Posts Tagged ‘Obama’

obamaccomplishments

September 8, 2009

Hat tip to TexasFred for this, plus I added in some of the comments. Enjoy!

1. Offended the Queen of England. Actually, that one doesn’t bother me, the Queen is not on MY personal list of priorities. But the stupidity exhibited BY Obama was incredible.

2. Bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. But in ALL fairness, Bush kissed the bastard.

3. Praised the Marxist Daniel Ortega.

4. Kissed Socialist Hugo Chavez on the cheek.

5. Endorsed the Socialist Evo Morales of Bolivia.

6. Sided with Hugo Chavez and Communist Fidel Castro against Honduras.

7. Announced we would meet with Iranians with no preconditions while they’re building their nuclear weapons.

8. Gave away billions to AIG also without preconditions.

9. Expanded the bailouts.

10. Insulted everyone who has ever loved a Special Olympian.

11. Nearly tripled our national debt.

12. Announced the termination of our new missile defense system the day after North Korea launched an ICBM.

13. Released information on U.S. intelligence gathering despite urgings of his own CIA director and the prior four CIA directors.

14. Accepted without comment that five of his cabinet members cheated on their taxes and two other nominees withdrew after they couldn’t take the heat.

15. Appointed a Homeland Security Chief who identified military veterans and abortion opponents as “dangers to the nation.”

16. Ordered that the word “terrorism” no longer be used and instead refers to such acts as “man made disasters.”

17. Circled the globe to publicly apologize for America ’s world leadership.

18. Told the Mexican president that the violence in their country was because of us.

19. Politicized the census by moving it into the White House from the Department of Commerce.

20. Appointed as Attorney General the man who orchestrated the forced removal and expulsion to Cuba of a 9-year-old whose mother died trying to bring him to freedom in the United States.

21. Salutes as heroes three Navy SEALS that took down three terrorists that threatened one American life and the next day announces members of the Bush administration may stand trial for “torturing” three 9/11 terrorists by pouring water up their noses.

22. Low altitude photo shoot of Air Force One over New York City that frightened thousands of New Yorkers. Obama *claims* he knew nothing of this and was, supposedly, outraged.

23. Sent his National Defense Advisor to Europe to assure them that the US will no longer treat Israel in a special manner and they might be on their own with the Muslims.

24. Praised Jimmy Carter’s trip to Gaza where he sided with terrorist Hamas against Israel. (Obama and Carter, closely related perhaps?)

25. Nationalized General Motors and Chrysler while turning shareholder control over to the unions and freezing out retired investors who owned their bonds. Committed unlimited taxpayer billions in the process.

26. Passed a huge energy tax in the House that will make American industry even less competitive while costing homeowners thousands per year.

27. Announced nationalized health care “reform” that will strip seniors of their Medicare, cut pay of physicians, increase taxes yet another $1 trillion, and put everyone on rationed care with government bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who doesn’t.

28. Is trying to push his socialist agenda on our school children by making direct addresses to ALL American school children. The beginning of The Obama Youth perhaps?

29. Posted the biggest nosedive in popularity since Ford (post-Nixon-pardon).

30. By-passed the constitution by appointing dozens of Czars without senate confirmation, etc.

31. He was the first President, since it’s inception during the Eisenhower admin, to snub (not attend) the MOH Inaugural Ball on on his Inauguration night.

32. The first President on Veteran’s Day to require sending families of fallen military personnel buried at Arlington away, making the yearly trek many families make in vain, all because the President was making a speech at the Tomb of the Unknowns!!!!

33. First executive order made in February… allocate close to 3 million in stimulus to help the “poor Palestinian Refugees” relocate HERE in the USA. The same Palestinians who partied in the streets celebrating 9/11 !!!!

34. Has broken the record for giving speeches to the public in the last eight months than any other POTUS before him.

35. After admitting he didn’t have the facts, implied that the Cambridge Police Department “acted stupidly” proving he was as biased as the people his campaign pointed fingers at, and that he can’t engage his brain before opening his mouth without a teleprompter.

Mack Daddy Report Update

September 5, 2009

Nothing like united support for the Long Legged Mack Daddy! H/T No Compromise

The Next Bailout

September 5, 2009

The Wall Street Journal reports on yet another government bailout at taxpayer expense. It seems that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is burning through its reserves. In the last year the FDIC has paid out in excess of $34.8 billion. Additionally, the FDIC’s list of troubled banks has increased from 305 to 416, even as it has closed 84 since the beginning of this year. The true scope of the problem is unfathomable. Now the FDIC is letting Congress and the nation’s bankers know that they may need more cash from either increased insurance premiums, special assessments or perhaps even the Treasury itself.

Deposit insurance premiums are (supposed to be) risk based. The CAMEL ratings (for risk factors Capital adequacy, Asset quality, Management competence, Earnings and Liquidity) are between one (best) and five (worst) and averaged for a composite value. But don’t ask your local banker his CAMEL rating because he can’t tell you — it’s a secret. That is one component of the moral hazard that accompanies deposit insurance. With a bank’s level of safety and soundness concealed, depositors must base their decisions only upon expected rate of return.

In a supposed attempt to keep the insurance fund solvent, FDIC hit the nation’s banks with a special assessment in the fourth quarter of 2008, causing a further depletion of capital from the banking system as a whole and forcing even more marginal banks into the red. Banking trade associations have been advising their members to expect a similar special assessment in 4Q2009. These increased expenses reduce the net income of individual banks, thus further straining their ability to retain earnings to improve their capital adequacy. To control cost and preserve earnings, bankers are giving deposit rates hard scrutiny. Couple this with FDIC’s quiet request to Congress for the authority to borrow up to $500 billion from the U.S. Treasury (five times its regular borrowing limit,) and one can see taxpayers squeezed, on the one hand, by lower interest rates on savings and, on the other hand, higher taxes to service increased federal debt.

Bottom line is that deposit insurance is not free, and as with all insurance, there are inherent risks. After a 15-year expansion in the U.S. economy (1992-2007) with banks being encouraged (or, perhaps more accurately, extorted) to engage in increasingly risky loans, (sub-prime mortgages, community re-development and re-investment) the current economic contraction has exposed bankers to increased risk, which may ultimately be borne by the taxpayer.

SOURCE

The Cowboy Libertarian: Post Turtles

September 2, 2009

After a somewhat stressful week I flipped over to the Google News page, and about fell over laughing at this one. Enjoy!

The days of fancy speeches and adoring rallies are over. The American people have been aroused from their infatuation and will now be judging President Obama on the cold hard facts not his rhetorical flourishes.

With President Obama taking some well deserved vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, that well known summer playground of the rich and famous, it might be a good time to evaluate the current state of the Obama Phenomenon.

By the time of the November 2008 election the country had became so angry at the failures of the Bush administration and of Republicans in general that John McCain was doomed. Fiscal mismanagement, a crumbling economy, rising unemployment and war seemingly without end, was just too much weight for the old fighter jock McCain to carry.

Republican congressmen, senators and pundits like to lay all the blame for their descent into the minority on George Bush’s presidency and John McCain’s campaign, conveniently forgetting that their own arrogance, lust for power and spendthrift ways had a lot to do with it.

The American humorist of the 1930s and 40s, Franklin Pierce Adams once said, “Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.” And Barack Obama is no exception.

But that lesson was lost on the Obama folks almost from day one. They did what all politicians and their supporters do after a big victory– completely misread the mood of the electorate interpreting their victory as a mandate to radically reshape American society. They actually believed in their “Yes We Can” agenda — and with their amen corner in the mainstream media calling him the greatest leader since FDR who could blame them?

But from where I sit, Barack Obama is a”post turtle.” What is a”post turtle” you urbane urbanites and city slickers might ask?

Well one day an old cowboy was out ridin’ fence and he saw a turtle balanced on top of a fence post. When he got back to the bunkhouse he told the other fellas that he saw a “post turtle”. They all asked, “What the hell is a ‘post Turtle’? And he said it was a turtle settin’ on top of a post! He then went on to explain that “you know he didn’t get up there by himself, he doesn’t belong there, he doesn’t know what to do while he’s up there and you just wonder what kind of dang fool put him up there to begin with!”

Obama was never really vetted by the adoring media, he has never had his nose bloodied in a real political fight, in the Senate he perfected voting “present” to an art form, he has no real understanding or knowledge of the struggles of his countrymen, and he has had no real hard life experiences that are the hot steel needed to forge and shape leadership qualities.

During the campaign when he made the comments about some Americans”clinging to their guns and their religion” to a crowd of well-heeled San Francisco Democrats, it was almost as if he was giving them an anthropological lecture on the people of the rest of America. What he said demonstrated a total lack of understanding of his fellow citizens, but the way he said it was worse. It was as if he was saying, “You know I just returned from the hinterlands and I would like to tell you about the strange natives and their quaint customs I encountered in my travels.”
And they wonder why health care is in trouble.

There is also a growing perception about Obama being in over his head and that his inexperience, once seen as a not being a problem by his admirers, has become a problem.

Still, Obama appears to enjoy BEING president–throwing out the first pitch of the baseball season, cracking jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner and having a NASCAR Day at the White House. The more important question is does he really know how to BE president?

Well, over the next few months we are about to find out. His health care plan is in deep trouble, the economy has too much “whoa” and not enough “giddyup,” and critical foreign policy questions will need to be answered on Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran — to name just a few.

He is either going to stand up and grab the standard of leadership or he will show that he really is a “post turtle” after all.

The days of fancy speeches and adoring rallies are over. The American people have been aroused from their infatuation and will now be judging him on cold hard facts not his rhetorical flourishes. It’s about to get very interesting.

As Obama’s hero old Abe Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

And the American people are showing they ain’t no fools.

SOURCE

Obama and the swimmer

August 27, 2009

What follows is a collection of quotations having to do with the impostor in chief, and the recently departed felon…

“There is a lot one could say of Senator Kennedy — positive from supporters, negative from critics. They say one should not speak ill of the dead. True. But I am of the view that one should not lie about the dead either.” –political analyst Bill Bennett

“[Ted] Kennedy left the scene of a fatal accident for which he was at least partly responsible. Then he used his extraordinary power to get off, spending the rest of his career in pseudo-remorse, playing the most liberal of Senators. It was always an act to me, even when I agreed with him politically. This was not a life well lived.” –author and screenwriter Roger L. Simon

“The American people must regain the ability to distinguish between wants and needs and must shed the ridiculous notion that government exists to provide either. Our Constitution — drafted by men well acquainted with the abusive capacities of a centralized government — limited the roles and responsibilities of the federal government in order to allow the principle of self-government to flourish in the new nation. Government exists to preserve and protect the sphere of civil freedom within which we can work to meet our needs and our wants. Government does not exist to provide them.” –columnist Ken Connor

“With its stimulus, the Obama administration borrowed more money, and realized fewer economic benefits, than the government of any other major economy. Perhaps results would have been better had the stimulus been directed at the economy instead of at the 2010 campaign.” –columnist David Frum

“What if America transcended race, and Barack Obama wasn’t invited? The question comes to mind as cries of racism grow ever louder from Obama’s supporters. No one should be surprised. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, liberal Democrats have to accuse their opponents of racism.” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

“Barack Obama’s escapes from his own past words, deeds and associations have been escapes worthy of Houdini. Like other magicians, Obama has chosen his distractions well. The insurance industry is currently his favorite distraction as scapegoats, after he has tried to demonize doctors without much success. … Obama even gets away with saying things like having a system to ‘keep insurance companies honest’ — and many people may not see the painful irony in politicians trying to keep other people honest.” –economist Thomas Sowell

“[I]t’s a mistake to think of the current legislation as a health-care reform bill. It is actually a bill for the formation of a massive health-care bureaucracy charged with the task of scheming endlessly to expand its own power. The only way to prevent this kind of free-floating grant of power to the bureaucracy is to prevent it from forming in the first place, by keeping government out of medicine. …[W]e don’t want a modified or watered down version of this health-care bill. We want no version of this health-care bill and no new health-care bureaucracy.” –columnist Robert Tracinski

Then we have…

Editor’s Note: If it were a matter of mere political disagreement, we would join the calls to strike a conciliatory tone and mourn the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy. But we do a disservice to him and the country to call him anything but what he was. Ted Kennedy was not a good man and we mourn the damage (or worse) he did both to individuals and to America.

“Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States Senator of our time.” –President Barack Obama, lamenting the death of Ted Kennedy

“No one has done more than Senator Kennedy to educate our children, care for our seniors and ensure equality for all Americans. Ted Kennedy’s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration.” –House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (Does she mean that Kennedy did more than the people who actually educate our children and care for our seniors?)

“Ted Kennedy’s dream was the one for which the Founding Fathers fought and for which his brothers sought to realize. The liberal lion’s mighty roar may now fall silent, but his dream shall never die.” –Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) (Actually, the Founding Fathers fought against oppressive big government.)

“[Ted Kennedy was] the best senator, the best advocate you could hope for.” –Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) (He was the best advocate — unless your last name was Kopechne.)

Messiah complex: “We are God’s partners in matters of life and death.” –Barack Obama (Apparently Obama got a promotion since stating that abortion decisions were “above his paygrade…”)

Say what?: “There is something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee weed up!” —Barack Obama

Clear as mud: “I think ‘wee-wee’d up’ is when people get nervous for no particular reason. … This is an August pundit pattern. …’Bed wetting’ would be the more consumer-friendly term.” –White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explaining BO’s “joke”

The log is his eye: “I know there’s been a lot of misinformation in this debate, and there are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness.” –Barack Obama, the master of bearing false witness

Cry us a river: “We need to understand that it is very, very hard for the president or anybody else to take on not just the Republican Party, that’s the easy part — to take on all of right-wing talk radio, which covers 90 percent of talk show hosts, a whole Fox network which is nothing more than an arm of the Republican Party and the Democrats got to think long term. Why is there not a progressive television network?” –Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on MSNBC, which is, well, a “progressive” network, laying the groundwork for the so-called Fairness Doctrine to make a comeback

Victimitis: “Part of what I feel is that one very successful minority is permissible, but when you see too many success stories, then some people get nervous. … I don’t think the media has acted in a racist way, but I have felt stereotyped at times.” –New York Gov. David Paterson, who is black and using that fact to complain about being treated badly.

Then we have…

Selling health care: “As with most of us, [Ted Kennedy’s] final days were another object lesson in the necessity of good health care. He thought it should be available to everyone, and he worked to make that a reality until the end. Moving toward that goal would be the greatest tribute his fellow legislators could pay him.” –The Washington Post, using Kennedy’s death to push socialized medicine

From the sycophants: “Mr. Obama has continued a presidential tradition, what Thomas Jefferson called neology, making up a new word or giving new meaning to an old one. … President Obama has introduced us to ‘wee wee’d up.'” –CBS’s Katie Couric on Obama’s most recent bizarre crack (“Do you recall anyone in the media ever hailing Bush’s ‘misunderestimated’ as advancing ‘a presidential tradition’?” –Media Research Center’s Brent Baker)

Slamming the protestors: “Instead of a multicultural tableau of beaming young idealists on screen, we see ugly scenes of mostly older and white malcontents, disrupting forums where others have come to actually learn something. Instead of hope, we get swastikas, death threats and T-shirts proclaiming ‘Proud Member of the Mob.’ President Obama has proven quicksilver instincts, but not in this case. You would think that a politician schooled in community organizing and the foul balls of a presidential campaign would be ready to squash this kind of nuttiness.” –New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

Wrong on so many levels: “The debate over the ‘public option’ in health care has been dismaying in many ways. Perhaps the most depressing aspect for progressives, however, has been the extent to which opponents of greater choice in health care have gained traction — in Congress, if not with the broader public — simply by repeating, over and over again, that the public option would be, horrors, a government program. Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism — by an ideology that says government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good. Call me naïve, but I actually hoped that the failure of Reaganism in practice would kill it. It turns out, however, to be a zombie doctrine: even though it should be dead, it keeps on coming.” –former Enron advisor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman

Everybody else is doing it: “We’re the only industrialized democracy that doesn’t cover every citizen. That is immoral. …[E]very other industrialized democracy has done this through a government program.” –Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin

Sarcasm detector failure: “[H]ere’s one from Republican Congressman Wally Herger of California. At his town hall meeting some guy yelled out, bragging that he was quote, ‘A proud right-wing terrorist.’ To which the Congressman responded, ‘Amen. God bless ya! Now there’s a great American.’ A great American. A guy who thinks it’s okay, in this day and age, to call himself a right-wing terrorist. This is the dangerous edge, in which these people, including some elected officials are now dancing.” –MSNBC’s Chris “thrill up my leg” Matthews, too dense to understand that the citizen-speaker was mocking guys like … well, Chris Matthews for falsely alleging common Americans are “right-wing terrorists”

SOURCE

Mexico, obama’s new residence for excuses

August 22, 2009

Last Sunday, the Mexican government fired 1,100 customs officials in a move to wipe out rampant corruption in the agency charged with securing the transport of goods and people across the U.S.-Mexican border. Army troops temporarily took control of the ports of entry (POE’s) along the 2,000-mile border.

Using more than 36,00 Mexican Army troops, President Felipe Calderon continues his war on the barbaric drug cartels that control and ravage much of Mexico. Last year, 5,600 people died at the hands of the cartels. The focus on the POE’s is not just the interdiction of human and drug smuggling but also of the flow of firearms into Mexico where they are tightly controlled. Calderon has complained frequently that guns from the United States provide the cartels with most of their firepower, though we have noted the dubious nature of this claim on more than one occasion.

During his visit to Mexico last week, Barack Obama praised Calderon’s efforts, but the Apologizer in Chief also readily blamed his own country for the violence. He pledged to dry up the flow of weapons into Mexico as well as to cut American demand for drugs. His strategy to stop the movement of guns includes reinstating (and, no doubt, enhancing) the 1994 ban on so-called “assault weapons” that expired in 2004. In addition, he promised an additional $1.6 billion for the Merida Initiative, a joint effort to fight against drug trafficking, money laundering and other crimes in Mexico and Central America.

But according to recent reports by the National Drug Intelligence Center, the Mexican cartels have been regulating “traffic” into and out of Mexico for some time, both at the POE’s and the virtually uncontrolled borderlands from San Ysidro, California to Brownsville, Texas. The problem always comes back to our wide-open border that four successive administrations have made little attempt to control. Calderon’s willingness to wage war on the cartels is truly admirable, but all things considered, it could end up as tilting at windmills.

SOURCE

The Shape of things to come?

August 22, 2009

Well, we warned you!

Let’s say one doesn’t agree with a White House policy. What does one do in the Information Age? Write a blog about it or post an opinion on a social network like FaceBook, or send an e-mail to friends, family and associates. By doing so, the writer creates a “paper trail,” albeit in the electrons of the Internet. Once a communication is in cyberspace, it usually has infinite shelf life, and, often, the anti-White House posting can be traced back to the author.

To expedite things, a White House functionary asked supporters (a.k.a. “snitches”), ala neighborhood watchers in Communist, fascist or other totalitarian regimes, to report “fishy” speech about ObamaCare to flag@whitehouse.gov. Such reports would contain some identification of the originator of the post, hence the fear of an “enemies list.”

Then a funny thing happened. All of a sudden, many Americans (including numerous Patriot readers) began getting unsolicited e-mail from the White House, some with the request that the e-mails be further circulated. Standardized unsolicited e-mail, sent in large quantities, is known as “spam.” Thus, the White House became one of the most reviled users of the Internet, a spammer, a Netiquette violator.

Due to public outrage, the informant e-mail address has been shut down, though now informers can use the White House’s “reality check” Web site. And the spamming was explained away and blamed on “outside organizations” submitting e-mail addresses to the White House. But the administration has demonstrated how Big Brother can use the Internet for dissident identification and for dissemination of propaganda. Is it, as H.G. Wells might have asked, “the shape of things to come”?

SOURCE

Taking guns to protests; Did it help or hinder gun rights?

August 21, 2009

Recently people have been taking weapons to Town hall meetings and impostor in chief appearances. A lot of things have been said about this. Mostly by hopolophobic politicians. The Christian Science Monitor has an article out dealing with this, and they missed at least one rather serious point. As have most reports.

The guys with no necks from Unions have been roughing people up, and otherwise intimidating peaceful protesters, as well as a few that were vocal about their concerns. Have the thugs been active at all when law abiding people, that don’t upset the Secret Service, still there bullying anyone?

Have the anti freedom types that believe that the First Amendment is sacrosanct, just so long as you agree with them, been out there challenging or twisting any arms when an armed lawful citizen is present?

Read the once believable Christian Science Monitor story HERE.

Contrast that puff piece with this.

Impostor in chief hits record low

August 21, 2009

The impostor in chief has hit a new low according to Zogby. It’s no wonder. I mean really? Your chief lieutenants are running around calling those that are being Laird over everything but Patriots what can you expect? Figure it out Mister President. The people are onto you, and your regimes plans to destroy America.

Read on…

President Barack Obama’s popularity has plummeted to a record low, with just 45 percent of voters now approving of his performance, according to the latest Zogby International poll.

Asked whether they approve or disapprove of the president’s job performance, just 45.3 percent of likely voters say they approve. That compares with 50.5 percent who disapprove of the job Obama is doing.

The results are a strong indication that contentious national debate over healthcare reform has taken a major toll on the president’s popularity.

Those numbers also indicate that Obama clearly is in serious political trouble, Fox News analyst and best-selling author Dick Morris tells Newsmax.

“As soon as Obama dropped below 52 percent . . . he was leaking real voters who had backed him in November,” Morris tells Newsmax. “Now that he is down to 45 percent among likely voters . . . he is in deep political trouble.”

Of greatest concern to Obama may well be his decline among all-important independent voters. Just 37.5 percent of self-identified independents say they approve of how Obama is handling the presidency. That compares with 59.2 percent of independents who disapprove.

“There is nothing counterintuitive in any of these numbers,” pollster John Zogby of Zogby International tells Newsmax. “The president is clearly taken a slide — most especially with independent voters, who play such an important role in any legislation or policy support.

“Interestingly, the president had been making some inroads with groups like investors, and frequent Walmart shoppers . . . both typically conservative,” Zogby says. “However, he has slipped considerably with them in this poll.”

Zogby adds: “The healthcare plan appears to be consolidating conservative opposition and scaring independent voters.”

Pundits pay especially close attention to trends involving swing voters.

Continued evidence of declining popularity there will ratchet up the pressure on congressional blue dogs and other conservative Democrats to go their own way on controversial proposals such as public-option healthcare and energy cap-and-trade, knowing they can’t rely on presidential coattails to prop them up with voters.

FULL STORY

‘I’m as Mad as Hell, and I’m Not Gonna Take This Anymore!’

August 15, 2009

The issues of the day,as usual, just refuse to go away…

‘I’m as Mad as Hell, and I’m Not Gonna Take This Anymore!’

That famous line from the 1976 movie “Network” sums up the sentiment of many Americans as the health care debate continued to roar across the fruited plain. More town hall meetings featured citizens angry over proposed government expansion, leaving many congressmen not knowing quite how to handle the reaction. It’s clear that many Americans have simply had enough.

That doesn’t mean that Democrats were convinced to abandon their nefarious scheme. Instead, when their own constituents dared to question the infinite wisdom of the carriers of Potomac Fever, Democrat regulars put into practice the words of Obama administration lackey Jim Messina: “If [we] get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.” In other words, don’t worry about winning the debate; just try to discredit the opposition.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her left-hand man, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), started with an op-ed in USA Today declaring, “These [town hall meeting] disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.” This type of “thinking” — the transfer of one’s own emotions or practices onto others — is called projection. The Left has long since perfected the art of “drowning out” both opposing views and the facts, while blaming Republicans for doing the same thing.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) put out a call to action: “Opponents of reform are organizing counter-demonstrators to speak at … several congressional town halls on the issue to defend the status quo. It is critical that our members with real, personal stories about the need for access to quality, affordable care come out in strong numbers to drown out their voices.” The SEIU has since removed the words “drown out,” but the message is clear — silence the opposition.

Last week, the administration encouraged Americans who support “reform” to rat on those who are spreading “fishy misinformation,” while Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) denounced the administration’s opponents as shills of the insurance companies. This week, the Left is painting town hall protestors as racists. “I think 45 to 65 percent of the people who appear at these groups are people who will never be comfortable with the idea of a black president,” said Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. MSNBC’s Carlos Watson worried that “the word socialist … is becoming the new N-word.” And Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein called them “political terrorists” who are “poisoning the political well” and “willing to say or do anything to prevent” ObamaCare.

Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) added, “[T]he last time I had to confront something like this was when I voted for the civil rights bill and my opponent voted against it. At that time, we had a lot of Ku Klux Klan folks and white supremacists and folks in white sheets and other things running around causing trouble.” How convenient, then, that one of his supporters showed up at a meeting with an Obama-as-Hitler sign to “illustrate” the opposition’s “hate.”

Similar signs were made by LaRouche PAC, an organization run by long-time Socialist Workers Party member and seven-time Democrat presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. Rep. David Scott (D-GA) had a swastika painted on his office sign after a heated exchange at a meeting. Talk about “fishy.” What are the odds that the swastika wasn’t painted by an opponent? Pretty good, given the Left’s history of perpetrating similar hoaxes. Not that comparisons with the National Socialists of Germany aren’t appropriate — we made one last week — and the Left certainly has done its best to invite the unflattering comparison. After all, it was Pelosi herself who first introduced the word “swastika” to the debate.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is so confident in the health care bill that he will conduct town hall meetings only by phone. And Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) had such esteem for her constituents that she talked to someone else on her cell phone while questions were being asked by meeting participants.

In the end, while Sen. Benedict Arlen Specter dismisses protestors as not “representative of America,” here in our humble shop, we suspect that this horde of hysterical hypocrites is in fact not representative of America.

OBAMA LIED!!!

“I have not said that I was a ‘single-payer’ supporter.” –President Barack Obama at a town hall meeting this week

“I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program.” –Obama in 2003

OBAMA LIED!!! Part II

“We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors. … AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare, okay?” –Barack Obama

Scratch that. AARP Chief Operating Officer Tom Nelson issued a statement saying, “While the President was correct that AARP will not endorse a health care reform bill that would reduce Medicare benefits, indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”

This Week’s ‘Braying Jackass’ Award

“UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” –Barack Obama, in a rare moment of truth-telling, arguing that a public option won’t force private insurance out of business

So let’s see: Government-run health care = the Post Office. And this is supposed to make us feel good about the idea?

The ‘Death Panel’

Section 1233 of H.R. 3200, the health care bill, would give financial incentives to doctors to give Medicare patients end-of-life counseling every five years. Yet federal law prohibits Medicare from reimbursing for services “the purpose of which is to cause, or assist in causing,” suicide, euthanasia or mercy killing. So why the ruckus over the section? Washington Post columnist Charles Lane explains, “Section 1233 … addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones. Supporters protest that they’re just trying to facilitate choice — even if patients opt for expensive life-prolonging care. I think they protest too much: If it’s all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to ‘bend the curve’ on health-care costs?”

The consultations are not mandatory, but the financial incentive for doctors makes them not entirely voluntary, either. To some extent, Section 1233 also prescribes the content of the consultation. The doctor “shall” discuss such things as “advanced care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to,” “living wills and durable powers of attorney,” and “a list of national and State-specific resources to assist consumers and their families.” Asks Lane, “Who belongs on ‘a list’ of helpful ‘resources’? The Roman Catholic Church? Jack Kevorkian?”

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin warned of a “death panel” and she may be on to something. As Barack Obama himself enlightened, toward the end of life, tough decisions have to be made, and the government can help: “At least we can let doctors know and [the patient] know that, you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhhh, not having the surgery but taking, uh, the painkiller.” Somehow, that’s not comforting. When Obama says “we,” he almost always means “the government.” The government telling the doctor and patient that the painkiller is better than the surgery sure sounds like a death panel to us.

Rush Limbaugh relayed the story of an Oregon woman who was denied a lifesaving medication for her cancer by OregonCare. The state did, however, in the same communication, assure her that it would pay to facilitate her death.

Furthermore, Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, wrote, “When the worse-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating to the better-off is often justifiable.” Perhaps decided by a panel?

Due to the negative publicity, the Senate Finance Committee announced Thursday that the end-of-life consultation provision will be removed from its version of the bill, but if there is any doubt as to liberals’ intention to introduce socialized medicine to America with all of its ugly consequences, Ronald Reagan put those doubts to rest in one particular radio broadcast.

“The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for ‘death panels’ that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t — it’s too expensive to let her live anymore. (Laughter.)” —New York Times transcript, including the crowd’s reaction, of Barack Obama yukking it up about the “death panels”

“President Obama is attempting to transmogrify America’s entire medical system. It is literally a matter of life and death. If Obama and his supporters find mirth in the thought of ‘pulling the plug on grandma,’ do you trust them anywhere near your health care?” –Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

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