Obama came in during a rough time but he needs to quit whining
We inherited the worst situation since the Great Depression.
That is the reflexive response of President Obama to the troubles from which he has been unable to extract his country.
Even before the inauguration, he says, there were projections of a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009. That deficit is not my deficit.
Presidents are usually blamed for deficits run while they are in office. But, in fact, presidents do not write budgets. Congress does. Presidents sign them. And the mammoth deficits of 2008 and 2009 came from budgets approved by a Congress run by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Did Sen. Barack Obama vote against those budgets?
As for the troubles he inherited, the president has a point. From day one, he has had to deal with two wars, a financial crisis and an economy careening into recession.
But Harry Truman inherited two great wars, an atom bomb and an ally, Joseph Stalin, about to dishonor his commitments and enslave half of Europe.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 23% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-three percent (43%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20. For President Obama, the Approval Index has been lower only once (see trends).
Data for these updates is collected via nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, just one-third of the interviews for today’s update were collected following the President’s health-care summit. Sunday morning will be the first update based entirely upon interviews conducted after the summit.
By a 46% to 29% margin, Democrats say it would be better for workers if they were dropped from their employers health insurance coverage and enrolled in a government plan. Republicans and unaffiliated voters disagree. Voters are divided on support for a “public option.”
Fifty percent (50%) see China as a long-term threat to the United States.
Overall, 44% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. That matches the lowest level of total approval yet measured for this President. Fifty-five percent (55%) disapprove.
The SEIU lobbyist president will sit on the Deficit Commission that’s just great
President Barack Obama has appointed Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andrew Stern to a new commission tasked with coming up with recommendations to help reduce the federal deficit. While disappointing, this is not surprising. Stern’s appointment is merely the culmination of a series of appointments by the Obama administration of individuals closely associated with SEIU to government posts.
These include Patrick Gaspard, a former vice president for politics and legislation for SEIU Local 1199, a giant New York health care workers union, who was named White House political director following Obama’s election, and SEIU Treasurer Anna Burger, who was named to Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Then there’s former SEIU associate general counsel Craig Becker, whose nomination to the National Labor Relations Board failed in a Senate cloture vote.
Stern himself, according to White House visitor logs released in November, visited the White House at least 22 times in 2009, making him the most frequent visitor during that time (the Alliance for Worker Freedom has filed a request for an investigation of Stern for possible lobbying disclosure violations, including during those visits).
This access hasn’t come easy. SEIU has invested heavily in politics. In 2008, it was the seventh biggest campaign donor, with nearly all of its contributions going to Democrats, according the the Center for Responsive Politics. Stern told The Las Vegas Sun in May 2009: “We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama — $60.7 million to be exact — and we’re proud of it.”
Sometimes, when a speaker tries telling a story to illuminate a point they want to make, they end up illuminating themselves more than any moral of their tale. Barack Obama fell into that trap yesterday during the health-care summit when he tried to argue that some insurance policies are not equal. As if that wasn’t obvious enough, President Obama then made it clear that he doesn’t get it at all. Greg Hengler captures the moment for Townhall:
Why would they have laughed at a Harvard graduate who tried to file a claim? Because Obama hadn’t bought collision insurance. The only insurance drivers in most states have to carry is liability insurance, to cover damage they do to the cars of other drivers. Obama explained in this clip that he only bought the legal minimum, not collision or comprehensive, which would have covered his damage. When people buy insurance, it’s made very clear exactly what it covers. Most drivers can understand it … even the Harvard Law grads. That may have been why “Acme” laughed when Obama attempted to file a collision claim when he hadn’t bothered to buy that policy.
One more point: a rear-end collision is almost universally presumed to be the fault of the driver who hits the rear end of the other. Obama should have been calling that driver’s insurance company … if this actually ever happened at all.
Open wide: ObamaCare is about to be shoved down your throat.
As the dust settles after the seven-hour Obama talk-a-thon called the health care summit, it is obvious that Obama never intended to actually listen, or consider compromise despite America’s desire for just that.
Americans don’t like ObamaCare for simple reasons. It doesn’t treat Americans equally. Because of the special deal for Louisiana, the $600 million hospital in Connecticut and the Medicare Advantage protections for some Florida seniors while it is cut for others is unequal treatment, and it is wrong.
America is broke and cannot afford another trillion dollars in new entitlement spending. It will destroy your freedom to determine your own health care and treatments.
Within minutes of the summit, Politico reported, “Democrats plan to begin making the case next week for a massive, Democrats-only health care plan…A Democratic official said the six-hour summit was expected to ‘give a face to gridlock, in the form of House and Senate Republicans.’ Democrats plan to begin hear, and perhaps legislative, steps toward the Democrats-only, or reconciliation, process early next week, the strategists said.”
Senators call reconciliation the nuclear option. Rush Limbaugh says it’s “a suicide pact.” The traditions of the United States Senate will end with this tyrannical manipulation of Senate rules un-witnessed previously in American history.
Why call it a “suicide pact?” Simply put, the American people have overwhelmingly said “no” to ObamaCare, and Democrats don’t care. They’re sneaking around behind closed doors, cutting deals, breaking the rules, threatening legislative trickery and making a mockery of our legislative process and traditions, and they don’t care.
And yes, the fix is already in. In the coming days, Nancy Pelosi will attempt to pass Harry Reid’s Senate version of ObamaCare in the House of Representatives and she’ll overcome liberal objections to the Senate version of ObamaCare by promising her fellow liberals that those objections will be resolved when the Senate amends ObamaCare through legislative reconciliation a process that will take a filibuster off the table.
ObamaCare being passed could end political careers and the Democrat party’s majority in Congress, and they still don’t care.
Why don’t they care? They don’t care because Obama, Pelosi and Reid are hard-core ideologues on a personal mission to transform the United States into a socialist country and they’re not going to let anything including the American people stand in their way.
Obama believes in the nanny-state. He actually believes that the United States would be a much better place if he simply had the power to tell you what to do, how much of your money you can keep, where you can live, where you can work, where your children can go to school. In short, he wants control over every aspect of your life.
And, as with his effective takeover of the banks and the auto industry and his plans to institute so-called Cap-and-Trade legislation, ObamaCare is a pivotal aspect of their plan to achieve that goal. If they can tell you and your family what kind of health care you are allowed to receive, whether you live or die, Obama, Pelosi and Reid have won a major battle in their quest to control you.
The Obama strategy is clear. The summit was, as Dick Morris told us, “designed to fail” … it was nothing more than a ruse and a stall.
Calling the summit gave Obama and Pelosi and Reid time to plot the resurrection of ObamaCare behind the scenes and it gave Obama a weak and pathetic excuse to paint Republicans as “obstructionists” and “justify” what was coming the whole time, an attempt to steam-roller Republican objections through legislative shenanigans and shove ObamaCare down our throats.
Naive Republicans fell for the trap. Desperate to avoid the accusation that they were “obstructionist,” they gave Barack Obama all the ammunition he needed to do just that. And to make matters worse, they are totally oblivious to the fact that the American people desperately want them to obstruct ObamaCare.
That’s why we can’t wait for our political leaders to draw a line in the sand. They’re so out of touch, they simply won’t do what needs to be done. That’s why it’s up to us, the American people, to win this battle. If the tide is to be turned, it will come as a result of unprecedented action by citizens demanding members of Congress listen.
ObamaCare stinks of corrupt politics, which Americans hate. The fix is in, but if America’s citizenry roars loud enough, the tide can be turned.
President Obama pledged to "listen" at the outset of his much-ballyhooed bipartisan health care summit on Thursday. Turns out he meant he’d be listening to his own voice.
By the end of the televised event, Mr. Obama had spoken for 119 minutes – nine minutes more than the 110 minutes consumed by 17 Republicans. The 21 Democratic lawmakers used 114 minutes, giving the president and his supporters a whopping 233 minutes, according to a "talk clock" kept by GOP aides.
From the beginning, no one could agree on anything, even how much time each side had used. When a miffed Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, pointed out early on that Democrats had controlled 52 minutes to Republicans’ 24, Mr. Obama jumped in to dispute even that.
The Top Marine rightly opposes Obama’s radical changes
The head of the US Marines said on Thursday he opposed ending the ban on gays serving openly in the military, the first top officer to break openly with President Barack Obama over the issue. General James Conway told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he disagreed with Obama’s plan to repeal the ban.
"My best military advice to this committee, to the (defense) secretary, and to the president would be to keep the law such as it is."
Conway said the current policy worked and any bid to lift the ban should answer the question: "do we somehow enhance the war fighting capabilities of the United States Marine Corps by allowing homosexuals to openly serve?"
Conway’s public rejection of his commander-in-chief’s stance is sure to fuel debate in Congress on the issue and reflects apprehension among some senior military officers about changing the 1993 law.
An attorney whose legal brief in a case challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility revealed a Supreme Court can remove an ineligible chief executive now has released an analysis confirming that if Obama isn’t eligible, he could be charged under a number of felony statutes.
And that’s just on the federal level; any state charges would be in addition, as would charges against individuals who may have helped him in the commission of any of the acts, according to Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation.
Kreep has been involved in several of the cases that have raised challenges to Obama’s occupancy of the Oval Office, including two in California. One is on appeal in the state court system and names California Secretary of State Debra Bowen as defendant. The other, in the federal court system, is on appeal before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Both make claims on behalf of individuals and political candidates in California over Obama’s presence on the 2008 election ballot.
Barack Hussein Obama has come under much scrutiny ever since his rise to national prominence as the Democratic National Committee nominee, and his election in November of 2008, as to whether or not he is a naturally born citizen of the United States. He produced, in 2009, a certification of live birth issued by the state of Hawaii. This, however, is not definitive evidence of birth in Hawaii, nor of being a natural born citizen. This has done little to quiet those who question Mr. Obama’s eligibility for the office President of the United States of America (herein after referred to as POTUS).
Currently, there are cases filed in both the federal courts and many state courts seeking to compel Barack Obama to produce evidence of his citizenship, and, in the case of his noncompliance of production of valid citizenship papers, to have the electoral votes in his favor nullified.
Assuming, for the purposes of this memo, that Mr. Obama is found to be ineligible, he could face a number of civil and criminal penalties. Potential federal criminal charges are as follows:
The Obama administration may expand efforts to ease the housing crisis by banning all foreclosures on home loans unless they have been screened and rejected by the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program.
The proposal, reviewed by lenders last week on a White House conference call, “prohibits referral to foreclosure until borrower is evaluated and found ineligible for HAMP or reasonable contact efforts have failed,” according to a Treasury Department document outlining the plan.
“It is one of the many ideas under consideration in the administration’s ongoing housing stabilization efforts,” Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said in an e-mail. “This proposal has not been approved and there are no immediate planned announcements on the issue.”
She confirmed the authenticity of the document, which hasn’t been made public.
Obama came in during a rough time but he needs to quit whining 
The SEIU lobbyist president will sit on the Deficit Commission that’s just great
Obama mostly just lectures at the summit
The Top Marine rightly opposes Obama’s radical changes
If Obama is found to have committed fraud
