So much for "If you like your plan............."

Among other lies about taxation, one of the presidents main campaign rhetorical sound bites was "If you like your plan, then you can keep it". It was right up there and in your face as "Read my lips. No new taxes". Hopefully these both prove to be truly 'famous last words'.

Of course state-run-media hasn't picked up on this and it's doubtful they will point it out. In the health care summit on February 25th, the president admitted he lied about being able to keep your plan, if you like it.

Defining ObamaCare Down

One fact is that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that premiums in the individual market would jump by 10% to 13% in 2016 because the government will mandate that consumers buy richer benefits than they otherwise would. Mr. Obama eventually conceded that point but said these mandates are simple consumer protections. "Yes, I am paying 10% to 13% more because instead of buying an apple, I'm getting an orange," Mr. Obama said. "We want competition, we just want some minimum standards."

Whoop there it is........

So to paraphrase "If you like your apple, you'll have to eat this orange". Great. Thanks.


And let's face it folks. This isn't just breaking one campaign promise. It is actually breaking both major planks in his platform. Introducing these minimum requirements is the equivalent of creating a new tax. So sorry Virginia, you can't keep your plan and you will be taxed with additional costs because of government mandates.

Political Karma

This is beautiful. Really, just beautiful.

Hillary Clinton: Partisan gridlock at home hurts U.S. abroad

Really? Partisanship is bad on the global stage?

"We're now more than a year into a new administration and whether you agree or disagree with a particular policy, a president deserves to have the people that he nominates serving him," Clinton told the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Blah ha ha ha ha! This is just too good. You cannot make this stuff up. The same lady and the same party that let nary a political appointment by then President Bush, is now frustrated at the system.

Does anybody remember when the Republicans had the majority in Bush's first term, and the Democrats filibustered virtually every appointment? And when the Republicans got so frustrated they considered using their majority to change some of the parliamentary rules to go around the super majority requirement for nominations, the democrats howled and gnashed their teeth. Remember the protests that erupted due to the accusations of partisan grid lock?

---

---

Like they say....
"What goes around comes around".
"What is good for the goose is good for the gander".

"People don't understand the way our system operates, they just don't get it," she said. "And their view does color whether the United States ... is in a position going forward to demonstrate the kind of unity and strength and effectiveness that I think we have to in this very complex and dangerous world."

Oh, poor thing........

Does this mean she regrets hobbling the Bush administration?

I doubt it, but I am glad to see her get a taste of her own medicine.

The Party of 'Doh!'

Just like Disney, every 20 years the democrats take 'Snow White' out of the vault and try to sell it to the American people. To the democrats, 'Snow White' is government run health care. But, to the rest of America government run health care is the wicked witch, and the poison apple.

Like in every scary movie (Is the health-care reform horrorshow just getting started?) there are moments when you think it's safe to peek through the fingers covering your eyes.

That happened today when I surfed to an AP article that was entitled  "Hoyer: Comprehensive health bill may be no go", but within seconds was changed to "Hoyer: Hopeful, not certain, on Obama health plan". Still, it is one of the moments where the producer of the B movie slasher flick tries to make you think everything is going to be OK.

A day after Obama unveiled a sweeping health bill, the comments from the Maryland Democrat amounted to an acknowledgment of reality: in a sour political environment, majority Democrats may not have the votes.

This line from the former disapears in the latter

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said comprehensive reform would be best but it's not all or nothing.

I hope that this really is the last time we try to dress up and put lipstick on this pig, because the country needs to focus on jobs. This recovery is not going to happen until the administration drops universal health care along with cap and tax.  As soon as business knows what the cost per employee and cost per energy unit is going to be they will execute within their budgets. Make those costs too high? Well, then don't expect a lot of growth. Make them reasonable, such that business can compete on the world stage? Then you'll be a hero. Obama can be a hero without even trying.

The Choice is his. Hero or Ideologue?

The Natural Truth : A Texas Tea Party Take Down

(H/T to Michael Graham)

If you didn’t know what an ignorant, self-absorbed jerk Keith Olbermann is, well, chances are you’re among the 299 million Americans who don’t watch MSNBC.  But even so, this take down of Olbermann by the Dallas Tea Party is priceless.

The Natural Truth : A Texas Tea Party Take Down

Capitol Theatre

When the curtain comes up on the Bipartisan Health Care Summit it will be with bated breath and intense curiosity that we watch the first act of president Obama's medicine show.

The president says he wants to hear the ideas from the other side of the isle. You know, the people he has ignored, and accused of not even having a plan (despite the waving of paper and cries of 'you lie' at joint sessions of congress). And now, he has to prepare the country of some of the most insidious shenanigans this country has seen if he wants to pass any measure of health care now that he has frittered his first year super majority away.

President Obama urges Democrats, GOP to compromise at health-care reform summit

President Obama warned lawmakers on both sides of the aisle Saturday not to turn the upcoming White House health-care summit into "political theater," but rather "to seek common ground in an effort to solve a problem that's been with us for generations."

What-A-Joke! The intent is 100% to produce "political theater,"  that will distract the masses from the issues at hand. It is 100% intended to stir a political dust storm that will send partisans to the barricades, and get the howling fever pitch of the far left base so incited that the issues of the health care plan get lost in the din of emotional furor. 

Obama puts forward last-ditch health care plan

First of all "Don't you believe it"! This is upping the ante, and I don't think it's even a bluff that he is willing to bargain away. He still believes that he can still wrap his plan into a populist frenzy.

Making a last-ditch effort to save his health care overhaul, President Barack Obama on Monday put forward a nearly $1 trillion, 10-year compromise that would allow the government to deny or roll back egregious insurance premium increases that infuriate consumers.

There is nothing 'last-ditch' about this. More over, it is a more aggressive take over than single-payer. If Obama cannot take over health care now, then he will put in place regulations that drive insurance companies into bankruptcy.

egregious insurance premium increases that infuriate consumers.

egregious?

e·gre·gious

   [ih-gree-juhs, -jee-uhs]  Show IPA

–adjective

1.

extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant: an egregious mistake; an egregious liar.

2.

Archaic. distinguished or eminent.

—Synonyms 
1. gross, outrageous, notorious.

What is egregious about trying to stay in business? Especially when you are footing the bill for people who need their medical procedures paid for?

The WellPoint Mugging

WellPoint's California unit, Anthem Blue Cross, recently informed nearly 700,000 individual insurance customers of premium increases of up to 39%. President Obama jumped on the announcement, claiming in a pre-Superbowl TV interview that the hikes were a "portrait of the future if we don't do something now."

It certainly is a preview of the future.

Wellpoint's rate hikes are the direct result of the Golden State's insurance regulations—the kind that Democrats want to impose on all 50 states. Under federal Cobra rules, the unemployed are allowed to keep their job-related health benefits for 18 to 36 months. California then goes further and bars Anthem from dropping these customers even after they have exhausted Cobra. California also caps what Anthem can charge these post-Cobra customers.

Most other states direct these customers to high-risk pools that are partly subsidized, but California requires the individual market to absorb the customers and their costs. Even as California insurers have had to keep insuring these typically older and sicker patients, the recession has driven many younger, healthier policy holders to drop their insurance—leaving fewer customers to fund a more expensive insurance pool.

This explains why Anthem lost $58 million in California on its post-Cobra customers in 2009. If WellPoint didn't raise premiums amid these losses, it would soon be under assault from its shareholders, if not out of business.

If Obama cannot get the single payer system that he wants, well then, they'll just legislate the things that will will take independent control from publicly held companies and force them into bankruptcy, and then the Governement will have to step in and take over. Which is what he wanted in the first place.

Lefty Loon Turns Suicide Bomber

After a little surfing it appears that everyone saw this coming. The state-run-media spinning this event into an anti-tea-party tirade.  I posted yesterday:

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Joe Stack (1956-2010)

Not a big free market guy is he? 

However one of my favorite blogs has summed it up best.

Right, Wing-Nut!: Washington Post Ties Austin Bomber to Tea Party

Nice try. The guy hated --

business (GM and others)-- leftist

healthcare industry -- leftist

corporate profits -- leftist

the Catholic Church -- leftist

the rich -- leftist

the American public -- leftist

company management -- leftist

the airlines -- leftist

wealthy bankers -- leftist

GW Bush and his cronies -- leftist

Be afraid. Be very afraid of those Tea Party people. Even though all the violence really comes from the left.

All Patches has to fear, is fear itself!

Don't be surprised if Nancy Pelosi cries more tears of more crocodile fear.

Violence from the left is on the rise

From the people that brought you the black panthers and Bill Ayers and his 'Weather Underground', select lefty loons are responding to the incredible and the impending collapse of their dream for total control with violence.

First, take Amy Bishop. The shootist professor from the University of Alabama - Huntsville. Amy shot her brother to death. Shot him in the chest, and after being caught by police hiding behind a car parked down the street with a shell in the chamber of her shotgun she was released. Because her mom was a connected democrat, she was able to convince then Norfolk county D.A. Bill Delahunt (now congressional representative from Massachusetts)  to end the investigation and drop all charges.

Amy continued her democratic "hey you! give me that!" tendencies in an iHop, where she was arrested for assault for punching the mother of an infant who had claimed the last baby booster seat before she could.

And taking a page out of the Bill Ayers 'rules for driven democrats' she:

was a suspect in the attempted bombing of Dr. Paul Rosenberg, who received a double-pipe bomb in the mail on Dec. 19, 1993. He ran from his Newton home with his wife, escaping without injury. The bomb never exploded.

An article in the Boston Herald goes on to submit more evidence of Amy's rabid democrat bonafides.

Article

A family source said Bishop, a mother of four children - the youngest a third-grade boy - was a far-left political extremist who was “obsessed” with President Obama to the point of being off-putting.

Wow! And you thought those Tea Partier's were bad asses! The disillusionment at the Obama administration's recent nose dive and her lack of control (because let's face it, liberalism is really all about control) in her Universities process for anointing tenure, drover her over the edge.

Just imagine what the headlines would be if she had ever gone to a Tea Party protest!

Secondly, take the case of the anti-IRS suicide bomber. Don't be surprised if the left-wing media machine bends over backwards trying to paint this guy as a dangerous Tea Party protest type, when in fact he is a Bill Ayers 'Government Sucks, let's blow them up' guy.

RAW DATA: Joseph Andrew Stack Suicide Manifesto

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Joe Stack (1956-2010)

Not a big free market guy is he?

Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”. Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes… isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.

None the less, state-run-media will spin the anti-governement sentiments as Tea Party planks. I mean after all, Baby boomer democrats were never anti-government? right?



xx

Hope and Cookies

Now I'm getting scared. On the one hand, the Scott Brown effect (aka 'The Scott Heard Around the World') has effectively convinced Pelosi Partisan ideologues like Patrick Kennedy that there was not a shot in hell of him beating Scott Brown like candidate John Laughlin. On the other hand, now even moderate democrats are jumping ship. The very guys who you could count on to negotiate. That's not a good sign.

You never know when the tide of war is going to change. Relatively small events can have large effects. I don't think George Washington thought that crossing the Delaware and taking Trenton would be a game changer. Rather it was a cheap shot by battle standards of the day, and it was more of a desperate attempt to keep troops from leaving the misery of Valley Forge and stay on for another season. The effect of crossing the Delaware was larger than he dreamed.

Not that the election of Scott Brown is a small event, but it is right up there in likelihood with Washington's chances of taking Trenton without a shot fired.

Avery good and very historical perspective of what is going on around us appeared in todays Wall Street Journal.

Another Liberal Crackup

Democrats failed in the latter half of the 1960s, as the twin burdens of the Great Society and Vietnam ended the Kennedy boom and split their party. They failed again after Watergate, as Congress dragged Jimmy Carter to the left and liberals had no answer for stagflation. They failed a third time in the first two Bill Clinton years, as tax increases and HillaryCare led to the Gingrich Congress before Mr. Clinton salvaged his Presidency by tacking to the center. 

***

A fourth crackup is already well underway and is even more remarkable considering how Democrats were set up for success. 

This is the problem with the two party system. You get mad at the party that most represents you, then you vote for the other party when they screw up, and the other party screws it up even worse!

For the fourth time since the 1960s, American voters in 2008 gave Democrats overwhelming control of both Congress and the White House. Republicans haven't had such large majorities since the 1920s. Yet once again, Democratic leaders have tried to govern the country from the left, only to find that their policies have hit a wall of practical and popular resistance.

They just can't help themselves. It is like kids and the cookie jar. They know if they get caught they will be in big trouble. They know it because they have been caught, and there was big big trouble. But just like a kid they think "this time I can get the cookie"

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Way Out in Left Field

Peggy Noonan wrote a very good piece in the Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Peggy Noonan: The Off-Center President - WSJ.com

She does an excellent job articulating just how tone deaf this president really is. I don't think we are allowed to act surprised though. Even though he campaigned about a new bipartisan path, he never ever voted against his party once. And not once did the administration reach out to Republicans in his first year of rule. Democrats who are looking to be re-elected in November 2010 are very very nervous about where this president has brought them.

the president had a stunning and revealing exchange with Sen. Blanche Lincoln, the Arkansas Democrat likely to lose her 2010 re-election campaign. He was meeting with Senate Democrats to urge them to continue with his legislative agenda. Mrs. Lincoln took the opportunity to beseech him to change it. She urged him to distance his administration from "people who want extremes," and to find "common ground" with Republicans in producing legislation that would give those in business the "certainty" they need to create jobs.

While answering, Mr. Obama raised his voice slightly and quickened his cadence. "If the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression . . . the result is going to be the same. I don't know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policy that got us in this fix in the first place." He continued: "If our response ends up being, you know . . . we don't want to stir things up here," then "I don't know why people would say, 'Boy, we really want to make sure those Democrats are in Washington fighting for us.'"

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!". Easy for you to say Kemosabi! The president isn't up for re-election until 2012. All 256 House democrats are running for re-election and they all just witnessed a stunning upset in what was thought to be a sure thing in Massachusetts. Sen. Blanch Lincoln was right to beg for the president to move a little more towards the center. Her seat is one of the seats that    is at risk.

The Washington Post's Charles Lane, one of the few journalists to note the exchange, said he found it revealing in two ways: First, the president equates becoming more centrist with becoming more like George W. Bush, and second, he apparently sees movement to the center as a political loser.

The president is stuck in left field, and he is apparently on a suicide mission.

"I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president," he said. "And I—and I believe that."

So it's no wonder that the rats are starting to jump off of the ship. Even Rep. Patrick Kennedy, son of the "Liberal Lion" has given up the ship. Although he's always been more of a drinker that a fighter anyways.

House retirements pile up - CNN.com

[Rep. Pete] Sessions said that many of the House Democratic retirements were occurring in some tough political territory, adding that "the fact of the matter is, Democrats in swing districts are retiring because they know what November has in store for them."

If the president is going to saty in deep left field he should turn around and face home plate so that he might see that line drive coming.

Bipartisan pleas and Crockadile Tears

All the pleas for bipartisanship from the Obama administration are merely a ruse to set the stage for the howling that will come when the democrats don't get their way. It's a political setup so they can scream "party of no!" and "Obstructionist!".

The only thing transparent about this administration is the way they play politics. If the administration really cared about bipartisanship he would have started a year ago. An entire year went by with Obama and the dems in Congress covering their ears and yelling "la la la you don't have a plan la la la". Even if you were to believe that suddenly Obama got the message because of the election in Massachusetts, the fact of the matter is that the deocrats in congress don't agree on the plan, and now the republicans can be set up to provide cover for the dems that don't want to vote for Obamacare.

Moreover, Obama's idea of bipartisanship is not negotiation and deal making. His idea of bipartisanship is "sit down, shut up, listen to my lecture, take my insults, and you will eventually see that my plan is right". There is no plan for changing any of it. And by the way, he is demanding that his far left appointees get confirmed as well. No compromise there either.

Like the Mayor of Las Vegas said after Obama slammed Vegas for a second time "This president is very slow learner".

One Man's Populist Can Be Another Man's Commie

This blog has high esteem for contemporary pieces written about history. This article is well written and thoughtful.

A Short History of American Populism

I think a lot what is said in the article still holds true. Real America does not like to see the lazy rewarded. Real America does want to help the down trodden pull themselves up by their boot straps. And, real America does not think that stealing from the rich and giving to the poor is an American ideal.

The current democratic party is nothing like Jackson's and Jefferson's democratic party. Hell, it's not even anything like JFK's Democratic party.

Obama the ideologue is ignoring the will of the American people. He deluded himself by thinking that his victory in his campaign for the presidency was a mandate from the people for his vision of socialism, when in fact it was merely a repudiation of tax-break and spend Republicans. Losing the Kennedy seat in Massachusetts should have nudged the president towards the will of the people but he remains determined to force his socialist vision of America on the country.


The Lost City is an excellent movie about the Cuban revolution. It reveals that communism is never really a populist movement. It's a feel good ideal forced on populations by violent liars who are more interested in control and power than they are about the people. I think one day we may look back at Obama's legacy and describe him the same way.

x

The Modern Yankee Doodles

What does Janeane Gorafalo think now?

I know that she likes to visit her friends in what was the leftist bastion of Massachusetts, so I am dying to know what this smart mouth 'speak before you think communist' thinks now? Just like the British Red Coats mocked the disheveled, disorganized colonial "Yankees" with the yankee doodle dandy taunt, this tattooed freakish whore has done everything she can to belittle people who do not think like she does.

More Hate Speech

&

She's at it again!

Where have you gone Janeane? What do you think of us now? Is the state of Massachusetts a bunch of tea bagging racist? straight up?

Just like the colonials eventually sang 'yankee doodle' proudly, the tea party is wearing the colors with pride!

xx

No, maybe he can't.

After the shot (or Scott) heard around the world the British Red Coats marched on from Lexington to that famous bridge in Concord. The British pushing on to Concord after Lexington is akin to Obama's speech to gathered democrats not to give up on health care because of that little skirmish in Massachusetts. "Push on through" he said. Well, apparently today the president has arrived at the bridge, and like the British Red Coats, he has realized that it is a bridge too far.

Obama admits health care overhaul may die on Hill (AP)

No, maybe he can't. President Barack Obama, who insisted he would succeed where other presidents had failed to fix the nation's health care system, now concedes the effort may die in Congress.

Obama, like the British, has no respect for the will of the people.

if Congress decides we're not going to do it, 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

He still does not get it. He does not understand that he lost Kennedy's seat precisely because he is tone deaf as to what the American people want.

If parliamentary tricks are used to pass health care, well then, that will be the equivalent to the battle of Long Island, and the retreat from Manhattan. The Tea Party Revolution will have lost a battle, but not the war.