I know I'm supposed to write about politics here, but I've been having some minor intestinal problems and my doctor told me to avoid stress. He also scheduled a colonoscopy for me, to which I replied, "I thought you said you wanted me to AVOID stress !".

And then one of my "friends" e-mailed me the following column from Dave Barry. This is too funny not to share, though it's somewhat less funny when you have a colonscopy looming on the horizon. Without further ado, here's Mr. Barry:

ABOUT THE WRITER
Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humour columnist for the Miami Herald.

Colonoscopy Journal:

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.

A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.

I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.

Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes – and here I am being kind – like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.'

This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but, have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep.

At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point.

Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand.

There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate.

'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me.

'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that IT was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

On the subject of Colonoscopies.

Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous….. A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. 'Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!'
2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?'
3. 'Can you hear me NOW?'
4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?'
5. 'You know, in Arkansas, we're now legally married.'
6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?'
7. 'You put your left hand in; you take your left hand out…'
8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!'
9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!'
10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.'
11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?'
12. 'Gosh, now I know why I am not gay.'

And the best one of all:

13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'

Oh well, what's a guy to do ? Besides, could a colonoscopy really be that much worse than Obama's State Of The Union speech ? I'll have to get back to you on that one.

Not-So-Super Committee: The congressional Super Committee is tasked with cutting $1.2 trillion from future deficits over the next decade. They can accomplish this by cutting spending or raising taxes. They have 9 days left to complete their mission before automatic cuts to defense and entitlements go into effect. Thus far, the Super Committee has been unable to reach an agreement.

If anything illustrates the ineffectiveness of Congress (and a failure of leadership by the President), this it it. Think about it. Over the last ten years, the federal government has spent about $28 trillion. Over the next ten years, federal spending is projected to be $45-50 trillion. All the Super Committee has to do is cut $1.2 trillion out of the next $45-50 trillion in spending, a miniscule percentage. The Super Committee's job isn't even about cutting spending. They are only talking about cutting the rate of future spending INCREASE. I could cut that much out of the budget in a day, if it took me that long. In fact, I'll do it right now, in about ten seconds. We could cut $1.2 trillion out of the military budget over ten years. That would come to $120 billion per year, out of a defense budget that is already larger than the defense budgets of all the other countries in the world COMBINED, a defense budget that costs almost $1 trillion per year when all associated costs are tallied. There. We're done. That wasn't so hard, was it ?

If the Super Committee can't even agree on these small cuts ($120 billion per year out of future $4-5 trillion budgets), what hope is there that Congress can close our annual trillion dollar deficits ? There is no hope, not with our current Congress, and not with our current President. Ron Paul sounds better all the time.

CBS Sucks: Speaking of Ron Paul, CBS held a 90-minute GOP presidential debate on foreign policy. CBS aired 60 minutes of that debate, and candidate Paul got a grand total of 89 seconds to speak on air. Paul advocates a non-interventionist foreign policy (see – defense spending cuts). Apparently, CBS didn't want to hear it. Paul wasn't the only GOP contender complaining, and CBS's excuse was that they gave the most air time to the candidates highest in the polls. It is not the job of CBS to decide which candidates are legitimate and which are not. That's the job of the voters, and the voters can't make a sound choice if certain candidates are cut out of the debate process. It's the job of CBS to give each candidate an equal chance, and CBS failed miserably.

Cain-wreck: I thought Rick Perry forgetting which government deparments he wanted to eliminate was about as bad as it gets for political flubs. I was wrong. Watch Herman Cain trying to answer a question about whether he agreed with Obama's policy in Libya:

Ouch. That was actually painful to watch. 'Let's see…Libya…that's a country, isn't it ? Golly, there are so many countries that it's hard to keep track [even though we've been at war in Libya for months and it was all over the news]. Libya's trying to develop nuclear weapons, right ? No, that's China…or is it Iran ? Wait, no, Libya is where Qaddafi was at, correct ? Whatever it is, I'm disagreeing with Obama's policy on it, because…I have to…even if I have no idea what I'm talking about'.

Give me a break already. Cain sounded like a college student who didn't study for the entire semester and then stayed up all night cramming for the final. So much information "twirling around" inside his head. Thanks for playing Presidential Jeopardy, Mr. Cain, and please accept this wonderful parting gift, dinner for two at Olive Garden. But please spare us any more of your "views" on foreign policy. Cain would have been better off if he just said, 'hell if I know. I'm a businessman. I don't even know where Libya is'.

Given Cain and Perry's recent responses, I'm starting to think maybe I could run for President. There don't seem to be any qualifications for the job.

Supreme Test For ObamaCare: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the lawsuit challenging ObamaCare. This is huge. We should find out next year whether we have a constitutional government or a totalitarian government. If the ObamaCare insurance mandate is upheld by the Supremes, the government would be granted almost unlimited power over the citizenry. The government could then tell us what products we have to buy from private companies, what we have to eat and drink, what we have to wear, you name it. There would be no limits to governmental authority. The ObamaCare mandate to purchase health insurance or be fined is an assault on our basic rights and freedom, and possibly the most unconstitutional law passed since the 1930's, when several unconstitutional FDR laws were struck down by the courts.

There have been calls for Justices Thomas and Kagan to recuse themselves from the proceedings. Justice Thomas' wife has been involved in campaigns to repeal ObamaCare, and Justice Kagan worked for Obama and is on record cheering the passage of ObamaCare. It doesn't really matter if they recuse themselves, unless only one of them does, which would swing the balance of the court. We pretty much already know the entire liberal wing of the court will vote for a totalitarian government and approve the unconstitutional ObamaCare mandate. The conservative wing of the court will vote to uphold the Constitution and liberty, and that leaves…Justice Kennedy, the swing vote who will decide the future of freedom in this country. The eventual ruling is almost certainly going to be 5-4 one way or the other. My view is that any Justice who votes to uphold the ObamaCare mandate should be immediately kicked off the Supreme Court for violating his/her oath of office.

When liberal economist/Princeton professor/New York Times columnist Paul Krugman speaks, his words are immediately incorporated into the left-wing body politick. Liberals use Krugman to fashion phony talking points by the dozens, and the bigger the Krugman lie, the better. Here are a few of the latest Krugman lies being consumed and regurgitated whole by liberals:

"The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook." – Paul Krugman

Here we have three contentions from Krugman. Two of them are completely, pants-on-fire false. The other has a grain of truth, but is also mostly false. The first lie is the contention that Obama is a conservative. The mostly false statement is that ObamaCare is a Republican plan that came from the Heritage Foundation. The third lie is the laughable argument that Obama is pursuing a path of fiscal austerity. Liberals across the land are repeating these things as if they were written on stone tablets, when they should be treating them as if they were written on a bookie's flash paper. Let's dispense with Krugman's arguments one by one.

1) Obama is a conservative.

It's hard to stop laughing long enough to take this Krugman argument seriously, but I'll give it a try. I never dreamed anyone would have the cojones to make the case that Obama is a conservative, or that I'd have to shoot such an inane argument down. After all, Obama was a community organizer, schooled in the tactics of radical Saul Alinsky. He was an ACLU lawyer. He attended a church for twenty years that advanced left-wing black liberation theology. Obama said Reverend Jeremiah Wright was "like a father" to him (until Wright's "God damn America" tirades became a political liability). Obama is a lifelong Democrat who launched his first political fundraiser from the home of domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn of Weathermen infamy. Obama was voted the most liberal Senator in Congress in 2007. In the Illinois legislature, Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times. In his book Dreams From My Father, Obama said he hung out with marxists in college and was mentored by "Frank", a reference to the American communist Frank Marshall Davis. Obama is admittedly pro-union, and his General Motors bailout rewarded the unions while screwing the bondholders. His Justice Department is trying to prevent Boeing from moving a plant from unionized Seattle to a right-to-work South Carolina. Obama is in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act that will remove the secret ballot from union voting. Obama is a believer in global warming who wanted to institute Cap And Trade. He advocates increasing taxes on the wealthy, and openly favors redistribution of wealth. He even said the U.S. Constitution had a "blind spot" because it didn't authorize redistribution of wealth. One of Obama's first acts as President was to enact an $800 billion plus Keynesian stimulus package that was supported by Democrats and rejected by Republicans. Obama is opposed to capital punishment. In the Illinois legislature, Obama was in favor of the state banning the sale and manufacture of handguns. Obama has said he favors a single-payer health care system "in principal", which would replace private insurance companies. He ran for President as the anti-Iraq war candidate. As a candidate, Obama supported giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. He supported raising the Social Security payroll tax on wealthier Americans. Obama signed into law the largest new entitlement program since Medicare was enacted in 1965. Federal spending has increased by $900 billion per year since Obama took office. Federal spending is higher now than at any time in U.S. history, with the exception of World War II. I could go on and on and on.

This is the guy Paul Krugman says is a conservative…and Krugman says it with a straight face…and liberals repeat it as if it were true. You have to wonder what planet these people inhabit. It can't be this one.

2) ObamaCare is a Republican plan from the Heritage Foundation.

Let's start with the fact that almost all the Democrats in Congress voted FOR ObamaCare, and almost all the Republicans voted AGAINST ObamaCare. That should give you an indication of how "Republican" ObamaCare is. Then add in the fact that 26 states, all of them led by Republicans, have filed suit against ObamaCare for being unconstitutional. Yes, ObamaCare is so obviously supported by Republicans, just as Krugman says !!!! Or not.

What is true is that a few conservative groups and/or individuals (Dole, Romney) did advance the individual mandate, primarily at the state level (in accordance with the 10th Amendment), as a potential solution to the "free rider" health care problem. Obviously, the idea never really caught on with or was supported by the GOP. Krugman conveniently omits that significant truth.

As for the idea that ObamaCare came from the Heritage Foundation, that idea didn't originate with Krugman. It came from President Obama himself. Here's the Heritage response:

It began when President Obama told "Today" show host Matt Lauer on March 30 that "a lot of ideas in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, that originated from the Heritage Foundation."

First, Heritage did not originate the concept of the health insurance exchange. Furthermore, the version of the exchange we did develop couldn't be more different than that embodied in this law…

For us, the health insurance exchange is to be designed by the states. It is conceived as a market mechanism that allows individuals and families to choose among a wide range of health plans and benefit options for those best suited to their personal needs and circumstances…

Under the president's law, however, the congressionally designed exchanges are a tool imposed on the states enabling the federal government to standardize and micromanage health insurance coverage, while administering a vast and unaffordable new entitlement program. This is a vehicle for federal control of state markets, a usurpation of state authority and the suppression of meaningful patient choice… This is probably not something President Obama gives a whit about, but we at Heritage do.

The other charge — repeated on this page and elsewhere — is that the federal individual mandate in Obama's health-care plan came from us.

For the record, we think that the law's federal mandate is unconstitutional…

Yes, in the early 1990s, we, along with other prominent conservative economists, supported the idea of such a mandate. It seemed the only way to solve the "free-rider" problem, in which individuals can, under federal law, walk into any hospital emergency room nationwide and rack up big bills at taxpayer expense.

Our research in the ensuing two decades has led us to realize our initial idea was operationally ineffective and legally defective. Well before Obama was elected, we dropped it.

Krugman neglected to mention that Heritage has been against it's own 20-year old mandate idea for some time now. Must have been an unintentional slip by old Paulie, eh ? Sure it was. It would also be helpful if Krugman mentioned that the overwhelming majority of Republicans reject such a "Republican idea". Maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty sure that Republicans usually support alleged "Republican ideas".

3) Obama is pursuing a path of fiscal austerity.

I've written about this canard extensively already, so I'll be brief here. One would have to be almost mentally challenged to believe we have entered a period of fiscal austerity. What the debt limit deal accomplished was to authorize $2.1 trillion in new debt (see how "austere" it is already ?!?!) in exchange for cutting $2.1 trillion in future spending out of the projected $10 trillion in new debt over the next decade. With the debt deal (which doesn't reduce the debt by one penny), by 2021, our government is still projected to be spending 22% of GDP, well above the modern age federal spending average of 19%. This is what Krugman is calling "austerity", which it obviously is not. It's the opposite of austerity. It's…um…hmmm….what IS the opposite of austerity ??? Um, how about "opulence" ? We'll go with that. Krugman is referring to opulence as austerity. As I said in my last post, everything is upside down with liberals. Here's yet more proof.

In short, Paul Krugman is a big fat liar. It would be nice if liberals stopped repeating his lies. Krugman's column in the New York Times is called "The Conscience Of A Liberal". It's a shame he doesn't have one.

I found the following current event quotes on The Patriot Post.

Insane The New Sane: "The same politicians who spent $1.7 trillion more than they collected, in just this year alone, say the problem is that private citizens are not paying enough. … [B]ecause the political class has made the national debt so high, it is able to insist that taking a chance on the power of liberty is an irresponsible gamble. Because the government lives so far beyond its means, it would be irresponsible to provide it with reduced means. This is how we have reached the madness of a moment when the national debt is used as an argument against spending reductions, or growth-oriented tax and regulatory policies. The insane problem becomes a weapon against rational solutions." –columnist John Hayward

There's nothing for me to add to that. Well said.

Moron Of The Week: "Isn't the Tea Party — I'm not trying to call them names or anything. I just want to ask a very serious question: Aren't they exactly what the Founding Fathers feared most? Which is people who are ignorant about the way the world works come to power. That is what the Founding Fathers hated the most. They were not for direct democracy" –HBO's Bill Maher

I'm still trying to figure out why Bill Maher has a political television show on HBO. His neverending ignorance on political matters is astounding. In the above quote, Maher not only demonstrates a cluelessness about the Founding Fathers and the original Boston Tea Party (it was about TAXES, Mr. Maher), he also doesn't seem to understand that today's Tea Party is not a direct democracy, it's a protest movement and only one of many political forces in this country. The Tea Party does not govern. Our elected representatives perform that function. That is and always has been a representative democracy. The "serious question" Bill Maher asks here is a complete joke.

Leadership Failure: "Meanwhile, the World's Greatest Orator bemoans the 'intransigence' of Republicans. OK, what's your plan? Give us one actual program you're willing to cut, right now. Oh, don't worry, says Barack Obluffer. To demonstrate how serious he is, he's offered to put on the table for fiscal year 2012 spending cuts of (stand well back now) $2 billion. That would be a lot in, say, Iceland or even Australia. Once upon a time it would have been a lot even in Washington. But today $2 billion is what the Brokest Nation in History borrows every 10 hours. In other words, in less time than he spends sitting across the table negotiating his $2 billion cut, he's already borrowed it all back. A negotiation with Obama is literally not worth the time." –columnist Mark Steyn

The extent of Obama's leadership on the debt limit has been to say he wants revenues raised along with spending cuts, and he didn't even care about spending cuts until the Republicans forced him to care. That's how this President leads…by following.

Hijacking The Tax And Spend Crowd: "Here's the thing about Obama. He ran as a transformational president. He sees himself as transformational. He always has. What occurred between 2008 and 2010 is the Tea Party. And the Tea Party has stopped that kind of transformation from occurring because it has hijacked the Republican Party and the John Boehners of the world who would have cut a deal with the president of the United States. It has hijacked the Republican Party and it has now become substantially just a no-tax party as opposed to a party that cares about the deficit. I think no tax trumps their caring and concern about the deficit." –CNN's Gloria Borger

Poor Obama. His transformational dreams were crushed by the Tea Party. Sniff, sniff. Cry me a river. In reality, it was, well, reality that crushed Obama's unrealistic dreams. Plus, if any party NEEDED hijacking after the big spending, debt accumulating Bush years, it was the Republican party. Thank goodness the Tea Party arrived on the scene and changed the discussion, because without it we wouldn't even be talking about reining in the sole cause of our fiscal unsustainability – big government.

Speaking of which…

The Left Calls It 'The Plan': "Forget all the numbers being tossed around in Washington — the millions and billions and trillions of dollars being taxed, borrowed, printed and spent as the country approaches the Aug. 2 debt-ceiling deadline. … Forget the fact that such 'entitlements' as Social Security and Medicare — social-insurance programs that the public long thought to be actuarially sound — have been exposed as little more than legal Ponzi schemes, paying today's benefits out of tomorrow's borrowed receipts. Instead, just ask yourself this simple question: When did it become the primary function of the federal government to send millions of Americans checks? For this, in essence, is what the debt-ceiling fight is all about — the inexorable and ultimately fatal growth of the welfare state." –columnist Michael Walsh

This reminds me of a USA Today article from a few months ago, titled "Americans Depend More On Federal Aid Than Ever". Here's a piece of it:

Americans depended more on government assistance in 2010 than at any other time in the nation's history, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds. The trend shows few signs of easing, even though the economic recovery is nearly 2 years old.

A record 18.3% of the nation's total personal income was a payment from the government for Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment benefits and other programs in 2010. Wages accounted for the lowest share of income — 51.0% — since the government began keeping track in 1929.

Americans got an average of $7,427 in benefits each in 2010, up from an inflation-adjusted $4,763 in 2000 and $3,686 in 1990. The federal government pays about 90% of the benefits.

"What's frightening is the Baby Boomers haven't really started to retire," says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes of the 77 million people born from 1946 through 1964 whose oldest wave turns 65 this year. "That's when the cost of Medicare will start to explode."

If you think things are bad now, America, prepare yourselves. You ain't seen nuthin' yet. Unless we change course dramatically, in a decade we'll be looking back at these times as the good old days.

The political left in this country wants the citizenry to be dependent, and, btw, disarmed. A passive and helpless population is more easily controlled.

My closing quote comes from our "transformational" President himself, though it sounds more like politics as usual to me.

Blaming Bush: "We don't need a constitutional amendment to do our jobs. The Constitution already tells us to do our jobs — and to make sure that the government is living within its means and making responsible choices. … We don't need a balanced budget amendment. We simply need to make these tough choices and be willing to take on our bases. And everybody knows it. … It turns out that our problem is we cut taxes without paying for them over the last decade; we ended up instituting new programs like a prescription drug program for seniors that was not paid for; we fought two wars, we didn't pay for them; we had a bad recession that required a Recovery Act and stimulus spending and helping states — and all that accumulated and there's interest on top of that." –Barack Obama

Maybe we wouldn't need a balanced budget constitutional amendment if the government showed any indication it could live within it's means or discipline itself, but it has not done that. When I hear Obama whining about a balanced budget amendment, all I hear is him thinking, 'but how will I spend and borrow more money ? How will I play politics and buy votes ?'

Here's why, by the numbers.

Total federal revenue for FY2011 will be about $2.2 trillion.

Here are the three biggest federal expenditures YTD:
Medicare/Medicaid – $815.1 billion
Defense including wars – $698.5 billion
Social Security – $711.8 billion

Medicare, Defense, and Social Security expenditures YTD comes to $ 2.225 trillion. These three areas are consuming ALL the revenue the federal government takes in. There is no money left for anything else. The other $1.6 trillion the federal government will spend this year is all borrowed. This is known as the deficit. The federal government is borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar it spends.

The federal government has spent beyond it's means for a long, long time, which is why we have a $14.4 trillion federal debt, but the government isn't even coming close to paying for itself these days, and President Obama isn't making any realistic efforts to address the problem. His 10-year budget proposal added another $9-13 trillion to the debt, and his budget assumed economic recovery, the implementation of ObamaCare, an end to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and a reversal of the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%. Obama's budget still leaves us on the road to nowhere. Incredibly, Obama tried to peddle his 10-year budget plan as one that reduces the deficit, as if it was fiscally responsible. It is anything but that. Obama is the Nowhere Man.

As bad as things are now, they are about to get much worse. We have future unfunded entitlement liabilities in excess of $114 trillion. $79.1 trillion of that is Medicare. This means we have made enormous future entitlement commitments that we have not funded. And as everyone knows, health care costs are going up much faster than the economy is growing. Those unfunded entitlement liabilities are going to get a lot larger.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) put out this chart in 2008 comparing entitlement growth to GDP growth. This shows how entitlement spending will rise:

Entitlement spending is growing three times faster than GDP, and the GAO's projection was made BEFORE ObamaCare was implemented. ObamaCare created massive new entitlements. It adds 20 million new people to Medicaid. Obama, like Bush before him, added to the entitlement problem (Bush's Prescription Drug plan has an unfunded future entitlement liability of $19 trillion. That's in addition to the $79 trillion Medicare/Medicaid liability).

Politicians like to create programs and promise people all kinds of things, but politicians don't like to pay for those programs and promises. Politicians want all the pleasure without any of the pain. It helps them get elected, but what they are ultimately doing is selling this country down the river with their unsustainable schemes.

A Heritage Foundation chart shows, using a 30-year tax to GDP average of 18%, Medicare/Medicaid, ObamaCare, and Social Security will consume ALL federal revenue by 2049. There won't even be room in the federal budget for Defense spending.

In summary, entitlements are doubling and tripling in size beyond economic growth. Historic levels of taxation can no longer support them and the rest of the government. We have massive entitlement commitments we have not funded….and we are ALREADY $14.4 trillion in debt, with a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, and no end to the deficits in sight.

Anyone who doesn't recognize this problem is engaging in willful blindness…which leads me to the Democrats. They are busy ripping apart Republicans who have proposed measures to deal with this coming fiscal crisis, like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), but the Democrats are proposing no solutions of their own that will address the problem. Shame on them. If they don't like Ryan's plan, or any other Republican plan (there are several), then how about the Democrats do the jobs they were elected to do and come up with their own plan(s) ! The Dems think ripping the GOP's ideas will give them an advantage in the 2012 elections, and that's all they care about. They hope nobody will notice they have no solutions of their own. As an example, listen to how Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz answered a question put to her about how the Democrats will address the problem:

There is the message of Democrats. They got nuthin', other than demonizing Republicans. The citizens of this nation deserve a lot better than that.

Democrats are mighty happy about the results of a New York special congressional election held on tuesday. In that race, the Democrat candidate, Kathy Hochul, defeated the Republican candidate, Jane Corwin, by a margin of 47-43%. A third candidate, Jack Davis, who ran under the Tea Party banner, got 9% of the vote.

There are two reasons Democrats are smiling today. The first is that the Democrat Hochul won in a district that is considered a Republican majority district. The second is that Hochul made Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) Medicare plan one of her major issues. Corwin supported Ryan's plan. Hochul was against it, and a left-wing group was running ads in New York of a Ryan look-alike pushing grandma over a cliff. (I seem to recall left-wingers being shocked and outraged over violent political imagery a few short months ago. Must have been my imagination). Democrats say Hochul's victory proves Americans reject Ryan's plan. Republicans downplay the Democrat victory, saying the Tea Party candidate siphoned votes away from the Republican candidate, splitting the vote and handing the Democrat a victory. Let's examine these two claims.

First the Republican claim. Davis, the third candidate, ran under the Tea Party banner, which would seem to indicate he did indeed take votes away from the Republican candidate. Davis also lost the special election Republican primary to Corwin before switching to the Tea Party banner, another indicator he took votes away from the Republican. However, Davis was a lifelong Republican who switched parties and ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat in elections in 2004, 2006, and 2008. In addition, many Tea Party groups disavowed the candidacy of Davis. Democrats are trying to say Davis also took votes from Hochul. Maybe so, but I have little doubt he took many more votes from the Republican. Just appearing on the ballot with 'Tea Party' next to his name would accomplish that.

The far more important claim is the one being made by Democrats about Americans rejecting Ryan's Medicare/budget plan, because the Republican-led House Of Representatives passed that plan last month, with the vote being along party lines. The Democrat-led Senate rejected Ryan's plan yesterday, with Democrats voting against it. Some Republican Senators also voted against it – Scott Brown (Massachusetts), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine), and Rand Paul (Kentucky). Many Democrats see the Ryan Medicare/budget plan as a big opportunity for them to win in 2012.

Democrat leaders are attempting to capitalize on the "push grandma over the cliff" message. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) keeps talking about the GOP's desire to "kill Medicare". House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Hochul's “victory in a staunchly Republican district has shocked the political world and sent an unmistakable sign that the American people will not stand for the Republicans’ reckless and extreme agenda to end Medicare". You get the idea.

Rep. Ryan says the Democrats are engaging in "Mediscare" and accuses them of demagoguery. Ryan says Americans will approve of his plan once they understand it, and once they accept the reality of what will happen if we don't reform Medicare.

Do Americans reject Ryan's plan ? Polls suggest it depends how the question is asked. Here are examples from two polls, one from the New York Times where a plurality of responders supported the plan, and one from the Washington post where responders rejected the plan:

The Times asked:

In order to reduce the budget deficit, it has been proposed that Medicare should be changed from a program in which the government pays doctors and hospitals for treating seniors to a program in which the government helps seniors purchase private health insurance. Would you approve or disapprove of changing Medicare in this way?

Yet the Post (PDF) asked:

I'm going to read you two statements about the future of the Medicare program. After I read both statements, please tell me which one comes closer to your own view: Medicare should remain as it is today, with a defined set of benefits for people over 65, OR Medicare should be changed so that people over 65 would receive a check or voucher from the government each year for a fixed amount they can use to shop for their own private health insurance policy.

Regardless of how poll questions are asked, Ryan and Republicans have a problem. A recent poll of Ohioans showed a whopping 75% were against cutting Medicare to reduce the debt. An Assocated Press poll found 54% believe we can balance the federal budget without reducing Medicare costs. If Ryan thinks people will support his Medicare plan once they understand it, well, he better start explaining it to them. My feeling is that change is usually met with resistance, even if that change is needed. People don't like to have anything taken from them, ever, and according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Ryan has an even bigger problem. The CBO says Ryan's Medicare plan will require seniors to pay more for their Medicare in the future, and it won't reduce health care costs either:

Under the [Ryan] proposal, most beneficiaries who receive premium support payments would pay more for their health care than if they participated in traditional Medicare under either of CBO’s long-term scenarios. CBO estimated that, in 2030, a typical 65-year-old would pay 68 percent of the benchmark under the proposal, compared with 25 percent under the extended-baseline scenario and 30 percent under the alternative fiscal scenario.

A private health insurance plan covering the standardized benefit would, CBO estimates, be more expensive currently than traditional Medicare. Both administrative costs (including profits) and payment rates to providers are higher for private plans than for Medicare. Those higher costs would be offset partly but not fully by savings from lower utilization stemming from two sources. First, private health insurers would probably impose greater utilization management than occurs in Medicare. Second, private plans might restrict enrollees’ ability to purchase supplemental insurance plans; enrollees would thus face higher out-of-pocket costs than they do in Medicare, and that increased cost sharing would encourage lower utilization. On net, for a typical 65-year-old in 2011, CBO estimates that average spending in traditional Medicare will be 89 percent of (that is, 11 percent less than) the spending that would occur if that same package of benefits was purchased from a private insurer.

That's a pretty tough sell for Rep. Ryan. The idea with health care is to reduce overall costs, not increase them. That is the biggest flaw in Ryan's plan. As for the CBO's estmate that seniors will have to pay more under Ryan's plan, that is actually less troubling, because there is a hard truth we must face – Medicare/Medicaid costs are skyrocketing, and we have to address them. If we can't reduce those costs, somebody has to pay for them. The health care fairy can't wave her magic wand and make this all go away. We have to face reality.

Former President Bill Clinton had something important to say on the subject yesterday:

Even though Clinton disagrees with the plan put forth by Ryan, the two men both know something must be done. As Clinton said, health care costs will devour our economy. That is the truth. Entitlements are the single biggest driver of future government spending, and therefore the biggest drivers of deficits, debt, and/or tax increases.

I share the same fear as Clinton, that Democrats will beat the kill grandma, kill Medicare drum, using it as a political scare tactic to win elections. The problem with that is, as the Democrats do nothing (the Dems haven't even produced a 2011 budget, for chirissakes, and we're over halfway through 2011), nothing is accomplished. Our challenges remain unmet. The longer we avoid dealing with reality, the more difficult and painful the solutions become. I'm going to leave you with two charts to ponder from the Heritage Foundation.

First is this link to a chart showing that, based upon historical tax revenue to GDP percentages (18%), entitlements will devour ALL tax revenue by 2049. There won't be money left for ANYTHING else.

Second is this link to a chart showing that, based upon current policies, our national debt will skyrocket to 344% of GDP by 2050.

Our country is on an unsustainable path, and anyone who tells you differently is, to put it simply, LYING. I know liberals think I'm some mouthpiece for conservatives (because I'm definitely anti-liberal on fiscal matters. See: unsustainable), but what I really am is someone who sees not just grandma, but his entire country going over a cliff. More than anything else, what I want to do is prevent that from happening.

Mitt Romney wants to be the Republican candidate for President in 2012, but he has a problem. That problem goes by the name RomneyCare. Here's how Wikipedia describes RomneyCare (aka, Massachusetts Health Care Reform):

The Massachusetts health care insurance reform law, enacted in 2006, mandates that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a state-government-regulated minimum level of healthcare insurance coverage and provides free health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% of the federal poverty level (FPL)[1] who are not eligible for Mass Health (Medicaid). The law also partially-subsidizes health care insurance for those earning up to 300% of the FPL.

Hmmm. Mandated health insurance, subsidized coverage…sounds a lot like ObamaCare. That's no coincidence. RomneyCare was the model for ObamaCare, and therein lies Mitt Romney's problem. Republican primary voters HATE ObamaCare, so why would they vote for Romney, who instituted a similar plan when he was the Governor of Massachusetts ? Good question, and Romney has a hard time answering it. He says he's against ObamaCare, but insists that RomneyCare was "right for the people of my state". Constitutional issues aside, if the plan was right for Massachusetts, how can it be wrong for America ? Romney says the individual health insurance mandate in Massachusetts was necessary because it's a matter of "personal responsibility", but the last time I checked, personal responsibility was something exercised by an individual person, not something the government forces you to do, or, in the case of subsidization, something someone else does for you. I'm missing the "personal responsibility" aspect there.

Romney said the individual mandate was necessary in Massachusetts to combat the "free rider" problem in healthcare. I'll let columnist Jeff Jacoby pick it up from here:

Since federal law requires hospitals to provide urgent care to anyone requiring it, Massachusetts needed a way to prevent uninsured free riders from using hospital emergency rooms to get medical care at public expense. Making insurance compulsory for those who could afford it, Romney says, was the solution to the free-rider problem.

President Obama said the exact same thing about ObamaCare:

“There’s always going to be somebody out there who thinks they’re indestructible and doesn’t want to get health care,’’ the president has argued. “And then… they get hit by a bus, end up in the emergency room, and the rest of us have to pay for it.’’

That sounds fair enough. You shouldn't have to pay for someone else's health care, right ? Heck, you have a hard enough time paying for your own health care. Maybe this individual mandate is the right thing to do after all….hey, wait a minute ! Both RomneyCare and ObamaCare DO MAKE YOU PAY FOR SOMEONE ELSE'S HEALTH CARE ! That's what the subsidies are all about ! The taxpayers pick up the health care tab. Ah, those hornswogglers almost had me fooled there for a second. Both RomneyCare and ObamaCare are ALL ABOUT giving people a free ride. Don't let them fool you into believing anything different. Those politicians, you gotta watch 'em every second. They'd try to sell sand to an Iraqi.

Romney has more 'splainin' to do if he thinks he's going to get the GOP nomination.

I have an idea. Maybe Mitt can simply explain to the people how great RomneyCare has been for Massachusetts. If he shows what a success it has been, he could make himself look good and lessen GOP fears about the impending ObamaCare debacle plan. That's the ticket. Being the helpful sort, I'll give old Mitt a helping mitt myself. Here's what has happened with health care in Massachusetts since RomneyCare was implemented in 2006.

- by 2010, 98.1% of Massachusettsians (Massachusists, Massachusetterans ?) had health insurance, far better than the nationwide average of 83.3%. Score one for the Mittster.

- In 2006, it was projected that RomneyCare would cost $725 million by 2011. The actual cost is estimated to be $1.35 billion by June 2011, almost double the original estimate. Subtract one for the Mittster.

- An American Journal Of Medicine study about medical bankruptcies found the following: 1) From 2007 to 2009, the total number of medical bankruptcies in Massachusetts increased by more than one third, from 7,504 to 10,093; and 2) Illness and medical costs contributed to 59.3% of bankruptcies in 2007 and 52.9% in 2009. The researchers note that the financial crisis beginning in 2008 likely contributed to the increased number of bankruptcies, and Massachusetts' increase in medical bankruptcies over the 2007-2009 period was nevertheless below the national average rate of increase. I guess we'll call that one a..wash ?

- As for RomneyCare's effects on insurance premiums, there is a study by ecomonists that reached the following conclusions:

We find that health reform in Massachusetts increased single-coverage employer-sponsored insurance premiums by about 6 percent in aggregate, and by about 7 percent for firms with fewer than 50 employees. The effect of reform on family premiums is less uniform. If Massachusetts is compared to the nation as a whole, reform had a modest 1.5 percent effect on family premiums. However, in the Boston MSA, and among employees of small firms, the effect of reform on family premiums was much greater. Family premiums grew by about 8 percent more in Boston than in the 19 largest other MSAs from 2006-08, as compared to 2004-06. For small employers, the differential Massachusetts/US growth in small-group premiums from 2006-08, over and above the growth from 2004-06, was 14.4 percent.

- Massachusetts has the second highest state health care costs in the nation (link).

- RomneyCare and ObamaCare are both designed to prevent Emergency Room overcrowding. But RomneyCare has resulted in more Emergency Room visits, not less.

- RomneyCare has resulted in longer waiting periods for a doctor's appointment, up to 48 days.

RomneyCare hasn't been a big moneysaver. Just the opposite. It insures more people, but it costs more and the waiting periods have gone up. About what I would expect, and that's about what I expect from ObamaCare as well. How President Obama thinks he's going to add tens of millions to the insured rolls, tens of millions to the Medicaid rolls, and reduce spending and the deficits at the same time is a complete mystery to me. My experience tells me when the government gets it's hands on something, costs only go up, and service only goes down.

Sorry Mitt, I guess I couldn't provide the help you need. Good luck to you, but you're on your own.

The picture above doesn't really pertain to today's topic, but I thought I'd post it anyway, because it cracks me up.
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A third Democrat-appointed judge in a row has declared ObamaCare to be constitutional. The latest ruling comes from a D.C. judge, Gladys Kessler, appointed by President Clinton. Here is some of the "logic" from that judge:

First, this Court agrees with the two other district courts which have ruled that the individuals subject to § 1501’s mandate provision are either present or future participants in the national health care market. See Liberty Univ., 2010 WL 4860299, at *15 (“Nearly everyone will require health care services at some point in their lifetimes, and it is not always possible to predict when one will be afflicted by illness or injury and require care.”); Thomas More Law Ctr., 720 F.Supp.2d at 894 (“The health care market is unlike other markets. No one can guarantee his or her health, or ensure that he or she will never participate in the health care market. . . . The plaintiffs have not opted out of the health care services market because, as living, breathing beings . . . they cannot opt out of this market.”). Thus, the vast majority of individuals, if not all individuals, will require some medical care in their lifetime.

With all due respect to Judge Kessler, this is one of the dumbest arguments I've ever heard. She says "the health care market is unlike other markets" because people "cannot opt out of this market", and for that reason it's fine for the government to mandate people to purchase health insurance. This "logic" could have come straight from President Obama's lips. I wonder if he wrote this ruling for her.

Where to start. First, of all, the health care market is NOT different than other markets. There are plenty of markets that nearly all "lving, breathing beings" will use during their lifetimes. To name a few: food, water, clothing, housing, tools, transportation… Almost none of us "opt out" of those markets (and those markets comprise the majority of ALL markets), yet the government doesn't mandate that we buy food, water, clothing, housing, tools, or transportation, does it ? No. The government doesn't fine us if we refuse to buy broccoli, bottled water, t-shirts, kitchen knives, or automobiles. People would revolt at the mere thought of it, but now we have Democrat-appointed judges attempting to rationalize the unthinkable in a free country. This is a direct frontal assault on freedom, and Democrats are more than happy to wage the battle.

Judge Roy Bean, er, I mean, Judge Kessler, had yet more irrationality in her ruling, and this bit is a doozy. Kessler endorsed government regulation of "mental activity":

As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making, there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls within Congress’s power…However, this Court finds the distinction, which Plaintiffs rely on heavily, to be of little significance. It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not “acting,” especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something. They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality.

In other words, why should people get to make their own decisions when Big Brother can make those decisions for them ? After all, Big Brother Knows Best. Who wants a population full of citizens engaging in "mental activity" anyway ? That's so messy, with thoughts running around all over the place. We must put a stop to it. Don't worry your pretty little heads, citizens. Obama's Thought Police have got your back. And your money too, but don't worry about that either. Just go outside and play, children. Daddy Obama will call you when it's time for supper.

At least Judge Kessler recognized the fact that there is "little judicial guidance" on the matter of the ObamaCare mandate. That's because no previous government ever dreamed of doing anything so blatantly unconstitutional as this (well, FDR did, but the Supreme Court stopped him. That's when FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court with judges friendly to his causes. No wonder FDR is a hero to the left. He didn't give a crap about the U.S. Constitution either).

The lack of judicial precedent for ObamaCare should have served as a caution to Judge Kessler, but no. I get the feeling these Democrat Judges start with supporting ObamaCare, and then work backwards to try to justify it by any means necessary, no matter how illogical and contrary to the Constitution and founding ideals of this country (i.e., life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).

If there's a bright spot in the darkness of this ruling, it comes here:

Kessler joined the other four judges in dismissing the Obama administration's fallback argument that the mandate was justified under Congress's taxing power, ruling "that Congress did not intend the mandatory payment…to act as a revenue-raising tax, but rather as a punitive measure." Given that even those judges sympathetic to the Commerce Clause argument have rejected the taxation argument, I wonder if the administration will eventually abandon it as the case moves up the food chain.

The Obama administration tried to pass off the "it's a tax" argument on the fly, after they realized the Commerce Clause justification might not work. That's because there is no Commerce Clause justification for the ObamaCare mandate, no matter how many Democrat-appointed judges try to manufacture one out of thin air.

Regulate "mental activity" indeed. Regulate This, you little dictators.

At the American Spectator link above, they mentioned Kurt Vonnegut's dystopian short story, Harrison Bergeron. This is important to the topic as well, because ObamaCare has lots of 'Citizen A will pay for the healthcare of Citizen B' in it, to which left-wingers apply the Orwellian label "social justice". See if the following description of Harrison Bergeron rings any bells, if it brings to mind any particular political ideology:

In the story, social equality has been achieved by handicapping the more intelligent, athletic or beautiful members of society. For example, strength is handicapped by the requirement to carry weight, beauty by the requirement to wear a mask and so on. All this equality is due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the United States Constitution. This process is central to the society, designed so that no one will feel inferior to anyone else. Handicapping is overseen by the United States Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers.

Is anybody advocating this stuff in America ??? Anyone ? Anyone ?

Hint – Think of how liberals look at the tax code or government spending. Oops, I gave it away.

Here's the video:

Nice to find this out nearly a year AFTER ObamaCare passed, isn't it ? Looks like the Republicans were on target after all when they named their ObamaCare repeal effort 'Repealing The Job Killing Health Care Law Act".

In January, noted liberal dunce Ezra Klein of the Washington Post/Newsweek, and a regular MSNBC contributor, tried to spin the ObamaCare job loss info this way:

the [CBO] report never says the bill will kill jobs. What it says, rather, is that the law will slightly reduce labor.

Huh ? ObamaCare won't kill jobs, it will just "reduce labor" ???? That's the same thing. Labor IS jobs. I suppose we shouldn't expect any better from Klein, whose previous inane statements include this one from December, where Klein attempted to argue that the Constitution "has no binding power on anything". I bet that came as a newsflash to the Supreme Court:

"The issue with the Constitution is not that people don’t read the text and think they’re following it. The issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago".

Um, that oh-so-confusing Constitution was adopted in 1787. For the enlightenment of the mathematically-and-constitutionally-challenged Klein, that was over 223 years ago, not over one hundred years ago. My only question is, why does the Washington Post employ this idiot ?

Klein gives us further clarification on how ObamaCare will not kill jobs as it does kill them:

"It's not that employers will fire workers. It's that potential workers — particularly older ones — will retire somewhat earlier. "The expansion of Medicaid and the availability of subsidies through the exchanges will effectively increase beneficiaries’ financial resources. Those additional resources will encourage some people to work fewer hours or to withdraw from the labor market."

I consider this to be the perfect liberal argument, an example of completely nonsensical and backwards thinking. Here, Klein is saying that people will voluntarily choose to leave the labor market earlier because their new ObamaCare entitlement will enable them to do so. So, in addition to there being fewer workers (and thus less government revenue), we will have more people dependent on the government for survival (more government spending). Let's see, what happens when we have less government revenue and more government spending ? One of two things – either we raise taxes or we have larger deficits and debt. Only a liberal of Klein's (low) caliber could spin this into a positive, even if he was telling the truth, which he isn't. ObamaCare will "reduce labor" by placing more burdens on employers, allowing them to hire fewer workers. Klein didn't even mention this in his hack article.

Ezra the mental midget actually compared tax cuts to ObamaCare, by saying that tax cuts also enable people to stop working earlier by "shifting financial resources". This dolt is starting to make my head hurt. People keeping their own money and retiring is completely different than people retiring via government dependence. People who retire early with their own money AREN'T DEPENDENT ON THE GOVERNMENT. They are self-supporting. They aren't consuming the resources of other taxpayers. Even though retired, they are therefore still PRODUCTIVE in the economy. They spend their own money. I swear, we could reduce liberal loons like Klein by 95% if we made them all take courses in Basic Economics. Unfortunately, those liberal loons would expect somebody else to pay for those courses.

Ezra Klein is actually advancing the idea of having fewer workers as a plus. As I said, it's the perfect nonsensical liberal argument. Klein is advancing the ball toward a more non-working, non-productive society of idle people dependent on the government for their survival. Way to go, Ezra. We already have a big problem with paying for future entitlements, and Klein is endorsing the exacerbation of that very problem. Why does this guy have a job again ? Somebody actually pays him money to spew this ignorance ? Unbelievable.

P.S. – It will probably take about five seconds for liberal loons reading this post to morph it into "King hates the poor". Begin the countdown. 5…4…3…2…

Twenty six states are challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare.

The House Of Representatives voted to repeal ObamaCare.

A majority of Americans are against the ObamaCare mandate (60% in the latest CNN poll).

Two federal judges have declared ObamaCare to be unconstitutional (two other judges, appointed by Democrats, have declared it to be constitutional. I don't know what Constitution they were reading, but it couldn't have been ours).

A reading of the U.S. Constitution immediately reveals the unconstitutionality of the ObamaCare mandate. The Commerce Clause states that Congress shall have the power to "To regulate Commerce…among the several States". The ObamaCare mandate doesn't regulate Commerce, it forces people to engage in commerce or be fined. Forcing people to purchase a product from a private company is an egregious perversion of the Commerce Clause, and is therefore unconstitutional. The ObamaCare mandate forces people to engage in commerce where there was none before. If the ObamaCare mandate stands, the government could force the people to do anything it wished. It could force us all to eat broccoli, buy guns, buy houses, drink milk, go to church, take vitamins, etc, etc. If the ObamaCare mandates stands, the power of the government would be unlimited, exactly the opposite of what the Founding Fathers intended. I think even Democrats know this is unconstitutional, but they don't care. They believe the end justifies the means, a principle attributed to Macchievelli. I cannot dispute that the Dems are Macchiavellian, so I'll leave them to defend that.

Yesterday, the Senate held a vote to repeal ObamaCare. It was defeated by a vote of 47-51. All 47 Republicans voted to repeal the unconstitutional bill. 51 Democrats voted for unconstitutionality. No Democrat voted in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. None. Zero. Lieberman and Warner didn't vote.

The lone bright spot on the Democratic road to unconstitutional tyranny is that one aspect of ObamaCare was repealed:

Another amendment to the health care repeal law did see passage, however – an amendment to repeal a provision that requires businesses to file a 1099 form with the IRS for every vendor with which they've done $600 worth of business or more. Both parties were sympathetic to complaints from the business community that the provision would create onerous paperwork requirements, and the amendment passed easily and with bipartisan support, 81-17.

Thank goodness for small favors.

Senators vow to uphold the U. S. Constitution when they are sworn into office. Fifty one Democrats just violated that oath…so, why can't we remove them from office ? I'm not talking impeachment, because that wouldn't work. Congress has impeachment power over itself, and the Democrats would certainly vote against impeaching themselves. Forget impeachment. I'm talking about holding recall elections. The people can do that themselves by getting enough signatures on a petition. Our government has overstepped it's bounds time and time again, and the Constitution is becoming increasingly irrelevant because of it. It's about time we stand up and stop it. The power really does belong to the people, for now at least, but we need to be awake to exercise it.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been in Congress for 29 years. He has a degree from Harvard Law School. You'd think Schumer might have some idea about how our government works. You'd be wrong. Here's Chucky, who never met a camera or microphone he didn't like, opining on our three branches of government:

There's your Schumerian civics lesson for today. The three branches of government are the House, the Senate, and the President (if Sarah Palin had said this, it would be on a continuous 24-hour loop on CNN). It's odd that Schumer, a lawyer, would forget all about the Judicial branch of government, but it's not that odd. Democrats aren't too fond of the Judicial branch these days, seeing as how another federal judge just ruled ObamaCare to be unconstitutional. That prompted assorted liberals to claim the judge was engaging in "judicial activism". I've come to learn that to liberals, "judicial activism" is when a judge applies the Constitution to overturn legislation liberals like. It means nothing more than that.

For the record, the three branches of government are the Igneous, the Sedimentary, and the other one.

Back to ObamaCare, here's White House advisor Stephanie Cutter's bizarre take on the ObamaCare ruling:

"The judge's decision contradicts decades of Supreme Court precedent that support the considered judgment of the democratically elected branches of government that the act's individual responsibility provision is necessary to prevent billions of dollars of cost-shifting every year by individuals without insurance who cannot pay for the health care they obtain," White House adviser Stephanie Cutter wrote in an Internet posting.

Allow me to translate. Cutter is saying it's not the job of the judiciary to overturn legislation passed by the legislative and executive branches, because there are decades of precedent in which the judiciary didn't overturn legislation….

Wow. Using Cutter's logic, we wouldn't need a Judicial branch of government at all, or a Constitution either. All we'd need is the "considered judgement" of Democrats. I wonder if Cutter is related to Schumer. Naturally, it is precisely the job of the Judicial branch to overrturn legislative overrreach by Congress and the President. It's their job to insure legislation passes constitutional muster. That's WHY we have a Judicial branch. It's known as checks and balances. Perhaps Cutter, like Schumer, believes that PROPER checks and balances consist of a Democratic-led House, a Democratic-led Congress, and a Democratic President all agreeing that ObamaCare is great, but that type of unilateral rule is what has Hosni Mubarak in trouble in Egypt. In fact, when Democrats aren't in power, they call such things "tyranny of the majority". You may have heard Democrats use that phrase once or a thousand times during the Bush years, though they've stricken the phrase from the English language now. These days, they deem opposition to Democrats to be "obstruction". You've heard that word used by Democrats once or a thousand times since Obama became President. Such intellectual honesty, those Dems.

From the "Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste" files, some liberals are hard at work trying to turn the crisis in Egypt to their political advantage. Like rust, they never sleep. MSNBC's Chris Matthews tried to blame it on Bush and the Iraq war, but the grand prize winner in the Loony Liberal Logic category goes to global warming alarmist Joe Romm, NPR, and John Podesta of the Center For American Progress, who blamed the Egyptian crisis on, you guessed it, global warming:

Political unrest has broken out in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and other Arab countries. Social media and governmental policies are getting most of the credit for spurring the turmoil, but there’s another factor at play. Many of the people protesting are also angry about dramatic price hikes for basic foodstuffs, such as rice, cereals, cooking oil and sugar.

This summer’s extreme global weather raised fears of a “Coming Food Crisis,” as CAP’s John D. Podesta and Jake Caldwell warned in Foreign Policy: “Global food security is stretched to the breaking point, and Russia’s fires and Pakistan’s floods are making a bad situation worse.” Earlier this month I discussed how, in fact, “Extreme weather events helped drive food prices to record highs.” Back then, experts were worried about food riots. Now they are happening.

Energy insecurity and climate instability have now become key factors in food insecurity, which in turn has become a key factor in toppling governments

Those who think that the serious impacts of climate change — and our inane energy policies — on the world economy and U.S. national security are decades away are simply not paying attention.

Can anyone remember what floods, fires, droughts, and food shortages were blamed on before global warming ? I'm pretty sure they were just considered natural events, though I don't want the loons to start calling me a flat-earther, a denier, or any of those other "scientific" names they call people. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin made the observation that the logic the loons use to decide whether global warming is the cause of everything something is similar to the way Monty Python decided if a woman was a witch. This is too funny not to use:

Update – I've found there is a problem with the Monty Python video playback. Rats. You can view the video on YouTube here.

So, I guess either the Egyptian crisis is caused by global warming….or Egypt is a duck….or made of wood…and is therefore a witch. Burn it !!!

There's so much happening on the political front that I couldn't settle on which issue to write about today. So instead, I'll write about all of them.
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Birther News: Hawaiian governor Neil Abercrombie said he wanted to put to rest all the craziness surrounding President Obama's birth certificate, so he set out to prove once and for all that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii. However, I fear his findings will only increase the volume of the Birthers (link):

Abercrombie said on Tuesday that an investigation had unearthed papers proving Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961. He told Honolulu's Star-Advertiser: 'It actually exists in the archives, written down,' he said. But it became apparent that what had been discovered was an unspecified listing or notation of Obama's birth that someone had made in the state archives and not a birth certificate. And in the same interview Abercrombie suggested that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health. He said efforts were still being made to track down definitive vital records that would prove Obama was born in Hawaii.

Now we know why we didn't see Obama's original birth certificate…there may not be one. Countdown to renewed Birthermania…..3…2…1…
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ObamaCare repeal: The House Of Representatives voted to repeal ObamaCare by a vote of 245-189. Three Democrats voted with the GOP for repeal. (link). One Representative did not vote – Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who is recovering from a gunshot wound after being attacked by either A) the mentally deranged 22-year old Jared Loughner, or B) Sarah Palin's crosshairs map. It depends who you ask (sane people select option A). And yes, the GOP actually did calls it's repeal effort 'Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act'. Give us a break already. That political rhetoric is a bit precious. I would have called it the 'Repealing The End Of The World As We Know It Act'. Just kidding. I'm for health care reform, just not ObamaCare. I can't even make sense of the government's Bureau Of Motor Vehicles rules, much less think of them dictating the health care rules for all Americans. I've seen Congress in action. It ain't pretty.
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Spending Cuts: GOP Representatives are announcing plans for $2.5 trillion in discretionary spending cuts over the next 10 years (link):

Jordan’s “Spending Reduction Act” would eliminate such things as the U.S. Agency for International Development and its $1.39 billion annual budget, the $445 million annual subsidy for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the $1.5 billion annual subsidy for Amtrak, $2.5 billion in high speed rail grants, the $150 million subsidy for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and it would cut in half to $7.5 billion the federal travel budget.

But the program eliminations and reductions would account for only $330 billion of the $2.5 trillion in cuts. The bulk of the cuts would come from returning non-defense discretionary spending – which is currently $670 billion out of a $3.8 trillion budget for the 2011 fiscal year – to the 2006 level of $496.7 billion, through 2021.

Rep. Jordan of Ohio said “Unless we begin to cut spending immediately, massive tax hikes or national bankruptcy will rob people of the chance to reach for the American Dream". I couldn't possibly agree more with that statement, but these discretionary cuts only get us part of the way there. Non-discretionary spending (mostly entitlements) is the lion's share of the federal budget, and also must be addressed. President Obama has proposed $78 billion in defense spending cuts that some GOP'ers appears to endorse. Good. We're going to need both parties to come together to get this done. This is a start.
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Obama Poll Bounce: Has anyone else noticed that since Obama has started to sound more centrist following the fall elections, his poll numbers are going UP ??? His approval rating is now 53%, according to a recent NBC/WSF poll (link). Not too long ago, he was at 40%. I call this the anti-left effect. It strikes me that the more the left complains about Obama, the better his chances for a second term will be.
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Gitmo Commissions Back On: Speaking of centrism, not to mention common sense, President Obama has reversed his 2008 campaign promise about military commissions trials at Gitmo. This is also a de-facto reversal of his campaign promise to close Gitmo. Military commission trials will proceed. Obama lifted the ban on military commissions after Congress stopped the transfer of prisoners to the United States. (link) Finally, change I can believe in.
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Abortionist Charged With Eight Murders: This story is sickening: (link)

A West Philadelphia abortion doctor, his wife and eight other suspects are now under arrest following a grand jury investigation. Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, faces eight counts of murder in the deaths of a woman following a botched abortion at his office, along with the deaths of seven other babies who, prosecutors allege, were born alive following illegal late-term abortions and then were killed by severing their spinal cords with a pair of scissors.

Gosnell is facing charges of murder in the third degree for the death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar. Mrs. Mongar died on November 20, 2009, when she was overdosed with anesthetics prescribed by Gosnell. He is also facing seven murder charges for the deaths of infants who were killed after being born viable and alive during the sixth, seventh, or eighth month of pregnancy. Gosnell is also facing numerous other charges.

Because left-wingers have been making such a fuss over political rhetoric lately, and trying to connect that rhetoric to violence, I ask them – whose political rhetoric would lead a doctor to believe it was okay to murder babies like this ?????? Whose political rhetoric shows no regard for the unborn ??????? I'd like to know. And this isn't some crazy person carrying out these murders. It's a professional physician, who allegedly lives by the Hippocratic Oath to treat patients ethically.

The new Republican-led House voted to repeal ObamaCare yesterday by a vote of 236-181. It was a bipartisan effort, with four Democrats joining Republicans in the repeal effort….oh alright, it wasn't very bipartisan at all. The repeal legislation will now move on to the Democrat-led Senate, where it will die. Even if it did somehow pass the Senate, I think I can say with confidence that Obama will veto repeal of his signature legislation.

Democrats have been trumpeting the fact that ObamaCare will reduce the deficit by $230 billion over ten years. Republicans are extremely skeptical of that figure. The Beacon Journal ran a New York Times article on friday supporting the notion that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit. Because the article left out a lot more than it explained, allow me to elaborate.

The CBO did score ObamaCare as reducing the deficit by $230 billion over ten years. That much is true, but there's a lot more to that story. The Times left out HOW this alleged deficit reduction would occur. From the American Spectator:

The Congressional Budget Office, in an email to Capitol Hill staffers obtained by the Spectator, has said that repealing the national health care law would reduce net spending by $540 billion in the ten year period from 2012 through 2021. That number represents the cost of the new provisions, minus Medicare cuts. Repealing the bill would also eliminate $770 billion in taxes. It's the tax hikes in the health care law (along with the Medicare cuts) which accounts for the $230 billion in deficit reduction.

Thus, repealing ObamaCare would REDUCE federal spending by $540 billion, REDUCE taxes by $770 billion, and eliminate Medicare cuts. Maybe it's just me, but I think these things were worth mentioning by either the New York Times or the Akron Beacon Journal, seeing as how they are, you know, alleged NEWS organizations.

They also might have mentioned that adding over 20 million people to the Medicaid rolls, as ObamaCare would do, would further burden state governments that are already in the red and trying to figure out how to cover their budgetary shortages.

They also might have mentioned that Medicaid is ALREADY in fiscal trouble, even without ObamaCare:

Medicaid—the joint federal–state health insurance program for numerous categories of the poor—has significant problems. Medicaid spending growth is unsustainable, increasing over 6 percent annually (in inflation-adjusted dollars) during the past two decades.[2] Medicaid growth has resulted in three federal bailouts in the past decade, and its growth is crowding out other state priorities, such as education, transportation, and law enforcement.

Yet, we're supposed to believe adding over 20 million more people to Medicaid will make things better ? Here's what CMS, the government office that manages Medicare/Medicaid, had to say:

Despite Medicaid’s enormous problems, Obamacare expands it dramatically. Beginning in 2014, states are required to cover all individuals below 138 percent of the federal poverty line with Medicaid.The CMS estimates that this will increase enrollment in Medicaid by 23 million individuals in 2014 at an added annual cost of over $70 billion.

Obamacare requires that states increase Medicaid reimbursement rates for PCPs to applicable Medicare payment rates for 2013 and 2014 to encourage PCPs to treat Medicaid patients. The estimated annual cost of raising the reimbursement rates by state is provided in Table 1. However, on January 1, 2015, both the mandate and the federal funding paying for it expire.

The "Table 1" mentioned above in reference to increasing reimbursement rates to physicians, is known as the "doc fix." Here is Table 1:

If you read the print at the top of Table 1, you will see that the CBO ObamaCare cost estimates do not include the $3-6.83 billion annual "doc fixes." Nor does it include the additional healthcare costs incurred by the states.

The Wall Street Journal noted other bogus cost estimates within ObamaCare:

The accounting gimmicks are legion, but we'll pick out a few: It uses 10 years of taxes to fund six years of subsidies. Social Security and Medicare revenues are double-counted to the tune of $398 billion. A new program funding long-term care frontloads taxes but backloads spending, gradually going broke by design. The law pretends that Congress will spend less on Medicare than it really will, in particular through an automatic 25% cut to physician payments that Democrats have already voted not to allow for this year.

Finally, let's look at the the government's track record on estimating healthcare costs. From the Daily Caller:

Tthe House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the original Medicare hospital insurance program would cost $9 billion annually by 1990. Actual spending that year was $67 billion.

The same committee predicted in 1967 that the total Medicare program would cost $12 billion in 1990. Actual spending was $110 billion.

In the case of Medicaid DSH — a program that reimburses states for payments to hospitals that treat Medicaid and uninsured patients — CBO estimated in 1987 that payments would amount to less than $1 billion in 1992. The actual cost that year was $17 billion

As is typical of our federal government, costs usually exceed the estimates…by a whole bunch.

If you want to know why Republicans are extremely skeptical, these are a few of the reasons why. Count me as extremely skeptical too. I've seen our government in action too many times to have much faith in them (see: $14 trillion debt, the rape of the Social Security Trust Fund, $55 trillion in unfunded entitlement mandates, etc, etc, etc). Now the government is telling me that adding tens of millions of people to the entitlement rolls for healthcare will reduce the deficit…and I'm supposed to believe them ???? Sorry. I can't suspend my disbelief that far. What ObamaCare gives us is what almost all Democratic programs give us – tax and spend. That is the precise mindset I'm dedicated to defeating, before we all go broke.

When the new Congress convenes, the GOP-led House is planning to move on several fronts.

1. They are going to try to repeal ObamaCare:

The new Republican-controlled House plans to schedule a vote to repeal the sweeping health care overhaul before President Barack Obama delivers his annual State of the Union address late this month, incoming House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said Sunday.

“We have 242 Republicans,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” He added, “There will be a significant number of Democrats, I think, that will join us. You will remember when that vote passed in the House last March, it only passed by seven votes.”

Upton, whose committee will play a key role in the GOP's effort to roll back the law, said that he believes the House may be near the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto.

Regardless of how the repeal vote turns out, the GOP will go after pieces of ObamaCare:

Upton specifically called out the requirement for businesses to complete 1099 tax forms, the individual mandate and the amendment on abortion introduced by Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak. "We will look at these individual pieces to see if we can't have the thing crumble," he said.

This should cause quite a stir. Democrats will fight back:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine, appearing on CNN, said “health care reform is going to go down in history as one of the great achievements of this president.”

And Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said repeal is a lost cause for Republicans.

“We cut prescription drug bills for senior citizens by 50 percent,” she told CBS. “We've already made sure that young adults up until they're 26 can be on their parents' insurance. A constituent in my district came up to me a few weeks ago and thanked me for saving her $3,000 a year because she could put her two adult children back on her insurance," she said.

"That's what the Republicans are going to be proposing to repeal this week," Wasserman Schultz added. "It's not going to happen. If it's about jobs and the economy and reducing the deficit, wasting time and money and adding to the deficit by repealing health care reform or on the attempt is irresponsible.”

In order for the Republicans to successfully repeal ObamaCare, I believe they will have to come up with a REPLACEMENT for it, a better idea. If the GOP forgets all about that part of it, they might be doing themselves more harm than good. I'm all for repealing ObamaCare, as long as something better takes it's place. We can't just stick our heads in the sand and pretend spiraling health care costs are not a problem.

2. Rep. Darrell Issa plans to go after wasteful government spending by the Obama administration:

The Republican congressman who is taking over responsibility for congressional oversight called President Obama's administration "one of the most corrupt administrations" on Sunday and predicted that the investigations he is planning over the next two years could result in about $200 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers.

Issa, who as chairman will have subpoena power, said he will seek to ferret out waste across the federal bureaucracy. While he used fiery rhetoric in describing the Obama administration in a series of television interviews Sunday, he said he will focus on wasteful spending, not the prosecution of White House officials.

Asked on "Fox News Sunday" about reports that the White House is staffing up on lawyers to prepare for his oversight hearings, Issa said: "They're going to need more accountants.

"It's more of an accounting function than legal function," Issa said. "It's more about the inspector generals than it is about lawyers in the White House. And the sooner the administration figures out that the enemy is the bureaucracy and the wasteful spending, not the other party, the better off we'll be."

Issa said he plans to lead bipartisan investigations on food and drug safety, as well as Medicare fraud.

"We can save $125 billion in simply not giving out money to Medicare recipients that don't exist for procedures that didn't happen," Issa said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "These are real dollars. Ten percent of the deficit goes out in wasted money – money that doesn't get one person health care in Medicare."

On the CNN show, Issa said: "When I look at waste, fraud and abuse in the bureaucracy and in the government, this is like steroids to pump up the muscles of waste."

Here is a list of investigations Issa has planned:

As the replacement for outgoing Democrat Henry Waxman, Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress.

According to an outline of the committee’s hearing topics obtained by POLITICO, the House Oversight and Government Reform is also planning to investigate how regulation impacts job creation, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis; recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown.

A look at the preliminary hearing schedule illustrates that Issa plans to stay away from hurling subpoenas at the White House.

In investigating the impact of regulation on job creation, the committee plans to ask why the economy hasn’t “created the private sector jobs the president has promised,” and he’s calling in business leaders to explain “about the government regulations that are doing the most harm to job creation efforts.”

“The committee will examine how overregulation has hurt job creation and whether the administration intends to try and abuse the regulatory process to implement regulations that Congress would reject,” according to an outline of committee hearing topics.

Issa also wants to study why the financial crisis commission couldn’t reach consensus last year. He’d like to call Phil Angelides and former Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), the chair and ranking member of the committee, to determine if there was any agreement on the panel in relation to the cause of the meltdown.

Thar's a new sheriff in town, and his name is Darrell Issa.

3. The Republicans might demand budget cuts in exchange for raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling:

Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, said if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, the “impact on the economy would be catastrophic.”

“I don’t see why anybody’s playing chicken with the debt ceiling,” Goolsbee said today on ABC’s “This Week” program. “If we get to the point where we damage the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.”

The government is slated to hit the legal limit on borrowing, $14.3 trillion, early this year. Congress must agree to raise that ceiling or the U.S. could be forced to default on its obligations.

After candidates supported by anti-deficit Tea Party activists were elected on pledges to rein in government spending, some lawmakers have said they would demand budget cuts in exchange for voting to raise the debt ceiling.

The U.S. has a $1.3 trillion federal budget deficit. President Barack Obama’s debt-reduction panel failed last month to agree on its chairmen’s recommendations for ways to reduce the annual deficit to about $400 billion in 2015.

The plan would have increased taxes by $1 trillion by 2020 by scaling back or eliminating hundreds of deductions, exclusions or credits such as those allowing homeowners to write off interest on their mortgage payments. It would also have cut individual and corporate income tax rates.

Goolsbee said he anticipates Obama will find common ground with Republicans on legislation to benefit the economy, citing investment incentives and tax cuts for workers and small businesses, and warned against cutting back on spending needed for economic growth.

“The reason the deficit is big this year is because we’re coming out of the worst recession since 1929,” Goolsbee said. “That’s the reason. The longer-run fiscal challenge facing the country is important.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said failing to raise the debt ceiling “would be very bad for the position of the United States in the world at large.” Still, he wouldn’t vote to raise it “until a plan is in place” to deal with debt, Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

If the GOP was paying attention to the last election, they definitely SHOULD demand some budget cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. How else will the runaway freight train of government spending ever slow down ? The federal government has been kicking the fiscal responsibility can down the road for a long, long time now. It has to stop.

Government tyranny has been staved off for a bit longer, as Federal Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled the ObamaCare mandate is unconstitutional. The mandate would have forced all Americans to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine, a clear perversion of the Commerce Clause, which states Congress shall have the power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

Getting right to the heart of the matter:

U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson wrote that no court had expanded the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to allow the government to regulate a person's decision not to buy a product.

"At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance — or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage — it's about an individual's right to choose to participate," Hudson wrote.

From the Judge's actual case opinion:

Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market. In doing so, enactment of the [ObamaCare mandate] exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article I.

In another crucial part of the ruling, the Judge explains why the ObamaCare mandate was so dangerous:

Of course, the same reasoning [to require Americans to purchase health insurance] could apply to transportation, housing or nutritional decisions. This broad definition of the economic activity subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation.

In other words, if the ObamaCare mandate is allowed to stand, the government could force us to do almost anything it wished. There would be virtually no limitations on government power, rendering the Constitution a worthless piece of paper, and subjugating individual liberty to the whims of our government overlords….which pretty much explains why progressives LIKE the ObamaCare mandate. They're a bunch of control freaks. They WANT to subjugate individual liberty to their idea of the collective good. They want to tell the rest of us what to eat, what to drive, what to wear, what to think, what to see on television or hear on the radio, how much money we should make, how much of our own money the government should let us keep, how we should spend the money we do have, etc, etc, etc. Individual liberty is the arch enemy of the leftists.

So naturally, the White House is "disappointed" that a Federal Court has ruled Congress "exceeded it's authority" with the ObamaCare mandate (actually, only congressional Democrats exceeded their authority. Republicans correctly voted against ObamaCare). Tyrants don't like limits on their authority. Here's Obama defending his unconstitutionality in an interview with ABC last month:

"What I think is appropriate is that in the same way that everybody has to get auto insurance and if you don't, you're subject to some penalty, that in this situation, if you have the ability to buy insurance, it's affordable and you choose not to do so, forcing you and me and everybody else to subsidize you, you know, there's a thousand dollar hidden tax that families all across America are — are burdened by because of the fact that people don't have health insurance, you know, there's nothing wrong with a penalty," [Obama] said.

What a pantload. Where should I start ?

No, Obama, nobody HAS to buy car insurance. Nobody even HAS to buy a car. Nobody has to drive. Those are individual choices. What Obama is doing with his health insurance mandate would be equivalent to FORCING people to buy a car, a clear violation of liberty. It doesn't matter whether the ObamaCare mandate is convenient to Obama's agenda or not. He shouldn't have the power to force such a thing upon the people. That's why we have a Constitution limiting the government's power in the first place. Plus, Mr. President, it's the STATES that require insurance if one chooses to drive a car, not the federal government. Read the 10th Amendment if you haven't yet, Mr. Constitutional Law Professor.

Obama's reasoning that others have to pick up an uninsured person's healthcare tab is even more specious, especially when you consider that Obama is a known wealth redistributor, as are all liberals. Obama has NO problem with other people subsidizing the housing, food, and healthcare of others. Are you kidding me ? What do you think welfare, section 8, food stamps, and Medicaid are all about, not to mention liberal views on tax policy ? Obama is for subsidization EVERY time. That's how his party gets elected to office, by offering to subsidize one group at the expense of another group. Now, all of a sudden, Obama reverses course and is worried about someone else subsidizing healthcare ? Bull-Spit. What a laughable lie. He could care less about that, as all his other beliefs prove. ObamaCare itself subsidizes healthcare for others. What Obama is really interested in is power. When the Constitution gets in the way of that power, it's damn the Constitution. He's not the first politican to act this way, of course, just the latest example.

Judge Hudson also shot down the White House's revisionist argument that the ObamaCare mandate is a tax and therefore constitutional. You may remember, Obama insisted over and over that the ObamaCare mandate penalty was not a tax, until the case went to court, at which time the Obamaniacs realized arguing that it WAS a tax was better for their case. Judge Hudson writes:

Having concluded that [the ObamaCare mandate] is, in form and substance, a penalty as opposed to a tax, it must be linked to an enumerated power other than the General Welfare Clause…in order for the noncompliance penalty to survive constitutional challenge, it must serve to effectuate a valid exercise of an enumerated power – here the Commerce Clause.

And in a footnote:

If allowed to stand as a tax, [the ObamaCare mandate] would be the only tax in U.S. history to be levied directly on individuals for their failure to affirmatively engage in activity mandated by the government not speciically delineated in the Constitution.

How I love it when the Court gets it right. The Court really is the last bastion of freedom against a tyrannical government. No wonder FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court with those friendly to his unconstitutional wishes. As I said before, tyrants don't like limitations.

We can't pop the champagne corks just yet. This case is not over. The Obamaniacs will no doubt appeal this ruling all the way to the Supreme Court.

But this is a hell of a good start. Score – Freedom 1, Tyrants 0.

President Obama announced the formation of a deficit commission last february to address the federal government's addiction to spending tons more money than it takes in. This addiction has become so serious that we now have annual deficits over a trillion dollars and a federal debt of $14 trillion. The addiction is so serious that we haven't had a Democrat-controlled Congress balance the budget since 1969, even though the Democrats have been in control of the federal purse strings for the majority of the time since then. You never hear about that from the mainstream media, do you ??? The last responsible Congress we had was the Republicans in the 1990's, which led to three balanced budgets (sorta), the last one being in 2000.

Yesterday, we learned the deficit commission has been a waste of time, because the deficit commission will reject it's own recommendations, according to Jake Tapper of ABC News. The deficit drug addicts are still mugging the rest of us for our cash, and our ship of state is still a ship of fools:

ABC News has learned Andrew Stern will vote no on the deficit commission’s plan to reduce the national deficit by nearly $4 trillion. Mr. Stern, the former president of the SEIU, has informed co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson that he will be the fifth member voting no, ending the commission’s hopes of officially passing the plan to Congress. The commission needed votes from 14 of the 18 members in order to pass the plan to Congress.

Mr. Stern joins Sen. Max Baucus and Reps. Dave Camp, Paul Ryan and Jan Schakowsky in voting against the plan. He is also the only non-elected official to vote against the plan.

A few thoughts.

First, why in the hell would anyone in their right mind (Obama) put Andy Stern, a left-wing union guy who has never been elected to office, and who is committed only to higher taxes and more government spending and wealth redistribution, on a flipping DEFICIT COMMISSION ? I know the answer, but I'll let someone else say it. There's barely a spending cut in the world Stern would agree with, and he'd reject out-of-hand anything that might help solve our unfunded entitlement problem. He wants MORE entitlements, not responsible reform. Stern was a 'no' vote from jump street. The only way Stern would have voted 'yes' was if the deficit commission's sole recommendations were 'increase taxes by $20 trillion and confiscate all the rich people's money (while carving out a union exemption so Andy Stern could keep all HIS money).'

Second, while I expected Democrats on the deficit commission to be against deficit reduction (liberal Democrats are basically for ever more government spending and ever higher taxes to support that spending. How they can possibly believe that will lead anywhere other than total fiscal meltdown mystifies me), I was surprised that two Republicans, Reps. Dave Camp and Paul Ryan, also voted 'no.' I was especially surprised by Ryan's vote. He is one of the few Congressmen whose fiscal chops I respect. His Roadmap For America's Future contains some very good ideas I'd like to see debated in Congress. Ryan said he voted against the commission's recommendations because "it not only didn't address the elephant in the room, health care, it made it fatter." Okay, Congressman, but in order to make ANY progress on deficit reduction now, with a split Congress and a Democrat in the White House, you're going to have to agree to something you don't like in order to move the ball forward. The other Republican 'no' vote from Camp was because he doesn't want to raise taxes. Ryan and Camp are both making the same mistake. They are giving away a possible $4 trillion in deficit reduction over a few issues they could address at another time, after another election.

The deficit commission's report did explode a couple myths about Obama. These myths have been exploded before, though liberals keep trying to deny it:

2) Health reform's cost savings apparently were bogus. Remember how Democrats boasted that health reform would cut the budget deficit by $170 billion over the next decade and far more after that? The deficit commission must not have gotten that memo. It says health spending projections under the new law "count on large phantom savings" and the reform law's new long-term care program that the report calls "unsustainable." As a result, Congress will still need to enact "a number of other reforms to reduce federal health spending and slow the growth of health care costs more broadly."

5) Obama is a big spender. Although President Barack Obama has talked about fiscal discipline — and set up this deficit commission — his own budget plan would spend $350 billion more on so-called discretionary programs over the next decade than if the government were just left on autopilot, according to the report.

The upshot is, President Obama has made the job of eliminating the deficit and reducing the national debt much more difficult, which all sane people already knew.

Some other deficit commission conclusions you can find at the previous link were:

-The federal government is horribly managed (no sh*t).
- Millions of workers don't pay into Social Security (almost 10%).
- The tax code is a hopeless, loophole-riddled mess (again, no sh*t).
- It's actually not that hard to cut the deficit (yeah, until you add politics into it).

So now the deficit commission's recommendations won't even be debated and voted upon by Congress. What a failure. Our representatives are still unserious. Our spending and debt addiction remains. What a tragedy for this country and it's future. Let's hope the new Congress puts these issues back on the table instead of abdicating all responsibility like the current Congress has done.

I'll leave you with the following video from Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), which says it all:

Speaking of failure, doesn't the government shutdown tomorrow, because Pelosi, Reid, and company couldn't be bothered to do their jobs and pass a federal budget ? Unreal. Actually, I don't think it's fair to call Pelosi and friends 'failures.' They aren't good enough.

Missouri voters went to the polls this week to vote on Prop C, the Missouri Health Care Freedom Act. It was a referendum on ObamaCare. Here are the results:

On Tuesday, the people of Missouri spoke. They said NO to Obamacare when they overwhelmingly passed Prop C, the Missouri Health Care Freedom Act. Without regard to the results of any other state and local races placing a checkmark in the "D" or "R" columns, 71% of voters supported Prop C, which means this issue crossed partisan lines.

What is most significant about the vote here in Missouri is that it is the first referendum vote on the health care mandates imposed by the federal government. Other states already have enacted legislation similar to Prop C. Arizona has a referendum vote coming up in November. Forty two states have some type of legislation in progress. Missouri's victory is expected to embolden other states.

SEVENTY ONE PERCENT of Missouri voters oppose the ObamaCare health insurance mandate. I repeat, SEVENTY ONE PERCENT.

That pretty much says it all. There's nothing more for me to add.

Any questions, ObamaCare supporters ?

P.S. – In anticipation of the inevitable 'Missouri is a red state full of Republican wingnuts' drivel that some of my more nefarious liberal commenters would conjure up, I offer the following pre-emptive facts: John McCain did win the state of Missouri over Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election…barely. McCain got 49.4% of the vote. Obama got 49.3% of the vote. It was nearly a dead heat. In addition, Missouri's governor is a Democrat (Jay Nixon), and one of the state's two Senators is a Democrat (Claire McCaskill). In the House Of Representatives, Missouri is represented by four Democrats and five Republicans. Missouri isn't a red state, it's a purple state, which makes the landslide vote against the ObamaCare mandate an even more overwhelming statement.

Here is Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA) informing a crowd that the federal government can do almost anything it wants, the U.S. Constitution be damned.

The crowd was none too happy to hear that American citizens are not free to engage in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as they see fit. No, instead of such trivialities, Rep. Stark says we are little more than pawns on a government-run chessboard who must obey any and all requirements placed upon us by our kings and queens. I rather thought we fought a Revolutionary War against ideas like Rep. Stark's, but I guess I could be mistaken. Maybe we are rewriting history about our founding in the same way that Rep. Stark would like to rewrite the Constitution. Maybe the Revolutionary War was about nothing more than a boatload of British tea, but I gather it was about much larger issues, such as liberty and self-determination.

I would write Rep. Stark off as a clueless nutball who could be ignored and laughed at, but he most certainly is not alone in his radical beliefs. The Democratic party is trumpeting the new "right" known as ObamaCare, and has no problem with the mandate requiring all American citizens to participate in this "right" or be fined/jailed. Apparently, most Democrats don't see the contradiction inherent in referring to something forced on the people by the government as a "right." The capacity to understand irony must be beyond them.

Leading the Democrats extremist charge of the "right" brigade to nullify the Constitution is none other than the Obama administration, which has taken to the court system to fight off challenges to it's regal omnipotence. Virginia, an upstart colony formerly known as a state, has claimed the ObamaCare mandate is unconstitutional. Lord Obama and his Superfriends sought to summarily dismiss the legal challenge of it's Virginia fiefdom, but a funny thing happened on the way to the quorum…a federal judge actually consulted the Constitution Of The United States, that musty old document these post-modern hipster Dems have no time for (I apologize for putting old Pete Stark anywhere near the phrase "post-modern hipster"). Go figure. A judge reading the Constitution. Maybe this could be the beginning of a trend. Here's what the judge said in his ruling:

In the opening salvo of the legal fight, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson refused to dismiss the state's lawsuit, which argued the requirement that its residents must have health insurance is unconstitutional and conflicts with state law.

Hudson, who noted that his ruling was only an initial step, decided the issue the state raised — whether forcing residents to buy something, namely healthcare, is constitutional — had not been fully tested in court and was ripe for review.

"The congressional enactment under review — the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision — literally forges new ground and extends (the U.S. Constitution's) Commerce Clause powers beyond its current high watermark," Hudson said in a 32-page ruling.

By "forges new ground" and "extends the Commeric Clause powers," Judge Hudson is telling us that the Commerce Clause was never intended to be used for such a purpose as requring American citizens to purchase health insurance from a private company. There are no constitutional grounds to mandate Americans to purchase health private health insurance. Here's what the Commerce Clause actually says about the powers of the federal government:

"To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes".

Regulating commerce means the government has powers to ensure commerice is equitable. The word "regulate" would have to be changed to "mandate" in the Commerce Clause in order to support ObamaCare. The Commerce Clause clearly doesn't say that.

It's so obvious that ObamaCare isn't supported by the Commerce Clause that left-wingers (and some right-wingers too), in order to justify their ongoing destruction of the Constitution, have taken to creating a second parallel Constitution out of whole cloth to replace the original one. In this parallel Constitution, the words of the Constitution mean something other than what they actually say. In the parallel Constitution, the words mean whatever the left-wingers want them to mean (and thus have no meaning at all). You'll know you're hearing about the actual Constitution when words like "originalist" are attached to it. You'll know you're hearing about the parallel Constitution that doesn't really exist when words like "living" and "evolving" are attached to it.

We could ignore and laugh at the advocates of the parallel Constitution just like we could laugh at the pathetic Rep. Stark, but we'd be making a grave mistake. Don't forget, the progressives and others have been progressively eating away at the original version of the Constitution for well over a century now, and they've achieved a great measure of success. Much of their unconstitutionality has legal precedent now, because judges have political ideologies too. We are getting dangerously close to Rep. Stark being correct, that the federal government can do whatever it wants to do, the Constitution be damned.

And anybody who isn't concerned about that is a fool of the first order.

Or a communist.

As the lady who questioned Pete Stark asked, if the government can get away with this, what can't they get away with ?

In Ayn Rand's classic novel, Atlas Shrugged, the character of Wesley Mouch is a Washington lobbyist who eventually becomes the country's economic dictator, controlling all commerce and industry. Mouch intentionally destroys free enterprise, thus destroying the opportunities of the common man along with it.

After reading a Wall Street Journal piece by Daniel Henninger, in which Henninger highlights many of the ideas of Dr. Donald Berwick, Obama's recess appointment to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), I believe we have found a real life Wesley Mouch. I find Mouch's, er, I mean, Berwick's ideas to be absolutely chilling. Let me know if you feel the same way. Following are some selected quotes from Dr. Berwick:

Big Brother Knows Best: "I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do."

If The Patient Dies, So Be It: "You cap your health care budget, and you make the political and economic choices you need to make to keep affordability within reach."

Leaders With Plans: "Please don't put your faith in market forces. It's a popular idea: that Adam Smith's invisible hand would do a better job of designing care than leaders with plans can."

I can think of many "leaders with plans" who distrusted the free market – Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Che, Castro, Hugo Chavez, Mugabe, Obam…well, you get the picture. If frequently turns out to be a nightmare.

Death Panels, Part I – Denying Care: "Indeed, the Holy Grail of universal coverage in the United States may remain out of reach unless, through rational collective action overriding some individual self-interest, we can reduce per capita costs."

Death Panels, Part II – Limiting Supply: "It may therefore be necessary to set a legislative target for the growth of spending at 1.5 percentage points below currently projected increases and to grant the federal government the authority to reduce updates in Medicare fees if the target is exceeded."

Death Panels Part III – Limiting Supply Drastically: "About 8% of GDP is plenty for 'best known' care."

The U.S. currently spends about 16% of GDP on health care. ObamaCare is supposed to add 31 million more people to the insured rolls, and at the same time, Berwick thinks we can cut spending in half. I guess we can, if we deny care to, say……SICK PEOPLE.

Yes, We Get It. You're Going To Limit Supply: "A progressive policy regime will control and rationalize financing—control supply."

You Ignorant Hicks Can't Make Your Own Health Care Choices: "The unaided human mind, and the acts of the individual, cannot assure excellence. Health care is a system, and its performance is a systemic property."

It Doesn't Sound Very Good So Far: "Health care is a common good—single payer, speaking and buying for the common good."

Screw The Patient: "Hence, those working in health care delivery may be faced with situations in which it seems that the best course is to manipulate the flawed system for the benefit of a specific patient or segment of the population, rather than to work to improve the delivery of care for all. Such manipulation produces more flaws, and the downward spiral continues."

Kill Free Enterprise, Says Mouch: "For-profit, entrepreneurial providers of medical imaging, renal dialysis, and outpatient surgery, for example, may find their business opportunities constrained."

We'll Wait Until You Have Late Stage Terminal Cancer. It's Cheaper: "One over-demanded service is prevention: annual physicals, screening tests, and other measures that supposedly help catch diseases early."

Doctor Doesn't Know Best: "I would place a commitment to excellence—standardization to the best-known method—above clinician autonomy as a rule for care."

Doctor Doesn't Know Best, Part II: "Young doctors and nurses should emerge from training understanding the values of standardization and the risks of too great an emphasis on individual autonomy."

Communism Is Better: "Political leaders in the [British] Labour Government have become more enamored of the use of market forces and choice as an engine for change, rather than planned, centrally coordinated technical support."
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For once, I'm almost speechless. Our anti-hero, Dr. Wesley Mouch, wants to insert the government directly between the doctor and the patient, standardizing life-and-death decisions from the top, rationing care, putting money above the patient's well-being, and acting like a communist dictator in general. I wonder if we'll have any doctors left after Dr. Mouch's plans are implemented. No wonder Obama didn't run this little Hitler past a Senate confirmation hearing, where his views would have been made public. It probably would have started a riot.

Henninger makes a summarizing point:

Vilifying Dr. Berwick alone for his views is in a way beside the point. Within Mr. Obama's circle they all think like this. Defeat Dr. Berwick, and they will send up 50 more who would pursue the same goals [great...like I'm not depressed enough already]

If the American people want the world Dr. Berwick wishes to give them, that's their choice. But they must be given that choice with full, televised confirmation hearings.

Barack Obama, Donald Berwick and the rest may fancy themselves philosopher kings who know what we need without the need to inform or persuade us first. That's not how it works here.

Well, that's not how it's SUPPOSED to work here, but that's exactly how it IS working, and that's the problem.

The only other thing I can say is…Don't Tread On Me.

Way back in the before times, nine months ago, you may recall President Obama saying the health care reform provision requiring all Americans to purchase insurance or pay a fine was not a tax. Here's one such discussion the Prez had with ABC's George Stephanopolous:

That's what Obama said then, when he was attempting to pass ObamaCare.

Here is what the Obama administration is saying now, when it is attempting to defend ObamaCare against legal challenges. This is classic. From the American Spectator:

Late last night, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the Florida-based lawsuit against the health care law, arguing that the court lacks jurisdiction and that the State of Florida and fellow plaintiffs haven't presented a claim for which the court can grant relief. To bolster its case, the DOJ cited the Anti-Injunction Act, which restricts courts from interfering with the government's ability to collect taxes.

The Act, according to a DOJ memo supporting the motion to dismiss, says that "no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed." The memo goes on to say that it makes no difference whether the disputed payment is called a "tax" or "penalty," because either way, it's "assessed and collected in the same manner" by the Internal Revenue Service.

Thus, the Obama administration's official position is….the health care mandate isn't a tax, until it is a tax.

That's transparency, folks. If it seems less than honest, it's only because Obama graduated from Harvard, and you non-elites (little people) just can't understand his high-level, elitist sophistry thinking.

And don't bother to get out your Mirriam-Webster dictionaries to look up the meaning of the word 'tax.' As the Prez also says, "words matter"….. but only until they don't.

Btw, didn't the President promise not raise ANY taxes on the middle class ? I seem to recall something like that……

"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." – Barack Obama

I wonder how Mirriam-Webster defines the word 'hypocrite' ?

"Meanwhile, you're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't rank all that high on the truth meter. With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations; information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment. All of this is not only putting new pressures on you; it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy." - President Obama, speaking at a Hampton University graduation ceremony.

Barack Obama is one brilliant guy. He knows better than the rest of us. He should not be questioned by bitter, clinging peons like me. We should just bask in the light of his profound wisdom. If Obama wants to give commencement speeches instead of dealing with the worst oil spill in history, we should just accept that he is doing the right thing (shut up liberals. If Bush was doing this, you'd be saying the exact same thing).

If The One says Playstations and iPods are threatening democracy, then, by God, Playstations and iPods are threatening democracy. This is his Word, and he saw that is was Good. Amen.

Uttered by lesser men, the President's statement might sound bufoonish, and the media would lambaste him for it (again, think Bush). I know I've never considered Xboxes and Playstations to be of particular political significance. I've also never considered the open information age to be a political threat, except to the politicians whose utterances don't, to quote Obama, "rank all that high on the truth meter." I also find it ironic that a President who was elected largely due to unexamined mainstream media adoration would turn around and bite the hand that fed him. I guess the Prez was for the ubiquitous media before he was against it.

In truth, it's really only the part of the media that questions Obama and his acolytes that Obama thinks "puts pressures…on our democracy." The President longs for the good old days, when the media consisted of three hundred Democrats and William F. Buckley. You know, the fair and balanced days before Fox News, the internet, and all those other threats to democracy. Back in those blissful times, you'd never even know that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the following yesterday:

While speaking at the Nation’s Catholic Community conference last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pleaded with religious leaders to "instruct" their followers to support immigration reform, according to Fox News.

Pelosi, who is Catholic, told the group of sisters, priests and activists that the church will play an important in shaping the future political landscape.

"The cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops that come to me … say, ‘We want you to pass immigration reform,’ and I said, I want you to speak about it from the pulpit," Pelosi told the audience.

"Some [who] oppose immigration reform are sitting in those pews, and you have to tell them that this is a manifestation of our living the gospels," she added.

Hmmm. Here I thought liberals like Pelosi were FOR the idea of separation of church and state. Now I find that belief is subjective, and should only be applied when a true threat to democracy exists, like when there's a cross that hardly anybody ever sees in the middle of nowhere on public land in the Mojave desert. And now absolutely nobody will see that cross, because it was stolen in the middle of the night after a court ruled it could remain on federal land, where it has stood for seventy years. The culprit undoubtedly resides somewhere in the Tea Party movement. Can I get a big amen on that, liberals ?

Back before the "24/7 constant media environment that bombards us with content," to quote Obama again, we also might not know that ObamaCare was passed based upon lies. ObamaCare doesn't bend down the cost curve, as the President promised time and again, and now the CBO has found it will cost another $115 billion more than estimated. But what's another $115 billion when we're talking about spending trillions ? It's not like this country has any money issues or anything. Nope. We're all rolling in clover. Pay no attention to the 9.9% unemployment rate, or the $12.8 trillion debt, or the $1.5 trillion deficit, or the tsunami of unfunded entitlement liabilities, or nearly every state in the union running in the red. Forget all that. I don't think that's too high on Obama's truth meter.

Also forget that the Democrats are looking to spend $200 billion more by Memorial Day, all of it exempted from the Dems own PayGo (lol) rules. The only thing Obama and the Dems want you to think about is that Obama appointed that debt commission, at the same time he spends more money faster than any previous administration in the history of the country. Greece ain't got nothin' on us.

If only that 24/7 media would just keep quiet.

You see, before the constant barrage of media that Obama doesn't like, that Obama thinks "pressures….democracy," we might not know about a lot of this stuff.

And that's how the President would like it, because the one being pressured is HIM.

Civil rights questions: How can a President who passed a law mandating that all Americans have valid health insurance cards or be fined also believe the Arizona immigration law asking suspected illegal immigrants for their papers is "misguided" ? Do illegals now have more rights than American citizens in the President's eyes ?

Gentlemen, start your engines: Evolutionists believe life on earth started with the spontaneous conversion of inanimate matter to animate matter (they call it the "primordial soup." I call it the movie Frankenstein, which was never been duplicated in any laboratory). How do these folks have the nerve to dismiss a higher power that many call God ? Is the higher power argument somehow less believable than the evolutionists Shazaam! belief ?

Subjugation as the new feminism: The United Nations has selected Iran to a commission on women's rights. The commission is “dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women," according to it's website. Women in Iran have been struggling for basic human rights, and have made some progress, but Iran is a country where stoning is still the law, where lashings are given to women for "improper dress," and where female civil rights protesters are arrested, beaten, raped, and tortured. Assigning Iran to a women's rights commission is like assigning the Ku Klux Klan to a commission on racism. Of course, this is the crazy UN, which also put China and Saudi Arabia on it's Human Rights Commission. Here's my question – in light of this move, shouldn't the UN also find some Neo-Nazi group to resolve the Israel-Palestine issue ? This does partially explain why so many think Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central is the real political news. It's hard to distinguish political reality from comedy these days, even though there's not much funny about the reality.

Speaking of comedy: President Obama did his brand of standup at the recent White House Correspondent's Dinner. Never one to miss a chance at gaining a partisan edge of any kind, the President took direct aim at one of his presumed presidential contenders in 2012. Here's Barack "Shecky" Obama:

“Speaking of undeserved honors, a few weeks ago, I was able to throw out the first pitch at the Nationals game….It was high and wide. FOX News reported it as the president pandering to the left wing, while MSNBC declared: “President pitches a no-hitter.”…

Of course, that’s not the only thing we’ve been accused of socialiizing this year. You might have heard we passed a healthcare bill… Some Republicans have claimed the bill includes a few secret provisions. That’s ridiculous. There aren’t a few secret provisions in the healthcare bill, there are like hundreds….such as The Bay State denial: This bill shall cover short-term memory loss with regard to healthcare reform. So good news Mitt, your condition is covered."

Pretty funny, but it does lead to an important question. How is Mitt Romney going to overcome the mandated health care reform he instituted in Massachusetts to secure the 2012 GOP nomination ? Romney has repeatedly said he is against ObamaCare, but his own record flies in the face of that. Romney won't be the first politician to run on an 'I was for it before I was against it' platform, of course. John Kerry got the 2004 Democratic nomination with that schlock, but remember, Kerry LOST the general election. The next question is, if Romney isn't going to be the 2012 nominee, who will be ? Huckabee ? Gingrich ? Pawlenty ? Palin ?…..I just can't see it.

Let me start by saying I agree with several things Obama has done recently – instituting an effort to secure loose nukes is great. Probably the single greatest threat to the USA and the world is a nuke falling into terrorist hands. Obama's move to start offshore oil drilling is a step forward. I supported his surge in Afghanistan (though I'm having second thoughts after Afghan President Hamid Karzai criticized American efforts. We can't possibly succeed without the support of the Afghan government). Obama took a small step forward on gay rights by requiring hospitals to allow patients to designate who can visit them during crucial moments. It no longer has to be a family member. The former policy discriminated against unmarried couples and gay couples who are not allowed to marry, and are therefore not recognized as family. Allowing unmarried and gay partners to visit their loved ones in the hospital is simply the right and humane thing to do. Kudos to the President for changing this longstanding and unfair policy.

But thursday, the President returned to what I termed "full-blown economic retard" mode a couple posts back. At a Democratic fundraiser in Miami, Obama said the following about the tax day Tea Party protests. From the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama said Thursday he's amused by the anti-tax tea party protests that have been taking place around Tax Day. Obama told a fundraiser in Miami that he's cut taxes, contrary to the claims of protesters.

"You would think they'd be saying thank you," he said.

At that, many in the crowd at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts stood and yelled, "Thank you!"

The Democrats at Obama's fundraiser may have bought into this schlock, but anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows better. This was Obama at his worst.

First of all, the Tea Party protests aren't really about current levels of taxation. They are primarily about out-of-control government spending and growth, along with the resulting massive deficits and debt increases. It doesn't take too many brain cells to figure out that higher taxation HAS to follow such fiscal irresponsibility eventually, even if Obama is throwing a populist bone to the taxpayers now. The Democrats who are saying "thank you" to Obama's program of cut taxes/increase spending certainly didn't feel the same way about George W. Bush's same program of cut taxes/increase spending. The Democrats were right about Bush, but they've become incredible hypocrites now that their man is in charge, and in little more than a year in office, their man has increased spending more than Bush ever dreamed. Federal spending in 2011 is scheduled to be nearly a trillion dollars more than it was in 2008. That is astounding, and remember, after that the huge spending increases for ObamaCare start to kick in.

Second, Obama is a tax RAISER, not a tax cutter. He broke his pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making under $200,000 about two weeks after he took office, when he implemented a regressive cigarette tax. Obama's health care reform will implement a slew of new taxes, far more than the TEMPORARY tax cuts he instituted for 95% of Americans last year. Obama's wants to end his middle class tax cuts after 2010. Then he wants to reverse the Bush tax cuts for those making over $200,000. Several of the health care reform taxes will hit the middle class, further violating his pledge not to raise taxes on those making under $200,000 per year. Coming up on Obama's agenda is another huge regressive tax scam known as Cap And Trade, which will drive up everyone's energy costs while doing virtually nothing to decrease CO2 emissions. Obama's economic advisors are contemplating several other tax increases, among them a VAT tax, which would also be regressive.

Yet, Obama wants us to say "thank you" for the temporary tax cuts. I don't think so. The American public has to be smarter than to fall for this bait-and-switch crapola. How our President thinks he can control the economic narrative with such fatuous nonsense is beyond me. Oh wait, I do know how. The mainstream media seldom calls him on his lies. Instead, they are complicit in pushing them. That's how.

Left-wing political mythology holds that President Bush referred to the U.S. Constitution as nothing but "a goddamned piece of paper" in 2005. Bush allegedly said this in frustration over constitutional issues with the Patriot Act. Though it is very unlikely Bush ever spoke those words, many left-wingers still believe he did say them, even though the unreliable anti-Bush website that originally made the allegations, Capitol Hill Blue, has removed the story from their database.

While it's not the least bit surprising that lefty sources would invent an anti-Bush story, it occurs to me that Congress and the Executive branch almost always treat the Constitution as nothing but a g-d piece of paper. They treat it as a nuisance, or they ignore it altogether. This is a pretty shabby way to treat the supreme law of the land, the law both Congress and the President are sworn to uphold. Rather than uphold the Constitution, our federal government invents specious justifications to get around it.

On the ObamaCare health insurance mandate, which forces all Americans to buy health insurance from a private company, our scoundrels in Congress ludicrously cite the General Welfare clause (see here what the Founders actually meant) or the Commerce clause (whichs has NEVER been used before to force a person to purchase a product from a private company). They completely distort the meaning and intentions of those portions of the Constitution. To add insult to injury, when 16 states (so far) announced their intentions to sue the federal government over the unprecedented insurance mandate, the White House responded by calling it a political stunt. Now, I don't know what the outcome of those lawsuits will be, but referring to constitutional issues as a "stunt" is greatly troubling, especially from a President who is a former Constitutional law professor. I can't help but wonder what he was teaching his students.

Republicans don't get off the hook here by any means. They may be concerned about the Constitution now, finally, but they haven't been so very concerned with it in the past either. Conservative columnist Walter Williams wrote an article called Ruled By Scoundrels, which points out that many of the most outrageous, constitutionally-questionable intrusions of the federal government DIDN'T come from the Democrats:

The March 10 issue of Human Events carried a special report on the 10 most outrageous government programs. Their 18 judges included conservative/libertarians such as former Rep. Dick Armey, R-Texas, former Delaware Gov. Pete Dupont, Mark Levin, president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, and David Boaz, Cato Institute's vice president.

The Legal Services Corp. headed the list, followed closely by the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act and the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. Rounding out the list were: Americorps, Endangered Species Act, No Child Left Behind Act, Amtrak, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards, Title X Family Planning Act, and the provision of welfare payments to non-citizens and illegal aliens.

Human Events, a conservative, Republican-leaning publication, unlike Democrats who protect scoundrels in their party, wasn't reluctant to list the presidents who sponsored or supported these outrageous government programs. Most of the programs were born during Republican administrations. Herbert Hoover was in office when the Davis-Bacon Act was written in 1931. Richard Nixon presided over the births of the Legal Services Corp. (1974), the Endangered Species Act (1973), Amtrak (1971) and the Title X Family Planning Act (1970). Gerald Ford sponsored CAFE standards (1975), and George W. Bush signed off on the No Child Left Behind Act (2002).

If we have two political parties ignoring the Constitution, why do we even have a Constitution ? What good is it ? If it can be ignored at will, it IS nothing but a goddamned piece of paper.

Walter Williams included the following in his article:

Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., has introduced the Enumerated Powers Act several times. It would require each act of Congress to contain a concise and definite statement of the specific constitutional authority relied upon for the enactment of each portion of that act or else the bill could not go forward. Shadegg's Enumerated Powers Act (HR 175) went down to three crushing defeats.

Can we ask for more compelling evidence of Congress's contempt for our Constitution, or do you think our congressmen are simply reflecting the constitutional contempt of the people?

Why do you suppose Congress would repeatedly vote against a bill that required constitutional authority for it's actions ???????

It wouldn't be because Congress doesn't want ANYTHING to limit it's power, would it ? And if Congress can do anything it wants, we really don't have a Constitution at all, do we ? It IS just a goddamned piece of paper. Sure, maybe the Supreme Court will strike down a law here or there once in a while, but we also have Presidents and Congresses trying to install activist judges who will rule THEIR way, who will change the meaning of the Constitution according to political ideologically rather than proper application of constitutional principles. The left-wingers are professionals at that game.

A final word of warning….

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." – Thomas Jefferson

Watching the health care debate over the last year has made me almost physically ill. It confirmed all my worst suspicions about our federal government. The lies, the spin, the ignorance, the corruption, the backroom dealings, the phony cost estimates, the buying of votes, the use of government force, the subversion of the Democratic process, the government going against the will of the people, the ongoing taxpayer ripoff, the catering to special interests….it's disgusting.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is the guy who singlehandedly destroyed the Democrats health care reform cost estimates at Obama's phony health care summit. Ryan also has a better health care plan than the one the Dems put forward, and it was ignored and rejected out-of-hand. Obama and the Dems preferred instead to promote the lie that Republicans didn't have a health care plan. That was one lie out of a sea of lies coming from the White House on the issue.

This statement by Ryan pretty much sums up why America is disgusted with the entire process, and why Congress' approval rating is in the dumper:

“And now I want to return to the Health Care Frankenstein. Most Americans understand that government-run Health Care is not free, not cheap, and not compassionate. I think most Americans believe Congress has no idea of what the public demand will be for subsidized Health Care. They are correct. When Medicare was enacted, Congress guessed it would cost about 10 percent of what it turned out to be after 25 years. Heck, Congress couldn’t even figure the cost of the 3-month long Cash for Clunkers subsidy last year, underestimating it on the order of 1 to 9. Most Americans know the Congressional majority are clueless about what their government-run Health Care system is going to cost.
“The drama that brought this creature to life was unedifying … part tragedy and part farce. Ethical categories went out the window. Never in history have the deliberations of Congress been subverted on this scale. The secrecy, the lack of transparency, the half-truths were stunning. The votes called at midnight … the 2 and 3 thousand page bills members of Congress had no time to read before the votes … the sordid backroom deals, the Cornhusker Kickback that shamed Nebraska, the Louisiana Purchase, the ‘Gator Aid’ Medicare privilege for Florida, the additional Medicare dollars for states whose wavering representatives only yesterday were ferociously denouncing earmarks … the federal judgeship dangled for one lawmaker’s brother … the raid on the Medicare piggy bank … the lie that $250 billion for ‘doc fix’ shouldn’t count as a Health Care cost … the double-counted deficit estimate scam that would land any accountant in jail … the proposed Slaughter rule that Congressmen not record a vote on a bill their constituents hate, just ‘deem’ it passed and vote on the amendments…and to complete the farce, the phony Executive Order pretending not to fund abortions when the Health Care bill, as ‘the supreme law of the land,’ does fund abortions. The level of political corruption to buy the votes for this debacle makes all past examples look penny ante by comparison.
“Self-government stands or falls on integrity, not only in those who represent you but in the enactment of law. This indecency soiled our freedom and embarrassed the democracy we promote in other nations. And this may not be the last of it. To enact its transformative agenda, this leadership employs the Machiavellian saying that the end justifies the means. America was born in a revolution against that whole idea. Soon it will be the norm.
“The Constitution and the consent of the people are all that stand between limited and unlimited government power. Zealous ideologues with the best of intentions brush aside the limits on power in order to get whatever they believe is good for the people … no matter what the people believe. Our system of freedom can survive an assault, but it won’t survive if the people are frightened, or angry, or asleep at the switch. A great Democrat, President Andrew Jackson, once said: ‘eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty.’ We can thank our current leaders at least for this: they have awakened the nation to the danger of taking self-government for granted.”

Exactly.

Ryan's entire statement at the above link is well worth reading.

I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, and 2012 is a ways off, but as far as I can see, the GOP doesn't have a real good presidential candidate. Maybe they should give Paul Ryan a look. Ryan's the ranking member on the Budget Committee, and I know I'd like to have a President who can add and subtract for a change.