America is in Trouble - Steve Wynn

I have more pessimism than I have had before. And it’s based upon the political environment in which we are living today. And it definitely is impacting Las Vegas. The President of the United States hasn’t missed one single opportunity to swelch [ph] Las Vegas. In our particular case it’s cost us millions of dollars from companies affected by the President’s remarks that had no connection whatsoever to federal bailouts. But we get phone calls, and I am not going to mention the names of the companies, from Chairmen, who say we don’t want to appear to be profligate because Barack Obama said this or that about Las Vegas. But it’s had an effect on us. The hospitality industry in the United States of America as a whole has suffered disproportionately during this recession. Maybe automobile workers got a break. But all of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people that work in the hotels, restaurants, and bars in the United States of America have been totally and completely overlooked in this aborted rescue attempt that has squandered billions of dollars in the United States. And I am being very harsh about it. And I’ve got the data to back it up and so is everybody else in the hospitality industry

Job formation and the kinds of companies that make jobs are under attack in the United States of America. You know, MGM – aside for a moment – in – last year we created almost 5000 jobs. And immediately became the target of the administration. Businesses that created jobs, little own gaming companies have created jobs, had to be no good. I mean, it is preposterous that businesses are under attack in the United States of America.

Anybody that makes over$250,000 in the form of a personal income tax return is now by Washington definition ‘a rich person’ when everybody who has got a college degree knows that the personal income tax rate in the United States of America is the business tax of America. Every subchapter S, every individual proprietorship, and every partnership in the United States of America files tax returns as individuals. And when they do, and they show that they made $2 million, or $3 million or God forbid $4 million, they pay the income tax rate. They deduct their working expenses, their living expenses and then they invest in a new store, a new shop, and most of the time 25% of their “profits” are tied up in accounts receivable or inventory. But all of a sudden, all of those people who make over $250,000 are rich folks to be fleeced. And if that’s job formation stimulation in America, (inaudible) providence. And if I sound angry about it, and disgusted, I am disgusted and angry at the apparent ignorance of the administration and the Congress to recognize the fact that the individual tax rate in the United States of America is in fact the business tax of America. And if you keep banging on that, you will destroy in the incentive for job formation in the United States of America. And that’s simple truth. Simple truth. And whether politicians like it or don’t like it, it means nothing to me.

And that’s why I am pessimistic about Las Vegas, because those are our customers. Those people out there, hustling their businesses, and God forbid, showing that they made a million dollars as a partnership or as an individual, yes, they are the enemy now. They are the rich folks. Well, until we get over this America is in for hard times because what’s going to happen is the people that are going to suffer from what’s going on are the working class of America. My 15 to 20,000 employees they are the ones that are in trouble. The reason they are in trouble is this demolition of the dollar. It’s going to reduce the buying power of the working class of America as sure hell as if we gave them a salary cut of 25%. And that’s another thing that doesn’t seem to be clear to the brilliant people in Washington, D.C. They are not just our customers, they are my employees. And until my employees get the drift of what’s being done to them America is in trouble.

Just when I thought I was going to have waterfront property!

Now I find out it was all a fraud? Anybody want to buy some carbon credits?... cheap.

Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels.
Study claimed in 2009 that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century – but the report's author now says true estimate is still unknown.

Read all about it here

Obama Lied, the Economy Died. I think Obama has Munchausen's Disease

By creating the Congressional Deficit Commission he can claim he is doing all he can to reduce the deficit (and more importantly, blame them when taxes get raised and services cut). The same deficit that he is responsible for tripling in his first year, what might the next three bring? Unfortunately, the patient being poisoned usually doesn't fair well in the long run.

Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome

Munchausen by proxy syndrome (MBPS) is a relatively uncommon condition that involves the exaggeration or fabrication of illnesses or symptoms by a primary caretaker. One of the most harmful forms of child abuse, MBPS was named after Baron von Munchausen, an 18th-century German dignitary known for telling outlandish stories.

About MBPS
In MBPS, an individual — usually a mother — deliberately makes another person (most often his or her own preschool child) sick or convinces others that the person is sick. The parent or caregiver misleads others into thinking that the child has medical problems by lying and reporting fictitious episodes. He or she may exaggerate, fabricate, or induce symptoms. As a result, doctors usually order tests, try different types of medications, and may even hospitalize the child or perform surgery to determine the cause.

Typically, the perpetrator feels satisfied by gaining the attention and sympathy of doctors, nurses, and others who come into contact with him or her and the child. Some experts believe that it isn't just the attention that's gained from the "illness" of the child that drives this behavior, but also the satisfaction in being able to deceive individuals that they consider to be more important and powerful than themselves.

Because the parent or caregiver appears to be so caring and attentive, often no one suspects any wrongdoing. A perplexing aspect of the syndrome is the ability of the parent or caregiver to fool and manipulate doctors. Frequently, the perpetrator is familiar with the medical profession and is very good at fooling the doctors. Even the most experienced doctors can miss the meaning of the inconsistencies in the child's symptoms. It's not unusual for medical personnel to overlook the possibility of MBPS because it goes against the belief that a parent or caregiver would never deliberately hurt his or her child.

If I had only given Barry a few bucks, maybe I could have been ambassador to the Bahamas!

From the Daily Caller

Barack Obama has long decried the corrupting influence of money in politics. As a candidate, he ran against lobbyists and the pay-for-play culture of Washington. As president, he has continued to hammer the theme, most recently in his impassioned attacks on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission.

Given this, it’s a little surprising to learn that Obama has not only embraced the sordid money-driven culture of DC, but actually outdone his predecessors. An analysis by the American Foreign Service Association [1], for example, found that Obama has stuffed the diplomatic corps with more political appointees (i.e., cronies) than any president in the past 40 years. Only a year into the administration, close of half of the president’s biggest donors already have federal jobs.

Below is a list of Obama campaign bundlers and the taxpayer-funded positions they’ve received:

The Big Changers’ Club ($500,000+) !!!!!!!!!!
Avant, Nicole (Los Angeles, CA)
Position: Ambassador to the Bahamas

Barzun, Matthew (Louisville, KY)
Position: Ambassador to Sweden

Beyer, Don (Alexandria, VA)
Position: Nominated to Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein

Bleich, Jeff (Piedmont, CA)
Position: Ambassador to Australia

Danzig, Richard (Washington, DC)
Position: Member, Defense Policy Board

Donahoe, Eileen Chamberlain (Washington, DC)
Position: Nominated to Ambassador to UN Human Rights Council

Eacho, William (Bethesda, MD)
Position: Ambassador to Austria

Forester, Christine (San Diego, CA)
Position: Member, Presidential Committee on the Arts and Humanities

Genachowski, Julius (Washington, DC)
Position: FCC Chairman

Gips, Don (Boulder, CO)
Position: Ambassador to South Africa

Gutman, Howard (Washington, DC)
Position: Ambassador to Belgium

Harris, Scott (Washington, DC)
Position: General Counsel, Department of Energy

Katz, Allan (Tallahassee, FL)
Position: Nominated to Ambassador to Portugal

Kennard, William (Washington, DC)
Position: Ambassador to the European Union

Oreck, Bruce (Boulder, CO)
Position: Nominated to Ambassador to Finland

Overton, Spencer (Chevy Chase, MD)
Position: Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy

Perrelli, Tom (Arlington, VA)
Position: Assistant Attorney General

Rivkin, Charlie (Los Angeles, CA)
Position: Ambassador to France and Monaco

Roos, John (Hillsborough, CA)
Position: Ambassador to Japan

Sanchez, Frank (Tampa, FL)
Position: Undersecretary of International Trade

Solomont, Alan (Boston, MA)
Position: Ambassador to Spain

Spinner, Steve (Menlo Park, CA)
Position: Loan Programs Advisor, Department of Energy

Stroum, Cynthia (Seattle, WA)
Position: Ambassador to Luxembourg

West, Tony (Oakland, CA)
Position: Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division


and this is just the first page!

Will Ol'Joe ever make up his mind?

1990: Biden votes against the first Gulf War and Bush I’s efforts to get Saddam out of Kuwait.

1998: Biden supports Bill Clinton’s call for regime change and “to dethrone Saddam Hussein over the long haul.”

2002: Biden asserts that Saddam has biological and chemical weapons and is seeking a nuclear arsenal, proclaiming, “We have no choice but to eliminate the threat.” He then votes in October for 23 writs authorizing President Bush to remove the dictator by force if need be.

2005: Joe Biden reassures the country that we must stay in Iraq: “We can call it quits and withdraw from Iraq. I think that would be a gigantic mistake. Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out – equally a mistake.”

2006: Biden declares that a sovereign Iraq is not sustainable, calls for trisecting Iraq into three separate entities and demands that President Bush “must direct the military to design a plan for withdrawing and redeploying our troops from Iraq by 2008.”

He adds that “Mr. Bush has spent three years in a futile effort to establish a strong central government in Baghdad, leaving us without a real political settlement, with a deteriorating security situation — and with nothing but the most difficult policy choices.”

2008: Joe Biden forecasts, “The surge isn’t going to work either tactically or strategically. … Tactically it isn’t going to work because … our guys go in and secure a neighborhood, but because we don’t have enough troops, we have to turn it over to the Iraqis, and they can’t hold it or won’t hold it.”

Joe Biden votes for legislation to oppose the surge, declaring that, “It’s an attempt to save the president from making a significant mistake with regard to our policy in Iraq.” He reiterates that the surge will not only fail, but make things worse: “I believe it will have the opposite — I repeat — opposite effect the president intends.”

Biden later elaborates on that: “The purpose of the surge was to bring violence in Iraq down so that its leaders could come together politically. Violence has come down, but the Iraqis have not come together. …There is little evidence the Iraqis will settle their differences peacefully any time soon. I believe the president has no strategy for success in Iraq.”

Biden then tells Gen. Petraeus that he is “dead, flat wrong.” He later concludes there is “no end in sight” in Iraq and staying is “killing us.”

2009: A Vice President Biden accepts the Bush-Petraeus plan of continuing a U.S. combat presence in Iraq, and accepts the status of forces agreement and timetable of withdrawal as negotiated with the Iraqis by the Bush administration to remove U.S. combat troops as envisioned by the end of 2011.

2010: Biden claims credit for winning Iraq: “I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”

Good Grief! These people have no Shame

You have got to be kidding me!

Joe Biden update: Iraq one of Obama's 'great achievements'

I am very optimistic about -- about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.

Do they all think we have no memory? Joe is the new Al Gore, having invented the internet. Considering the fact that the East Coast is knee deep in snow, I'm sure Joe is going to claim they have now 'fixed' Global Warming. What a buffoon.

Gibbs WH press briefing notes

See how much better off we are with Barry, et al

I Was A Teenage President

By Greg Lewis in American Thinker

The Obama administration resembles nothing so much as a big house in the suburbs where the parents are away for the weekend. In the absence of any responsible person to take charge, the Teenager-in-Chief is letting the rest of the adolescents run wild.

They've maxed out their parents' credit cards and have begun working on their overdraft lines in earnest, as the T-I-C's budget, which proposes a $1.5-trillion deficit for the coming fiscal year, attests. With "what, me worry?" aplomb worthy of a Mad Magazine cover boy, Barack Obama delivered to Congress a bloated document which proposes that more than 40 percent of federal spending be done with borrowed money, and some of the rest courtesy of renewed taxes on America's "rich" -- those people and small businesses making unholy annual incomes greater than $250,000.

And although there are several carloads of bullies pulling into the driveway who are about to enter the premises, the partiers inside remain oblivious to potential threats. They're wrecking the furniture, eating their parents out of house and home, and in general carrying on like there's no tomorrow.

Fraternity Boy General Eric Holder insists, with teen-worthy logic, that trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in U.S. federal court will demonstrate to the world how wonderfully the impartial American justice system works -- this after Holder himself arguably contaminated the pool of potential jurors by declaring that after the trial, the "suspect" would be executed. This claim -- that KSM is virtually guaranteed to be convicted in an American court of law, and even if he isn't we'll detain him indefinitely anyway -- was repeated by the Teenager-in-Chief himself and his Smokesperson, Robert Gates.

In the meantime, the head of Gangland Security, Janet Napolitano, was still tired from a pre-Spring Break European jaunt and decided not to appear before a House Committee hearing on the Christmas Day Skivvies-Bomber plot, upsetting even House Democrats. These are the same Democrats who are generally on board with the administration's confiscate-and-squander policies, recently ratcheted up from previous tax-and-spend levels.

Under new laws governing parents' rights with regard to their adolescent children, the Teenager-in-Chief's academic records can't be sent home without the student's consent. That has led to a great deal of speculation about whether the T-I-C really did complete the requirements for his college degrees, and if he did so, whether he distinguished himself as a student. Even though we footed the bill for our adolescent's education and are paying for the consequences thereof, we haven't been afforded so much as a glimpse at the papers he wrote or the marks he received for them.

And though we had our doubts about some of the characters he's hung out with, The New York Teens assured us that no permanent damage had been done by his association with the likes of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and political radical Bill Ayers. And no, the Teens added, Bill Ayers didn't write Obama's autobiography, and he certainly didn't write his college papers. Heck, Ayers and Obama didn't even meet each other until Obama was well on his way to the stunning success he achieved in his early career as a community organizer. How in the world could Ayers have written Obama's college papers? Tell me that! And they surely wouldn't have let Obama teach constitutional law -- at the University of Chicago, no less -- if he weren't qualified, would they?

I mean, jeez, what more do you want? The T-I-C is already working harder than he ever thought he would have to. He barely has time for golf and pickup basketball games and date nights any more, and you know how important those are to any teen. So of course he's angry.

He's angry at the overwhelming problems he "inherited" from the previous administration. And he's angry because despite the fact that he had bulletproof majorities in both houses of Congress, the American public was too stupid to understand his health care initiative and the wonderful things it would do for them, and so he couldn't get that legislation pushed through.

Never mind that his is the anger of manufactured intellectual outrage unconnected to real-world experience. And never mind that it's the anger of psychological pain born in the midst of privilege few generations in the history of our planet have ever enjoyed. It is ultimately an unpleasant and whiny anger, the anger of a rich kid bitching that his parents haven't given him quite enough, the anger of a spoiled child who denigrates those who came before him for not being what he thinks they should have been. He's the Teenager-in-Chief, and he's not about to let you forget it.

Take Responsibility? Moi?

Obama picks campaigning over leading

read it here: by NOLAN FINLEY

There's always been a disconnect between what Barack Obama says and what he does, but for the last few weeks, the president's rhetoric has been wholly detached from reality.

Many pundits predicted that after the Massachusetts massacre Obama would swing toward the middle, adopt a conciliatory approach and adjust his policies and priorities to reflect the mood of the nation.

Instead, the president jutted his chin a notch higher in the air and launched into campaign-style attack mode. His statements range from outrageous to audacious and risk throwing Washington into total gridlock. It's a risky strategy that ought to worry Democrats who this fall will face an electorate weary of political bickering.

It began with the State of the Union address last week. Obama could have tried to catch some Republican flies with honey, challenging them to meet him in the middle and letting them weigh the political consequences of saying no. He opted for vinegar instead.

The speech started with a call for cooperation and ended with the president taunting Republicans and tagging them with the blame for Washington's mess.

Obama accepted an invitation to the Republican congressional retreat, which should have opened the door to a working relationship. But the president slammed it shut. The session continued the partisan baiting and accusations, and drew comparisons to the raucous exchanges of Britain's Parliament.

Obama isn't missing a chance to spank the GOP. How this fits into his professed objective of ending the destructive rancor in Washington is difficult to see.

More likely, the president is hardening partisan lines and confirming the public's view that Washington is a broken place.

Not only that, but Obama's assertions fail the accuracy test. To suggest Republicans blocked him is laughable. Until Scott Brown is seated as the new Republican U.S. senator from Massachusetts -- which could happen as early as today -- Republicans can't block anything.

The president has to accept responsibility for stubbornly pressing an ideological agenda that was out of sync with the public's priorities and then not effectively advocating for his own proposals.

For a solid year, Democrats held a rare super-majority in Congress. Had Obama been a better politician and a more forceful leader, he could have passed his entire wish list. He squandered his advantage, and now he wants to place the blame elsewhere.

He's good at that. After unveiling his budget earlier this week, Obama crisscrossed the country, lecturing Americans on the virtues of frugality. "We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences," the president said, adding that the government has to make hard choices and set priorities.

That's a good message. Except that this is entirely Obama's budget. He's the one who failed to set priorities, who didn't make hard choices. The nearly $1.3 trillion deficit built into this budget is historic in its fiscal recklessness, and it belongs to him.

He ought to be wagging his finger in the mirror.

Campaign rhetoric is fine for campaigns, but not so good for governing. Obama needs to face the fact that he's made some pretty serious mistakes in his first year that can't be covered up with campaign sound bites.

Global Warming Art

If these turbines don't generate electicity maybe they could be turned around and be used as fans to cool down the planet. Or maybe they should just be considered 'Art'. Leave it to Minnesota, isn't that the state that recently elected Al Franken?

Read it here

State of the Union: Barack Obama gets an F for world leadership

This from the UK Telegraph

the scant attention paid in the State of the Union speech to US leadership was pitiful and frankly rather pathetic. The war in Afghanistan, which will soon involve a hundred thousand American troops, merited barely a paragraph. There was no mention of victory over the enemy, just a reiteration of the president’s pledge to begin a withdrawal in July 2011. Needless to say there was nothing in the speech about the importance of international alliances, and no recognition whatsoever of the sacrifices made by Great Britain and other NATO allies alongside the United States on the battlefields of Afghanistan. For Barack Obama the Special Relationship means nothing, and tonight’s address further confirmed this.

Obama’s world leadership in his first year in office has been weak-kneed and little short of disastrous. He has sacrificed the projection of American power upon the altar of political vanity, with empty speeches and groveling apologies across the world, from Strasbourg to Cairo. He has appeased some of America’s worst enemies, and has extended the hand of friendship to many of the most odious regimes on the face of the earth. Judging by the State of the Union address tonight, we can expect more of the same from an American president who seems determined to lead the world’s greatest power along a path of decline.

The State of Confusion Address

Considering all Barry's whining about the mess that he inherited, you would think that he was drafted for the job. Didn't he campaign for the job of President? Didn't he spend two years telling us how he was going to fix everything?? even to the point of declaring how the seas were going to stop rising (I guess he got that right, because it sure seems damn cold out there these days). Did he think President of the US of A was going to be a walk in the park?

Why does Barry always seem to insinuate that the problems America faces were all thrust upon him in the middle of the night and that it is so unfair? Did Ronald Reagan inherit a cake walk? I think he faced a thing called Stagflation (thank you Jimmy Carter), all you Gen X'ers go google the term, you might be surprised at what you find. How about Harry Truman? He was thrust into the middle of WWII, and had to make the tough decision to drop the atomic bomb which ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of American GI's lives. That decision was probably a no-brainer in retrospect, but still very difficult to live with. How about GW Bush and the 9/11 tragedy, were those easy decisions to make? And even more difficult to stick by them when the whole world turned their back on him.

I wish Barry would grow up and at least try to fill the shoes that so many before him have worn with such dignity and under even more difficult circumstances. Barry needs to come to the realization that America is NOT a nation of whiners, and we will never respect a Whiner in Chief! I think it is already cast in stone that history will not treat Barack Obama kindly.

AC editor

Something that has always bugged me about Barry

What were your SAT and LSAT scores and your GPA at graduation from Columbia?

You are one of the youngest presidents ever, with one of the leanest track records in elected or executive office. Virtually all your predecessors served in the U.S. Congress for many years, or served as vice president, or in a cabinet, or a high military command position, or as governor of a state, prior to being president. (See Appendix.)

Yet you served in the U.S. Senate for only one year before starting your run for president, had never held any other national office, had never been a governor of any state, had never held any executive position, and had not even been in the military. We really know very little about you. We have not even seen your real birth certificate, meaning the official "long form" version.

We knew President Bush's SAT scores and his grades at Yale. We also knew Al Gore's SAT scores and grades at Harvard. And John Kerry's grades, too. Yet without ever releasing any test scores or transcripts, you have been proclaimed as "probably the smartest guy ever to become president" by a presidential historian of such credibility that PBS puts him aside noted plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin on its News Hour.

So what exactly were your test scores and grades? Did you take any economics courses? Was your SAT score higher than 1206, which was President Bush's score?

You told us your eleven-year-old daughter Malia's score on a third-grade science test. How about telling us your test scores?


Appendix: U.S. Presidents since 1900 and their highest levels of executive or national legislative experience.

McKinley - Governor of Ohio

Teddy Roosevelt - Vice President, Governor of New York

Taft - Secretary of War

Wilson - Governor of New Jersey

Harding - U.S. Senator (1915-1921)

Coolidge - Vice President, Governor of Massachusetts

Hoover - Secretary of Commerce

Franklin Roosevelt - Governor of New York

Truman - Vice President, U.S. Senator (1935-1944)

Eisenhower - Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (World War II)

Kennedy - U.S. Senator (1953-1960)

Johnson - Vice President, U.S. Congressman and Senator (1937-1960)

Nixon - Vice President, U.S. Congressman and Senator (1947-1952)

Ford - Vice President, U.S. Congressman (1949-1973)

Carter - Governor of Georgia

Reagan - Governor of California

George H. W. Bush - Vice President, Director of the CIA, U.S. Congressman (1966-1970)

Clinton - Governor of Arkansas

George W. Bush - Governor of Texas

Obama - U.S. Senator (2005-2008)

From AmericanThinker.com

No matter how you slice it... it's gruesome

Read it here.

What a difference a year makes

From Obama the OMNIpotent ..

to Obama the IMpotent.

The true meaning of getting 'Tea-Bagged'

Getting tea bagged now means any Big Government politician getting whipped by someone who believes in freedom.

My Hero

One year into the Obama Administration, one thing is clear. The American presidency is a tough job. One can only wonder how much more successful President Bush’s presidency could have been if the media mandarins weren’t hell bent on providing a pathway for their favored Democrats to regain power. Now that the Democrats control everything it’s interesting to note how closely Obama is toeing Bush’s line on the war in Afghanistan, and how unsuccessful the new president is in rationalizing giving rights to enemy combatants. Maybe Bush wasn’t so dumb after all.

That’s what I’ve thought all along. A year after he left office, it looks more and more like others will now not only start appreciating our 43rd president, they might start wishing they helped him when he had the toughest job in the world and they could only wish him ill.

Once again: thanks, President Bush.

Read it here

Also this:
One year after taking office however, Obama has done a total reversal on his isolationist, non-interventionist foreign policy, and is now pushing President Bush’s neo-conservative philosophy as a justification for starting a new war in Afghanistan. What the Democratic Party once criticized as an over-simplified good vs. evil argument has become the cornerstone of Obama’s reasoning.
“Evil does exist in the world,” Obama recently admitted. “A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of man.”

In the wake of this stunning adoption of the Bush foreign policy doctrine, there is little, if any dissent. The same people who crucified Bush for liberating Iraq are hardly criticizing Obama for using force to promote democracy in Afghanistan.

But after President Bush successfully secured America in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, he was rewarded with accusations of committing human rights violations and war crimes – an incredible irony since his policies were responsible for liberating tens of millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some Americans accused Bush of lying and starting a war under false pretenses simply because our troops never found actual weapons of mass destruction.

Despite what Michael Moore implied in his film "Fahrenheit 9/11," Congress did not base their 2002 authorization for the Iraq War solely on the premise that Saddam Hussein either had or was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Their legislation reads very clearly that America’s purpose in sending troops back to Iraq was to enforce U.N. resolutions, some of which were violated in the 1990’s and probably should have been enforced by President Clinton. Whether actual weapons were found or not, the war in Iraq was legally and morally justifiable, and necessary.

In addition to enduring criticism for his war policies, millions of Americans demanded the new Obama administration prosecute Bush for his decision to indefinitely holding detainees charged with war crimes. When President Obama signed an executive order in May that reinforced that same Bush policy, the far left was mute.

Almost no one said a word. Apparently, its acceptable for Obama to indefinitely hold detainees, just not Bush.

As Obama continues to make decisions that mirror the Bush doctrine, it is becoming apparent that the former president was not ignorant or irrational in his foreign policy decisions despite the harsh criticism and disloyalty he endured. He was in fact, ahead of his time, a visionary who understood politics and warfare in the modern age of terrorism.

That is why Obama is now following his lead.

It should be obvious now, even to Obama’s most passionate supporters that shielding the free world requires more than mere words like “hope” and “change.” Bush’s detractors should be embarrassed having arrogantly thought they could do it better, and those Republicans who abandoned Bush when he needed them most should take a moment to reflect on their fortitude or lack thereof.

Americans who chastised President Bush for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq should apologize and show him the same respect they are now showing President Obama as he neutralizes the Taliban in Afghanistan.

George W. Bush seemed to have an almost mystical understanding of what the American people needed when we needed it most. He reminded all of us of why we should be proud to be Americans at a time when there was a whisper that we brought the Sept. 11 attacks upon ourselves for promoting democracy abroad.

President Bush deserves our respect, not our betrayal.

Read the entire article here.

Thank you, Massachusetts!

The people of Massachusetts torpedo ObamaCares.

Did you know the word 'gullible' is not in the dictionary?.. go see for yourself.

OOOPS! Scientists goof on Himilayan glacier retreat
Rick Moran

If anything, this story in The Times of London is good for a laugh - except that there's nothing funny about the people who wanted to use this information to steal trillions from the world's most productive nations.

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it. Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Got that? The IPCC Report on which the science of global warming rests - a report being used to justify ruining industrial civilization - used an old story based on a brief telephone interview with a scientist nobody ever heard of, in a general interest science magazine geared for non-scientists (The New Scientist) to push the notion that the glacier's in the Himalaya's would be gone in 25 years.

It would be too easy to ascribe this idiocy to conspiracy. More likely, it is simply one more indication that the proponents of AGW don't care about the science and are promoting a political agenda.

How Obama can get ObamaCares passed.

I have a modest suggestion for the White House: given the stakes, why not simply promise the people of Massachusetts free health insurance for life, if they vote for Coakley?

It’s a perfectly reasonable strategy, given the other special concessions and payoffs that have been needed to drag ObamaCare this far. Non-unionized Americans will be compelled to subsidize lower taxes on the “Cadillac” health care plans of far wealthier union workers. Exactly one state in the union, Nebraska, will receive full Medicaid funding, because that was the dollar value of Senator Ben Nelson’s pro-life beliefs. Hundreds of other payoffs are hidden inside the Senate and House bills, to be periodically discovered by bleary-eyed staffers after the latest two-thousand page printout thuds onto their desks.

The elaborate restrictions and rationing of the final, twisted product of these negotiations will never apply to the ruling class. Top Party officials will never have to stand before the death panels, to be told their cancer treatments are an expensive gamble the state cannot afford. No one will ever tell Michelle Obama that she has to wait for a mammogram. Why not simply extend the Cadillac Escalade SUV benefits of the ruling class to everyone in Massachusetts, if they vote Coakley in? The population of the state is only a little over six million. Toss another hundred billion dollars on the deficit, and it’s all taken care of.

Giving free health care to Massachusetts would be a terrific stimulus for the state’s moribund economy. Doubtless it would attract both new residents eager to cash in on those benefits, and health-care providers hungry for government subsidies and ObamaCare insurance payouts. And once the system inevitably generates to single-payer socialized medicine, and the hard-core rationing kicks in, you’d have tons of shovel-ready projects down at the local cemetary!

Read the entire Blog here, from HotAir.com

I'm the King of the World!

EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW?

Well, there's one American concept that certainly doesn't hold water with the Obama crowd. The idea our founding fathers had was pretty solid. The law would apply equally to every person in this country - rich or poor, weak or strong. There would be no privileged classes in this country to who the law would not apply.

That's not the way it is with the Democrats and Obama.

The unions were at the White House telling Obama that they weren't going to support his health care takeover. And why not? Because Obama was going to pay for part of his takeover with a tax on what we're calling "Cadillac" health insurance plans. These are health insurance plans that go past the usual coverage by providing such things as dental and vision coverage.

Something had to be done to keep the unions on board. The Democrats are already facing a rough time in this year's elections and they certainly didn't need union members sitting on their hands on election day. So a deal had to be made. If it meant violating the concept of equal protection under the law ... well then, you do what you have to do; expecially if you're Barack Obama and you believe that your whole presidency rests on your ability to achieve the lifelong Democrat dream of seizing control of the American health care system.

Here's the deal they reached last night. If you're an ordinary citizen who has one of these "Cadillac" health care plan you will pay an excise tax on the plan. If you're an ordinary citizen who has a "Cadillac" plan, but you happen to be a union member, you will NOT pay the tax.

Can you believe this is happening in our country? The government tells you that you're going to have to pay a special tax on your health insurance plan .. unless, that is, you happen to be a union member - or if you happen to work for city or state government. Then you won't have to pay the tax.

This from Neal Boortz, read the entire blog here.

Matthews: Obama Speech Caused 'Thrill Going Up My Leg'

During MSNBC's live coverage of the 2008 presidential primary elections, Chris Matthews expressed his latest over the top admiration for Obama's speaking skills as the MSNBC anchor admitted that Obama's speech created a "thrill" in his leg: "It's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often."

I wonder if Chris Matthews still gets the same sensation today, if so, its probably the feeling of urine running down his leg.. anticipating the backlash that is to come in November 2010.

Me and Mrs Jones, we got a thing going on..

Help is on the way.. to Haiti?

No, Massachusetts.

Them that has the money, makes the rules!

Big Labor got some big love from President Obama and congressional Democrats yesterday after they agreed to exempt union workers from the whopping “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health-care plans until 2018.

The sweetheart deal, hammered out behind closed doors, will save union employees at least $60 billion over the years involved, while others won't be as lucky -- they'll have to cough up almost $90 billion.

The 40 percent excise tax on what have come to be called "Cadillac" health-care plans would exempt collective-bargaining contracts covering government employees and other union members until Jan. 1, 2018.

IT'S NICE TO BE THE KING!

I guess that leaves you and me to foot the bill.

Dear ObamaCares

Dear ObamaCares,
I am a senior citizen in desperate need of a hip replacement. I would like to have this approved before my 70th birthday.
Sincerely,
Hippie


Dear Hippie,
We truly admire our elderly generation and all they have done for the United States. Thank you for contacting us and praising the fine job we are doing.
Signed,
ObamaCares

White House budget director blames old computers for ineffective government

A big reason why the government is inefficient and ineffective is because Washington has outdated technology, with federal workers having better computers at home than in the office.

This startling admission came Thursday from Peter Orszag, who manages the federal bureaucracy for President Barack Obama.


Can you imagine the havoc that this administration would wreak if they had new computers. Lets give them Comodore 64's instead.

New Bank fees to repay TARP

On Thursday, President Obama unveiled a much-talked about bank fee that will seek to recoup any lingering costs from the $700 billion bailout package over the next decade. "My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed," Obama said.

Guess who gets to pay these fees? Yup, you and me. EXCELLENT STRATEGY BARRY! When are people going to wise up and figure out that corporate 'taxes' are paid by the average Joe.

Good thing the Washington State legislature has such a high corporate tax on Boeing so all those nice 787 jobs could go straight to South Carolina. Another BRILLIANT move.

See #2 on the Top Ten List.

Coakley's Saviors - The health-care industry rides to the Democratic rescue.

From the WSJ

We've argued that the leading health industry CEOs will one day be exposed as the most short-sighted business leaders in history, but how to explain the gala fundraiser that their top lobbyists hosted for Martha Coakley last night?

Amid a Beltway panic, the health lobby is riding to the rescue of the Massachusetts liberal, whose defeat in the special Senate race next Tuesday could deny Democrats the 60th vote for ObamaCare and thus maybe spare the U.S. health system from the coming damage.

As first reported by Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner, the host committee for the fundraiser at Pennsylvania Avenue's Sonoma Restaurant includes lobbyists for Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, Novartis and sundry other drug companies that have been among the biggest of ObamaCare's corporate sponsors. Other hosts—who have raised at least $10,000 for Ms. Coakley—include representatives from UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Humana and other insurers. As far as we can tell, the insurance industry claims to oppose ObamaCare's current incarnation.

Naturally, lobbyists from America's Health Insurance Plans and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the major trade groups, were on hand too. Money follows power in Washington, obviously, though this example seems especially inexplicable given that Ms. Coakley's GOP opponent, state senator Scott Brown, may be the last chance to defuse the health-care doomsday machine. But maybe someone in the press corps will bother to mention this episode the next time President Obama takes aim at the "special interests" he claims are opposing his agenda.

Against overwhelming public opposition, the only things keeping ObamaCare alive at this point are power politics and the misguided corporate cease-fire that Democrats have either coerced or bought—or is homegrown at companies like Pfizer that are deeply invested in more government control of the economy. Ms. Coakley's election would make that outcome a certainty.

I guess Coakley doesn't like to answer tough questions! And if you do, you are now a 'Stalker'!

“TWS: Attorney General Coakley, you said last night that there are no terrorists in Afghanistan - that they’re all in Yemen and Pakistan. Do you stand by that remark?

BAM!

COAKLEY: I’m sorry, did someone else have a question?

Poll: 48% Say Obama a 'Failure' so Far

Forty-eight percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday say Obama’s presidency has been a failure so far

Venezuela plans blackouts in Caracas

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela will switch off lights for hours at a time in Caracas and other cities such as oil town Maracaibo in planned blackouts to tackle power shortages that threaten President Hugo Chavez's support.

Critics blame the government for not investing enough in the national grid since Chavez took office 11 years ago.

The president says the previous government made critical errors by building most of the nations energy infrastructure on one river that is affected by rainfall.

(Its always the previous administrations fault,, thats a good socialist for you.)

CAUTION!

This blog has been written in Caucasian dialect.

Bumble, Stumble and Skid

If the first year of President Barack Obama's foreign policy were a law firm in Charles Dickens's London, it would have a name like Bumble, Stumble and Skid.

It began with apologies to the Muslim world that went nowhere, a doomed attempt to beat Israel into line, utopian pleas to abolish nuclear weapons, unreciprocated concessions to Russia, and a curt note to the British to take back the bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office. It continued with principled offers of serious negotiation to an Iranian regime too busy torturing, raping and killing demonstrators, and building new underground nuclear facilities, to take them up. Subsequently Beijing smothered domestic coverage of a presidential visit but did give the world the spectacle of the American commander in chief getting a talking-to about fiscal responsibility from a Communist chieftain.

The lovely town of Copenhagen staged not one, but two humiliations: the first when the Olympic Committee delivered the bad news that the president's effort to play hometown booster had failed utterly, before he even landed back in the U.S.; the second when the Chinese once again poked the U.S. in the eye by sending minor officials to meet with Mr. Obama, as they, the Indians and Brazilians tried to shoulder him out of cozy meetings aimed at sabotaging his environmental policy. Even smitten foreign admirers—in the case of the Nobel Prize, some addled Norwegian notables—managed to make him look bad.

Read it here from the WSJ

Baghdad Bob

Obama Bob

I just spoke to Barack, and he assured me that he is going to stop lying to the American people; and that at this time he has no intention of resigning.

But he looks so damn good in a suit, and reads a teleprompter so well.

Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blahblah blah.. blah blah blah Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah .. CONNECT THE DOTS .. Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah SYSTEMIC FAILURE Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah THE BUCK STOPS WITH ME .. Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah BUSH'S FAULT Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah CLOSE GITMO, OPEN GITMO NORTH IN ILLINOIS Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah WE ARE NOT AT WAR WITH ISLAM Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah BLAME BUSH Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah... Blah Blah blah... blah blah.. blah blah blah

How Do I Lie to Thee?, Let me count the ways

The term 'Borked' came out of the congressional confirmation hearings for Judge Bork. It now refers to someone getting unfairly prosecuted in a partisan manner.

I wonder when we are going to start hearing the term 'I got Obama-ed', meaning someone lies to you straight in the eye and doesn't even flinch.

Watch video here

Obama's sense of Dignity

Photo-ops at the Delaware Air Force base at the return home of an American warrior who did not survive his last battle; Michelle in scruffy shorts descending the steps of Air Force One; brazen million dollar shopping trips by ‘the family’ in Paris and London; flying Chicago pizza chefs to Washington for the weekly gigs at the White House; Robert Gibbs; the White House social secretary saying “sure, anybody can come by” resulting in crashergate, one among many; giving shoutouts (whatever they are) to Indian chiefs on the heels of the worst terrorist act in this country since September 11; refusing to meet with your Afghanistan theater general until this refusal becomes public knowledge; taking a very public and humiliating trip to the Olympics meeting with your begging bowl to benefit your Chicago cronies; apologizing for America on every stage internationally upon which you land; constant vicious and untrue trashing of your predecessor; ridiculing Nancy Reagan; making fun of the Special Olympics; blowing off the international celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall; giving the Queen of England (a former ally of the United States) a disrespectful pat on the back (no bowing to her); dissing the Cambridge police in favor of your arrogant black friend; appearing shirtless on magazine covers; observed carrying reading material for a flight which consisted solely of a magazine on which you were the cover story; vast overuse of the word ‘I’ in all public speaking; actually bowing, as President of the United States of America, to a Middle Eastern potentate, the Japanese Emperor and the Communist leader of China; to speaking out on everything authoritatively with an astounding ignorance of history, especially this nation’s; insultingly ignoring a dinner invitation from the French President, (a former ally of the United States) -- I could go on and actually list just about everything this embarrassment has done for the last 11 months, but all of these, and more, demonstrate Obama’s lack of comprehension of the term “dignity.”

Read entire article here

Christmas incident was "screw up" - Obama

WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama told his security chiefs on Tuesday that the botched Christmas Day plane bombing was the result of a screw up by U.S. intelligence and that the country had barely dodged disaster, according to a quotation released by the White House.

"This was a screw up that could have been disastrous," the president said during a meeting in the White House situation room, according to the White House media office. "We dodged a bullet but just barely. It was averted by brave individuals not because the system worked and that is not acceptable. While there will be a tendency for finger pointing, I will not tolerate it."


Then why is it that all I hear from BO is,, ‘Bush’s fault…Bush’s war…Bush’s economy’.
I think the screw up was electing you, Pal.

Traitors

Remember when dissent was supposed to be patriotic? Well, it seems that only applies when a Republican is president. Now that Barack Obama is in the White House, criticism of him is "un-American" and "traitorous." This new "tolerant" view of dissent comes from Joan Walsh of Salon.Com as you can see in this Hardball video from Wednesday. Below is the Walsh money quote but please be sure to also watch the video since it is important to watch as she drops any facade of liberal tolerance and lets her true dogmatic soul reveal itself in both her face and voice which seems to border on dementia:

The climate right now is that Republicans use everything they can to undermine and delegitimize this president. And it‘s actually un-American. It‘s traitorous, in my opinion. Do you want to give aid and comfort to our enemies? Continue to treat this president like he wasn‘t elected and he doesn‘t know what he‘s doing! He knows what he did. He knows what he‘s doing. I‘m proud of him. I believe that he has the stalwart, resolute nature to get this done...

watch it here

Chickens.. and roosting

by Victor Davis Hanson

In the coming year, plenty of chickens will be coming home to roost.
Take foreign relations. In 2009, the new administration assumed that George W. Bush was largely responsible for global tensions. As a remedy, we loudly reached out to our foes and those with whom we had uneasy relationships.

But so far these leaders — like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin — have only interpreted Barack Obama’s serial goodwill gestures as weaknesses to be exploited. They play the part of the pushy class bully, we the whiny nerd.

In the waning days of 2009, Iran announced it has no intention of dismantling its nuclear facilities and ignored the latest Obama deadline to cease. There’s no reason not to expect the theocracy to make significant strides in its nuclear program in 2010, while continuing without rebuke to beat and murder democratic dissidents in its streets.

Russia has announced plans to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons — and scoffed at our polite suggestions that it should pressure Iran to stop its nuclear development.

Venezuela brags of its own similar program to come — which could threaten all the neighboring democracies in the region.

The administration courted China on a much-heralded Asian tour. President Obama even has said he would be our first “Pacific president.”

Unfortunately, China was not impressed. It declined to follow our advice about reducing its carbon footprint and instead reminded Americans that we owe the Chinese people nearly $1 trillion. Expect much more of that hectoring in 2010 as our debt to China grows.

We were given a break on energy prices in 2009. The worldwide recession sent oil down to about $50 a barrel. But America did little during the year’s reprieve to rush into production newly discovered domestic gas and oil fields, to tap existing finds in Alaska, or to license new nuclear plants.

By year’s end, oil was creeping back up to $80. If the economic upswing continues, in 2010 it may near its old high of nearly $150 a barrel. Soon we will wish we had done something concrete in 2009 rather than offering more stale rhetoric about wind and solar power.

In other words, 2009 may seem to have ended relatively quietly. But in our foreign relations, in the war against terror, in our massive borrowing, and in our energy policies, we created chickens that will come home to roost in 2010.

Rasmussen: Obamacare Disapproval at New High

Rasmussen's health-care polling results since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid orchestrated the Christmas Eve vote are full of undeniably bad news for Democrats. In roughly ascending order of bad news (if one is a Democrat)...

Likely voters oppose Obamacare by more than the (18-point) margin by which Ronald Reagan beat Walter Mondale: 58 percent to 39 percent.

There are far more likely voters who "strongly" oppose Obamacare (46 percent) than there are likely voters who support it even "somewhat" (39 percent).

Only 24 percent of likely voters think that the quality of health care would get better under Obamacare, while 54 percent think it would get worse -- a gap of 30 percent.

Only 13 percent of likely voters think that the cost of health would go down under Obamacare, while 63 percent think it would rise -- a gap of 50 percent.

Seniors oppose Obamacare by more than 2 to 1: 63 percent to 31 percent.

And the worst news of all for Democrats...

Independents oppose Obamacare by the head-turning tally of 66 percent to 28 percent.

From the Weekly Standard

Bait and Switch, Obama style

You voted for this..

But got this..

Why people believe in Global Warming

The Left's End Times, American Thinker

As the informed know, science isn't science unless theories -- if they are that -- are subject to rigorous examination and criticism. Theories stand or fall through a relentless process of challenge and elimination. Call the method scientific musical chairs. The last to have a seat wins...for a while, anyway.

The scientific priesthood that surrounds global warming theory seems far more determined to protect the theory from the rigors of scientific method than to open it up to challenge. This bespeaks a couple of important things: 1) that so jealously guarding global warming theory from scrutiny and challenge means that its advocates have little confidence in it; 2) that it reduces the theory to an article of faith, which anyone is entitled to hold, but not to impose on the rest of us.

It must strike those who are stridently secular as peculiar for anyone to suggest that global warming science is nothing more than a faith, and that their deep need for faith -- as there's a deep need for faith in all human beings -- is being satisfied and expressed through pseudo-science.

Global warming adherents are simply replacing God -- Christian or otherwise -- with constructs of their own. It's quite remarkable that socialism or Marxism -- which are generally hostile to religion or faith, which lay claims to objectivity and reality, and which most global warming adherents are in sympathy with -- should fall into the hands of those who, despite their protestations, are decidedly antagonistic to the openness and dissent that in large part makes science science.

Heckuva Job, Barry

If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?

by Maureen Dowd in the NYT

Top Ten reasons it took Obama 3 days to respond to terror attempt

by William Tate on American Thinker

Barack Obama has received considerable criticism for waiting three days to address the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253. In the holiday spirit of giving, I would like to offer Obama ... the Top 10 excuses Obama can use for why it took him so long to speak up.

10. My teleprompter was on vacation last week.

9. Polishing a Nobel Prize takes longer than you think.

8. It was Bush's fault. (Hey, it worked last year.)

7. The waves here in Hawaii are bitchen, dude.

6. Janet Napolitano said the system worked great, even if I couldn't get email on my Blackberry for a while there.

5. This sort of thing just ain't supposed to happen on my watch.

4. It was Bush's fault.

3. Axelrod never told me I'd have to work holidays.

2. I was busy celebrating Festivus.

And the Number One excuse Obama can give for taking so long to respond to the attempted attack on Northwest Flight 253:

I was busy looking for my birth certificate.

What Recession? Michelle Obama Wears $635 Shoes on $4,000 Per Night Vacation

Barack Obama enjoys living like a king, so why shouldn't Michelle Obama live like a queen?

The First Lady was photographed last night in Hawaii wearing $635 per pair designer shoes by Maison Martin Margiela.

The shoe style is called "Leather open toe flat pumps." It features a "thin nude leather strap across the top of the toe."

A woman lucky enough to have a job in this economy and working for the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour would have to work 88 hours (without taxes taken out) to make enough to pay for Michelle Obama's shoes. If she can get them on sale, they would only set her back $445 for 62 hours work.

The Obamas are staying at an $8.9 million estate for an estimated $4000 per night. To cover the Obama's ten night stay, the minimum wage worker would have to work two-and-a-half years (before taxes) to come up with the $40,000 Obama is reportedly laying out.

Obama has lectured Americans about how they can not expect to live their lives as indulgently as they have in the past. He has lectured businesses about their travel and pay. Yet Obama and his wife live like kings and queens.

The news media has yet to call him out on his extravagance when there is 10% unemployment with no sign of the employment picture improving this coming year.

H/T maggief

Unhealthy Arrogance

What does calling this medical care legislation "historic" mean? It means that previous administrations gave up the idea when it became clear that the voting public did not want government control of medical care. What is "historic" is that this will be the first administration to show that it doesn't care one bit what the public wants or doesn't want.

In short, this is not about the public's health. It is about Obama's ego and his chance to impose his will and leave a legacy.

This is not the only massive legislation to be rushed to passage in Congress and then left to go into effect slowly. The same political formula was used earlier, to pass the "stimulus" bill to spend hundreds of billions of dollars that the government doesn't have-- and that may well amount to more than a trillion dollars when the interest on the debt it creates is added, for this and the next generation to pay off.

Legislation is not the only sign of this administration's contempt for the intelligence of the public and for the safeguards of democratic government.

The appointment of White House "czars" to make policy across a wide spectrum of issues-- unknown people who get around the Constitution's requirement of Senate confirmation for Cabinet members-- is yet another sign of the mindset that sees the fundamental laws and values of this country as just something to get around, in order to impose the will of an arrogant elite.

That some of these "czars" have already revealed their own contempt for the values of American society in the things they have said and done only reinforces the point.

In a sense, this administration is only the end result of a long social process that includes raising successive generations with dumbed-down education in schools and colleges that have become indoctrination centers for the visions of the left. Our education system has turned out many people who have never heard any other vision and who can only learn what is wrong with the prevailing vision from bitter experience.

That bitter experience now awaits them, at home and abroad.

Read the entire article here

Healthcare explained..

We were told we had to do it because of the however many millions of uninsured, yet this bill will leave about 25 million Americans uninsured. On the other hand, millions of young, healthy Americans in their first jobs who take the entirely reasonable view that they do not require health insurance at this stage in their lives will be forced to pay for coverage they neither want nor need. On the other other hand, those Americans who have done the boring, responsible, grown-up thing and have health plans Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid determines to be excessively "generous" will be subject to punitive taxes up to 40 percent.

On the other other other hand, if you're the member of a union that enjoys privileged relations with commissar Reid, you'll be exempt from that 40 percent shakedown.

On the other other other other hand, if you're already enjoying government health care, well, you're 83 years old and, let's face it, it's hardly worth us giving you that surgery for the minimal contribution you make to society, so in the cause of extending government health care to millions of people who don't currently get it, we're going to ration it for those currently entitled to it.

Looking at the millions of Americans it leaves uninsured and the millions it leaves with worse treatment and reduced access and the millions it makes pay significantly more for their current health care, one can only marvel at Mr. Reid's genius: Government health care turns out to be all government and no health care. Adding up the zillions of new taxes and bureaucracies and regulations it imposes on the citizenry, one might almost think that was the only point of the exercise.

by Mark Steyn read it here.

The Big Lie

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once defended the proposition that every statement suggests its opposite. Others have expressed a similar skepticism concerning the trustworthiness of words, especially when those words are not backed by action. From Shakespeare ("The lady doth protest too much, methinks") to Emily Dickinson ("A word is dead/When it is said"), our great writers have always been suspicious of flowery words.

Modern political history offers plenty of examples of words that suggest their opposite. For many who watched the speech, Richard Nixon's insistence that he was "not a crook" immediately heightened the suspicion that he was. Bill Clinton's finger-wagging denial of ever having had "sex with that woman" only whetted public curiosity to find out what he had been doing with that woman.

Taxing and spending may not be sexy, but in fact they are far more scandalous activities than those engaged in by Presidents Nixon and Clinton. They are scandalous because unlike the foibles of his predecessors, Obama's bad judgment will affect the life of every American, including those yet unborn. Unlike the failings of his predecessors, Obama's fiscal recklessness affects what we are and what we shall be for generations. Shall we be a rich and powerful nation with a strong and trusted currency and prosperous markets -- or an unproductive nation dependent on the fiscal dictates of others? Shall we be a nation of affluence and opportunity, or a nation of beggars housed in public shelter, fed with food stamps, heated and clothed with vouchers, educated in dysfunctional schools, and treated within an overcrowded, government-regulated medical system? The choice depends on whether government is able to restrain its spending.

Certainly, Obama wishes to appear to be a fiscally responsible president who will both lower the deficit and hold the line on taxes. He is loud and insistent, even to the point of browbeating opponents, about controlling spending and not raising taxes. But as Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, and Dickinson understood, "not one penny" is one of those phrases meant to disguise the speaker's intention. It is a classic example "the big lie," a falsehood so outrageous that it cannot easily be challenged. It is, in fact, a rhetorical trick to which Obama frequently resorts.

"Raising taxes next year," says the president, "would be the wrong thing to do." Why would it be the wrong thing to do next year if it is necessary in future years? Does it have anything to do with the November election? What about every year after 2010? The American people recognize lawyerly speech when they hear it. As the American people grow weary of Obama's deception, the moment of truth may finally catch up with him. That is the moment when bluster, deception, and denial no longer work.

With each week that passes, the president's assurances that "spending is saving" ring more hollow. At some future press conference, during some tense interview or angry speech, the moment will surely arrive when the president glowers angrily at the camera and insists that "I am not a wastrel." And at that point, everyone in America will know that he is.

From the American Thinker

Have you heard Obama has solved the problem of homelessness in America?

He's going to mandate everyone buy a home!

Read it here.

Healthcare reform? In the not too distant future we are going to be paying 'filet' prices, and eating cat food.

Richard Foster, Chief Actuary for Medicare, issued a report on November 13 documenting the severe impact the bill would have on hospitals.

Americans today enjoy the best, most advanced health care in the world. That is why people come here from socialized medicine systems all over the world, when they are really sick and need the most advanced care. And that is why these other health care systems copy our health care innovations and breakthroughs. This is a key component of the high standard of living Americans have enjoyed.

But that will be gone under this Democrat socialized medicine bill. Instead you will suffer the equal sharing of misery that the Democrats mistake for social justice, as our current system is looted and sacked, with the resources redistributed to where the Democrats think they can buy more votes than by spending huge sums on seriously ill people that need truly advanced medical care to save their lives.

President Obama continues trying to sell his government takeover of health care with the counterintuitive claim that it will reduce health costs. "Anybody who says otherwise simply hasn't read the bills," he said last weekend, a shockingly ridiculous statement given how Congressional Democrats have been hiding the various versions of the bill until springing them just before a vote.

Many other studies now have accumulated to show the same thing. As indicated, younger workers will be hurt the most with their premiums, which they will be required by law to pay, increasing 2 to 3 times. That is because today their health insurance is relatively inexpensive due to their low health costs on average. But the bill would prohibit insurers from continuing to provide this benefit to younger workers, with the increased money from the young, already paying so much for Social Security and Medicare, redistributed elsewhere.

During last year's campaign, President Obama pledged a health reform plan that would reduce health insurance costs by $2,500 per year per family. If health insurance costs soar under his plan instead, wouldn't it be reasonable to ask him to resign for defrauding his way into office?

Notice also that you do not hear President Obama say anymore that if you like your health insurance plan you can keep it. That is because in the face of these soaring costs, employers will have powerful incentives to save substantial costs by dropping their coverage and paying the fines for doing so. The Chief Actuary of Medicare also estimates that 9-10 million seniors will lose their Medicare Advantage plans because of the steep cuts for those plans under the legislation. Would it not be reasonable for those who lose their health coverage under his health plan, contrary to his promises, to ask him to resign?

You can read the whole sad truth here.. most choose not to believe it though. When we all have miserable health care in the future, remember who got us there.

Dubai (an Arab Las-Vegas-without-the-fun)

This should make you think..

Obama’s ‘Cash for Cardigans’ to Cut Carbon Emissions

Posted By Scott Ott On December 15, 2009

(2009-12-15) — President Barack Obama has acknowledged that his new $23 billion weatherization subsidy program will merely slow the leakage of heat from homes.

So today the president introduced what the White House calls “phase II” of an overall program to completely eliminate carbon emissions from residential buildings.


The $37 billion “cash for cardigans” program will help homeowners to pay for sweaters, cardigans, housecoats, even Snuggies (the blanket with sleeves, As Seen on TV), so that they can dial back the thermostat to a setting that would require combustion of fossil fuels “only during the most frigid episodes of global cooling.”

According to experts at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, widespread “bundling up” in the U.S. and U.K. will “unquestionably save island nations from seawater inundation, African nations from utter dessication and polar bears from spontaneous combustion.”

“The data, which we recently misplaced, is irrefutable,” said CRU director Phil Jones, currently on involuntary sabbatical. “By combining carbon-credit trading with weather stripping, vegetarianism, cardigan-wearing, alternate-day respiration, and other simple lifestyle changes, we can stave off the destruction of billions of acres of wildlife habitat, and perhaps save humanity as well.”

Under the Obama “cash for cardigans” program, citizens would receive a one dollar credit toward woolen wear for each degree they reduce their thermostat. The White House said this means a senior citizen, living on a fixed income, could receive a $45 cardigan at no charge, simply by turning the thermostat back to 27 degrees Fahrenheit.

I laughed so hard when I saw this I thought I was having an appendicitis

Honest Leadership??.. Open Government?? oh puleeze.

I thought Obama was going to make the world love us again

HAVANA (AP) - Cuba's foreign minister called President Barack Obama an "imperial and arrogant" liar Monday for his conduct at the U.N. climate conference, a reflection of the communist island's increasingly fiery verbal attacks on the U.S. government.

Bruno Rodriguez spent an hour and a half lambasting Obama's behavior in Copenhagen, telling a news conference, "at this summit, there was only imperial, arrogant Obama, who does not listen, who imposes his positions and even threatens developing countries."

He called the summit "a fallacy, a farce" and said Washington used back-room deals and strong-arm tactics to foist on the world a deal that he labeled "undemocratic" and "suicidal" because it urges - but does not require - major polluters to make deeper emissions cuts.

Read it here.

Obama agrees to 'cap' the global temperature rise

Anyone possessing a personality syndrome which renders capable a belief that world leaders have the power to “cap” the earth’s temperature should not be allowed to serve as president of anything. The U.S. Constitution should be amended to read: “Anyone who believes that he has the ability to cap the earth’s temperature in conjunction with global leaders shall not be eligible to serve as President of the United States. Instead, he shall be remanded immediately for mandatory psychiatric evaluation.”

Nice... read the entire article.

A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve.

60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command-and-control regulation, in which bureaucracy trumps innovation and transfer payments are more important than private investment and individual decisions. In short, the Obama Democrats have chosen change nobody believes in—outside of themselves—and when it passes America will be paying for it for decades to come.


Change Nobody Believes In from the WSJ.