Obama's First Asteroid?

During a speech in which he tried "selling" Health Care Reform after he already signed it into law, O.B.A.M.,A.* mocked Republicans, Independents, TEA Party activist and the rest of us who don't like high deficits and debt, saying that when he signed the disastrous Health Care act, he looked around and didn't see any asteroids.

Well, look again, O.B.A.M.,A., the first one may be on its way...

The United States should consider raising taxes to help bring deficits under control and may need to consider a European-style value-added tax, White House adviser Paul Volcker said on Tuesday.

Volcker, answering a question from the audience at a New York Historical Society event, said the value-added tax "was not as toxic an idea" as it has been in the past and also said a carbon or other energy-related tax may become necessary.

Though he acknowledged that both were still unpopular ideas, he said getting entitlement costs and the U.S. budget deficit under control may require such moves. "If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes," he said.

* O.B.A.M.,A. = One Big Ass Mistake, America

Christians and Jews = Dhimmis Under Obamacare

Opus (check out her blog at MAInfo) alerted us to the following:
Christians And Jews = Dhimmis Under Obamacare?

A dhimmi is a non-muslim in a muslim country who is treated as a second-class citizen, with punishing taxes, abuse, and no legal recourse.

Let’s Get this Straight:

President Obama Vice President Biden Speaker Nancy Pelosi Harry Reid White House Staff Cabinet Secretaries Congressional Staff* Amish American Indian Tribes Criminals Scientologists Christian Scientists Muslims Baptists Catholics Lutherans Jews

Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare Exempt from ObamaCare NO Exemption NO Exemption NO Exemption NO Exemption

*Congressional staffers who wrote ObamaCare, staffers working in a leadership office or for a Congressional committee all receive an exemption.

Promises Kept

Racism Accusation Reigns on O'Reilly

I usually find Bill O'Reilly entertaining, funny and sometimes thought provoking. However, as I've mentioned on this blog before, O'Reilly seldom has the wits to match his guests. He's no dummy, but he's also not as clever or as brilliant as the people he brings on.

The left, of course, is in the "You're Racist" mode, trying to sell the already-passed Health Care System Demolition Program to the American people with the idea that Health Care reform is great because anyone who opposes it is racist.

On Tuesday, O'Reilly had two guests on his program that played the race card effectively. Al Sharpton was invited by O'Reilly to respond to a Miami Herald opinion article which charged that the "Tea Party had an element of racism running through it." Sharpton defended the statement by playing semantic games with O'Reilly, and O'Reilly obviously never caught on.

Sharpton cleverly rephrased what the opinion writer said and told O'Reilly that there were, indeed, "elements of racism within the TEA Party movement," a phrase using similar language but which changed entirely the meaning of the author. He then argued that if even two or three people out of millions of TEA Party activists are even the least bit racist, then the TEA Party has "elements of racism" within it. After making this point, which O'Reilly had trouble arguing, he slipped back and forth between "elements of racism within" the movement and "an element of racism running through" the movement, which implies that the TEA Party has an inherent racist element in it's fabric and that every member must be, to some degree, racist to be associated with the party.

While I think Sharpton is un-American, a Marxist, and uses the cloak of religion for credibility, (while he, himself has no problems with lying to achieve his own ends), he's certainly no idiot, and has a great command of the language. He knew what he was doing. O'Reilly was no match.

In a later segment, Alan Combs appeared. Combs seems like a smart enough fellow, but seems to view his job as spouting whatever the democratic talking points for the week are. If Gibbs and Pelosi and Reed were to come out tomorrow and say that the sky is red, Combs would be telling us all exactly what shade of red the sky is and how racist it is to deny that the sky is red.

This week, of course, the talking points are that ObamaKare is Great because the TEA Party is racist. It's a theme, apparently. And in the segment, which was not about race at all, Combs started his argument stating that (essentially) anyone who opposed ObamaKare does so because they don't like having a black man in the White House. Monica Crowley, his "co-guest' (if there is such a thing) started to argue with Combs, but O'Reilly was insistent that Combs have his say, even though he pointed out there is no evidence to the contrary.

I find these things very offensive.

In fact, I'm going to make a statement that many will probably disagree with, but here goes: I think that making the accusation of "racist" to someone for whom there is no real evidence of racism, is as offensive as using the "n-" word.

There, I said it.

Watch for more accusations of racism over the next few months (and probably years) as the left continues to try to peddle the idea that voting against democrats is a racist move. They will continue to tout the "fairness" of their programs against the "racism" of the Republican ideas.

Frankly, I think it takes a twisted sense of morality to define "fairness" as taking stuff away from the person who has worked hard to get it, in order to give it to the person who has not worked for it.

... but then again, I'm racist.

Premiums to Rise under ObamaCare

(Source: Newsbusters)

It's no shock to rational, thinking people that healthcare legislation currently before Congress will do nothing to halt rising insurance premiums, but that the folks at the Associated Press would come to such a conclusion AND write about it is quite surprising.

There it was in a piece published Wednesday called, "FACT CHECK: Premiums would rise under Obama plan."

Readers are strongly encouraged to fasten seatbelts tightly, for they're about to enter what has to be an alternate universe (h/t Ed Morrissey):

Buyers, beware: President Barack Obama says his health care overhaul will lower premiums by double digits, but check the fine print.

Premiums are likely to keep going up even if the health care bill passes, experts say.

Shhh. Wait. It got better:

Listening to Obama pitch his plan, you might not realize that's how it works. [...]

An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office of earlier Senate legislation suggested savings could be fairly modest.

It found that large employers would see premium savings of at most 3 percent compared with what their costs would have been without the legislation. That would be more like a few hundred dollars instead of several thousand.

The claim that people buying coverage individually would save 14 percent to 20 percent comes from the same budget office report, prepared in November for Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind. But the presidential sound bite fails to convey the full picture.

The budget office concluded that premiums for people buying their own coverage would go up by an average of 10 percent to 13 percent, compared with the levels they'd reach without the legislation.

Imagine that. Real facts about ObamaCare from the AP as the Democrats try to garner enough votes to get it passed.

Who'd have thunk it?

Unfortunately, this piece still didn't accurately reflect the entire truth as Ed Morrissey noted Wednesday:

The insurance policies of the future under ObamaCare would provide more comprehensive benefits, but that’s because ObamaCare would outlaw more modest plans. The federal mandates of ObamaCare would mean that healthy people would no longer have the choice of low-cost, high-deductible plans that encourage direct spending on routine medical issues, the exact kind of policies that realreform would emphasize. Obama and the Democrats want to force young, healthy people into committing more money into risk pools in order to keep premium increases down for others — in essence, subsidizing medical care for older, higher-risk pool members.

Despite this oversight, the AP did a pretty good job, especially as it referred to a speech Obama just made this week in a Cleveland suburb:

"You'll be able to buy in, or a small business will be able to buy into this pool," Obama said. "And that will lower rates, it's estimated, by up to 14 to 20 percent over what you're currently getting. That's money out of pocket." [...]

"Your employer, it's estimated, would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent," said the president, "which means they could give you a raise."

A White House press spokesman later said the president misspoke; he had meant to say annual premiums would drop by $3,000.

It could be a long wait.

Makes you wonder what might have happened during the presidential campaign in 2008 if the AP had spent its time fact-checking Obama's stump speeches rather than gushing and fawning over them.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/03/17/shocking-ap-fact-check-premiums-will-rise-under-obamacare#ixzz0jPp1zDv0

Calls For Special Prosecuter To Investigate Bribery

Representative Darrell Issa (R)-CA, has called for a Special Prosecutor to investigate Representative Sestak’s (D)-PA claim of an Obama White House bribery attempt. Sestak alleges that the White House offered him a top federal spot to drop out of a Primary race with sometime Democrat, sometime Republican and full time Harpy, Arlen Specter.

The call for independent review should be welcomed by those who are disgusted by the back alley deals, tax cheating cabinet members, and a whole host of ethical issues that plague the Democrat Party and the Obama White House in particular. From payoffs to Senators to Viagra maintenance for Sex Offenders, The Left and Obama have forced America to accept and in the future even pay for things that are not only against the mainstream, but also unconstitutional. Given the way the Democrats ran roughshod over their own Party to force reluctant members to ignore their constituents, it makes sense to have someone outside of the Obama-Pelosi-Soros cabal ascertain just how much credence to place in Sestak’s claims.

Credibility is the real problem here. On the one hand, Obama denies any deal was offered, while Sestak insists it did. On the other hand both folks have shown a willingness to bold face lie to the American people and their constituents in passing a very controversial bill which violates the Constitution. The lies and deception surrounding the Democrats handling of this Bill demands an honest review. But who to do it?

Patrick Fitzgerald, when it was fashionable to be in the Special Prosecuting business, made a dog’s breakfast of the “Libbygate” investigation. Guided by partisanship and ambition (while never proven, it was rumored he was angling for an AG spot in a Kerry Administration), he was a lousy choice to investigate fairly. In the end nothing was ever proven about the initial allegations, and after Kerry’s defeat in 2004, interest dropped in the case. Libby was sideshow and once the big show ended, Election 2004, Fitzgerald went back to Chicago. Chicago? Imagine that.

Unconstitutional Procedure Will Be Used to Pass Unconstitutional Bill

House leaders are preparing to ram through ObamaCare this week without a vote. Not only is the legislation unconstitutional, but the process being used to pass it is unconstitutional. The House is preparing a rule that would consider the Senate-passed version of ObamaCare passed in the House even though members would never directly vote on it. That would violate Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution.

Here is how the trick would work: In the House, the Rules Committee sets up the parameters for debate on legislation. House leaders are considering a complicated rule that would be structured so that a vote on the rule setting down the structure for the ObamaCare debate would allow the Senate’s version of health care reform to pass without a vote. First, there would be a vote on a rule. If the rule is passed by the House, then the House would vote on a health care budget reconciliation measure that is an amendment to the Senate passed ObamaCare bill. If that reconciliation measure passes, then reconciliation goes to the Senate and the ObamaCare legislation is deemed passed without a direct vote. The plan for the legislation is unclear. House leadership will either structure the rule to either immediately present ObamaCare to the President for his signature or they will hold the bill and deliver it only if the Senate passes a health care reconciliation measure. Either way, the Constitution and the American people are the losers.

Understand that this procedure is drafted in a way so your average American can’t understand it. The simple way to understand the situation is that the House is trying to pass a bill without a vote.

The Constitution states that the House and Senate are supposed to pass identical versions of a bill before the President can sign it into law. One of the reasons for this tricky procedure is to provide cover for moderate Democrats who don’t want to vote for the Senate-passed ObamaCare bill because it includes the federal funding of abortion.

Michael McConnell, Professor and Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, explains it this way at the Wall Street Journal today:

Democratic congressional leaders have floated a plan to enact health-care reform by a procedure dubbed “the Slaughter solution.” It is named not for the political carnage that it might inflict on their members, but for Rep. Louise Slaughter (D., N.Y.), chair of the powerful House Rules Committee, who proposed it. Under her proposal, Democrats would pass a rule that deems the Senate’s health-care bill to have passed the House, without the House actually voting on the bill. This would enable Congress to vote on legislation that fixes flaws in the Senate health-care bill without facing a Senate filibuster, and without requiring House members to vote in favor of a Senate bill that is now politically toxic.

McConnell is right. The Constitution says that:

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law.

If a branch does not vote on a bill, then that bill did not pass. This proposed procedure seems to be a clear violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution. There will be debate on the proper remedy for this constitutional affront, but all can agree that, at a minimum, House members can raise a constitutional point of order against the rule.

Liberals in the House understand that this process is hard to defend. Chris Frates at Politico writes about a leaked memo drafted by Assistant to the Speaker Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) intended to provide talking points to Democrat members when challenged on the unconstitutional process.

The Van Hollen memo also advised members to avoid talking about the process. “At this point, we have to just rip the band-aid off and have a vote — up or down; yes or no? Things like reconciliation and what the rules committee does is INSIDE BASEBALL,” the memo says. “People who try and start arguments about process on this are almost always against the actual policy substance too, often times for purely political reasons.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the House Rules Committee have come up with a very complicated procedure to get ObamaCare to the President’s desk without House members having to vote directly on the bill. This procedure is going to be debated extensively this week and may be the key issue as to whether President Obama signs legislation to provide a de facto government-run health care system.

Rendering the Constitution Irrelevant

Throughout most of 2009, the liberal wing of the Democrat Party, the inhabitants of the White House, and the slavishly progressive mainstream media dismissed the Tea Party movement. They apparently assumed that the Tea Party was populated by the “fringe conservative” element of the Republican Party, which meant that their base was still solidly affixed. They apparently assumed that the Tea Party would not organize, which Tea Partiers have done – quite effectively. They apparently assumed that if they could force enough laws through by political will and curious expediency, the Tea Party would dissolve under the weight of new bureaucracies.

Moreover, leaders in the Republican Party foolishly believed that Tea Partiers would “return” to the fold after their period of wandering.

All of them were wrong.

Long before the Tea Party movement came into being, a quiet war was taking place in America. Popular talk-show host Glenn Beck has gained a huge following by connecting the dots between Cloward, Piven, Progressives, and the White House, which is symptomatic of the war. He has put together many pieces of the puzzle, and new pieces are fitting everyday. It’s no surprise he’s the darling of and inspiration for the Tea Party movement. He sees, and more Americans are beginning to recognize, that the goal of fanatical Progressives is not progress; their goal is rendering the Constitution irrelevant.

Progressives have long used the law, whether through the courts or the legislature, to force radical change. When propositions are repeatedly defeated in the public forum, progressives seek any and all alternative routes to push their agenda. They believe that they can effectively intimidate the American people, and strip them of their identity, through the weight of the law, regardless of Constitutional limits or safeguards.

Is it any wonder that they actively promote the flawed notion of a “living” Constitution? If the limits within the Constitution are malleable, they can be altered to expand the role of government on a whim. Is it any wonder that they slap the term “rights” onto initiatives or programs that are, in fact, privileges, thereby blurring the line between the two? They do not see rights as an inalienable, integral and inherent component of our humanity; rights, like “privileges,” are viewed as gifts of the State.

The more Americans they can convince of this twisted logic, the easier it will be to affect the kind of change informed Americans would otherwise reject.

Dereliction of Duty

Jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010. — Barack Obama, January 27, 2010.

So much for all that.

After a year of crisscrossing the country hawking his health care boondoggle, President Obama in his State of the Union address graciously took note of a separate, minor problem — America’s continued mass unemployment.

Obama’s first year in office saw the economy bleed millions of jobs and bottom out at the lowest labor force participation rate in 25 years. The official unemployment rate for December was 10 percent, a scary but misleadingly sunny number which failed to take into account the millions of Americans forced into part-time work or those who left the job market altogether in frustration and disgust.

Naturally, such dismal statistics got fair media play as 2009 wound to a close. So the president paid lip service to the jobs situation when he addressed Congress in January, 2010, promising to buckle down and concentrate on getting Americans back to work in the coming year. A lot of Americans, a lot of jobless Americans, likely gave a sigh of relief and uttered a hearty “it’s about time.”

Unfortunately for them, what came instead was a renewed frenzy to pass nationalized health care, and a corresponding neglect of the still dismal unemployment situation. The last weeks have seen 1) the release at last of the president’s own health care plan, 2) a much ballyhooed but still farcical health care summit, and 3) yet another public presidential plea (yawn) for the necessity of national health care. And now Obama is reportedly gearing up for yet another health care tour as his allies in Congress prepare to make their final push to pass this misbegotten legislation by Easter.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans continue to fill the unemployment lines or take menial work in order to have something on their resume besides a year-long gap of eating Cheetos and playing Guitar Hero. One can only conclude that Obama does not care whether you have a job or not, so long as he can force government health care down your throat.

Doing the Wrong Thing

We've all heard the democrats (and Republicans) tell us during the Health Care Reform debate/fiasco that "doing something is better than doing nothing." Last night, I even heard liberal writer Bob Beckel say that "doing the wrong thing is better than doing nothing?"

Oh, really?

I'd like to take Bob out to a tall cliff and give him only two options: Do nothing or jump. Do you think he'd still say that doing the wrong thing is better than doing nothing.

Of course, like my hypothetical cliff, there are more than two options, but I'd like to focus on just the issue of doing the wrong thing versus doing nothing.

In regards to health care, let's make the assumption that passing ObamaKare is doing the "wrong thing." (A stretch, I know.)

Doing the wrong thing could cost the government (the taxpayers) trillions and trillions of dollars that we don't have. Doing nothing costs the government no more than we are spending now.

Doing the wrong thing will decrease the quality of care. Doing nothing maintains the highest quality care available in the world.

Doing the wrong thing will result in health care rationing in which those most vulnerable, particularly the elderly and the most ill, will likely be left out to pasture to die. Doing nothing continues the current system of rationing health care to those who work for a living and can afford health insurance, and leaving deadbeats to seek health care from ER's (where they still get treatment if they need it.)

Doing the wrong thing will force doctors out of business. Doing nothing maintains our current levels of health care providers, which is still inadequate in some areas and in some specialties, but is still better than most places in the world.

Doing the wrong thing throws the constitution out the window. Doing nothing keeps it hanging by a thread.

Got any more?

Health Care and the Constitution

Let me expand on yesterday's post. Yesterday, we discussed (I monologued) on the opinion that the federal government does not have the constitutional power or authority to use tax dollars to give to other nations, either for humanitarian aid or for other kinds of foreign aid.

I feel the same way about health care.

Where in the constitution is the authority granted to the federal government to provide health insurance to citizens (and non-citizens, for that matter)?

The tenth amendment to the constitution says simply:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

In other words, any power not spelled out as being given to the federal government, is automatically given to the states or the people. If health care isn't a power granted to the federal government, then it doesn't have that power or authority. Am I wrong on this?

As far as I'm concerned, Medicare, Medicaid and ObamaKare are all unconstitutional.

Clearly, all of us who believe in the constitution should oppose ObamaKare in all its forms and any move toward Universal Health Kare. We should also oppose most of the Republican "alternatives," which also grant more power and authority to the federal government than the constitution allows.

As O'Reilly would say.... "Where have I gone wrong?"

One Year Ago, He Saved the Economy

Yes, one year ago, he saved the economy. Not Barack Obama, but rather, Blogger William Jacobson from Legal Insurrection. Or so he claims in his most recent, clever blog:

Barack Obama is claiming credit for "saving" the economy from a full-blown depression based on passage of the stimulus plan.

As with most Obama claims of success, Obama simply is exhibiting his prowess at using strawman arguments.

Obama compares where the economy is now, versus where the economy would have been on some hypothetical downward spiral assuming government did nothing. The "some say doing nothing would be better" paradigm is classic Obama.

But the alternative to the Obama stimulus plan and ramped-up budget deficits was not nothing, but a lowering of the tax and regulatory burdens on businesses and individuals which would have created real, economically sustainable jobs.

Instead, at most, we had subsidies to state governments to perpetuate completely unsustainable budgets drowning in union-related labor costs and pensions, and infrastructure projects notorious for cost overruns. No jobs were created or saved; unless of course the federal government is going to continue to subsidize these jobs indefinitely.

Obama confuses association and causation. Just because two events occurred (the economy did not go into a full-blown depression and Obama passed the stimulus) does not mean that the stimulus saved the economy. It is the intellectually lazy person's idea of logic, since it is much, much more difficult to compare what was to what could have been.

Now to the point of this post. Using Obama's logic, I saved the economy.

On February 20, 2009, I wrote The Last Bull Capitulates. In that post I wrote about the damaging effects of Obama deliberately talking down the markets to create a crisis atmosphere necessary to pass the stimulus (as in Rahm Emanuel's "never let a crisis go to waste"):

For the first time in my adult life [yes, h/t MO], I am convinced that we have a President who sees capitalism and markets as the enemy. There is no other explanation for the hyperbolic rhetoric Obama has used to create a sense of economic crisis far in excess of reality. We are in a recession, but as others have documented extensively, to compare the current economy to the Great Depression is damaging.

The result of my analysis was that the time had come to take some money off the investment table until Obama stopped talking down the markets (which he did in fact do in April 2009 when he needed to pass his expansive budget).

But I recognized that I probably was a counter-indicator, the so-called "last bull" capitulating, and that my capitulation probably signalled we had hit bottom:

There's an old saying on Wall Street that a bear market has not bottomed out until the last bull capitulates. News flash. The last bull has capitulated. Me....

I hope I'm selling at the bottom, because that will mean the markets and the country will have recovered from the worst economic policies since the Great Depression.

And so it came to pass.

I capitulated, and the economy did not sink into depression. Therefore, I saved the economy.

So please give credit where credit is due.

Unless, of course, we continue to stay at or near 10% unemployment, in which case it's all Bush's fault and there was nothing I could do about it.

The Stimulus is Working

America received two bits of economic news today. The unemployment rate, which has risen every month since Obama took office, actually dropped today. The rate went from 10 percent to 9.7 percent in January. Meanwhile, the same report says that America lost 20,000 jobs in the same period.

Now, that's interesting. How can that be?

Well it seems that while the "official" unemployment rate dropped, that number does not include those who have given up looking for work. Economists are telling us that those who have lost their jobs since Obama took office have been unemployed four times longer than during a normal recession. Because of that, those who have given up looking, the "desperate unemployed," has continued to rise. In fact, the "real" unemployment rate (current numbers not available, but above 17 percent) is higher than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930's.

The administration is "pleased" with the numbers. At least, that's the official line. The drop in unemployment, according the administration, is proof that the Generational Theft Act (a.k.a. the Stimulus) is working.

I'll have to agree. These numbers are, indeed, a direct result of Obama's policies, including last year's spending spree.