The Obama Administration must go

It's time to put a real cop in charge. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is just not fit for the job, after she claimed "the system worked" in Flight 253 terror incident. Caption & Image Credit: NY Daily News/Brandon AP

The Obama Administration must go

From self-professed Communists to American culture-hating PC malcontents, the administration of this 44th presidency must go.

The latest evidence of how dangerous this administration is to the governance of our country happened on Christmas day and the week-end following the foiled Islamic religion inspired terrorist attack on a Northwest Airlines Flight 253 during the landing phase of its Amsterdam to Detroit journey.

Janet Napolitano, the third Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security since its formation, has absolutely no idea or background in what it takes to protect our country from terrorist threats. Her first comment on the events that led to the failed bombing attempt (detonator break-down on the attempt to ignite $80,000 of explosive sewn into the underwear of Nigerian passenger, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab) was that "One thing I'd like to point out is that the system worked," Napolitano said on CNN. "This was one individual, literally, of thousands that fly and thousands of flights every year," Napolitano continued. "And he was stopped before any damage could be done."

Problem is that nothing in the Homeland security system that Janet Napolitano heads stopped a man, who was pointed out to be a problem to the United States by his father (Abdulmutallab's father, Dr. Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, was a government minister during the 1970s and went on to become the head of the First Bank of Nigeria), from boarding a plane bound for a major United States city with explosives sewn into his underwear. Plain and simple ... the American people were lied to by Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, in an attempt to diffuse the real problem. This Administration does not believe that there really is a war on terror, just criminal acts. Janet Napolitano must go.

This is only the tip of the Obama Administration iceberg of dangerous appointed operatives.

We have all witnessed the trials of Van Jones, Green Jobs Czar appointed by Barack Obama's Senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett ... after it was discovered that he was a "truther" ... but this was not the worst of why Anthony "Van" Jones was dangerous to our country and its administration. He had claimed in his own words that he was a Communist - period.

From legal advisor in the State Department, Harold Koh, former dean of the Law School at Yale University, is an advocate of transnationalism ... to Mark Lloyd, Obama’s FCC diversity czar, who is an open admirer of leftist thug Hugo Chavez in Venezuela for his handling and control of media in Venezuela ... to Obama’s science czar, John Holdren, who advocates for forced abortions, forced sterilization, government control of reproduction, confiscation of babies from families at the whim of the state and elimination of so-called undesirables ... to Cass Sunstein, Obama's regulatory czar. Sunstein believes that hunting should be banned and animals should have the right to sue people and he also believes there should be a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet. Actually, almost all of the Obama Administration is filled with people who have a grudge against the United States and American Culture.

The Obama Administration has to go!

OBAMA-BERNANKE INFLATION - Simple dollar dynamics rears its ugly head

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2009. Last year's winner was then-President-elect Barack Obama. The 2007 winner was Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Other previous winners have included Bono, President George W. Bush, and Amazon.com CEO and founder Jeff Bezos. Image Credit: urbandigs.com

OBAMA-BERNANKE INFLATION - Simple dollar dynamics rears its ugly head

'Tis the season to be jolly, a Christmas season song lyric cajoles, yet all the American public can see is a political system and an economy in complete disarray.

We are treated to an endless menu of Christmas specials on television and, of course, Oprah Winfrey has to weigh in with a fluff piece of an interview that starts off with a contrived impromptu drop by visit with the President and first lady for a chat. In the interview, Barack Obama could not resist the temptation to answer a question about the "grade" he would deserve for the performance of the first eleven months of his time as President of the United States. Most good politicians would beg off answering the question ... but not this Oscar and Nobel awarded political radical. Nope, he had to give himself a B+ ... and went on to say that if he is able to sign a bill (any bill) that addresses health care, he would figure that an A- would be the better and appropriate grade.

Today, the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke was tapped to be on the cover of TIME Magazine as the "Person Of The Year" stating that the economy would be much, much worse if the Fed had not taken such extreme measures to stop the panic. There's a vast difference between 10% and 25% unemployment, between anemic and negative growth.

This begs the question, however, on ... what happens when the leadership of the Federal Government passes legislation (TARP, two Omnibus, and one Stimulus bill totaling about $4 Trillion plus dollars) that open up the spending of future generations of uncollected tax revenues and places this money into an economy that is not producing goods or services to back up or justify the value of these extra dollar bills in circulation?

Too many dollars chasing the once stable prices on goods and services creates a situation where it takes two dollars to match the value of something that was once valued at one dollar when a stable and consistent money supply dictated this as the cost of the good, service and a living profit. Increase the money supply and prices have to be reset to reflect this simple dynamic.

Welcome to the age of Carter's Second Term ... welcome to the age of INFLATION!

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may be running out of room to pump money into the financial markets and cut interest rates to rescue the economy. Image Credit: urbandigs.com

This excerpted and edited from the New York Post -

Economy bubbles up with wholesale inflation
By PAUL THARP, New York Post - Last Updated: 8:52 AM, December 16, 2009

So much for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke telling the country not to worry that zero percent interest rates might spark inflation.

Economists' worst fears were realized yesterday when the Labor Department said wholesale prices climbed a surprising 1.8 percent last month -- double what economists had predicted and the second-biggest November jump in a decade, following the stunning 2.7 percent surge two years ago at the start of the housing collapse.

The government report said factories are saddled with sharply rising energy and materials costs, among other growing expenses. The higher costs could be passed on to factory customers and consumers, analysts said.

The Labor Department also said core inflation, which excludes the major consumer purchases of food and energy, posted its sharpest increase in more than a year at 0.5 percent.

The surprise jump means analysts will pay even closer attention to today's government report on consumer prices, which could help determine whether inflation has spiked enough to undermine the economy's slow recovery.
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Bernanke, meanwhile, told lawmakers the US economy is still too sluggish with lots of "slack" in factory capacity to support any lasting or serious price hikes.

"The bulk of the evidence indicates that resource slack is now substantial," Bernanke said in a written response to a lawmaker's questions. "I continue to expect slack resources, together with the stability of inflation expectations, to contribute to the maintenance of low inflation in the period ahead."
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Some economists believe the Fed will ignore the inflationary red flags.

"The 1.8 percent jump in wholesale prices is a red herring," said economist Paul Dales at Capital Economics. "The Fed is not going to see this as any indication that their actions are triggering higher inflation."
Reference Here>>

We can expect an economy that will end up worse than any experienced during the "progressive-minded" rule of Jimmy Carter.

Anthropogenic Global Warming Scientists, The New “Flat Earth” Society?

Top UN scientists have been forced to admit that natural weather occurrences are having a far greater effect on climate change than CO2 emissions as a continued cooling trend means there has been no global warming since 1998. But despite overwhelming signs of global cooling - China's coldest winter for 100 years and record snow levels across Northeast America - allied with temperature records showing a decline - global warming advocates still cling to the notion that the world is cooling because of global warming! Caption Credit: PrisonPlanet.com Image Credit: blahblahblog

Anthropogenic Global Warming Scientists, the new “Flat Earth” society?

Last week, a hacker revealed that a group of powerful, government-backed European scientists are controlling the results of developing global warming theory, and preventing clear debate or the development of opposing scientific evidence to AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). It appears that certain more objective scientists run the risk --- if they present solid evidence contrary to the popular global warming theories --- realize they run the risk of being made objects of ridicule and marginalized in efforts to gain monies from Governments for research projects designed to discover facts ... that lead to the truth.

So on one side we have the “flat earther” powerful old-world scientists … and on the other side we have the “world is round” scientific-method based researchers who are continuing to discover facts … and thereby, the truth.

Powerful forces within the scientific community have been purposely shaping information in order to bolster a concept that, at best, is speculative and seems designed to lead to one human activity that these people think is perfectly suitable for their point-of-view ... a one-world Government, based upon a socialist model of CONTROL. This CONTROL is initially focusing on calling us to “Save the Earth From Destruction”, since a fear-based program is the only way to get free people to forsake their rights and their freedoms in the concept of climate stabilization and saving humanity from imminent destruction.

South Park's depiction of Al Gore giving a lecture that will give him greater riches through the selling of "Carbon Credits" based upon a flat Earth, AGW paradigm. Image Credit: Malagent

This excerpted and edited National Review Online –

Krauthammer's Take
On the announcement that President Obama will attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen
NRO Staff, Friday, November 27, 2009

Comments From Wednesday's Fox News All-Star Panel:

The global warming science is not junk science, but it's speculative. It's based on incomplete data. It's based on computer models that rest on assumptions — that, in turn, rest on an understanding of how the globe’s climate controls itself — that [are] extremely incomplete.

So its projections are speculative. But it pretends that, of course, that it is the hardest of all sciences and anybody who is skeptical is a denier — using a term used normally about the Holocaust, which is of course an event that actually happened as opposed to projections in global warming, which are speculative science.

So what you see in the [leaked global-warming] emails are people that are on somewhat shaky grounds. It is not as if there is no science at all in this, but there is contradictory evidence, such as the flattening of the rise in temperatures, which they cannot explain.

And their response is either suppression or manipulation or, even worse, the delegitimizing of — the personal attacks on — skeptics in an attempt to write them out of the journals, to get them fired, and all kinds of nasty stuff. … It puts a lot of their research in question.

I think what's interesting about Obama is he is going to be at the U.N. [conference in Copenhagen] to announce the [new] policy about climate change on the basis of — nothing. He is going to be proposing what the House has passed — that he knows is not going to pass in the Senate.

And we are actually a constitutional democracy where the president can't announce a policy unilaterally. It actually has to pass the two houses of the Congress, and our allies abroad know that, and they’re going to look at this announcement he is going to make and think it … extremely strange.
Reference Here>>

The United States has established no formal policy, yet our President, if allowed to do so, will gladly sign away our sovereignty in order to achieve the socialist political objectives of control found in the Copenhagen accords.

Further, scientists and Government forces who choose to use or believe in their conclusions that the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a fact, are no better than previous generations of leaders in their insistence that the Earth is flat. These people should be known from this moment forward as ... "Flat-Earthers"!

From The Free Dictionary:

1) flat-earth·er (flatûrther)
n.

One who stubbornly adheres to outmoded or discredited ideas: "If you don't accept the ideas derived from Adam Smith ... then you are [considered] a flat-earther" (James Fallows).

[From the long-discredited belief that the earth is flat.]

2) flat-earther

n.

Informal - a person who does not accept or is out of touch with the realities of modern life

Paint The Obama Administration With Halliburton Brush Coated With AIG

Officials handling the multibillion dollar bailout of insurance giant American International Group Inc. mismanaged an initial rescue attempt and may have overpaid other banks to wind down AIG's business relationships, a government watchdog says. Image Credit: Mark Lennihan

Paint The Obama Administration With Halliburton Brush Coated With AIG

The facts are surfacing about the activities of Timothy Geithner and his transition into the Obama Administration and the bail-out of AIG.

These facts should have the press take out the Halliburton brush and begin painting the Obama Administration with a healthy coat of AIG.

The reference here is to compare the point of view that the Mainstream Media held with respect to the relationship the Bush Administration had with the exclusive contract bid process they used to engage Halliburton Corporation in providing services on a sub-contract basis in the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With Halliburton, however, the argument can be made that this corporation was unique in being able to provide the services required and the Government did, in fact, receive the services contracted for. The American people got what they paid for.

What did the American people get from the management of its money spent on AIG and how was this effort managed.

For his part, Barack Obama assured us all how the Government would operate in a speech just after the $787 Billion dollar Stimulus Bill was passed by Congress.

With the party-line voting on the stimulus marking a defeat for his push for bipartisanship, Obama shifted focus to something else most un-Washington: making government spending transparent.

"Washington hasn't set a very good example in recent years, and with so much on the line, it's time to begin doing things differently," he said.

"I've tasked my Cabinet and staff to set up the kind of management, oversight, and disclosure that will help ensure that."

Enter (tax-cheat) Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner ... it was revealed today in an article appearing in the Washington Post that he did not negotiate with the AIG corporate primaries, let alone the additional connected web of companies associated with AIG, a discount on the money to be paid to financial institutions to secure their sub-prime portfolio assets in order to save these institutions from collapsing. The taxpayer money committed paid 100% on the value of the assets purchased.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York didn't even try to get a good deal for taxpayers when it caved to demands from AIG's creditors that they should be paid in full. Image Credit: Clusterstock

This excerpted and edited from the Washington Post -

Fed criticized for not negotiating harder with AIG creditors
Inspector general says decisions during bailout 'came with a cost'
By Brady Dennis, Washington Post Staff Writer - Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Federal Reserve officials made only a passing attempt to negotiate discounts from the creditors of American International Group last fall before directing the company to fully pay what it owed on its troubled derivatives contracts, according to a report from the special inspector general overseeing the government's financial rescue program.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who was then the president of the New York Fed, concurred with advisers that it would be impractical to impose losses on AIG's counterparties and that they essentially should be paid at 100 cents on the dollar, the report by special inspector general Neil Barofsky states.
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The government extended an $85 billion loan to AIG in September 2008 as the company struggled to pay obligations related to derivatives contracts at its Financial Products unit. According to Barofsky, that initial loan came with a high interest rate, which "inadequately addressed AIG's long term liquidity concerns, thus requiring further government support."

Later, New York Fed officials agreed to buy tens of billions of dollars worth of complex securities that would allow Financial Products to cancel its most troublesome contracts, and staff members developed talking points that stressed to AIG's trading partners that they were benefiting from the bailouts and asked them to agree to concessions, according to Barofsky.
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Ultimately, AIG's trading partners received more than $62 billion, which many critics have branded as "backdoor bailouts."

In a letter commenting on Barofsky's report, Fed officials called the original AIG loan "appropriate in light of the circumstances at the time." In addition, they argued that the Fed had done what it could in trying to negotiate with AIG's trading partners.

"We believe that the Federal Reserve acted appropriately in conducting these negotiations, and that our negotiating strategy, including the decision to treat all counterparties equally, was not flawed or unreasonably limited," the letter said. It said the Fed actively sought concessions from AIG's counterparties, "but was unable to obtain any such agreements." The officials added that they were wary of using their supervisory authority on behalf of AIG to impose losses on other companies.
Reference Here>>

The American taxpayer got what it paid for ... through the tens of billions of dollars to AIG and its network of companies. A 'still ugly' economy with a group of financial executives that will be giving some of the money they received with their intact multi-million dollar pay bonuses, political contributions to this one-party "CONTROL" Government regime we have three more years (hopefully, only one) to endure.

It is high time to start painting!

The Obama Administration, The EPA, & Free Speech

U.S. EPA attorneys Allan Zabel and Laurie Williams produce a YouTube video (The Huge Mistake Climate Change 2009) and are asked to take it down by the EPA and the Obama Administration [ctrl-click to launch video]. Video Credit: Allan Zabel and Laurie Williams via oversightandreform

The Obama Administration, The EPA, & Free Speech

The short answer ... It is not happening.

This probably isn't surprising to many who are critics of the current leadership of our country, that the Government is actively working against the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights in order to insure that their approach to governance carries the day, but this last week saw the passing of a troubling example of this kind of action and attitude.

A couple of lawyers who work for the Environmental Protection Agency, who are all for the protection and care of the environment and green agenda of the United States, posted a YouTube video voicing their objection to the effort at fashioning legislation that would measure CO2 emission outputs of business activity and set limits on the level of emissions an effort can produce.

This legislation is commonly called "Cap & Trade" where the Government is able to assess penalties on the CO2 emissions produced above the authorized level and thereby make the business effort more expensive to the end products the effort creates which is then reflected in the price to the consumer. This legislation amounts to a backdoor TAX to the purchasing public on all products the Government deems worthy of scrutiny in their CO2 creating activities.

These two lawyers do not believe that this approach of Cap & Trade is not good and a "huge mistake". They argue that the legislation, while making the offense of producing CO2 costly, allows offenders to continue to create emissions without actually reducing or improving the activity that creates the CO2 gas in the first place and makes the activity more costly but OK!

This excerpted and edited from the Washington Post -

EPA tells workers to tone down YouTube clip about climate bill
By David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post Staff Writer - Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Two Environmental Protection Agency lawyers who made a YouTube video calling current climate legislation a "huge mistake" were told by the agency to remove the clip and edit out some references to their employer, one of them said.

Allan Zabel and Laurie Williams, a husband and wife who have worked in the EPA's San Francisco office for more than 20 years, have been outspoken in their opposition to a "cap and trade" system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

That system -- in which companies may buy and sell the right to pollute -- is at the heart of a climate bill passed by the House this summer, and another under consideration in the Senate.

On Oct. 31, the two made their case in an opinion piece in The Washington Post, saying the bill was fatally flawed by the inclusion of unreliable "carbon offsets," and would "lock in climate degradation" instead of solving it.

A few days later, Williams said, they were approached by EPA ethics officials. She said the officials demanded they take down a YouTube video they had posted in September that made many of the same points.

In the video, Zabel says none of their statements should be construed as an official position of the EPA or the Obama administration. But Williams said the EPA wanted them to further play down their federal connections. The officials said they could repost the video, she said, if they removed a mention of the length of their experience at EPA.

Another comment, in which Zabel said he oversees a cap-and-trade system for smog-causing pollutants in California, also had to go, she said. In addition, the agency said they had to take out a photo of the EPA's San Francisco office building.

The EPA cited a federal regulation that says government employees may note their official position when making statements on their own time -- as long as their title is "given no more prominence than other significant biographical details."

Williams said the pair have taken down their video, although it was reposted by an environmental group.
Reference Here>>

China's president, Hu Jintao, meets US President Barack Obama tomorrow. Obama has said that a treaty is unlikely to be ratified at Copenhagen. Delaying a treaty for long enough for the US to sign up might mean that China would be willing to sign up. Image Credit: Kevin Lamarque

Addendum:

This consternation voiced by a couple of committed left bureaucrat lawyers from the EPA may be the reason why President Barack Obama is signaling that the meeting of world leaders on an over-reaching Global Warming agreement next month in Copenhagen ... may be put off.

There is a division in the ranks on the left that Cap & Trade does not go far enough, while on the right, having the President sign away our country's sovereignty in a world governance agreement may not be in the best interest of our nation ... ever!

This excerpted and edited from The Guardian -

Copenhagen climate talks: No deal, we're out of time, Obama warns
Gordon Brown still hopes to salvage climate talks as US rules out binding targets
David Adam, Jonathan Watts and Patrick Wintour - guardian.co.uk, Sunday 15 November 2009 21.36 GMT

Barack Obama acknowledged today that time had run out to secure a legally binding climate deal at the Copenhagen summit in December and threw his support behind plans to delay a formal pact until next year at the earliest.

During a hastily convened meeting in Singapore, the US president supported a Danish plan to salvage something from next month's meeting by aiming to make it a first-stage series of commitments rather than an all-encompassing protocol.

Postponing many contentious decisions on emissions targets, financing and technology transfer until the second-stage, leaders will instead try to reach a political agreement in Copenhagen that sends a strong message of intent.

While this falls short of hopes that the meeting would lock in place a global action plan to replace the Kyoto protocol, it recognises the lack of progress in recent preparatory talks and the hold-ups of climate legislation in the US Senate.
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Britain's climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, tried to put a brave face on Obama's move, insisting it is still possible to reach a broad political agreement on carbon emissions targets, but senior Labour MPs admitted they feared the necessary momentum for a detailed agreement would be sucked from the Copenhagen event if politicians know a deal has been postponed to the next scheduled meeting in Mexico City next year.
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There will now be intense discussions on whether the political agreement at Copenhagen contains any detailed meaningful commitments.
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Obama spoke in support of the proposal, cautioning the group not to let the "perfect be the enemy of the good".

The proposal by Denmark would buy time for the US Senate to pass carbon-capping legislation, allowing the Obama administration to bring a 2020 target and financing pledges to the table at a UN climate meeting in mid-2010.

But there are many other divisions between developed and developing nations that could prolong talks. It was unclear if China, the world's biggest emitter, and other developing countries supported the two-stage plan.
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According to the UK government's former chief scientist Sir David King, these talks are the best chance for the world to agree a new deal. "Once Hu Jintao and Obama agree, I think the rest of the world could fall into place," he told the Guardian. "It's a head of state issue. Obama, through an agreement with Hu Jintao, could be able to deal with some of the concerns of the American population."
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"Copenhagen has come a year too early. There was no way Obama could get this together for December this year," said King. Chinese negotiators have been saying much the same thing in private.
Reference Here>>

Obama As Commander-In-Chief ... From A Law Professor Perspective

President tells Jake Tapper it was important to let the investigation play itself out so the details as to how and why the rampage happened are known before he comments further [ctrl-click to launch video]. Image Credit: ABC News

Obama As Commander-In-Chief ... From A Law Professor Perspective

Yesterday, Jake Tapper of ABC News had a sit down interview with President Barack Obama at the White House that covered many of the pressing issues of the day from the economy (unemployment at 10.2%), the Congress passing its version of a Health Care system overhaul (that included a ban on Federal funding of abortion procedures), Afghanistan and a slow-paced troop build-up, and a small discussion on the mass murder rampage by Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood and its meaning in the face of 9/11, jihad, and acts of terrorism.

One would expect that President Obama, as Commander-In-Chief over all of our American military, would have a profound and decisive response to almost any act that would be damaging to the moral, unity of purpose, and overall readiness of our armed forces. Sadly, Barack Hussein Obam(Mmmm, Mmmmm, Mmmmmm)a's response, and this in light that this Nov. 5 shooting rampage happened 4 days ago, was anything but one that had the steely resolve of a Commander-In-Chief.

No, the response from Barack Obama was one of a Chicago university law professor, ending a discussion where he wanted the students to think of the professor as one burdened with so much knowledge, that a direct and resolved answer would give away too much and spur the students to want to study more.

ABC News is out front on the Fort Hood massacre story. Correspondent Brian Ross is reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Hasan was attempting to contact associates of Al Qaeda [ctrl-click to launch video]. Image Credit: ABC News

This excerpted and edited from ABC News -

Obama: All Necessary Steps Will Be Taken to Prevent Another Tragedy Like Fort Hood
By JAKE TAPPER, KAREN TRAVERS, SUNLEN MILLER and DEVIN DWYER - Nov. 9, 2009

On Tuesday, Obama will attend a memorial service at Fort Hood for the 13 killed in last week's shooting. Today he reiterated that the nation is "heartbroken" by what happened there Thursday, but said there are many questions to be answered.

The president was asked about an ABC News report that intelligence officials learned months ago that Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan had reached out via the Internet to al Qaeda affiliates, and had passed it into military intelligence, though no official actions seem to have been taken. But he wouldn't say directly whether he was concerned that the U.S. government failed to communicate with itself as was seen in the investigation into 9/11.
----
Asked what philosophically separates an act of violence from an act of terrorism, the president said, "I think the questions that we're asking now and we don't have yet complete answers to is, is this an individual who's acting in this way or is it some larger set of actors? You know, what are the motivations? Those are all questions that I think we have to ask ourselves. Until we have these answers buttoned down, I'd rather not comment on it.
Reference Here>>

Obama's statement on May 31, 2009, just hours after George Tiller's death (the assassination of a renowned abortion doctor at the hands of another): "I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."

Why couldn't have Obama issued a statement similar just hours as opposed to days after the murderous act to the statement he issued for the Tiller murder like ... "However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as religious freedom and jihad, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."

As Commander-In-Chief over all of our American military, President Barack Obama has an obligation to lead and protect - not to philosophize over what type of mass murder this act represents ... but to make sure it does not happen again beyond any considerations of Political Correctness.

Obama Administration: Horse Trading For Healthcare Control

Nancy Pelosi couldn’t have announced the new House healthcare reform bill, the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962), with any more pomp and circumstance. It was certainly more impressive than the Senate’s mouse-like rollout, apparently intended to avoid rubbing salt in the Baucus “bipartisanship” wound. H.R. 3962 is definitely a major milestone in attempting to reform our broken system-less healthcare; it’s historic, certainly. But no, it’s not the best our legislators could do. Image Credit: Wikipedia

Obama Administration: Horse Trading For Healthcare Control

Many have said it over these last several months ... "It's the Chicago way." What pundits have been reacting to is the way Barack Obama and the Administration around him negotiate in bad faith in order to get what they want, politically, even when the outcome will create more damage to our Constitutional country than fix the problems they say they are trying to address.

Just this last week, President Obama was able to come to the microphones Friday and tout the fact that he has received the endorsements of some pretty recognizable health care and special interest advocacy groups in the run up to the close approval of the House of Representatives Bill for the radical overhaul of America's health care insurance industry - HR-3962.

This excerpted and edited from The Doc Is In -

Health Care Reform 2009: Why Did the AMA & AARP Back Obamacare?
by Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

Here are the deals:

* The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians’ reimbursements under the current law.

Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5-6 percent reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors and as of this point in time, they have risen to 21 percent. With this leverage as blackmail, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill … or else!

* The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill.

Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.

Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP — which supposedly represents them — will make more money. (If this galls you, join the American Seniors Association, the alternative group; contact sbarton@americanseniors.org. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it).

* The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs.

This represents chump-change to HR-3962's almost $3 trillion projected costs over the next decade. They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S. All it had to do was put its formidable advertising budget at the disposal of the administration.

* Insurance companies get access to 36-40 million potential new customers.

When the Senate Finance Committee lowered the fine that would be imposed on those who don’t buy insurance from $3,500 to $1,500, the insurance companies jumped ship and opposed the bill, albeit for the worst of motives - so the fine stood.

The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the Medical Device Makers (MDM). They stood on principle and wouldn’t go along with Obama’s blackmail strategy for an endorsement. The Senate Finance Committee reacted to this stance by imposing a tax on the MDM marketplace targeting medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stents, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accouterments and consumables of healthcare.
Reference Here>>

So, these endorsements were not freely given, but were bought and paid for by an administration that is intent on passing its "Control of Healthcare" program at any cost. This is not the American way, you know, for the good of the country ...

... It's the Chicago way!

Welcome to the new, and improved Carter's Second Term.