Welcome To The Machine - On the same day President Obama invited Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) to the White House to pressure him to switch his vote on health care reform, Obama appointed Matheson's brother, Scott Matheson, to a judgeship on the 10th Circuit Court Of Appeals. I'm sure that was an entirely random, coincidental event with absolutely no underlying political calculations whatsoever…not at all similar to the way things are done in Obama's old stomping grounds…not at all similar to the Chicago way….not at all. This is the most ethical administration ever…especially when they aren't lying about everything.
===
Global Warming Kettle Calls Pot Black – "First of all, we just got five feet of snow in Washington and so everybody is like — a lot of the people who are opponents of climate change, they say, see, look at that, there’s all this snow on the ground, this doesn’t mean anything. I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn’t mean that every place is getting warmer; it means the planet as a whole is getting warmer. But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver, which is supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees, and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow." – Barack "The Weatherman" Obama.

The glaring problem with Obama's "everything is climate change now" rhetoric is that Vancouver doesn't usually get much snow in February. The average temperature there in February is 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Not exactly snow weather, and a temp of 55 degrees is just an example of normal weather variation. Exit questions – What if Sarah Palin said something this dumb ? How many months would it be before the media stopped talking about it ?
===
Nominee For Idiot Of The Year - The following video shows MSNBC talker Dylan Ratigan "interviewing" a Tea Party representative, and hijacking his own interview by refusing to allow the Tea Party guy to answer the questions put to him. Ratigan instead used the segment as a transparent ploy to parrot the constant MSNBC propaganda point that the Tea Party movement is a racist movement.

This might be a new low in what passes for journalism. Either that, or Ratigan fancies himself the next Keith Olbermann, a dubious aspiration at best.

While I'm on the subject of the Tea Party movement…I keep hearing from liberals that the Tea Parties are chock full of racist signs, and having attended Tea Parties, I haven't seen any. Not one. I have seen a couple signs on the internet that COULD be interpreted as racist (and could also be liberal plants), out of the hundreds of thousands of signs from which to choose at Tea Party events. Can some liberal please show me all these racist Tea Party signs ??? I really want to see what all the fuss is about.
===
A Good Day To Die – "Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good." – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) link

I've heard of the bigotry of soft expectations, but this is ridiculous. By Reid's standard, if only 20,000 people lost their jobs next month, that would be, as Tony the Tiger used to say, "GRRREEAAT !"

Time for a new Senate Majority Leader. This one's broken.
===
Rules ? We Don't Need No Stinking Rules - From NBC News:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today the American people ought to know more about what she called "total obstruction" by the Republican Party in the Senate. Referring to Sen. Jim Bunning's hold-up of unemployment benefits earlier this week, Pelosi said, "It's not about rules, it's about a decision they've made to obstruct."

Here we have Pelosi admitting that the Pay-Go rules passed by the Democrats a couple weeks ago are basically meaningless. They bypassed them the first time they had the opportunity to enforce them, and then they have the gall to portray the one Senator who called the Dems on their dishonesty an obstructionist. Wow. Words fail me.

Time for a new Congress. This one's broken.
===
Obama As The New Bush - Students in Jakarta, Indonesia are protesting President Obama's upcoming visit to that country. Obama previously has been very popular in Indonesia, having spent part of his childhood in Jakarta. From the Associated Press:

Scores of Islamic students staged protests outside Jakarta's parliament and in at least three other major Indonesian cities on Friday against President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to this predominantly Muslim country.

The students carried banners branding Obama as an enemy of Islam and an imperialist in downtown Jakarta as well as in the provincial capitals Padang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya.

They also threw shoes at large pictures of Obama's head. An Iraqi journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in 2008.

Protest organizer Ahmad Irhamul Fikri, spokesman for the Coordinating Board for Campus Proselytizing Institute, said bigger rallies will be staged next Friday in more Indonesian cities ahead of Obama's March 20-22 visit.

If there's a bright side here…maybe this will shut up some of the fringe element nuts known as the Birthers, who think Obama is a foreign-born Muslim who wants to establish a Caliphate here in America, or something.

I keep thinking I should write a post about my differences with the Republican party, but Democrats keep talking, thereby constantly reminding me why I detest Democrats, so I never quite get around to the Republicans. Here are a few of the latest examples of Demo-speak.

"I am very optimistic about, about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration." –Vice President Joe Biden, Febrary 2010.

Don't that beat all ? Here is Biden crediting the Obama administration for our successes in Iraq. Time for a short history lesson. Biden and Obama both opposed the Bush-era Surge, which transformed the Iraq War from a failing proposition to a winning proposition. And Biden was the one who proposed the colossally stupid three-state solution in Iraq, which would have been a logistical and humanitarian nightmare involving the uprooting and relocation of millions of Iraqis. In addition, the timetable for America's withdrawal from Iraq was setup by the Bush administration, not the Obama administration. To Obama's credit, he did continue the policies of his predecessor Bush in Iraq, policies which were condemned by Democrats for years, policies that Obama himself condemned over and over again on the campaign trail in 2008. Obama also repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he'd end the Iraq War in sixteen months, another promise he will not keep (thankfully).
===
"Most small businesses right now, if they've got enough customers to make a profit and they can get the bank loans required to boost their payroll, boost their inventory and sell to those customers, they will do so." –Barack Obama, February 2010.

Here is a comment from a man who has no idea what it means to run a business. FYI Obama – A business doesn't take out bank loans to make payroll. If a business is taking out bank loans to make it's payroll, that is a business soon to be out of business. If a business can't make payroll, it lays people off, it scales back.
===
"The idea [to create jobs] is to provide financial support to workers, age 60 to 62, who are currently employed, to opt for a temporary, expanded early retirement benefit under Social Security. The jobs those individuals leave will need to be refilled, even under the current recessionary circumstances. Employers will hire an equal number of unemployed people to take their places. With approximately 4.2 million workers in that age group, we would need only one-quarter of them to elect to take expanded early retirement in order to create 1 million private-sector jobs." – Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), January 24, 2010.

Here, Dennis the Menace is saying a million jobs will be created by moving a million people to early Social Security at age 60. Sigh. I can't stand it. First of all, retiring a million people early to have their jobs taken by other workers DOESN'T CREATE ANY JOBS. It's a wash. A million workers leave the workforce and a million workers replace them. That's ZERO jobs created. Second, the net result of Kucinich's proposal is only that a million more people go on Social Security, adding more unfunded entitlement liability than that program already has. It adds more to the government debt. Why does it seem that the Democrats response to absolutely everything is to have MORE people dependent on the government ? Maybe it's because the Democrats response to everything is to have MORE people dependent on the government (Whoa. I just got that deja vu feeling. Weird). Speaking as someone from northeast Ohio, I sincerely apologize for Dennis Kucinich. We are not all dolts here.
===
"It's [called] climate change, where where it's supposed to get warm it gets warmer, and where it's supposed to get cold, it gets colder." – Keith Olbermann, February 2010.

Maybe it's not fair to Democrats to characterize Olbermann as a Democrat. He's more like…a raving left-wing madman. I'm sure Olby doesn't ever vote Republican, however. The above quote is Olbermann of PMS-NBC responding to Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who joked about how the recent record snowfalls don't seem to indicate any global warming taking place. Olby takes the insane liberal loon stance that no matter what happens with the weather…global warming, er, I mean, climate change, is responsible for it. This is pretty convenient for the loons, because it's makes their climate change religion inviolable. Climate change is responsible for EVERYTHING now. Heavy rain ? Climate change. No rain ? Climate change. Hot temperatures ? Climate change. Cold temperatures ? Climate change. Heavy snowfall ? Climate change. No snowfall ? Climate change. On and on it goes. The old flat-earthers look absolutely intelligent by comparison.

On the same subject:

"One of the most disturbing things about the Republican Party over the last couple of decades is that they just don’t believe in science any more. And that is not an approach that is likely to generate any kind of creative thinking…People who use snowstorms as an example of why global warming doesn’t exist don’t understand the science and they don’t care.” – Democrat Howard Dean, February 2010.

See: Olbermann's response that ALL WEATHER PHENOMENON is climate change. How scientific is that ?

For further response to How-weird Dean, I give you Ed Morrissey from HotAir, who responds to Dean better than I could:

"Actually, we do respect science. What we don’t do is adopt belief systems based on hypotheses from so-called scientists that use incomplete and unreliable predictive modeling, include wild conjectures as fact, pass off student dissertations as reliable research, and accept advocacy claims without testing, all while conspiring to hide contradictory evidence and scheme to ruin the careers of those who question them. Science requires that claims get tested, that predictive models that fail get discarded, that data and process remain open for review, and that critical thinking get welcomed instead of demonized.
Now, when Howard Dean wants to discuss scientifically how anyone can represent what the IPCC did as rigorous and reliable science, and how the “science” that predicted unstoppable increases in global temperatures for the last 12 years got it wrong but still remains reliable as a basis on which to enact public policy that massively intrudes on private enterprise, property rights, and energy production, well, I’d bet the GOP would welcome such a forum. But while we’re there, perhaps Dean and the scientific acolytes in the Democratic Party can scientifically explain how a group of cells with a unique, human DNA that divide and multiply within a uterus is somehow not human life.
You know, since we’re being scientific and all." – Ed Morrissey

Yeah. What he said.

Or we can go with the dumb screamy guy who said Republicans don't believe in sicence. You pick.

The official proclamation from the media is that President Obama is a moderate now, after word came from the White House that Obama will propose a three-year federal spending freeze in tonight's State Of The Union address. The official proclamation claims that the President got the message from the Massachusetts senatorial election, and now he's taking bold steps to deal with our disastrous deficit/debt problem, the one thing certain to destroy the economic future of this country.

Let's scrutinize the official proclamation for accuracy.

1. Obama's spending freeze would only cut non-defense discretionary spending. This is the small part of the federal budget, representing only about 20% of federal spending. It excludes nearly all the major expenditures, such as Social Security, Medicare, other entitlements, and defense. Over ten years, the White House says this spending freeze would save $250 billion, but the White House isn't proposing a ten-year freeze, it's proposing a three-year freeze, from 2011 through 2013. Estimated savings – about $15 billion per year for three years. To put this in perspective, the deficit for FY2009 was $1.5 TRILLION. The estimated deficit for FY2010 is $1.35 TRILLION. Obama's spending freeze is like taking a drop of water out of a bucket-full, it's so minor. If this is an example of Obama being a moderate, we're in trouble.

2. Obama already INCREASED non-defense discretionary spending by about $100 billion during his first year in office. In FY2009, President Bush's last budget, that spending was $589 billion. Obama jumped it to $687 billion for FY2010, and he did it during a recessionary period of no inflation. That's not moderate either. That's standard liberal big government policy.

3. Prior to announcing the three-year spending freeze, Obama had already submitted budgets to Congress for the next three years. Those budgets had called for REDUCTIONS in non-defense discretionary spending after FY 2010. As Alex Conant explains:

In the budget proposal that President Obama submitted to Congress last year, his budget office already projected actual cuts and freezes in “non-defense” discretionary spending for the next three years. That’s in part because of the huge increase in that area of spending that the President requested (and received) for the current fiscal year. To be specific: FY2009 (President Bush’s last budget) had $589 billion in non-defense discretionary spending. That number jumped to $687 billion in FY2010 (Obama’s first budget), and then drops to $641 billion in FY2011, $622 billion in FY2012 and $625 billion in FY2013. So for the White House to now boast that it will freeze non-defense discretionary spending is hardly news. If anything, it’s backtracking on its earlier plans to actually cut that area of spending.

By my math, if Obama freezes spending at the FY2010 level, he will actually be spending $173 billion more than his own previous budget proposals called for. Still sound moderate ???

4. Also excluded from Obama's spending freeze will be the rest of his stimulus package (which has now swelled from $787 billion to $862 billion, according to the CBO), the massive spending of ObamaCare if it passes (at least a trillion over ten years and most likely WAY more), and a second stimulus package that is being contemplated ($174 billion). I don't see anything moderate there either.

There's nothing at all moderate about Barack Obama. Those who say there is are playing their typical game of 'Let's Pretend.'

Still, this spending freeze that isn't…this drop in the bucket…this $15 billion pretend spending cut amidst trillions in defcits and massive federal spending and entitlement increases….has liberals in an uproar. As the Nobel-prize winning Princeton professor, NY Times columnist, and alleged economist, Paul Krugman, said of the imaginary spending freeze, "this is appalling on every level." President Clinton's former Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, actually had the audacity (of a dope) to refer to Obama's move as "fiscal austerity." These guys REALLY like to play 'Let's Pretend.' There has been nothing austere about Obama's fiscal policies to date. Nothing. The reactions of Krugman and Rubin are typical of the liberals, er, I mean progressives. You see, progressives have two fiscal scenarios:

1) During lean economic times like this, they advocate massive government spending and tax increases (like Obama's bank tax, health care taxes, carbon tax, etc, etc).

2) By contrast, during flush economic times, they advocate…um….massive government spending and tax increases.

See the difference ? I don't, but somehow progressives do. They must call them progressives because they progressively take away your income, progressively take away your liberty, progressively take away your rights, and progressively ruin America. I can't think of any other reason to call them progressives on the fiscal front.

Far from being a moderate, Obama is the biggest liberal to ever hold the office of President, by far. His little kabuki theater of fiscal responsibility shouldn't fool anyone.

P.S. – Speaking of progressives taking away your rights, I see the progressive anti-free speech crusade is continuing. They are still trying to stop groups from airing ads on television. This time they are trying to censor Tim Tebow's mother. They don't like her Super Bowl ad, where she says she's glad she didn't listen to the doctors who recommended she abort the future Heisman trophy winner. Progressives know we can't have any crazy talk like that floating around, with mothers going around saying they're glad they had their babies and stuff. With this brilliant move, progressives have now placed themselves solidly in the anti-life, anti-free speech camp. You couldn't make this stuff up, nobody would believe it. They are not only against freedom of speech now, they are against human beings as well.

Here's the world-class left-wing dunderhead Hugo Chavez, the socialist President of Venezuela, describing America's relief efforts in earthquake-ravaged Haiti :

"I read that 3,000 soldiers are arriving, Marines armed as if they were going to war. There is not a shortage of guns there, my God. Doctors, medicine, fuel, field hospitals, that's what the United States should send," Chavez said on his weekly television show. "They are occupying Haiti undercover. On top of that, you don't see them in the streets. Are they picking up bodies? … Are they looking for the injured? You don't see them. I haven't seen them. Where are they?"

Any questions about the sanity of Hugo Chavez ? I hope not. America will be the biggest contributor to Haitian relef, by far.
===
Here's the world-class left-wing dunderhead Keith Olbermann, describing Massachusetts Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown on last night's episode of Fictional Narratives From Loon Central, aka, Countdown With Keith Olbermann, on MS-NBC:

“In short in Scott Brown we have an irresponsible homophobic racist reactionary ex-nude-model tea-bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees. In any other time in our history this man would have been laughed off the stage as an unqualified and disaster in the making by the most conservative of conservatives. Instead the commonwealth of Massachusetts is close to sending this bad joke to the Senate of the United States.”

The short translation of Olby's words is 'oh no, Scott Brown might win in Massachusetts ! Let's make up a bunch of phony crapola about him !' For a longer explanation of the Olby-hate, I'll have to pull out my Liberal-To-Sanity translation manual. Where did I put that thing ? Ah, here it is.

1. Scott Brown is "irresponsible" because – well, who knows. Maybe because he drives a truck. Not, you know, "green" enough. Olby doesn't drive due to a head injury he suffered running for the subway. He slammed his head into the top of a subway car door and doesn't have any depth perception, which could explain a lot. Lack of perception is one of Olby's biggest problems.
2. Scott Brown is "homophobic" because – he's against gay marriage. I'm in favor of gay marriage, but, not being a world-class left-wing dunderhead, I'd never call all anti-gay marriage folks "homophobic." After all, marriage has been defined as being between a man and woman for all of recorded history. That's the standard we've always had. Change will come slow.
3. Scott Brown is "racist" because – Ubermorons like Keith Ubermoron think the entire Tea Party movement is racist because – well, they don't have a reason. They just think the race card works for them, because Obama is black. They're liars, that's all.
4. Scott Brown is a "reactionary" because – Olbermann thinks using the word "reactionary" makes him sound intelligent.
5. Scott Brown is a "teabagging supporter of violence against women" because – like an immature twelve-year old, Olbermann gets a cheap thrill out of using the nasty sexual innuendo of the word "teabagging," and the "supporter of violence against women" part comes from a vicious smear from the Coakley campaign. Coakley reportedly put out a flier that says “1,736 women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008. Scott Brown wants hospitals to turn them all away." Not only is the charge blatantly false, but Scott Brown is filing a criminal complaint against Coakley for her slander. Still, Olbermann repeats the slur, because slurs are what Olbermann does.
6. Scott Brown endorses violence against "other politicians" because – someone in the crowd at a Brown event made a tasteless comment about Coakley that was caught on tape. Now, Brown didn't say it, it came from the crowd. Brown said he didn't even hear the remark, but that's all the lie-master Olbermann needs to attribute the comment to Scott Brown and falsely claim Brown advocates violence. Unbelievable.

In summary, Keith Olbermann is a low-down filthy lying scumbag snake. I hate to be so harsh, but there's no way to sugar-coat it. It shouldn't be sugar-coated. Olbermann is vermin, and beneath contempt. The next time he does his Worst Person In The World schtick, he should look in the mirror. That person will be staring back.
===
The next world-class left-wing dunderhead is Hanoi John Kerry. Here is what the desperate Kerry said about Scott Brown:

"I'm no stranger to hard fought campaigns, but what we've seen in the past few days is way over the line and reminiscent of the dangerous atmosphere of Sarah Palin's 2008 campaign rallies. This is not how democracy works in Massachusetts," Kerry said this afternoon in a statement. "Scott Brown needs to speak up and get his out of state tea party supporters under control. In Massachusetts, we fight hard and win elections on the issues and on our differences, not with bullying and threats," Kerry said.

The "dangerous atmosphere of Sarah Palin's 2008 campaign rallies ?" Uh, what dangerous atmosphere ? The grand total of violent episodes at 2008 Palin campaign rallies was – ZERO. Ditto for the Tea Party protests. For an explanation of Hanoi John's remarks, see that Liberal-To-Sanity translation manual again. Brown campaign spokesman Felix Browne responded, "People are tired of John Kerry's partisan politics. His baseless accusations reflect the desperate last gasps of a flailing campaign." Sounds about right.
===
The final world-class left-wing dunderhead is another MS-NBC cretin, Ed Schultz. Here's Schultz advocating criminal action in the Massachusetts election in order to defeat Scott Brown:

"If I lived in Massachusetts, I'd try to vote ten times," Schultz said on his radio show, The Ed Schultz Show. "Yeah that's right," he went on. "I'd cheat to keep these bastards out. I would. Because that's exactly what they are."

Gotta love those democratic principles embraced by Schultz, no ? What a guy. He fits right in with the political mainstream – in Iran. Which is where I wish he'd go.
===
There ain't no freak-out like a left-wing freak-out, eh ? These people are coming apart at the seams. That's the great thing about insane hatred. It always reveals itself eventually. The left-wing dunderheads are revealed for what they are – hate-filled lying morons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As someone who holds mostly fiscal conservative/Libertarian political belefs, and as someone who has been falsely slandered as a racist by liberals more times than I can count because of it, I am keenly aware of the double standard that exists regarding the topic of race. The Harry Reid incident is another example of it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made a stupid racial remark about Barack Obama. In 2008, Reid said Obama could be elected president because he is “light skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Not at all good (and who even uses the term 'Negro' these days ?). Reid's remarks just came to light in a new book called Game Change. If I was Obama and Reid said those words to my face, I'd want to punch him in the mouth. It's like telling a Jew that he could become President because he doesn't look or act too Jew-y.

This isn't the first time a Senate Majority Leader has gotten himself in hot water over perceived racist remarks. In 2002, Trent Lott (R-MS) said the following about endorsing late Senator Strom Thurmond's 1948 Dixiecrat presidential bid, "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either." Lott didn't explicitly mention race, but because Thurmond's 1948 campaign platform included racial segregation, Lott was cast as a racist.

Now, I don't know if either Reid or Lott is a racist. Maybe they both are, maybe neither of them are. I can't look into their hearts and judge them, so I won't. Both Lott and Reid apologized for their remarks, but what is instructive here is what happened after the racially insensitive remarks were made and the apologies given.

After Reid's remarks, Obama accepted his apology and declared the matter closed. Democrats rushed to Reid's defense as GOP'ers called for Reid to step down. Reid said he has no intention of stepping down.

After Lott's remarks, according to Politico:

President George W. Bush, by contrast, said in 2002 that Lott's comments did "not reflect the spirit of our country," explaining that "any suggestion that the segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive, and it is wrong." Lott later wrote in his book, “Herding Cats,” that Bush’s public comments about the matter were “devastating” and that many on his staff had “grown certain that some powerful Bush staffers had launched a power play to replace me as Senate majority leader.”

Democrats attacked Lott, and the Republicans forced Trent Lott out as Senate Majority Leader.

So I ask, why the double standard ? If these types of racially insensitive remarks are wrong and call for punishment, then they are ALWAYS wrong and call for punishment. It shouldn't matter to which political party the offender belongs.

We can also add hypocrisy to Reid's offenses. When others have made racially insensitive remarks, none other than Harry Reid leapt to judge them racist (as long as they were Republicans).

Unlike the Republicans, I am not saying Reid should step down over this, even though I pretty much despise him. The man couldn't tell the truth if there was a gun held to his head. He's been lying for so long that I doubt he'd even recognize the truth if he heard it. In my opinion, Harry Reid is a 100% pure political creature in the very worst sense of the word. He will say or do anything for political advantage.

But I know how the Democrats and Republicans play their political cat-and-mouse games, and frankly, it makes me a little sick. Both parties have entirely self-serving situational ethics at best. I'm tired of it.

All I want to know is, why is it okay when Harry Reid makes racial remarks, and not okay when Trent Lott or other non-Democrats do it ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wish I could take credit for this, but it's an e-mail making the rounds on the web. For your consideration…
—
My dog sleeps about 20 hours a day.. He has his food prepared for him. He can eat whenever he wants, 24/7/52. His meals are provided at no cost to him.. He visits the doctor once a year for his checkup, and again during the year if any medical needs arise. For this he pays nothing, and nothing is required of him. He lives in a nice neighborhood in a house that is much larger than he needs, but he is not required to do any upkeep. If he makes a mess, someone else cleans it up. He has his choice of luxurious places to sleep. He receives these accommodations absolutely free. He is living like a king, and has absolutely no expenses whatsoever. All of his costs are picked up by others who go out and earn a living every day. I was just thinking about all this, and suddenly it hit me like a brick in the head…Holy crap, my dog is a LIBERAL !!!

Now that it appears the Democrats are going to pass something they can call health care reform, I've been wondering what will come next for the Dems. There's cap-and-trade to ruin the energy industry fix global warming climate change, but then what, other than the inevitable amendments to health care reform and cap-and-trade that will have to be implemented to deal with all the unintended consequences of those oppressive measures ?

Because it's the holiday season and I wish good will to all men, I have a killer idea for the donkeys in their quest for a Fourth Reich Of The Democrat Kind…….

Fruits and vegetables.

Yup. Fruits and vegetables could be the next "crisis" for the Democrats to address. Think about it. All people need food (even more than health insurance, believe it or not), and fruits and vegetables are acknowledged as the healthiest foods. All the Democrats have to do is use their standard talking points, apply them to fruits and vegetables, and voila!, a "crisis" is born ! Here's what I mean:

1. People need fruits and vegetables, but the rich have the means to purchase them in much greater quantities than do the poor. All liberals know this is not fair. I bet they could even find a study that says 40,000 people die every year from not having enough fruits and vegetables. The Dems could say Fruit And Vegetable Reform is about saving lives.

2. Evil capitalism and it's demonic sidekick, PROFIT, rear their ugly heads all along the food production cycle. Farmers (often evil corporate farmers) make profits, wholesalers make profits, truckers make profits, and grocery retailers make profits from selling lifesaving fruits and vegetables to the American people at inflated prices. This is a travesty, putting people's lives second to the almighty dollar. Liberals could propose a single-payer fruit and vegetable system to correct this outrage. Maybe they could create a couple government-sponsored enterprises to oversee the redistribution of food wealth – Fruity Mae and Veggie Mac. Sure we have the Food Stamp program already, but that's like Medicaid, woefully inadequate. Much more needs to be done. There are probably 100 million Americans who don't eat enough fruits and vegetables. The government must step in to bend down the cost curve and correct this dire situation.

3. Simply taking control of the food production cycle from A to Z is not enough. In order for the government to ensure that all Americans eat their fruits and vegetables, the government must mandate it. Americans must either eat their recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables each day or pay a fine/face imprisonment. It's for our own good, you know.

4. Huge tax increases must be implemented to pay for the government taking over all the farms, wholesalers, trucking companies, and grocery stores. When "naysayers" point out that this is socialism, liberals will laugh derisively and accuse the naysayers of being for "the failed policies of the past" for using the term "socialism," and then point out that lots of socialism already exists in America – the post office, the military, health care, General Motors, Social Security, etc. A little more socialism will surely not hurt.

5. Subsidies (welfare) will be enacted to help the poor have the same ability to acquire fruits and vegetables as the wealthy folks do. Again, this is a health and fairness issue. I know we already have tons of unfunded entitlement liabilities, but see point #4 about paying more taxes. Don't worry, only OTHER people will pay those taxes, not you. Or at least Congress will make it appear that way. They are experts at that kind of thing.

Any conservative types who oppose Fruit And Vegetable Reform will be characterized as mean, greedy, and uncaring. If any of those mean conservatives start muttering about how inefficient the enormous federal bureacracy is, or start yammering about supply and demand principles, or any stuff like that, just point out how well centralized food production and distribution has worked out elsewhere, like in the Soviet Union. On second thought, strike that, even though waiting in line six hours for a loaf of bread IS preferable to having an unfair capitalist pig, profit-based food system where almost every conceivable type of food is abundant and readily available. Remember, this is about FAIRNESS. The rich capitalist foodsters don't care about that. They only care about their big salaries and yachts.

In order to get the ball rolling, I'm urging all caring liberals to lend their financial assistance to my new lobbying group, People For A Vegetative State. You can make your checks out to me personally, and I'll see that your money goes to bribe every congressperson in sight (after a small remuneration to me for my time and efforts. I have to eat too. ). You can trust me. I'm compassionate. After all, I thought up this idea, didn't I ???

And after Fruit And Vegetable Reform passes, we'll go after the scumbags in the clothing industry. I can't afford designer labels, can you ??? Only the wealthy rapists of the proletariat can afford stuff like that. Power to the people, and dos vedanya.

You have to hand it to the Democrats. No matter what objective reality this country finds itself in, the Democrats have the capability to utterly deny it. If we are $12 trillion in debt, the Democrats think the answer is more debt. If we have $56 trillion in unfunded entitlement liabilities, the Democrats think we need more entitlements. If we have 10% unemployment, the Democrats enact business-punishing policies (health care reform, cap-and-trade). If people are struggling to get by, the Democrats think we need to be taxed more. If George W. Bush grows the deficit and debt, which the Democrats hated, the Democrats think the answer is to grow the deficits and debt twice as fast. If we are at war, the Democrats think the answer is to lose the war (see Iraq). If we are in a recession, the Democrats think the answer is to punish business and enact anti-free market policies. When the federal government is already growing at unprecedented rates, the Democrats think the answer is to grow government much, much more.

If I didn't know better, I'd think the Democrats were TRYING to destroy this country on purpose.

But of course, I must be crazy, because the Democrats keep telling us they are the good guys, that they are helping people. Look at health care reform. The Democrats are helping us by giving up to 31 million more people health insurance. How can that not be good ? Sure it raises taxes by over $500 billion and does nothing to pay down the debt, but hey, that's because the Democrats are HELPING. The Democrats are SAVING LIVES (by cutting payments to hospitals, providers, Medicare, etc). How dare I question such good intentions as those ? Then again, when Republicans tried to cut any of those payments over the past 30 years, Democrats condemned those Republicans as mean grinches who wanted to kill people, so I'm a little confused. I guess the only thing that matters is WHO is cutting payments to hospitals, doctors, and Medicare. When Republicans do it, they are killing grandma. When Democrats do it, they are saving lives. It must be true, because Harry Reid said so. He knows what's in the Senate health care reform bill, even if hardly anybody else does.

There are probably a few liberals out there right now who are thinking 'the CBO said Senate health care reform will LOWER the debt.' To those naive Olbermaniacs, I say only this….in order for that to happen, Congress would have to ignore the doctor fix and cut Medicare payments EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Congress has NEVER done that before. NEVER. Not even once. Plus, what's the last government program that came in under budget ? The last one was Bush's Medicare Part D, which the Democrats hate and want to kill. Any questions ? I guess Part D is too efficient, too free-markety. Democrats know we can't have that. Democrats know we need the heavy-handed, bureaucratic nightmare of centralized government to inefficiently administer things in order for them to work. It's just common sense. After all, look at how well the government is running everything else. Social Security – broke. Medicare – broke. The post office – broke. Amtrak – broke. The states – broke. The federal government as a whole – no entity has ever been so broke. So naturally, the Democrats think we need MORE OF THAT.

Because the Democrats are the good guys. That's all you need to know. For God's sake, don't THINK ABOUT THINGS. Just let Big Brother do all the thinking. That has worked out SO well up to now.

I'd like to take this time to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I'm not going to have much time between now and the beginning of next year for blogging. Even I have to take a break from political nonsense once in a while, and now is the time. I've had it up to my ears with politics, and I have other obligations. I've enjoyed talking to each and every one of you, and I wish all your families the best. Remember, only the American people can stop the government from taking over our entire lives. We used to understand that in this country, even if almost half the country is now doing little more than expecting someone else to give them a handout, the mythical free lunch. Obama thinks the free lunch is a great idea, but it will destroy us as sure as it has destroyed every other country who tried it. Why we want to emulate that failure here in the land of the free, the world's lone superpower, eludes me, but it makes sense to some. lord help them. One day they'll realize how wrong they were, but by then it will be too late. It's up to the rest of us to insure that day never comes.

Calling all big government advocates !!! It's time to do your patriotic duty for your country. As VP Joe Biden would say, "step up and be part of the deal."

As the Christmas season approaches, what better present could all you compassionate statists, leftists, socialists, communists, marxists, maoists, progressives, and liberals give us than to pay down the massive federal debt that all this out-of-control government spending has rained down upon our heads ? Show those mean old conservative grinches that you big government types are standup people who have the courage of your convictions. Send a big fat check to Uncle Sam to brighten the holidays for all us recession stressed Americans. We know you are the good people (because you keep telling us you are), so I'm going to tell you where to send your money. No need to thank me. Remember to dig deep, and give until it hurts. Your country needs you. The poor and oppressed need you, now more than ever.

Reuters has helpfully written an article on this subject. Here is the essential info:

The U.S. Treasury Department accepts gifts, payable to the Bureau of the Public Debt. Just mail them to the attention of Department G, Post Office Box 2188, Parkersburg, West Virginia, 26106-2188. Make a note in the memo section that it is a gift to reduce the debt held by the public.

The info is also contained on the U.S. Treasury website here.

I'll even help you big government lovers calculate the amount you should send in. According to the U.S. debt clock, the federal debt is just short of $12 trillion. Now I have to figure out how many liberals we have. Let's see…..we have about 250 million adults over the age of 18 living in the United States, and about 20% of the people refer to themselves as liberals according to polling……….soooo, that means there are around 50 million caring liberals in our broke country.

Dividing $12 trillion by 50 million liberals comes to…………

If you all would send in a check for $240,000, then voila!, our debt problem is solved.

Man, this is gonna be great !!! You liberals just paid for health care reform and lots more, because by paying off the federal debt, you saved America from paying over $330 billion a year in interest on that debt. We can use that savings to pay for health care reform, AND have lots left over to institute massive tax cuts, thereby revving up the economy !!! God bless you, every one !!! The recession will be over and jobs will be created !!! It'll be morning in America again !!!

Of course, there's always the possibility that you will think only of yourselves instead of helping others, and not send in any money, but no way do I think you good liberal people would be that selfish. I have complete confidence in you. I'm so excited.

Oh, wait a sec. There is one other thing. Even if you pay off the debt, we'll still have that $106 trillion in unfunded entitlement liabilities hanging over our heads. Rats. Still, I know how you good liberals love your entitlements. You'll certainly want to pay for those, so allow me to recalculate the amount of money you need to send in….$106 trillion plus $12 trillion equals $118 trillion. If I divide that by the 50 million liberals in America……….

You all need to send in a check for $2,360,000. Then we'll be good.

I offer my heartfelt thanks on behalf of all Americans. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

After months of liberals quaking in their Birkenstocks about non-existent violence at peaceful Tea Party protests across the country, it bears pointing out what actual violent protest looks like. We just witnessed that at the G-20 protests in Pittsburgh, where anti-capitalist (read: left-wing, socialist) protesters hurled rocks at police and vandalized private property. Police responded by firing tear gas canisters and using pepper spray. Nearly 200 people were arrested.

I'm sure the condemnations of the violent G-20 protesters will be forthcoming from our media and politicos, any day now. It's funny though, because I had a very difficult time sourcing this post. There are so very few stories about the G-20 violence on the web. Hmmm. Maybe our media have all gone on holiday. That's probably it. I can't blame them. They are probably worn out from trying to invent violence at all the Tea Parties over the last six months. It's gotta be hard work trying to invent something out of nothing. It's like alchemy, trying to turn lead into gold. Exhausting and time-consuming work, and after all the effort, you still have lead. The media deserves a rest. I hear Havana is lovely this time of year.

I'm sure that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and company will be calling the G-20 protesters "extremists," "mobsters," "fearmongers," and "racists," any day now. I'm sure that they will castigate those protesters for inciting other left-wingers to violence. While they are at it, they can throw in some stuff about how filmmaker Michael Moore is calling people to violence and assassination with his new anti-capitalist movie, Capitalism, A Love Story (fun quote from Moore – "Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil."). After all, I know how concerned liberals are about this stuff. I've been hearing about it for most of the year.

Oddly enough, when I did some web searches about what happened in Pittsburgh, liberal bloggers, after months of nail-biting about violence breaking out at protests, were not very concerned when actual violence did break out at the G-20 (because THEY were the ones perpetrating the violence). No, no. The liberal bloggers were only concerned about the POLICE BRUTALITY used to stop the protestor violence. I kid you not. Never mind that the police were motivated by the protesters breaking windows out of a dozen businesses. I assume the police weren't overy thrilled with having rocks hurled at them either.

Reading through various braindead comments at a liberal blog called the Democratic Underground (DU), now it seems the far lefties are bitching about the police state we have in America. If only I could find a bottle with a genie in it, so I could make a wish and transport all those clueless libs from their parent's basements to an actual police state for awhile (like any of the socialist utopias liberals dream about), so they could see what it's really like. That would shut them up.

My favorite liberal blog comment at DU came from a guy named Big Dan, who asked plaintively, "Why do only liberal protestors get tear gassed, why don't the Teabaggers ever get it ?"

Gee, I don't know Dan. Maybe it has something to do with the rocks and vandalism. I'm sure you can figure it out if you think REAL hard, for once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've pretty much had my fill of liberals condemning free speech, and then using the specters of racism and/or violent right-wing boogeymen as the excuse. In my last three posts, I have outlined examples of the left calling the right racist. It's the number one argument they use to discount the Tea Party protests. That argument was shot down by President Obama himself on Meet The Press on sunday:

DAVID GREGORY: …this week you had former President Jimmy Carter saying most, not just a little, but most of this Republican opposition against you is motivated by racism. Do you agree with that?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: No. Look, I said, during the campaign, are there some people who still think through the prism of race when it comes to evaluating me and my candidacy? Absolutely. Sometimes they vote for me for that reason, sometimes they vote against me for that reason. I'm sure that was true during the campaign, I'm sure that's true now. But I think you actually put your finger on what this argument's really about. And it's an argument that's gone on for the history of this republic. And that is what's the right role of government? How do we balance freedom with our need to look after one another?

The President is absolutely correct. The argument here is about the role of government, not race. The President pointed out that the argument about the government's role goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson versus Alexander Hamilton, and that it always evokes passionate debate. Nothing has changed. Our President is apparently much more intelligent than many of his clueless supporters, who play the race card at the drop of a hat. Kudos to President Obama for saying this.

After the racism charge, the number two free speech stopper used by the left is the politics of fear (which I seem to remember the left condemning not too long ago, ironically enough), in the form of those right-wing boogeymen I mentioned earlier. Apparently, liberals think there are cadres of right-wing nutjobs sitting in front of tv sets and radios all across the country, with their helmets on, armed with hand guns, hand grenades, and Billy Beer, just waiting for Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck to give them their marching orders about who or what to go blow up. We saw Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) playing the politics of fear card recently, when she weepily worried about potential violence in front of the cameras. The latest version of this inanity I've read came from the blissfully ignorant Media Matters (aka, George Soros Media Inc.), who had a profound enough lack of self-awareness to write a piece called 'A President was killed the last time right-wing hatred ran wild like this'. That President was John F. Kennedy, of course, and, as much as I hate to pierce Media Matters' bubble of historical revisionism, JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a self-avowed communist. The last I heard, communism was a left-wing ideology. It wasn't "right-wing hatred" that killed JFK. It was left-wing hatred. Not that Media Matters let's the truth get in the way of a good old phony political diatribe.

I can point out ten acts of left-wing violence for every act of right-wing violence over the last several decades, and left-wing governments killed approximately 100 million people in the 20th century alone, (yet somehow liberals NEVER profess a fear of left-wing violence), but liberals do have a real right-wing boogeyman to whom they can point. That is Timothy McVeigh, the man who blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in the 1990's, killing 168 people. Heinous. He received the death penalty, which he richly deserved.

McVeigh was an anti-tax, anti-big government Libertarian who voted for Libertarian candidate Harry Browne in the 1996 Presidential election. That makes McVeigh sound a lot like……ME. I voted for Harry Browne, and I agree with many Libertarian ideas. In light of McVeigh's violence, the question is, does that make the ideas themselves dangerous ??? Should I stop writing what I do because some nut might misinterpret it ? Should I self-censor my political rhetoric ? Liberals have been answering "YES" to that question for months now. They see a bunch of peaceful Tea Party protests (zero examples of right-wing violence) as some kind of powder keg, ready to explode. Liberal accuse the Tea Partiers of fear-mongering even as liberals fear-monger themselves. It's absurd, and we should all be able to see right through it.

Here are a couple things Timothy McVeigh said that I agree with (horrors ! You better arrest me NOW):

"Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight"

"The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful."

Dangerous ideas ? I think not. The Founding Fathers held those ideas, and they are ideas about liberty. I think the dangerous people are the ones who don't object to the ever-growing government, which has the inevitable crushing effect of taking away ever more property and choice (freedom) from the citizenry. McVeigh's gigantic mistake was moving into calls for civil war and violence. Naturally, I don't agree with that. I'm all for using peaceful means, as Martin Luther King advocated. You don't defeat tyranny by becoming a tyrant yourself. In America, we can defeat tyranny at the ballot box.

What McVeigh does represent is what I'll call The Lunatic Factor. We have a country of over 300 million people. Because human nature is fallible, some of those people are bound to be unhinged (I should name names here, but I'll resist). These people might listen to political speech and be motivated to do stupid and destructive things, as McVeigh did. What liberals seem not to understand is, this can manifest itself across the political spectrum. Liberals quake in their boots over largely imaginary right-wing violence, but then they turn around and call right-wingers racists, which is about as inflammatory as political rhetoric can get. If so-called "dangerous" speech is to be controlled, as liberals are advocating, then we can start with the liberals themselves. By labeling all the Tea Party protesters as racists, are not liberals, by their own standards, inciting violence against those alleged "racists" ? After all, racists are dangeous people who must be stopped. If Limbaugh and Beck are inciting violence, so are Olbermann, Garofalo, Maxine Waters, Jimmy Carter, etc.

It's one more liberal example of "do as I say, not as I do." The lack of self-awareness is nothing short of astounding. Are liberals incapable of remembering all the way back to LAST YEAR, when they were calling former President Bush all manners of inflammatory names ? For that matter, they still are calling Bush those names.

The bottom line here is, free speech is allowed in this country. We can't ever allow that to be lost. The people we should always cast a skeptical eye upon are the ones who are attempting to stifle it with their scare tactics. At this moment in history, the stiflers in this country are coming from the left. That also happens to be where the stiflers most often come from – from the big, all-powerful totalitarian governments the left is constantly advocating for (knowingly or not). The belief in freedom is not just an ideological exercise. The real world consequences are immense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The children be damned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The only remaining questions are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just LOVE this next Sunstein quote. Love it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't know if the FCC had a Diversity Officer before, but they have one now. Here's a brief biography of Mark Lloyd, the newly appointed assoiciate general counsel and chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission.

"Mr. Lloyd was most recently the Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights/ Education Fund, where he oversaw media and telecom initiatives. Mr. Lloyd was also an adjunct professor of public policy at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, and from 2002-2004 a visiting scholar at MIT where he conducted research and taught communications policy. Previously Mr. Lloyd has been a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the General Counsel of the Benton Foundation, and an attorney at Dow, Lohnes & Albertson. Before becoming a communications lawyer, Mr. Lloyd had a distinguished career as a broadcast journalist, including work at NBC and CNN." – FCC

As the FCC's chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd's mission is to destroy conservative talk radio promote divergent viewpoints that represent the greater community. The fact that Lloyd himself is a liberal (senior fellow at the Soros-funded left-wing Center For American Progress) will in no way affect his mission, I'm sure. As we all know, liberals are the tolerant, open-minded people who are willing to listen to any and all liberal viewpoints.

Lloyd is focused on a serious problem with radio broadcasting – conservative talk radio is beating the pants off of liberal talk radio in the private sector. This is a BIG problem, unlike television, newspapers, movies, and college campuses, where liberals have a large media advantage. There is NO problem there, other than maybe how to get Fox News off the air. Lloyd isn't for a return to the Fairness Doctrine though, because, well, the Fairness Doctrine just wasn't effective enough. Conservative talk might still filter through. Lloyd has some better ideas, and like most liberal ideas, they center around punishing that nasty entity known as the "free market." In a 2007 article titled 'Forget The Fairness Doctrine,' Lloyd says the following:

The Center for American Progress late last month published a widely read report titled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” That report demonstrated the failure of the supposed “free market” regulation of the U.S. radio industry to address the public-interest needs of listeners. Our analysis revealed that conservative talk radio dominates the airwaves of our country—to the detriment of informed public discourse and the First Amendment.

There you go. Those damned Conservatives must be stopped. There's an "imbalance." It's a "detriment." And probably unconstitutional. Unlike newspapers, movies, television, and college campuses, where there is no problem. Lloyd goes on:

In our report, we call for ownership rules that we think will create greater local diversity of programming, news, and commentary. And we call for more localism by putting teeth into the licensing rules. But we do not call for a return to the Fairness Doctrine. Despite what we thought was fairly stark evidence of conservative bias, despite clear proposals to address that bias, Rush Limbaugh and other distortionists insisted that we were calling for a “return” of the Fairness Doctrine

See ? We have conservative "bias" in talk radio, unlike newspapers, television, movies, and college campuses (where we have liberal bias), and those conservative talk radio folks are "distortionists." They lied and said liberals wanted a return to the Fairness Doctrine (how that is supposed to be a lie, I have no idea. All kinds of liberals DID want a return to the Fairness Doctrine).

But as I said before, Lloyd has better ideas than the Fairness Doctrine. Here he is promoting one such idea, which is, file lawsuits to force conservative talk radio into submission:

Here’s the history that matters. In the late 1960s the United Church of Christ successfully challenged the Federal Communications Commission over the lack of local input in FCC decisions. A moderate Republican judge, Warren Burger, whom Nixon later appointed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, sided with the church group. As a result of that ruling, a whole slew of rules were put in place to give local communities power in the licensing of broadcasters.

Yes, let's get liberal groups to sue and threaten the licenses of the conservative talk radio stations ! Lloyd expounds on that theme:

In their engagement in the licensing process many of those [suing threatening] groups cited the responsibility of the broadcaster to “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of issues of public importance…this core responsibility remains in the Communications Act today.”

Here's Lloyd's bestest idea of all – Make them pay:

The other part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don’t want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community. Commercial broadcasters want to be trustees of public property but without responsibility.

Yeah, it's only those "dittoheads" who get all upset when you want commercial radio stations (aka, conservative talk radio) to fund public radio stations (aka, liberal talk radio). That's the ticket. Lloyd actually wants private conservative talk radio stations to fund their direct competition. Only a liberal mind could dream up something this perverse. This all happens under the mirage of promoting divergent opinions. Let's take a look at existing public broadcasting on political issues. As we all know, NPR plays it straight down the middle, politically speaking, as long as by "straight down the middle," you mean "promotes the liberal view."

Now for the piece de resistance. Guess how much Lloyd wants commercial radio stations to pay to fund their public radio station competition ? You're gonna love this. In his 2006 book, Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America, Lloyd called for making private broadcasting companies pay licensing fees equal to their total operating costs to allow public broadcasting outlets to spend the same on their operations as the private companies do: Here's the communist Lloyd, from his book:

“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) must be reformed along democratic lines and funded on a substantial level,” Lloyd wrote in his book. “Federal and regional broadcast operations and local stations should be funded at levels commensurate with or above those spending levels at which commercial operations are funded,” Lloyd wrote. “This funding should come from license fees charged to commercial broadcasters. Funding should not come from congressional appropriations. (link)

How many private conservative talk radio stations would choose to stay in business with such exorbitant fees ? I'm thinking – NONE. I'm also thinking that's the whole idea behind Lloyd's bs.

But our new Diversity Czar doesn't stop there. He also wants to dictate programming content as well:

“Local public broadcasters and regional and national communications operations should be required to encourage and broadcast diverse views and programs,” wrote Lloyd. “These programs should include coverage of all local, state and federal government meetings, as well as daily news and public issues programming. “In addition, educational programs for children and adults, and diverse, independent personal and cultural expression should be encouraged,” he wrote.

What's ostensibly crazy about Lloyd's crapola is, we have more divergent viewpoints being heard in our society than we ever have. With the rise of the internet and alternative media, cable television, etc., it's not difficult to find somebody somewhere catering to your particular political stripe. It's easier than in ever was. Mark Lloyd just doesn't like it that conservatives have carved out a niche for themselves on the radio. Think of all the radio stations on the air in your locality. How many of them are conservative talk radio ? One, maybe two out of dozens ? Yet, this is the BIG PROBLEM that Lloyd thinks we need to address ? Ridiculous. Mark Lloyd is disseminating disinformation. Mark Lloyd is just one more in a long line of double-talking, anti-free market, anti-free speech, pro-government control, pinhead bureaucrats who wants to censor any opinions he doesn't like. Because the liberal talk radio that Mark Lloyd wants has not succeeded on as big a scale as has conservative talk radio up until now, Lloyd wants to bully it into submission. Screw him and the horse he rode in on. He's a Nazi. This is all about censorship and nothing else. Have you ever heard a liberal like Lloyd complain about the imbalance of liberal college professors over conservative college professors at state-run universities ? Of course you haven't, and you never will. Those like Lloyd don't care about anything other than shutting up those conservatives. If they can't win in the open market of ideas, they want to close the market.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In responding to what he termed "absurd attacks" against ObamaCare, the President said the following:

“So, let me explain what reform will mean for you. And let me start by dispelling the outlandish rumors that reform will promote euthanasia, cut Medicaid, or bring about a government takeover of health care. That’s simply not true. This isn’t about putting government in charge of your health insurance; it’s about putting you in charge of your health insurance. Under the reforms we seek, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

This statement outlines one reason why those townhall protesters are complaining so loudly – they think the President is not being honest with them.

Let's do a little fact-checking on the above Obama statement.

I agree that ObamaCare will not "promote euthanasia," which is another word for mercy killing. The government isn't going to start putting down old people with suicide pills or lethal injections. It's against federal law to do that. If any Republicans are actually using the word "euthanasia" to describe ObamaCare, that is a distortion of the actual issue at hand, which is, to what extent will ObamaCare ration (deny) care to the elderly ? That is still an open question, and is making many folks fearful. Obama saying he will not "promote euthanasia" may knock down a GOP straw man, but it doesn't deal with the real issue of rationing. Withholding care from elderly sick people isn't euthanasia per se, but the end result is the same, death. We need clarification, Mr. President. I realize this is a difficult issue to deal with, but people want to know that cost-savings isn't going to trump people's lives. They don't know that now.

How about Obama's claim that he will not "cut Medicaid ?" Well, back in june, the President outlined $313 billion in spending cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to pay for part of ObamaCare. The cuts include reductions in payments to Medicare/Medicaid providers, cuts in federal subsidies to hospitals for uninsured patients, and cuts in how much the federal government pays pharmaceutical companies for drugs. The Democratic health care plan in the House of Representatives goes further, calling for $500 billion in Medicare cuts. If you want to know where anyone came up with the "absurd attack" idea that ObamaCare was going to "cut Medicaid," now you know. The idea comes from the Medicare/Medicaid cuts that the Democrats have already proposed.

How about the notion that ObamaCare "will bring about a government takeover of health care ?" Where did this "absurd attack" come from ? Here's Obama in 2003, speaking to the AFL-CIO:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

Here's Obama in 2007 at a townhall meeting when asked about single-payer. Obama states again that single-payer is his preference, but political reality dictates that he can't get there immediately:

"'If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense. That's the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world. The only problem is that we aren't starting from scratch. We have historically a system of employer-based health care…we don't want a huge disruption…now, obviously, as President, I've got to work with Congress to get this done…we may not get everything I want in there, and may not have everything you want in there..I'm confident that we are gonna get health care reform this year, and start putting us on a path that is sustainable over the long term '"

Here's Barney Frank (D-VT) in July, 2009:

"The best way we're going to get single-payer; the only way; is to have the public option and to demonstrte its strength and power."

Is there ANY doubt that Obama and the liberal Democrats want to use the public option as a Trojan Horse to bring about a transition to the single-payer system they really want ? Obama denies it now, of course, but the above quote tells you why he is denying it now. It's because he knows such a change wouldn't pass. He needs a transition period to get Americans conditioned to the idea. Thus the disinformation.

On to Obama's next statement – "This isn’t about putting government in charge of your health insurance; it’s about putting you in charge of your health insurance."

This line doesn't even pass the laugh test. ObamaCare is ALL ABOUT putting the government in charge of your health care, with or without the public option. The government will force you to buy health insurance, create a myriad of new health care regulations that the insurance companies must follow, fine any employer who doesn't provide health insurance, create a health insurance exchange of government approved insurance companies, and eliminate the citizen's choice to control the type of health insurance coverage they want. Not to mention that the House Democrats health care plan would create a slew of new federal programs, agencies and commissions to oversee the government-run health insurance regime (link). The last thing ObamaCare is about is "putting you in charge of your health insurance." It's about putting the government in charge.

One part of Obama's statement that appears to be true is when he says "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." I have no reason to doubt that. Then again, what alternative is there to having doctors perform health care ? It's not like some government bureaucrat can do it. Just as farmers grow crops and plumbers fix sinks, doctors provide health care. It's a fait accompli. The very notion that we need the President of the United States to tell us we can go to a doctor of our choice indicates how out of kilter our health care system has become. On a side note, guess who invented HMO's, that reviled health care construct where you can only go to doctors inside the HMO network (to "manage" care and costs) ???? If you answered that the GOVERNMENT created HMO's, led by Senator Ted Kennedy, the "liberal lion" from Massachusetts, you win a kewpie doll. This is the same Ted Kennedy whose health care plan is the outline for the Senate version of ObamaCare. If you think of ObamaCare as an HMO on a universal scale, it suddenly doesn't sound so appealing, does it ?

It's no mystery why people are concerned with Obama's health care reform, and I haven't even mentioned the fact that it is going to cost the taxpayers a LOT more money, at a time when our government is already spending money faster than any drunken sailor could ever imagine. We toss around the term 'trillion' like it's nothing these days. 'Trillion' is far from nothing. It's MASSIVE. It's frightening, and people are frightened.

And all we're getting is partisan politics (from both sides) and disinformation from the top. When the President of the United States is engaged in spin and deception, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence. It inspires fear and doubt, and we're seeing that play out at townhall meetings all across the country. Then the Democrats criticize the people at townhall meetings asking the hard questions. Hard to fathom.

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

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

Yes We Can !

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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