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

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

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

After nearly fifty years of ripping off the American public, the government scam known as Social Security is coming undone. In 2010, Social Security revenue will not be enough to pay benefits to retirees. The Associated Press reports:

The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.

It's time to start cashing them in.

For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

We have to start tapping into the alleged $2.5 trillion in IOU's in the so-called "trust fund." ???? How do we do that ? Here's how:

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg's municipal offices.

Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn't be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.

Yes, kiddies, we have to BORROW the money to pay those SS IOU's. That's because the "trust fund" doesn't exist. It's just paper. Congress spent your SS "trust fund" money long ago. Borrowing the money will drive our deficits even higher, and the piece de resistance is….guess who gets to pay back all that borrowed money ???? Why, it's us, the American taxpayers who funded Social Security in the first place !!! We get to pay for it all over again !!! What a deal ! That's your government at work for YOU (stealing your money) !!!

Now, you will hear various government officials say that SS is "backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government." That's supposed to make us feel all warm, fuzzy, and safe, but again….the "full faith and credit of the U.S. government" only means that the government can FORCE us taxpayers to pay for SS…all over again. It means nothing more than that. It only means we've been ripped off, but the government will make make it all good by ripping us off some more. That's the government's definition of "faith." They have "faith" that they can forcibly extract more tax dollars from us after stealing our trust fund.

SS will soon go into permanent deficit status:

In the short term, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security will continue to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes for the next three years. It is projected to post small surpluses of $6 billion each in 2014 and 2015, before returning to indefinite deficits in 2016.

For the budget year that ends in September, Social Security is projected to collect $677 million in taxes and spend $706 million on benefits and expenses.

Social Security will also collect about $120 billion in interest on the trust funds, according to the CBO projections, meaning its overall balance sheet will continue to grow. The interest, however, is paid by the government, adding even more to the budget deficit.

Congress will undoubtedly "fix" SS again, as they've "fixed" it so many times in the past, by raising SS taxes (again) and/or cutting benefits (again). Remember, when SS started FDR promised that the SS tax would never be more than 1% of income. Because Congress has systematically raided the SS trust fund since the 1950's to cover up it's own fiscal irresponsibility, YOUR SS taxes are raised over and over, and YOUR SS benefits are slashed over and over. That's the nature of a scam. A scam ultimately collapses under it's own weight, as did Bernie Madoff's scam, which was a drop in the bucket when compared to SS.

Good thing we aren't in enormous trouble with borrowing money already. Oh wait, we ARE:

The national debt — the amount of money the government owes its creditors — is about $12.5 trillion, or nearly $42,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. About $8 trillion has been borrowed in public debt markets, much of it from foreign creditors. The rest came from various government trust funds, including retirement funds for civil servants and the military. About $2.5 trillion is owed to Social Security.

And don't forget the $55 TRILLION in unfunded Medicare entitlement liabilities. There's that little matter to deal with, and now we have President Obummer about to add trillions more in entitlement liabilities with his boneheaded health care reform. What could possibly go wrong ? Besides everything, that is.

Here's one of those government jackasses prattling on about that "full faith and credit" bilge:

Good luck to the politician who reneges on that debt, said Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut who is now president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

"Those bonds are protected by the full faith and credit of the United States of America," Kennelly said. "They're as solid as what we owe China and Japan."

Well, that's great news. We're sure on solid financial footing with airheads like Kennelly in charge. About as solid as Greece, where rioters have taken to the streets. How long will it be before that happens here ???

In closing, I can only say, if we don't get off of this Big Government ship of fools real soon, all of us will sink together, and that will be the social justice we richly deserve for our collective irresponsibility. Politicians, especially Democrats, always talk about doing this or that "for the children," but if we really want to help our children, we need to get our fiscal house in order to give our children's futures a snowball's chance in hell. As of now, things couldn't look worse. The enduring shame of the greedy baby boom generation looks to be that we indulged ourselves at the expense of future generations. We may be the first ones to leave America worse off than we found it. That is a legacy I can't embrace.

President Obama made the following groundbreaking announcement at the abandoned Members Only warehouse this morning (the same warehouse where Derek Zoolander and Hansel held their historic male model "walk-off"):

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As I look around this room, I see many well-dressed people. I see members of Congress, lobbyists for powerful special interests, and media giants in attendance. As the privileged few, we can afford the finest fashions, the best designer clothing. We are the lucky ones, but not everyone in America shares in our good fortune. Throughout this land, the wealthiest country in the world, we have a great disparity in the quality of clothing and accessibility to fine clothing. Even as we in this room don our Brooks Brothers suits and Donna Karan dresses, others, through no fault of their own, are forced to wear sub-standard clothing, such as cheap sweat pants and t-shirts from Value City or Goodwill. Others are forced into wearing threadbare hand-me-downs, and some even make pants out of trash bags, or wear only boxer shorts. Imagine if one of those people was your child or your grandmother.

This is a grave injustice in a country that prides itself on equal rights for all. Quality clothing is a basic human right, and no American should be without it. As many as 60 million in this country suffer from inferior clothing, and many die due to a lack of proper warm clothing in the winter. We have a moral obligation as a people to correct this situation, and that's why I'm calling today for an overhaul of our clothing delivery system. Everybody should enjoy the same quality of fine clothing that Congress receives, and that's the goal of my clothing reform.

We currently have a system where greedy clothing retailers and wholesalers line their pockets with profits while the underprivileged struggle to meet their daily clothing needs. Giant corporate interests and Wall Street gamblers make millions in this immoral de-pantsing of ordinary working people, who often must make a decision on whether to purchase proper clothing or pay their heating bill. CEO's like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger rake in the big bucks and live in mansions. The same can be said for the supermodels, the beautiful people who serve as hucksters for the corporate world and drive clothing prices out of the reach of most. Together, these shirtsters and shoesters add 30%, 50%, 100%, or more to the cost of our underwear and outerwear.

I receive many letters and e-mails from Americans seeking help with their apparel needs. One such letter came from Mr. Willy Makeit of Gary, Indiana. Willy writes, 'Dear Mr. President. I've been out of work for 6 months, and this morning I finally had a job interview. When I went to put on my one decent pair of dress pants, I noticed the rear end had split out, leaving me nothing to wear for the interview. As a result, I didn't get the job, and now I don't know how I will feed my six kids. Please help. I'm nearly at the end of my rope. I'm also a veteran.'

Hearbreaking stories like this are why I'm calling for a redistribution of our clothing wealth. I am creating a government program that will require the big clothing corporations to provide affordable, quality clothing for all. This program will bend down the clothing cost curve and provide clothing subsidies of up to $1,500 per year to all who need it. I will pay for this program by reversing the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and by imposing a tax on those making more than $250,000 per year. I also mandate that employers give clothing benefits to all employees at a minimum of $1,000 per employee per year. I further mandate that all clothing be union-made to insure that the finest quality is achieved. This will, of course, be resisted by the powerful special interests, but I will not stop. I will create a new government agency, the Federal Department Of Apparel, to insure against price-gouging, excessive profits, and outrageous executive salaries in the garment industry. My goal is to make the United States the best-dressed nation on earth, and I will not stop until this right is bestowed upon every man, woman, and child in this great country. Clothing is a more important right than the right to a job, the right to food, the right to shelter, or even the right to health care. Without clothing, you can't even do these other things. You'd be arrested if you went outside without any clothes on. Clothing is therefore a primary right.

There are naysayers who complain that the U.S. Constitution doesn't give the federal government the power to control the clothing industry. This phony argument presents a false choice, and is only a distraction used for partisan political purposes. In addition, the Constitution has a blind spot when it comes to both casual and formal wear. The founding fathers did not address the issue.

There are others who desire a single-payer clothing system, and while that is an admirable goal, the history of garment development in this country does not easily lend itself to this end. Unfortunately, we have a history of capitalism and free market economics in this country. Despite all it's flaws and inequities, we cannot fundamentally transform this system overnight. It will take time. My clothing reform is an important and critical first step.

I expect Congress to have the Clothing Reform bill on my desk by the end of this year, when I will sign it into law. In closing, I say God bless America, whether your God be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever, or if you have no God at all. Thank you very much. Yes We Can !"

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

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

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

1. ObamaCare will kill people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other than that it's great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No sense mincing words.

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

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

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

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

But he doesn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

I have to start today's post with a tip of the hat to the Iraqi people, who have seen more than their share of wars and brutal dictatorial regimes. Yesterday, the Iraqis flocked to the polls to vote in huge numbers in democratic elections, despite a string of bombings by what our media refers to as "insurgents" (and what I refer to as cowardly fascist terrorist scumbags). At this point, the "insurgents" don't represent anything but their own fascist wet dreams of power. The "insurgents" are nothing but thugs trying to step on the necks of the Iraqi people, and the Iraqis are sick of them. President Obama was correct when he said yesterday's elections were an "important milestone." Obama also said the following, according to the New York Times:

In Washington, President Obama praised the vote. “I have great respect for the millions of Iraqis who refused to be deterred by acts of violence and who exercised their right to vote today,” he said in a statement. “Their participation demonstrates that the Iraqi people have chosen to shape their future through the political process.”

The attack by the "insurgents" didn't signal the weakness of the Iraqi government. It signaled the weakness and desperation of the "insurgency." The Iraqis were unfazed. They persevered. The Times also reported the following:

The deadliest single attack occurred when what the police said was a Katyusha rocket collapsed an apartment building, located in the Ur neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad. The Interior Ministry said 25 were killed.

Mr. Bedawi, who witnessed the carnage, said the attack hardened the resolve of Iraqis to vote. “Everyone went,” he said. “They were defiant about what happened. Even people who didn’t want to vote before, they went after this rocket.”

The extensive use of mortars and rockets suggested that a weakened insurgency had to shift tactics, perhaps because it was unable to get cars or suicide bombers through an intense security lockdown, with some checkpoints erected every few hundred yards.

The insurgents still fighting in today’s Iraq face a far stronger government, capable now of saturating the country with police officers and soldiers. Even more important, they face an Iraqi people far less willing to support, or even sympathize with, violent resistance against the country’s democratic government. Iraqis, seemingly inured to violence, even mocked the attacks.

“We have experienced three wars before,” Ahmed Ali, a supporter of Mr. Maliki, said in Ur, “so it was just the play of children that we heard.”

There is a lesson here. Though I was against the Iraq war prior to the U.S. invasion, with my thinking being that we were biting off more than we could chew, that a democratic Iraq seemed like such a longshot, I am happy to report it appears I will be wrong. The only way we have reached this point in Iraq is through perseverance. Now, it appears a democratic Iraqi government will be able to stand on it's own, and I thank God for that.

If there is one person on earth responsible for the transformation of Iraq, it is former President George W. Bush. Without his resolve and the resolve of our soldiers, the Iraq war would have failed back in 2006, when cowardly liberal naysayers such as Harry "the war is lost" Reid (D-NV) were ready to give up the fight when things got tough. Imagine where Iraq would be today if the lack of character illustrated by Harry Reid and company had prevailed. I guarantee you Iraq would be far worse off, even though the naysayers would be patting themselves on the back for ending the war (and leaving Iraq in chaos). For all the talk of American imperialism spewed forth from the lefties over the last seven years, it was never about that. We aren't going to run Iraq. The Iraqis are going to run Iraq. It wasn't about a "war for oil" either, which was always a nonsensical notion. The war was about replacing a brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, with a democratic Iraq that could stand on it's own and provide more stability in the Middle East, a very unstable region. I used to think that was an overly ambitious goal. Today, I think less that way.

There is still work to be done, but perseverance has it's rewards. As a reminder to what we face regarding Islamic terrorism, following is what the Islamofascist terrorist scum want to do. This statement comes from the U.S. born terrorist, Al Qaeda member Adam Gadahn:

“Brother Nidal [the Ft. Hood shooter] is the ideal role-model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of the unbelievers and apostate regimes.”

“You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that military bases are the only high-value targets in America and the West. On the contrary, we should look for targets which epitomize western decadence, depravity and atheism.

“It is rapidly becoming clear that this already hot global battle is about to get even hotter.This is a war which knows no international borders and knows no single battleground. And that is why I am calling on every honest and vigilent Muslim, unsheath your sharpened sword and rush to take your rightful place among defiant champions of Islam.”

There is no negotiating with this mindset. We must either submit or stamp them out, and obviously, we won't submit. The only thing we can do going forward is to continue the Iraq success, be successful in Afghanistan, assist the Pakistani government in achieving success in Pakistan, stand firm against the Iranians, and continue to improve our intelligence to keep Americans as safe as possible at home. This is the situation we are in, the hand we've been dealt. The only thing to do is persevere.

We also should turn a deaf ear to the defeatists on the left who think America is to blame. That will get us nowhere, and will only make our enemy stronger, which in turn will raise the threat level to Americans and further subjugate the people in the Middle East, who have already suffered so much.

President Obama often refers to "the failed policies of the past" to criticize his predecessor, President Bush. One of those Bush "failed policies," according to Obama, was the Bush tax cuts, which the President and practically every other Democrat have railed against for years. There is a reason for such criticism, though it really wasn't the Bush tax cuts alone that caused the problem. It was Bush cutting taxes at the same time he ramped up federal spending that led to federal deficits and a net increase in federal debt of around $4.5 trillion during his tenure in office.

Keep Obama's "failed policies of the past" rhetoric in mind as you read the CBO's latest debt projections on Obama's watch. From the Washington Post:

President Obama's proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday. Proposed tax cuts for the middle class account for nearly a third of that shortfall… "Over the next 10 years, those policies would reduce revenues and boost outlays for refundable tax credits by a total of $3.0 trillion," wrote Douglas W. Elmendorf, the CBO director. Combined with interest payments on that shortfall, the tax cuts account for the entire increase in deficits that would result from Obama's proposals.

If Bush cutting taxes and increasing federal spending was a "failed policy of the past," then how should we describe Obama's cutting taxes and increasing spending at twice the rate Bush did, resulting in twice as much debt as Bush ? Should we call Obama's policies, failed policies of the past on steroids, or what ??? When Obama promised change, I'm betting most of you didn't anticipate a change for the worse.

Any long-term CBO debt projection contains assumptions, of course, and the current CBO projections (through 2020) include assumptions that GDP will increase over 4% per year, that unemployment will gradually fall to 4.8%, and that the price index will remain relatively stable. I don't want to be a pessimist here, but what if those assumptions DON'T come to pass ??? The accumulated debt will then be even greater. Even if the CBO assumptions are correct, we will have a federal debt well over $20 trillion by the end of the decade, with interest payments on the debt soaring to $800 billion annually.

And that renders most of Obama's presidential economic pronouncements to be little more than the politics of the meaningless.

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.
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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 ?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Eliminate health insurance "pools."

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

4. Tort reform with lawsuit caps.

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

5. Nationwide insurance competition.

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

6. More choices of insurance coverage, not less.

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

7. End Medicare.

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

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

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

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

The following video is from 2005, when the Senate majority Republicans were contemplating the use of the "nuclear option" to stop the minority Democrats from blocking Bush's judicial nominees. The Republicans wanted the judicial nominees to be allowed an up or down vote. Adoption of the nuclear option would have changed longstanding Senate rules requiring a 60-vote supermajority to overcome a filibuster and invoke cloture (ending debate and allowing a vote). With the nuclear option, only a simple majority of votes (51) would have been required for cloture. In 2005, the Republicans wanted the nuclear option to apply only to judicial nominees. The nuclear option was never implemented. Instead, a deal was struck between the Democrats and Republicans regarding Bush's judicial nominees.

Here is how Democrats reacted to the spectre of the nuclear option back in 2005.

My, how things change. Now those same Democrats are pondering the use of reconciliation (abandoning the 60-vote supermajority and invoking cloture with a simple 51-vote majority) to pass ObamaCare, one of the largest pieces of legislation in American history. This isn't about some Bush judicial nominees, like it was in 2005. This is about 1/6th of the U.S. economy, and many Democrats, including the President, want to silence the minority voice.

At thursday's' health care summit, the following occurred regarding reconciliation. From NBC:

In yet another exchange he had with GOP Sen. John McCain, President Obama affirmed that the Democratic Senate would pass any health-care fixes via reconciliation, if he and the Republicans were unable to reach an agreement.

It began when McCain mentioned his "Gang of 14" work to resolve the Senate stand-off on George W. Bush's judicial nominees. McCain warned that using reconciliation would have potentially disastrous results.

Obama suggested that reconciliation was a legitimate course of action. "I do think [the American people] want a vote on how we're going to move this forward," he said. "A majority vote makes sense."

You see, when Obama wants to dispense with Senate supermajority rules, it "makes sense." When Republicans thought about doing it in 2005 for Bush's judicial nominees, Obama fretted that it would lead to "majoritarian absolute power" that would "change the Senate forever," that is was "not what the Founders intended."

In other words, Obama is an absolute hypocrite with no integrity whatsoever. This isn't the Audacity Of Hope, it's the Arrogance Of Power, and our lightweight President thinks the American people are too dumb to notice. He also thinks the American people don't care. He said that at the health care summit too. Well, you better care America, because over 200 years of unlimited Senate debate on major legislative issues may be coming to a crashing end if the Dems use reconciliation now. If the supermajority requirement is thrown away on this issue, it can and will be thrown away on anything. Things WILL never be the same. The minority voice will be in effect silenced.

Those Democrats on the video were right in principle in 2005, even if they are on the verge of betraying their own stated beliefs now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now what do I mean when I say that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For most of the last year, I thought the Republican party should have been the party of 'no.' Resisting Obama's health care takeover, the stimulus boondoggle, and cap-and-trade….those were definitely times for the GOP to say 'NO'.

But lately, the GOP has been saying 'NO' to things they should be saying 'YES' to, such as the jobs bill and the Congressional deficit reduction committee.

The cornerstone of the $15 billion jobs bill is to give employers tax credits for hiring new workers. How can the GOP be against that, other than to resist the Democrats ? For the last year, Republicans have been rightly calling the stimulus package a failure because of it's enormous cost and because it didn't do enough to help the private sector, but then when the jobs bill comes up to help private sector businesses, including small businesses, the GOP votes against it. The GOPers will say 'we voted against the jobs bill because it's money we don't have, and it will add to the deficit.' That may be true as a standalone policy, but….the GOP voted against the deficit reduction committee !…which could have reduced government spending and voila!, more than offset the cost of the jobs bill. In addition, creating jobs will reduce the deficit by increasing government revenue, which has fallen due to rising unemployment. By voting against both policies, which have traditionally been policies Republicans would embrace, Republicans have in effect voted against their own stated beliefs in tax cuts and deficit reduction.

New Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) and four other Republicans broke ranks with the party to help pass the jobs bill. Good for them. As a result of the GOP helping to shoot down the deficit reduction committee, President Obama is forming his own deficit reduction committee, which is a much weaker substitute for a Congressional deficit reduction committee. Congress is where the legislative authority to make budget cuts resides. The President's committee has no such power. It is more of a cosmetic exercise, and the GOP is partly to blame for that.

The GOPers are saying the deficit reduction committee is just a front for the Democrats to justify tax increases, but GOP involvement could have helped insure that it wasn't. If the Dems had only proposed big tax increases and little in the way of spending cuts (as they probably would have), then the GOP could have rightly highlighted that and pointed out that the Democrats were not serious about reducing government spending. Instead, the party of 'no' missed the boat altogether, and the country missed a chance to reduce the deficit, which is our number one long-term problem.

Thanks for nothing, GOP. After a year of complaining about the lack of bipartisanship, you missed two golden opportunities to engage in it. You just became what you've been complaining about.

In fairness to the GOP, it wasn't only Republicans who voted against the Congressional deficit reduction committee. 23 Republicans voted against it, but 23 Democrats also voted against it. The final vote was 53-46, seven votes shy of adopting the committee. There was a lack of seriousness and bipartisanship from both sides of the aisle, and our deficit problem remains unaddressed. Shame, shame. This is why Americans are dissatisfied with both parties, and the political games they play.

A couple incidents from the recent C-PAC Conservative conference led me to believe Conservatives are moving toward Libertarianism, a move I mostly welcome.

The first was Ron Paul winning the C-PAC straw poll vote for the 2012 GOP presidential nominee. Paul captured a surprising 31% of the vote, with Mitt Romney in second place at 22%. No other Republican tallied higher than single digits. Sarah Palin took third place with 7%. Paul's victory is probably due to the fact that over half the C-PAC attendees were under the age of 25. It's the younger conservatives who I feel are more Libertarian-leaning, which is borne out by the second incident I'm mentioning.

For the first time, a group of gay Republicans called GOProud attended the conference. This caused tension with the Religious Right wing of the GOP. I've never been a fan of the Religious Right. The gay issue is but one area where I have problems with them. The tension between the gay GOPers and the social conservatives came to a head as one C-PAC speaker condemned the conference for allowing the gay group to attend, in true intolerant fashion. Happily, the anti-gay speaker was booed. Here is the video:

If the GOP wants to be a big tent party, which I assume they do, it won't happen by excluding people from the movement, as that wrong-headed C-PAC speaker advocated. I'm of the opinion that in 2010 fiscal issues are by far the most important ones, and Democrats are dead wrong on almost every fiscal issue, but some social issues also matter. The Religious Right should be free to air their opinion within the GOP (even though they make me cringe sometimes), but so should everyone else. The upcoming elections, as with most elections, will be decided by independent voters. If Republicans want to win in the 21st century, if they want to attract younger voters going forward, they will encourage debate on the social issues, and not attempt to exclude what they don't like. George W. Bush was for gay marriage in the civil sense. Ditto for Dick Cheney.

The Libertarian party platform says the following – "we defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power."

Nothing wrong there.

Memo to Religious Right – Gays don't tell you how you should live. Don't tell them how they should either.

If you listen to the liberal media or the mainstream media (pardon my redundancy), you probably know that the Tea Party movement consists of the six 'R's – Racist Radical Retarded Redneck Revolutionary Rubes. You know the Tea Party movement hates Obama because he is black, and that the Tea Partiers sit around all day cleaning their guns in anticipation of the violent overthrow of the government. You know those crazed Tea Party nuts are hate-filled, foaming-at-the-mouth, illiterate morons who can barely speak in full sentences. You are probably surprised they don't walk on all fours…if you listen to our esteemed media.

Now I'd like to show you a list of twenty policy proposals that the Tea Party people have chosen to vote upon among themselves, to either approve or disapprove. Wait until you get a load of the far-out, loony, and subversive ideas these extremists have cooked up out of their fevered minds. Here they are:

- Amending the constitution to require a balanced budget and a two-thirds majority for any tax hike.
- Permanently repealing all tax hikes scheduled to begin in 2011.
- Requiring every bill in Congress to be made public seven days before any vote can be taken and all government expenditures authorized by any bill to be easily accessible on the Internet before the money is spent.
- Requiring each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.
- Permitting all health insurance plans to be sold anywhere in the United States through the purchase of insurance across state lines. Allow small businesses and associations to pool together across state lines to buy insurance.
- Adopting a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and “replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words — the length of the original Constitution.”
- Imposing a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth.
- Allowing Americans to opt out of Social Security and Medicare and instead put those same payroll taxes in a personal account “they own, control and can leave to whomever they choose.”
- Preventing any regulation or tax on the Internet.
- Improving education by eliminating ineffective and wasteful programs, giving parents more choices from pre-school to high school and improving the affordability of higher education.
- Authorizing the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition.
- Prohibiting the Federal Communications Commission from using funds to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.
- Creating a Blue Ribbon task force that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs.
- Blocking state and local governments that receive federal grants from exercising eminent domain over private property for the primary purpose of economic development or enhancement of tax revenues.
- Preventing the EPA from implementing costly new regulations.
- Placing a moratorium on all earmarks until the process is fully transparent. Also requiring a two-thirds majority to pass any earmark.
- Making all lawmaking regulators, including presidential appointed czars, be affirmatively approved by Congress and signed into law by the president.
- Audit the Federal Reserve System.
- Making sure the federal government does not bail out private companies. The government should also immediately divest itself of its stake in the private companies it owns from recent bailouts.
- Amending the constitution to require congressional term limits. No person shall be elected to the Senate more than twice or to the House of Representatives more than four times.
- Making all regulations “sunset” after 10 years unless renewed by congressional vote.
- Broadcasting all non-security meetings and votes on C-SPAN and the Intern

Aren't all those ideas just insan…..er, wait a sec. Most of those ideas actually sound pretty good to me. Very rational. Hmmm. What's going on here ? I don't see a crazy idea in the bunch. This is very confusing. These policy proposals from the Tea Party movement don't sound anything at all like the kinds of nutty stuff I expected from listening to the media condemn the raving Teabaggers all this time. I didn't see anything about Obama's birth certificate, or death panels, or allowing citizens to own tanks and rocket launchers, or any white supremacist stuff…Weird, huh ?

Gee, if I didn't know better, I'd think the media might be lying.

Hmmm.

Six days ago, President Obama signed Pay-Go legislation into law. Pay-Go required that federal spending be paid for, in order to stop the spiraling federal budget deficits and debt. A worthy notion, but we should have suspected something was amiss when the Pay-Go legislation also included a provision to raise the debt ceiling to $14.2 trillion. Why would we need to raise the debt ceiling if we were going to pay for federal spending going forward ? It's a non-sequitur. If we truly were going to pay for federal spending going forward, the Pay-Go legislation would have frozen the debt ceiling where it is.

Of course, Obama and company never had any intention of paying for the government's spending. Pay-Go was just for show, like the previous Pay-go legislation(s) that were passed. The Democrats are already trying to get around the Pay-Go legislation to pass their jobs bill. After all, six days ago was so…last week. The Hill reports, in a piece titled Pay-Go Gets Passed, Then Bypassed:

The ink is barely dry on the pay-as-you-go law, and Democrats are seeking to bypass it to enact parts of their job-creation agenda.

Democratic leaders said extensions of unemployment insurance and COBRA healthcare benefits should be emergency spending that isn’t subject to the pay-as-you-go statute, which requires new non-discretionary spending to be offset with spending cuts or tax increases.

With current extensions of unemployment and COBRA benefits set to expire at the end of the month and the jobless rate still near 10 percent, Democratic lawmakers want to pass the extensions quickly, without having to find offsets for the costs.

This year, facing record deficits and a debt that has exceeded $12 trillion, Democrats touted the new pay-go requirements as a necessary step to get spending under wraps. President Barack Obama signed the pay-go bill into law on Feb. 12 and Democrats are ready to waive those requirements to help get the economy going.

See, Democrats are all for Pay-Go, except when they aren't. It's complicated. Us average working schmoes probably don't have the Ivy League educations to understand it.

Republicans voted against the Pay-Go legislation, and were criticized by Democrats for being against the Dems fiscal responsibility that isn't. Here's one of those mean Republicans who is against imaginary fiscal responsibility:

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said Democrats’ move to bypass pay-go using emergency exemptions proves that the pay-go law is just a “political statement, not a substantive event.”

“They continue to claim some sort of fiscal discipline … when in fact they basically keep spending money like drunken sailors,” Gregg said.

C'mon, Senator Gregg. No need to insult drunken sailors like that.

Not all Democrats are going along with bypassing the nearly week old Pay-Go legislation. There are some Democrats, a small minority known as Blue Dogs, who think legislation stating that federal spending will be paid for means….federal spending will be paid for. Liberal Democrats don't like these crazy Blue Dog varmints who think legislation should mean what it actually says. Here's one of the Blue Dogs:

Former Rep. Charlie Stenholm (D-Texas), a fiscally conservative Blue Dog and longtime champion of pay-go, said job-creation legislation should contain no exceptions to the pay-go restrictions. He urged lawmakers to find spending cuts to offset any new costs.

“You can find there are so many places in discretionary spending that have been increased tremendously over the last two three four years that can be cut,” said Stenholm, now a member of the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform and senior policy adviser at Olsson Frank Weeda.

Uh-oh. Did Stenholm just suggest that federal spending CUTS could pay for the jobs program ? No wonder liberals don't like Democrats like him. Liberals think the doubling of federal spending over the last few years only means that the government isn't spending ENOUGH. Liberals are fiscally wise like that.

But I have to give the government a little credit. It was a great six days of fiscal responsibility. After the jobs bill passes, maybe Obama and Congress can try real hard and enforce Pay-Go for a full week next time. Such men of principle. We're in good hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's more from The Hill:

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

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

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

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

Most people have accepted as fact the notion that the earth has warmed over the last century, even if they debate the reasons behind it. The last IPCC assessment deemed global warming to be "unequivocal." When I have discussed global warming previously on this blog, I always accepted as fact the underlying idea that the earth has warmed slightly, though I was skeptical of all the doomsday rhetoric being spewed by the global warming alarmists.

But British scientists and others are now saying the earth may not be warming at all.

The London Times has reported new studies examining the unreliability of temperature measuring stations around the world. Here are the findings of a peer-reviewed study:

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.

The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

In other words, temperature measuring stations that used to be in the middle of rural fields are now in or near urban areas, so they register the warmer urban temperatures.

I only hope Howard Dean, Barack Obama, Al Gore, and company won't call the London Times anti-science flat-earthers for reporting this information. They don't think any of this stuff should be aired. They think the science is settled, the matter decided.

Isn't that THEIR problem ? Doesn't that make THEM anti-science ? I'm just asking.

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).
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"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.
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"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.
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"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.

From Bloomberg Press:

President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

"I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”

The free-market system ? I must have a far different idea of what constitutes the free-market system than our President does. In my version of the free market system, companies like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan don't get to have the taxpayers bail them out when their risky business schemes run amok and result in massive losses for their companies, as well as for the financial system in general. When those companies get bailed out, that isn't the free-market system, it's the welfare state. Perhaps Obama the wealth redistributor has the two confused. Maybe he thinks the welfare state IS the free-market system. As for me, I'm not even too crazy about what the welfare state does to poor people in this country. I'm certainly not going to advocate it for the wealthy.

Let's examine these "savvy businessmen" that President Obama knows, the men whom Obama doesn't begrudge their multi-million dollar bonuses.

We'll start with JPMorgan. You may remember them for a "savvy" little derivative they cooked up in 1994 known as the credit default swap (CDS). The thinking behind the CDS went like this – J.P. Morgan loaned out huge amounts of money in 1994, tens of billions of dollars. By federal law, J.P. Morgan had to keep huge capital reserves on hand in case some of those loans went bad. So the "savvy businessmen" at J.P. Morgan designed a way to free up those capital reserves and mitigate their loan risk at the same time. A third party would serve as an insurance company to guarantee the loans in return for regular premium payments from the banks. The CDS was born, and within a few years, CDS business was booming big time. You may also remember the third party who served as the insurance company for the credit default swaps. It is known as AIG.

As always, it's important to remember that George W. Bush was the President in the 1990's when the CDS's were created and became popular, because everything is Bush's fault.

In fairness to Obama's acquaintance Jamie Dimon, he wasn't at JPMorgan when the CDS was created. Nope. But a few years after the CDS became the hot new financial instrument, Dimon and a partner formed the largest financial conglomerate the world had ever seen. That company was Citigroup. Dimon went on to become CEO of Bank One in 2000, and President of JPMorgan in 2004. He is also on the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and following the real estate crash, credit crisis, and financial system collapse brought on by massive overleveraging on derivatives like the JPMorgan-created CDS, Dimon of the NY Federal Reserve made decisions to lend Dimon of JPMorgan $55 billion to bail out Bear Stearns. Nice work if you can get it. Then JPMorgan bought Washington Mutual. Too big to fail became too bigger to fail.

Here are the bailouts given to Jamie Dimon's various companies:
Citigroup – $45 billion ($25 billion has not yet been repaid) plus additional federal aid
Bank One – merged with JPMorgan in 2004 when Dimon became President of JPMorgan
JPMorgan – $25 billion (all repaid)

And the insurance company, AIG ? They have been bailed out and given other federal aid to the tune of $180 billion. $45 billion of AIG's bailout money has not been repaid, but it was recently announced that AIG is paying their employees $100 million more in bonuses. And the money AIG received from the government went to pay the insurance claims of other banks, like CDS creator JPMorgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, etc.

These are some "savvy" mo-fos alright, as long as the American taxpayers serve as THEIR insurance company, insulating the "savvy" schemers against all losses and responsibility for their own actions. Who could ever begrudge multi-million dollar bonuses for such upstanding men as these ? These "savvy" turds really flesh out the old saying 'laughing all the way to the bank.' And the bank is us, the American people. Another word for us is the 'marks.' The banks make their profits from us in the first place, and then when the banks lose the money, we pay again to bail them out. And that is the greatest scheme of all, stamped with a seal of approval by the federal government.

Now let's turn to Goldman Sachs, who got a nifty little $10 billion bailout, all of which has been repaid. Goldman Sachs also got $12.9 billion of the AIG bailout money, more than any other firm, according to the NY Times. Lots of "savvy businessmen" at Goldman Sachs too. Remember who told America that the financial system was on the brink of collapse, and that we needed to pony up $700 billion for TARP ? That was Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who coincidentally was the former CEO of…drumroll please…Goldman Sachs. Small world, isn't it ? Paulson left Goldman Sachs in 2006 to become the Treasury Secretary, near the apex of of the housing bubble. Paulson was at Goldman Sachs for 32 years. Maybe HE should have seen the financial troubles coming, don't ya think ? When guys like Paulson or current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, former President of the NY Federal Reserve Bank, tell us how much they hated the bailouts, it comes across as more than a tad disingenuous. These were the guys who watched the financial world spin out of control and didn't say squat until it all blew up in their faces. As Paulson said yesterday, "I do not get concerned about the second guessing, because this was very complicated. It's very hard for people to understand the technicalities." Sure Hank, whatever. Why should anyone second-guess the actions of Goldman Sachs or the rest of the Wall Street gamblers ? Btw, Paulson, overseer of the largest financial bailout in American history, considers himself a champion of the free market. I guess shame is not a trait these guys possess.

When Obama's "savvy businessman" Lloyd Blankfein took over for Paulson as the CEO of Goldman Sachs in 2006, he earned the big bucks right away, as the housing bubble peaked. The risky derivatives financial scheme was paying off nicely at that time. Blankfein earned over $53 million in 2006, and over $53 million again in 2007.

Finally, we should get to WHY Obama calls these men "savvy" and doesn't "begrudge" them their bonuses, while he continually demonizes others who engaged in the exact same business practices…..

Could it be because Goldman Sachs was the largest private donor to Obama's campaign, donating nearly $1 million ? Goldman Sachs was Obama's second largest donor overall. JPMorgan was sixth on the Obama campaign donation list. Standing in third place is Harvard University (every single person mentioned by name in this post attended Harvard University. Another big coincidence, eh ?).

These might be "savvy" men, but they certainly think the rest of us are a bunch of dummies. Maybe they're right, because we keep letting them get away with it.

Btw, credit default swaps, the trading of credit default swaps, and maybe even the insider trading of credit default swaps IS STILL LEGAL. Suckers.

AIG should be dissolved. Goldman Sachs should be broken up and sold. Citigroup should be broken up and sold. THAT is how the free market is supposed to work, no matter what our President might believe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On to the terrorism front:

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

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

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

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

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

Here's the video of Sarah Palin's keynote speech at the Tea Party Convention. The mainstream media usually covers Palin by saying things like, "she throws red meat to the conservative base." Then they find the most controversial quote they can dig up, report that, and call Palin "polarizing" and/or "divisive." That's about the extent of how they cover Palin, except for the disparaging comments about her intellect and other various personal attacks. (question – why doesn't the MSM ever call Obama polarizing and divisive ? To me, he's the most divisive President in memory). The Associated Press actually called the following speech "short on ideas, but long on enthusiasm." That was their "objective" conclusion. I disrespectfully disagree – a lot. The AP was trying to minimize Palin, as the media generally attempts to do with her. That game is getting very tired, and very transparent.

Without further ado, here is the Palin speech in it's entirety. The video is just over 59 minutes long. Judge for yourself:

Here's Speaker Of The House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), talking about job losses:

“…misguided economic policies have failed to create jobs. Since [the President] took office, the country has lost 3.2 million jobs, the worst record since President Hoover…Job losses are taking a real toll on the financial security of American families…According to today’s survey, while the national unemployment rate dropped slightly, it still stands at a near record high."

Pelosi is being pretty hard on President Obama here, isn't she ?

No, not a bit. Pelosi wasn't talking about Obama. The words I quoted above are from August 2003, and San Fran Nan was talking about President Bush's "misguided economic policies." After Bush had been in office 19 months, Pelosi was castigating the President for an unemployment rate of 6.1%, caused mainly by the recession Bush inherited and 9/11. If Bush implemented any "misguided economic policies" that negatively affected unemployment, then Pelosi must be referring to Bush's across-the-board tax cuts for all taxpayers, though that doesn't make any sense. Tax cuts would only assuage rising unemployment, not add to it. Ask Obama, he cut taxes in his stimulus package to assuage rising unemployment.

Now, let me give you the statement Pelosi did make about the current job situation, with unemployment at 9.7% (actually waaaay higher) and a Democratic President at the helm who presided over more than 4 million job losses in his first 12 months in office:

"Today's jobs report marks a welcome step in the right direction for our economy and our families: the unemployment rate is going down. The Recovery Act, which Congress passed one year ago to pull our economy back from the brink of collapse, has already created or saved nearly 2 million jobs so far. Yet our work is far from over. This recession that President Obama inherited has taken the worst toll on our job market since World War II.

Here we have a tale of two Presidents – they both inherited recessions. They both presided over an economy shedding jobs during their first year in office….Notice how Pelosi treats the two Presidents exactly the same, lol. Just kidding. That's the opposite of what Pelosi did. She blamed Bush for recessionary circumstances beyond his control and cast Bush's jobs performance in the worst possible light, while she gave credit to President Obama for recessionary circumstances beyond his control and cast Obama's jobs performance in the best possible light. That's the politicization of jobs.

That's also why I hate most politicians with a passion, and wouldn't trust them to feed my cat while I was out of town, much less trust them to run the country.

It's not only Democrats who politicize jobs, of course. The Republicans are doing their level best to blame job losses on Obama now, and they continually cite Obama's guarantee that unemployment would not rise above 8% if the stimulus package was passed. Okay, so Obama miscalculated. So what ? Who didn't miscalculate the size of this recession ? Almost everyone did, or at least everyone who had it in their power to do something about it. In any case, it's not like Obama was elected President due to his expertise in economics. He was elected due to his soarting rhetoric, not his record of achievement. He didn't have a record of achievement. He's learning on the job right now. That's OUR fault, not his.

I don't blame the job losses on President Obama. It's unfair to do so, any more than it was to blame the 2001-2002 job losses on Bush. If I have any criticism of Obama on jobs, it would probably be his obsession with health care reform in his first year when there were more pressing economic matters. Also, the uncertainty surrounding the future of health care makes the private sector unsure and hesitant. Business people like to know what their costs and risks are prior to making financial commitments, and Obama has introduced a significant amount of uncertainty into the private sector. We don't know what health care will cost. We don't know what energy will cost. We don't know where taxes will be. We don't know what regulations will be put into place. He's subsidizing one company and not another. And lately, since the Massachusetts election, Obama's policies seem like a patchwork quilt of confusion. He's trying to be a liberal, a moderate, and a conservative all at the same time. It almost seems like he's campaigning instead of leading. All his promises come with expiration dates, and a lot of his rhetoric seems tied to the previous day's news cycle, never a good sign for a President. Obama has added more uncertainty to already extremely uncertain times. Then he wonders why banks are hesitant to loan money, after the banks just got devastated from making questionable loans. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see why they are hesitant now.

But the job losses ? No, those are not Obama's fault, just as the majority of the decrease in the job losses have little to do with Obama either, though he'd like you to believe otherwise. They have more to do with the overall stabilization of the economy. We hit bottom (for now), that's all. You can credit TARP and other bailouts and rescue efforts for stabilizing the financial system and the economy, and you can credit the stimulus package for stopping an even worse hemorrhaging of jobs if you wish, even though we can't measure it. I'm sure over $350 billion spent in stimulus so far had some effect, even if it didn't "save or create 2 million jobs" as the President claims. In fact, if we have to give someone the most credit for stopping the financial collapse and therefore saving jobs, it's probably the Fed, who committed $6.4 trillion to the financial rescue effort. Yes, you heard that number correctly. That's $6.4 TRILLION. If you want to get really depressed, go to this CNN Money link for a list of all the financial rescue efforts. In total, THE GOVERNMENT HAS COMMITTED OVER $11 TRILLION. Thus, using the word "credit" to talk about job loss reductions is a mixed blessing at best. The government cures are almost as bad as the disease, maybe worse.

Not that there's anything to worry about.

In his friday meeting with House Republicans, President Obama made the following statement:

"The fact of the matter is, is that when we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. $1.3 trillion. So — so when you say that suddenly I've got a monthly budget that is higher than the annual — or a monthly deficit that's higher than the annual deficit left by Republicans, that's factually just not true, and you know it's not true. And what is true is that we came in already with a $1.3 trillion deficit before I had passed any law. What is true is, we came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade. It had nothing to do with anything that we had done. It had to do with the fact that in 2000, when there was a budget surplus of $200 billion, you had a Republican administration and a Republican Congress, and we had two tax cuts that weren't paid for, you had a prescription drug plan — the biggest entitlement plan, by the way, in several decades — that was passed, without it being paid for, you had two wars that were done through supplementals, and then you had $3 trillion projected because of the lost revenue of this recession. That's $8 trillion. Now, we increased it by $1 trillion because of the spending that we had to make on the stimulus.

Democrats are absolutely giddy with excitement over the above Obama claims. They think Obama the GOP slayer has set the record straight. I am, however, more than happy to fact-check the President's claims here, because a lot of them are either wrong or misleading.

Let's start with that alleged $200 billion surplus Clinton left in 2000.

It never happened. I know most of you probably think it did happen, but it didn't. It was a budgetary trick, a gimmick. Clinton did come close to balancing the budget with his Republican Congress, but there was never a surplus. I addressed this misconception in a previous post. The federal debt actually increased by $17.9 billion in 2000. That's a DEFICIT, not a surplus.

Next, let's address the unbelievably inane Democratic talking point that the Clinton administration left us on a path for budget surpluses for the next decade, which Bush came along and ruined single-handedly.

Those imaginary surpluses of 2000 were gone the very next year, in 2001. Remember, fiscal year 2001 budgeting was done by the Clinton administration and Clinton's Republican Congress (the federal government's fiscal year runs from October 1st to September 30th). When Bush entered office, he inherited a recession too, mostly due to the dot-com bust, later worsened by the after-effects of 9/11. Neither of those events were caused by Bush. There were never going to be any ten-year surpluses. Reality intervened. All Democrats, including Obama, tell us now that deficit spending is peachy-keen and necessary to fix a bad economy, and Bush did his part by enacting his 2001 tax cuts. Somehow, Democrats didn't agree so much then as they do now. Here's how the NY Times described it in May, 2001:

Congress gave final approval today to the biggest tax cut in a generation, voting to reduce all income tax rates over the next five years and to give the weakened economy a quick jolt by sending rebates to taxpayers this summer.

Following 9/11, we had the Afghanistan war, which EVERY SINGLE DEMOCRAT IN THE SENATE VOTED FOR. The Afghanistan AUMF passed the Senate by a vote of 98-0. That spending came from EVERYONE, not just Bush. Later, came the Iraq AUMF. Democrats in the Senate SUPPORTED that war, by a margin of 29-21. The Senate at that time consisted of 49 Republicans, 50 Democrats, and 1 Independent. It was not controlled by the Republicans. Democrats voted FOR the spending for both wars.

Now, let's move on to the Bush era deficits. This is pretty interesting too.

2002 deficit: $157.8 billion
2003 deficit: $377.6 billion
2004 deficit: $412.7 billion
2005 deficit: $318.3 billion
2006 deficit: $248.2 billion
2007 deficit: $160.7 billion
2008 deficit: $460 billion
2009 deficit: $1.42 trillion

I think we have to look back on those Bush deficits, with the exception of 2009, as the good old days, relatively speaking, no ? It even looks like Bush was heading for a balanced budget, with the deficits dropping in 2005, 2006, and 2007 (and with two wars going, two Bush tax cuts, and Medicare Part D implemented, no less), until the housing sector imploded. Now we have $1 trillion+ deficits projected as far as the eye can see. And if I argued like liberals do, I'd point out that the two largest Bush-era deficits came after the Democrats took over singular command of Congress, and that those two deficits under Democratic leadership were far greater than the previous six years of Bush deficits combined. I might even point out that Barack Obama was in the Senate then, and voted for every budget and spending proposal.

The CBO tells us why the deficit increased so much from 2008 to 2009. From Wikipedia:

The CBO reported in October 2009 reasons for the difference between the 2008 and 2009 deficits, which were approximately $460 billion and $1,410 billion, respectively. Key categories of changes included: tax receipt declines of $320 billion due to the effects of the recession and another $100 billion due to tax cuts in the stimulus bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act or ARRA); $245 billion for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and other bailout efforts; $100 billion in additional spending for ARRA; and another $185 billion due to increases in primary budget categories such as Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, Social Security, and Defense.

You can't blame any politician for revenue drops during the recession, although Obama tried to in his statement that kicked off this post, by acting like he inherited a $3 trillion revenue drop from Bush. Let's look at how much revenue was lost before Obama stepped into the White House. Here are the revenue numbers:

FY2007 – $2.568 trillion federal revenue.
FY2008 – $2.524 trillion federal revenue.
FY2009 – $2.105 trillion federal revenue.

From this, we see that revenue peaked at $2.568 trillion before the recession. Then it dropped by $24 billion in 2008 and $419 billion in 2009. That totals $443 billion that you could say was lost prior to Obama stepping into the White House……BUT….Obama passed $288 billion in tax cuts in 2009 as part of his stimulus package, so he's responsible for part of that lost revenue. A good deal of it, actually. I don't see $3 trillion in lost revenue that Obama "inherited" here, do you ? I see more like $155 billion,. Plus, 2008 and 2009 were deflationary years. If I adjusted for inflation, that loss would be even less. As for projecting revenue drops into the future to explain things away, our double-talking President would be well-served to remember whose job it is to address that situation. It's HIS job, along with Congress. So liberals can understand how ridiculous Obama's claim is, imagine if President Bush had said the dot-com bust and 9/11 recession was going to cause him to run up $3 trillion in debt 10 years later. Liberals would have made a laughingstock of Bush if he had said something so stupid, and rightfully so. Obama's claim of inheriting $3 trillion in lost revenue is nothing more than Obama claiming he's not up to doing his job.

Let's look at the deficit increases the politicians could control:

Who implemented the stimulus tax cuts ? Obama and the Democrats.
Who implemented TARP ? Bush, Republicans, and DEMOCRATS. Obama voted FOR it. A greater percentage of Democrats voted for TARP than did Republicans.
The increases in Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, Social Security, and defense were supported by both parties, including Obama.

I guess Obama thinks he "inherited" deficits that he and his party actively voted FOR. That makes him a dishonest jerk, a synonym for "politician."

Last, let's look at Obama's incredible declaration that $8 trillion in deficits over the next decade are not his responsibility. He claims he inherited those as well, and also claims he only added $1 trillion to the deficit.

Do I even really need to address this fantastic bit of nonsense ? Obama IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. He spent tons of money to get the job. His party CONTROLS BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS. They can do whatever they want to do, and that includes DEFICIT REDUCTION. I'm sure they'lll get no resistance on that front from Republicans, who've been screaming about deficits from the rafters all year long. Let's look how the federal spending has increased:

FY2002 – $2.011 trillion (first Bush/GOP budget)
FY2007 – $2.729 trillion (last GOP Congressional budget)
FY2008 – $2.983 trillion (Democrat Congressional budget)
FY2009 – $3.518 trillion (Democrat Congressional budget)
FY2010 – $3.83 trillion (Democrat Congressional budget)

What this shows us is that in six years, the GOP-led (or neutral in the Senate) Congress increased spending by about $870 billion in six years (2002-2007). When the Democrats took over Congress, they increased spending by $900 billion in only THREE YEARS (2008-2010). The Democrats are increasing spending over twice as fast as the GOP did, and Obama voted in FAVOR of every one of those budgets. Obama has fixed spending at a rate nearly $1 trillion per year higher going forward than it was only two short years ago, and then he wants to pretend it's someone else's fault. Un-real.

FINDING – Obama is engaging in full-fledged partisan spin. He doesn't even take responsibility for his own votes in the Senate that increased the deficits he now claims he "inherited." He doesn't take responsibility for anything his party voted for during the Bush era. He doesn't take responsibility for his own massive spending increases. All he is admitting to is basically the $862 billion stimulus package, plus a couple other things.

Who does this guy think he's fooling ??? Besides liberals, that is. They LOVE his misdirection. The rest of us know better.

Note to liberals – This was NOT a defense of the Bush administration. Y'all always get confused about that. I was against the Bush deficits, the Iraq War, and the unfunded Medicare Part D too. I don't want to hear any more silly misdirection comments here arguing as if I supported all those things. This was merely a fleshing out of the Democratic and Obaman involvement in things, to shine a little light on the twisting of history that invariably occurs. Our current Prez is a world-class twister. I'm sorry you have to hear that, but unfortunately, it's true. I wish it wasn't.

Update – I just realized I left something important out about Obama's distortions. When Obama said he inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit when he walked in the door in 2009, that included the Bush-era $700 billion TARP spending (that Obama and the Dems voted FOR). What Obama failed to include was that about $500 billion of TARP has been repaid by the banks, reducing the deficit Obama claims he "inherited" to $800 billion. Yet, the 2009 deficit was over $1.4 trillion. Obama nearly doubled the 2009 deficiit, and is raising it even more next year. The man seems incapable of honesty.

When President Clinton declared 'the era of big government is over" in 1996, the federal budget of the United States Of America was $1.56 trillion. A mere fifteen years later, President Obama has announced a $3.83 trillion budget for 2011. I don't think I'm alone in saying the rumors of the death of big government were greatly exaggerated. The increase in spending alone since 1996 ($2.3 trillion) is substantially more than the entire federal budget was in 1996. It's no surprise that federal revenue has not been able to keep up with this spending explosion, and even if it had, imagine the effect that would have had on our economy. Imagine the economy as it is now, but with the federal tax burden DOUBLE what it is currently. Nightmarish.

It's not like GDP increases justify this spending boom either. In 1996, the GDP was $7.762 trillion. Now, it's $14.4 trillion. Our GDP has increased by 85% while our federal spending has increased by 145% over the same period. If our federal spending was in line with GDP, the federal budget should be around $2.88 trillion now, but it's a trillion dollars higher. We've managed to increase spending by a trillion dollars per year above GDP. That's a trillion per year that comes out of the private sector, a trillion per year more that comes out of the taxpayers pockets.

But we don't pay for all these enormous federal spending increases, as bad as that would be for the economy. No, what we do is even worse. We deficit spend and run up the federal debt. We borrow or print the money. The reason this is worse is because when we run up the debt, we are not only indebting future taxpayers for our irresponsibility, but they also have to pay interest on the debt. We pay hundreds of billions of dollars in interest on the debt now, and it we keep on the trajectory we're heading, as it appears we will judging from the latest numbers coming out, by 2019 we would be paying more than $700 billion per year in interest on the debt alone. To put this in perspective, our entire defense budget now is about $644 billion. That $700 billion in interest on the debt would be money flushed down the toilet, of no use to any American.

And now for the bad news. As bad as our economic prospects are already, we have an economic time bomb getting ready to detonate very soon. That bomb is known as the baby boom generation, the largest group of citizens in America. The baby boomers will begin to retire next year, and by the end of this decade, most of them will be out of the workforce. This will have a number of effects on our economy. First of all, consider that much of the economic growth from the mid-1980's until now has come due to the boomers. They entered the workforce, started earning money, and started SPENDING money, leading to economic growth. As the peak earning years of the boomers starts to wane, they will do LESS SPENDING, resulting in less economic growth. Remember, 70-80% of our economy is based upon consumer spending. That spending will start dropping very soon, as the boomers move into retirement. Secondly, just as the boomers leave the workforce, move into retirement, and start spending less money, thereby inhibiting economic growth, they will start putting an enormous demand on Social Security and Medicare, the two entitlement programs that represent the majority of our federal budget.

And guess what ? We aren't prepared to pay those boomers. We have an estimated $55 trillion in unfunded entitlement liabilities on top of our $12.3 trillion current debt, a debt that is projected to reach $21 trillion or so by 2019. There is no money in the mythical Social Security Trust Fund (Congress stole it), and Medicare is on a definite path to bankruptcy, in far worse shape than Social Security.

So, what does it all mean ?

It means we are headed for the perfect economic storm, one that will surely bankrupt our country. We are facing nothing less than an economic tsunami, while our distinguished Congresspersons watch it come, doing nothing. Even worse than doing nothing, they are actively making things worse by ramping up federal spending, deficits, and debt at a rate unprecedented in the history of our country. Congress and the White House have gone beyond irresponsibility. This level of depraved indifference to the economic situation America is facing should be a crime, a very serious crime. And I'm not talking about just Democrats or just Republicans here. It's both parties. Almost all of them are complicit in this criminal negligence.

Think about this – we live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, yet our federal government has never been able to balance the budget in my entire lifetime. That debt has accumulated and accumulated ever since I was born, and I'm 56 years old. It seems to get progressively worse as each year passes. It's absolutely unconscionable.

The federal government is leading us off the brink into the abyss, and I'm so fed up with it that the words I'm writing here can barely express it. I could care less if Obama says he's' "not an ideologue," or if he complains that he's being "demonized" by the Republicans. So what ? Who gives a flip ? He SHOULD be demonized, as should be every other politician of either party who is part and parcel of this problem, as Obama certainly is. Bush was a part of it too. Democrats, Republicans, I'm sick of them all (although slightly more sick of the Dems and their big government bs, which is the essence of the problem). If I hear one more big spending, big government moron talk about being "compassionate" as they spend us into oblivion, I'm going to turn into Howard Beale from the movie Network and start screaming "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore !' out my window. I don't want to hear Obama blame it all on Bush, and I don't even want to hear the Republicans blame it all on Obama. That's useless political puffery. It's meaningless. What we need are some SOLUTIONS, even if they are painful in the short term, because if we don't come up with them, all of us are going to suffer far more down the road. What I don't want to hear is what I just heard from our President – trifling nods toward fiscal responsibility while he massively increases spending and deficits more and more and more. That is phony political posturing, which solves nothing. We've had enough of that already.

Arrrrrggghhhhh ! No wonder people take Xanax.

P.S. – As bleak as our future is, allow me to point out one bright spot before we all go out and hang ourselves. Here it is – we don't have a long-term unemployment problem. As the boomers retire, starting next year, all kinds of jobs are going to open up for younger workers. In fact, our problem will soon become that we don't have enough workers to fill all the available jobs. The demographics should insure it. So, all you young workers, take heart. You will have jobs…but how you're going to pay all the taxes that my stupid generation is leaving for you is another matter. On behalf of my stupid generation, I sincerely apologize. I never supported the stupid policies of my stupid and greedy generation. I wish all you young people the best of luck. You'll need it to get through the Great Recession ahead.

Well, you could knock me over with a feather. The Associated Press actually fact-checked Obama's State Of The Union speech. Will wonders never cease. They better watch out, or Team Obama will start claiming that the AP is not a real news organization, like they did with Fox News.

The AP found many examples of Obama stretching the truth, in contrast to my friend the Reverend at the Blog Of Mass Destruction, who claimed, "Obama speaks the truth. He's not duplicitous."

Sure, Reverend. Whatever you say.

I am a little surprised that the AP could only find eight or ten examples of Obama's deception. I'll assume they just hit the word maximum for their article and stopped checking. My take on the Obama speech was…..it sure sounded good if you don't already know better. Perhaps the AP is starting to know better now too, so they've decided to tell a little truth about Obama. It's about time. Here are a few of the distortions AP found. I lifted the following partial list from the HotAir website, because I'm being lazy today:

- Spending freeze – The AP points out that it will save less than 1% of predicted deficits over the next ten years — and that Obama scoffed at such a plan when John McCain proposed it in 2008.

- Health care – Obama said the Democratic plan would allow people to keep their insurance and their doctors, but the bill doesn’t guarantee either. Their plan has massive cuts to Medicare Advantage, which would definitely affect coverage of a large portion of America’s seniors and disabled.

- Lobbyists – Obama has not “excluded” lobbyists from his administration; he’s hired over a dozen for key posts, and the AP notes seven of those waivers were for White House posts. Obama called for restrictions on lobbyist contributions, but those already exist.

- Two million jobs saved through Porkulus – The CBO puts the theoretical range between 600K and 1.6 million, but also cautions that the methodology of estimating jobs “saved or created” is “uncertain.” The last detailed numbers the White House produced totaled 650,000 — and were found to be highly inaccurate.

- Openness: “Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign — to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN “so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders behind closed doors. Nor has Obama lived up consistently to his pledge to ensure that legislation is posted online for five days before it’s acted upon.”

HotAir also addressed Obama's self-serving claim that he inherited almost all of the deficits from Bush. There are important caveats to that claim:

Obama repeatedly insisted that he inherited massive budgetary problems from George Bush, but the Con Law professor may want to retake his high-school civics class. Congress passes budgets, not the President, and the last three budgets came from Democrats. In three years, they increased annual federal spending by $900 billion, while the admittedly profligate and irresponsible Republican Congresses under George Bush increased annual federal spending by $800 billion — in six years. And during the last three years before taking office as President, Obama served in the Senate that passed those bills, and he voted for every Democratic budget put in front of him.

So, Obama is now whining about the very budgets he voted FOR when he was in the Senate. Rather than those being budgets and deficits Obama "inherited," which is how Obama characterizes them, those are budgets and deficits Obama and his Democratic cohorts CREATED, along with Bush. The Reverend may say that is "not duplicitous," but I'd say it's not only the very definition of "duplicitous," it's far worse. I'd say Obama is soul-less (along with many other pols), and will say absolutely anything at any time, as long as it serves his needs. The truth is immaterial. All that matters is what he can get the rubes (that's us) to believe.

If you set aside the 15-20 spins and deceptions (by my count) in Obama's SOTU speech, there actually were some things I liked in it. Zeroing capital gains taxes for economic stimulus, his all-around energy approach which included nuclear power and offshore drilling. Those are two that I liked, and there were others. It's just that I no longer take this President at his word, because his actions frequently do not match his rhetoric. Part of this is due to the fact that Obama made more campaign promises than any other candidate in history, by far. That probably should have tipped us off that something was amiss, but it all sounded good in theory, at least to many. Besides, Obama knows it doesn't matter what you say to get yourself in power. All that matters is that you do get power. Now, it also appears Obama thinks he should say anything to keep power…….no matter if it's true or not. And that means things are still amiss.