This video is all kinds of amazing. The best part is that President Obama has spent the last four years writing what is at its essence a Romney/Ryan campaign ad. How brilliant is that?
Actually, the content of that video is downright depressing. If it were a Republican President with glaring inconsistencies like that the media would be all over it. Good to see that tidbit from John Stewart in there; until that, everything I had heard from him had been pretty blatantly pro-Obama.
It’s been a crazy-busy day for me today, one that followed by an even crazier day for the folks in our nation’s capital, and that one word title kinda sums up my reaction to the day.
Crap.
As in what I said when I heard Obama’s poorly named “Health Care Reform” bill barely got the votes needed to pass it.
Crap.
As in what the politicians supporting this bill are full of and are spreading around thick. Example: Our Glorious President said last week that this bill will add “almost a decade of solvency to Medicare;” wonderful, but what happens after that? And does anybody else notice the irony in a statement like that being used to defend a program that will make Medicare look like a first-aid box by comparison? How long will Obamacare program stay solvent? And what new and bigger-still program will be proposed to extend Obamacare’s solvency when it’s suffered a few decades of expansion and three card monte at the hands of politicians?
They say it will ‘only’ cost just shy of a trillion dollars, but it will reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions in the first ten years. Bull crap. What they don’t tell us is that “$53 billion of the $118 billion “lower” deficit over the next 10 years comes from Social Security payroll tax revenues that result from the increase in wages that employers will offer employees instead of health insurance.” Horse hockey. But what about the burgeoning number of Social Security recipients that will be on the government dole in the next ten years? Seems like the CBO might have missed that little detail.
There’s also the matter of some $463 billion in cuts to the Medicare program over the next decade. While Obamacare essentially adds how many millions of people to the Medicare rolls? The cost to run Medicare isn’t going to magically shrink in the coming years; it seems like every day you hear something about some pharmacy chain or hospital or group of doctors that refuse to see any new Medicare patients because when they bill Medicare for services rendered, they either don’t get paid or get paid a fraction of the bill. It also looks like the Feds will just push some of those costs off to the states and make them worry about where it comes from. Can you say “unfunded mandate”? Last I heard there were already eleven states lining up to bring suit against the Federal Government once Obama signs this thing into law. (and what do you wanna bet that nobody in Congress or the CBO took legal costs into consideration.)
Crap.
As in what this bill is worth.
If you listen to the Democrats and the mainstream media, this bill is full of Sunshine and Rainbows and Puppy Dogs. It’s passage is important not only for the President’s Legacy, but it will also reduce the deficit, be revenue-neutral, cure blindness, eliminate hunger, cool the climate, slow the rise of the oceans, heal the planet… (sorry; different speech.) Meanwhile the Republicans counter with their own version of what this bill will accomplish, and paints a somewhat less rosy picture. Somehow I think the reality of the thing be somewhere in between, but as trustworthy as the Democrats have proven to be since taking control of Washington, I’d say the Republican version is closer to reality. The good that’s in it is more than outweighed by the bad in it. Like a pan of brownies made with all the best ingredients, but has had a half cup of dog crap mixed in. I don’t care how great the other ingredients are, you won’t catch me eating one.
Yup. Crap is the word.
Wow; this guy is in-stinkin’-credible! Now he’s telling us that if his Health Care Insurance Reform somehow makes it through Congress, we and our health insurance providing employers will see 3000% reductions in our insurance premiums. Three thousand percent!
Of course, it was a slip of the tongue or more likely a teleprompter miscue, but still… If it had been George W. Bush making a mistake like this, the media would be all over it, but again, our President can do no wrong. This guy is supposed to be the brightest bulb to grace the White House in centuries; shouldn’t he have caught that flub or at least corrected himself after he said it? And what about the adoring crowd? Was no one listening to what the man actually said and applying any critical thinking before cheering madly?
It seems the man is in permanent campaign mode, constantly trying to sell us something, even when polls show that we don’t want what he’s selling, and the facts show him to be dead wrong. Even Congressional Democrats are afraid to vote on it fearing a backlash come November.
Here’s a good read by Dan Kennedy on the Business & Media Institute website. An excerpt:
Mrs. Obama… reportedly has a staff of 22 assistants. Yes, I said twenty-two. (Previous First Ladies’ dedicated staffs were in the single digits). Michelle’s little army includes a Chief of Staff costing $172,000 a year; a Deputy Chief of Staff at $90,000; a Director of Policy and Projects at $140,000; a Director of Communications at $102,000; a Deputy Director of Scheduling at $62,000; two Social Secretaries – mysteriously, one at $65,000, one at $64,000; an Associate Director of Correspondence at $45,000, an Assistant to the Social Secretary at $36,000, and more, in total consuming $6.3-million annually thus $25-million during her 4-year term. Not to mention a make-up artist and hair stylist.
Kennedy took the occasion of the scolding tone of President Obama to bring this up; when he said that a trip to Vegas wasn’t the wisest move “when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It’s time your government did the same.”
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black…*
*not a racist comment.
I’d heard rumblings of Nancy Pelosi’s boorish attitude before, but this news just takes the cake. Since stepping into the position of Speaker of the House, the bill for Madame Speaker’s air travel is pushing the $3 million mark, with well over $100,000 in just in-flight food & booze. Then there was the staggering bill for the monstrous Congressional presence at the Copenhagen Climate Summit…
She has been using Air Force aircraft and personnel to jet back and forth between Washington, D.C. and her home in San Francisco, plus has made several overseas junkets (for who knows what)… But traveling alone isn’t much fun, so she has her usual entourage tagging along, plus any number of her family members, plus whatever Congressional delegation needs to come along, plus their own entourages, plus security…
And when asked about the extravagant use of taxpayer funds for travel, Pelosi’s defense is along the lines of, it’s all necessary for the person third in line to the Presidency. Can she justify all of the travel and expenses? Has she reimbursed the DOD for any of those expenses? If Denny Hastert had pulled the same stunts, would there be the near deafening silence from the mainstream media about it? I think not, on all three counts.
Not my words, but the words of highly respected economist, Dr. Arthur Laffer from an interview published on Human Events.
“Obama is a fine, very impressive person. He really is. Unfortunately, everything that he is doing in economics is exactly wrong. He is a crappy president,” Laffer said.
Dr. Laffer had a lot more to say in that interview about the state of the country’s economy and how the Obama Administration’s economic policy is affecting it. Although Laffer didn’t have much nice to say about the current policy, his is not your run-of-the-mill partisan mudslinging. He’s also written some scathing reviews of Bush Administration spending decisions, especially the bailouts in 2008. He may not be a totally unbiased source of info, but he is consistent in calling bad economic policy as he sees it. And he has some solid credentials backing up what he says.
President Obama told Diane Sawyer in an interview recently, “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.” I would so love for him to be a really good president, but if he continues on his present course, I forsee him being more of a crappy one-term president.
Human Events Interview
“Get Ready for Inflation and Higher Interest Rates” — June 11, 2009, WSJ
Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich — May 18, 2009, WSJ
“How to Fix the Health-Care ‘Wedge’; There is an alternative to ObamaCare” — August 5, 2009, WSJ
Great article about the shooter in last Thursday’s massacre at Ft. Hood over at NYTimes.com.
With all that has been discovered about this ordeal and the guy behind it — Maj. Nadal Malik Hasan — it’s amazing that there is so much handwringing over whether to call it an act of terrorism or not. The media and the politicians seem to be going way out of their way to avoid stating the obvious, seemingly motivated by out of an over-developed sense of political correctness.
The good news is that he was denied the reward he was likely seeking from a ‘martyr’s’ death; he was shot four times, and survived. Even though to him, being held by infidels is a punishment worse than death, I’m not sure if that’s quite enough.
Guess this makes it official; Barack Hussein Obama (mmmm, mmmm, mmmm!) being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize means that the Nobel Peace Prize means absolutely dick. i.e. Zip. Zero. Nada. Nothing.
It was bad enough when the prize was awarded to Al Gore, who at that time was singularly undeserving of such an award, but Barack Obama? What has he done to deserve this prize? Nothing that I can think of, unless he leads a secret life of which the public is largely unaware (oh wait, we still don’t know much about what his work as the editor of the Harvard Law Review, nor do we know anything of the grades he earned at Harvard.) According to one Reuters article, he deserves it for “… offering the world hope and striving for nuclear disarmament”? I guess you could say that his naive striving for nuclear disarmament gives hope to some, like Iran, North Korea, China and Russia (who surely were all laughing in their sleeves at his “… dreams of a world without weapons…” while “… right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.”)
The prize surely isn’t for his leadership at the nation’s capitol when it comes to bipartisan cooperation, nor for his leadership in his dream of universal healthcare… All of that has left the nation even more polarized than when he (mis)took the Oath of Office in January. And the prize can’t be for his leadership in the role of Commander in Chief, as troop morale is at an all-time low in Afghanistan, exacerbated by the lack of clear mission goals and confusing rules of engagement that leave them poorly equipped to even defend themselves in the face of an enemy unafraid to hide behind civilians…
But according to the Nobel Prize Committee, he gets the prize because, “Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.” So it’s all about celebrity. I laugh, as do many when they first heard this news. The only hope inspired in me by Obama is that his agenda for this country fails, and by the grace of God and the arrogance & incompetence of the Democrats in Congress, thus far it has.
Since the Nobel comes with a cool $4 million bonus, I wonder whether the Obamas will be inclined to “share the wealth” with the country. Something tells me that ain’t happening.
Saw this on today’s Patriot Post, and thought it interesting in light of the President’s proposed healthcare ‘reform’. Emphasis mine.
We warned of things to come, of the danger inherent in unwarranted government involvement in things not its proper province. What we warned against has come to pass. And today more than two-thirds of our citizens are telling us, and each other, that social engineering by the federal government has failed. The Great Society is great only in power, in size and in cost. And so are the problems it set out to solve. Freedom has been diminished and we stand on the brink of economic ruin. Our task now is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. We are not a cult, we are members of a majority. Let’s act and talk like it. The job is ours and the job must be done. If not by us, who? If not now, when? Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society. Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, galloping inflation, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite. Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people.
The speech from which that quote was taken was given on February 6, 1977, but you’d think that he was looking through time to today. I guess what it really means is that the initiatives being promoted by Barack Obama and his sidekicks in Congress are nothing new; it’s all been tried before. One side note: Reagan referred “our party” two times in this quote, referencing of course the Republican Party. These days it seems as though the Republicans are trying harder to be the me-too, “Democrat-lite” party than anything resembling what Reagan envisioned. In trying to build the fabled “big tent” the party has abandoned anything resembling principled positions, running around with one finger in the wind and another somewhere else trying to woo one demographic or another. Reagan was a conservative in principle and in practice, something we haven’t seen in the leadership of the Republican Party for a good decade. Who will be this generation’s Ronald Reagan?
Why is it so difficult to understand that conservatism works every time it’s tried?
President “Tennis Match” Obama is prepping right now for a speech to a joint session of Congress, which will of course be beamed far & wide for all of us to see. The purpose, according to the President, is to help us all to know…
… exactly what I think will solve our healthcare crisis, they will have a lot of clarity about what I think is the best to move forward. So the intent of the speech is to, A, make sure that the American people know exactly what it is we are proposing, B, to make sure that Democrats and Republicans understand that I am open to new ideas, that not being rigid and ideological, but we do intend to get something done this year.
So, “what I think will solve our healthcare crisis” and “what I think is the best to move forward”… Thus far since taking office, what he thinks is best doesn’t line up very well with what history has proven to be best for the country. I hope he does better than that. And is it just me, or does B contradict A just a little bit? I mean, if he’s gonna let us know exactly what it is that’s being proposed, is it safe to assume that the leaders of the House and Senate are going to get it right and not throw their pet projects in there? I don’t think that’s a safe assumption at all. He seemed to be pretty clueless about what was in HB 3200; will his dulcet tones make all the difference and soothe us into complacency so we’ll just bend over and take it in the rear? Or will those tones convince Congress that they need to just ignore public opinion and pass what he thinks is best for us?
I won’t likely be listening in — I’ll just read the transcript of it later. Listening to that voice for that long will definitely exceed my ewww factor for the day, and besides, what he’s going to say is pretty predictable, judging by what I’ve read from people who’ve been given a preview of what he’s going to say.
The problem is that the guy hasn’t got much credibility left; HB 3200 is the only legislation that has been made public, and there are huge inconsistencies between it and what he says is “in the plan”. I just don’t buy anything he has to say on the subject.
He’s already telegraphed what he ultimately wants to see in healthcare reform legislation, and that’s a state-controlled healthcare industry with a massive bureaucracy overseeing it and huge tax increases to pay for it. I’ll be the first to admit that there are problems with the healthcare system, but it’s not so broken that we need this kind of cure. And he may be telling the truth in saying that he’ll settle for less, but that’s what he and the rest of the statists in Congress will be working toward, if only through small increments. They say there are 40-some million people in the US without healthcare insurance; even if that’s true (and those figures are highly questionable) is it worth screwing up the system that works pretty darned well for the other 260 million of us who do? Even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says they can’t pull it off the way they’d like to; any healthcare reform they pass now will leave more people uninsured in five years than we have now, and will cost far more than Congress and the President say it will; in the end we’ll have tax increases and healthcare rationing. There’s no way around it. And I for one do NOT want some bureaucrat deciding whether my kid is worth the expenditure of the Government’s precious and limited healthcare resources. And the President has the temerity to tell us the idea of “death panels” is ridiculous… It’s only a logical next step down the path he wants us to go.
I think President Obama suffers from a bit of guilt that he wants to assuage on a grand scale; he says that, “… the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough.” I admire his desire to help those who need help, but this plan of his won’t. And there is plenty of evidence to show this plan to be little more than a pretext for other things he wants to accomplish that will work just as poorly, and leave a terrible legacy for us all to endure.