyers).

Congressional health care votes are even being bought outright, as in the $100 million bribe to get the vote of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA). Conservative talker Glenn Beck drew some heat for calling Landrieu a prostitute following that little bit of D.C. quid pro quo. I agree with Beck's criticizers. Why did Beck single out Landrieu ? There are a slew of whores operating inside the D.C. Beltway. Landrieu is but one of many. That's how they do business in D.C. They rob the johns taxpayers blind in order to please the special interests. That's standard operating procedure. The part that gets me steamed is when they call that CHANGE.

Also, I've mentioned this before, but the whores in Washington, D.C. are lying their dishonest fannies off about how much health care reform is really going to cost.

I favor health care reform, but I cannot favor this. Back to the drawing board. It's time for a CHANGE. As usual.

Here's President Obama doing his best Judge Roy Bean impersonation during an NBC interview:

NBC: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — can you understand why it is offensive to some for this terrorist to get all the legal privileges of any American citizen?
Obama: I don’t think it will be offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.

Vintage Bean – we'll give him a fair trial, and then we'll hang him. What a shining example of American justice.

I'm still waiting for any reporter to ask the obvious followup question…what if KSM is found not guilty ? Will we let him go free ?
===
In a related event, the group Organizing For America, formerly known as Obama For America, formerly known as Soiled Panties For America, has identified a true danger to our country. No, it's not KSM coming to New York City to espouse his jihadist hate, or homegrown jihadist Nidal Hasan shooting 40 people at Fort Hood (Obama tried to delay the Congressional investigation into Hasan's massacre. Kudos to Joe Lieberman and others for having none of that). No, those things aren't dangers to America. The REAL danger to America is, wait for it………Sarah Palin's book tour.

"It's dangerous," Organizing for America Director Mitch Stewart said of Palin's book tour. He continued:
"Remember, this is the person who coined the term 'Death Panels' — and opened the flood gates for months of false attacks by special interests and partisan extremists. Whatever lie comes next will be widely covered by the media, then constantly echoed by right-wing attack groups and others who are trying to defeat reform."

Stewart asks supporters to help raise $500,000 to "push back against Sarah Palin and her allies."

Remember, Palin's book isn't even a political tract. It's just a memoir, yet the libs are still going batty over it. I guess free speech IS dangerous to the Soiled Panties For America group, but I'm thinking that's THEIR problem. Btw, the Death Panels will be trying to figure out how to cut half a trillion bucks out of Medicare if the health care reform bill passes, in order that it doesn't "add a dime to the deficit."
====
Next up is Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) telling one lie after another about passing the health care reform bill that Americans are against:

Let's review.

Reid said, "everyone agrees we must move forward (with the health care reform bill)."

The truth – a recent CNN poll showed that 72% of Americans are against the Democrats health care bill. Only 26% support it.

Reid said, "our plan saves lives, saves money, and saves Medicare."

The truth – the bill cuts nearly $500 billion from Medicare, and will cost $849 billion. The $849 billion figure isn't even accurate, because the benefits don't kick in until 2014. If the bill is scored from when the benefits start, it costs more like $1.5-2 trillion. More lies and number fudging from the Democrats. Even individual health care premiums rise with this bill.

Reid said, "They'll see the Republican alternative, which I'm sorry to say is non-existent, so obviously it keeps our broken system just the way it is, and let's it get even worse."

The truth – Republicans have offered an alternative, and it drives down costs and insurance premiums, which was supposed to be one of the primary goals of health care reform. The obvious shortfall of the GOP plan is that it doesn't cover as many of the uninsured as the Democrats plan does, but it's actually the Dems plan that makes health care costs rise.

Harry "the Iraq war is lost" Reid never tells the truth about anything. If any Senator loses his seat in the 2010 elections, I hope it's Reid.
===
Back when the stimulus package was passed, President Obama claimed that 90% of the jobs created or saved would be in the private sector, and that unemployment would not go past 8%. Both of those claims are demonstrably false, and the administration's claim that 650,000 or a million jobs have been created or saved (the number changes depending on which administration official you talk to) have been exposed as wild exaggerations. Still, I thought the recent attacks by Republican Congressmen on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner were over-the-top and politically motivated. You can't expect jobs to turn around this quickly during a recession this serious, and there are some encouraging signs that the recession has bottomed out (for now. The real recession/depression is coming a few years down the road, due to our continued exploding debt). Another problem going forward is our loose fiscal policy, and here's an exchange between Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Geithner that delves into that issue:

Hang on, America. It's going to be a bumpy ride. Anyone who thinks our problems have been solved by merely printing or borrowing tons more money, as our government has done, is in for a very rude awakening.

"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.

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.

Here's Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Barack Obama, speaking to CNN about Fox News:

I don't know how a clip could illustrated the dishonesty of politics any more than this clip does. When Jarrett is asked if Fox News is biased, she immediately answers "Of course they are biased. Of course they are." When CNN interviewer Campbell Brown follows up immediately by asking if MSNBC is also biased, Jarrett starts backtracking and deflecting, never answering the question (correct answer – Of course MSNBC is biased. Of course they are). Jarrett said, "Actually, I don't want to generalize all of Fox is biased or that another station is biased. I think what we want to do is look at it on a case-by-case basis. When we see a pattern of distortion, we're going to be honest about that pattern of distortion….We're actually calling everybody out. So this isn't anything that's simply directed at Fox. We just want the American people to have a really clear understanding."

Well, that's funny. I haven't heard the Obama administration call out any other network than Fox News. In fact, MSNBC's opinion show anchors were invited to the White House for a cozy little chat with Obama. Liar, liar, pants of fire, Ms. Jarrett.

And did you get a load of Jarrett saying on the video that the White House is "going to speak truth to power" ????? Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the White House IS THE POWER.

Valerie Jarrett admitted what this was really about. It's about health care reform, and the fact that Obama is having a difficult go of it. The majority of the American people are against it, and the majority of the American people are turning against Obama on the issues in general. It has become a disturbing trend of this administration to demonize anyone and everyone who gets in it's way. The insurance companies, the drug companies, the Chamber of Commerce, doctors, whomever. Obama even sank so low as to say doctors were cutting people's feet off for profit, for chrissakes. If you have to resort to demonizing people whose job is literally to save other people's lives, then you have a problem.

Politicians are professional liars by trade. You can choose to believe in the current bunch of liars if you wish, but I sure don't. You may think it's fine for the government to force all Americans to buy health insurance as a condition of residency, but I don't. I guess we better change that old saying about death and taxes to death, taxes, and health insurance. The current bunch of professional liars is also bankrupting the country faster than any other. This administration also seems more partisan than any other in memory. I don't hear Obama talk about a problem that he doesn't blame on someone else first. To hear Obama talk, it seems there was no America prior to George W. Bush, because all the problems seem to have originated from that one man.

And do any of you really believe that ObamaCare won't add one dime to the deficit ??? Really ??? Do you really believe Congress will cut $400-500 billion from Medicare to make that happen ? Really ???

If you are naive enough to believe that, check out this article on the "doctor fix" for Medicare, which would have added $247 billion to the deficit if the Republicans and thirteen Democrats hadn't voted it down. The Democrats tried to separate that $247 billion in debt out of ObamaCare and pass it as a standalone measure, so that ObamaCare "wouldn't add a dime to the deficit." (except for the $247 billion, of course).

Like I said, politicians are professional liars. The current group of liars isn't even particularly good at lying. It's just that the media has, to date, let them get away with it. It's time for that to stop. It's time for the press to be the ones speaking truth to power, as is their job. The White House is only speaking THEIR truth. That's not necessarily THE truth.

People always act in their own financial self-interest. Ditto for organizations. For instance, let's say you have a choice between two competing health care plans with the same coverage. Company A offers the plan for $200 per month, and Company B offers the plan for $400 per month. It's pretty obvious you'd choose Company A, and Company B wouldn't make any sales. Organizations act in exactly the same way. When the Senate Finance Committee passed a health care reform bill that taxes medical devices at a rate of $39 billion over 10 years (raising the cost of health care), lobbyists for the medical industry descend on Washington D.C. to fight for their self-interest, against those taxes. When the Senate health care bill imposes a $6.1 billion fee on health insurers (raising the cost of health care), lobbyists for the insurance companies descend on Washington D.C. to fight for their self-interest, against those taxes. When the Senate health care bill imposes 40% taxes on so-called "Cadillac" health care insurance plans, the lobbyists for the unions descend on Washington D.C. to fight for their self-interest, against those taxes. When the Senate Health Care bill cuts $100 billion from Medicare Advantage programs (lowering the cost and quality of health care), lobbyists for the insurers who provide those plans descend on Washington D.C. When the Senate Finance health care bill has a provision to create a commission to oversee cuts in Medicare (lowering the cost and quality of health care), lobbyists for doctors descend on Washington D.C. to complain that their Medicare reimbursement rates are being cut.

This is one of the difficulties in passing something as large as health care reform. We have an array of varied business concerns all bargaining in their own self-interest. They all agree somebody must be taxed, they just don't want it to be them. You can't blame any of them, really. They are just looking out for their own financial well-being.

There is another organization that I believe is looking out for it's self-interest in the health care debate as well, but nobody talks about it. It's a very large organization known as the federal government. In my last post, I wrote about how the government is so deeply in debt that it will ultimately destroy the American economy. The government is fully aware of this, though they seldom mention it, and seldom seem to prioritize it unless it's around election time, after which they forget all about it, and continue merrily spending us into oblivion. The government, like every other self-interested concern, doesn't want to cut the size of government. They don't want to rein themselves in by cutting government spending. They want to increase government spending, and boy, do they. That's what a big portion of Obama's stimulus package was for, to keep the government from having to make the painful cuts that every other business concern in the country had to make during this recession. Government is the one organization that has actually grown during the recession. When the government says things would have been even worse without the stimulus package, this is mostly what they mean. The stimulus package was largely a bailout of government, unpaid for and added to the national debt. The taxpayers will have to make up that money at some unspecified future point.

This leads me to the health care reform bill(s), and the incentives included therein. Health care reform started out as a moral mandate to achieve universal health care coverage, but that goal has been abandoned. Instead, we have a mandate from the government that employers and individuals must purchase health care insurance or pay a penalty (tax) to the government. President Obama continues to say that nobody will be "required" to change their health insurance if they like it. The word "required" is key. The President is correct, nobody will be required to change their health insurance, but what will they be incentivized to do ? In other words, what will be the response of employers and individuals according to their own self-interest ? To understand that, all we have to do is look at the size of the penalty tax versus the cost of health insurance. It's also vitally important to keep in mind the reason everybody doesn't have health insurance now. It's because THEY CAN'T AFFORD IT, or they just choose not to buy it. Here's how Business Week describes the individual penalties:

In the bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee on Oct. 13, there are no fines at all the first year it goes into effect, in 2013. In 2014 individuals would have to shell out $200 in annual penalties if they choose to forgo insurance, and by 2017, the number jumps to $750. That's starting to sound like a meaningful sum. But consider that the average yearly insurance premium for an individual policy is around $5,000. For just a few hundred dollars during the first years the law is in place, a healthy person might decide to forgo the costly security of insurance

Paying a fine of $200-$750 to the government, as opposed to shelling out $5,000 in health care insurance premiums seems to incentivize many people to just pay the far smaller amount to the government. Good for the government, because it raises their revenues, but not so good if universal health care is really the goal. I'm against the whole idea of government forcing people in the first place, but if they are forcing people, shouldn't they at least force them in the right direction, instead of setting up a system that incentivizes people to just pay more in taxes ?

The incentives for employers are even worse. The Senate Finance health reform bill would require employers with 50 or more employees to cover their employees or pay a fine of up to $400 per employee. That's far less than the actual cost of health care insurance, so employers would be incentivized to drop health insurance coverage for their employees altogether and just pay the penalty tax instead. That would be in the employers self-interest, and again, the government cashes in with more tax revenue. Then all those uncovered employees are required to buy their own insurance or pay the individual penalty, and the government cashes in one more time.

In conclusion, I ask, who is the government really looking out for – you, or itself ?

I've been waiting a long time for some hard numbers to come out on health care reform. We finally have at least some ballpark estimates on what individual health insurance policies will cost under the various reform packages floating around Congress, courtesy of Kaiser. Find some numbers at the following link.

Health Reform Subsidy Calculator

Health care reform comes down to two things –

1) You will be forced to purchase health insurance.
2) The government will subsidize health insurance for many, on a sliding scale, according to your income.

The subsidies are basically welfare, entitlements. Welfare comes from taxes. Congress is still discussing where the taxes are going to come from, while President Obama pretends there won't be any tax increases. Obama wants to cut Medicare to offset some of the costs, and pretends that health care efficiences will pay for reform, but c'mon now, we're adults, we all know that's not true. You will also see at the above link that health care reform will dramatically increase Medicaid, which are costs to the states.

Note – Deductibles and copays are not included in the health insurance costs at the above link.

I'll refrain from further comment, for now. I'd rather hear your comments.

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.