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There’s a reason, and it’s not what you think

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Keeping Obama entertained

Moe Lane of Redstate brings us this gem, which once again highlights the Obama administrations ineptitude when dealing with the media, including the media that put Obama in the White House:

Executive summary: David Axelrod conference-called lefty bloggers to beg for their help in the November elections (because they’ve been ever so useful so far in the 2010 election cycle); and apparently the lefty bloggers are feeling quite aggrieved and put-upon for being called upon to do as they’re bid. One even went so far to as to categorize the entire interaction between the Democratic establishment and the netroots in furtive, sexually shameful terms (one hopes that this… no, that’s too vicious a comment to make); apparently, this is something that happens often enough that it has the name of ‘hippie

The point the bloggers were making is how the White House publicly criticizes liberal bloggers from Robert Gibbs’ White House briefing room pulpit, but then quietly asks them to support the President and Democrats up for reelection this fall.

Things got ugly on the call between Axelrod and liberal bloggers when blogger Susan Madrak, apparently frustrated with Robert Gibbs recent accusations of liberal bloggers being too critical of the White House, shouted out “you want us to help you, the first thing I would suggest is enough of the hippie punching,” Madrak added. “We’re the girl you’ll take under the bleachers but you won’t be seen with in the light of day.”

In typical Chicago tough guy fashion, Axelrod proceeded to mix it up with Madrak, and when Axelrod attempted to minimize her concerns she stated, “Don’t make our jobs harder”, to which Axelrod replied “Right back at’cha. Right back at’cha.”

This type of exchange, and more importantly treatment of the very people that helped perpetrate the fraud that was “Hope and Change” on the American people, is all too common coming from the members of Obama’s inner circle.   They believe that they are so skillful that the “close of the moment” given today, will overcome the “bash of the moment” they handed out yesterday or last week.

The Obama administration has gotten away with it up to this point, because Obama is THEIR guy.  The liberal blogoshpere and media put him in the White House, foregoing the duty of reporting the truth, in order to get a far-left, liberal President in the White House.  Now, they find themselves with the dilemma of continuing to blindly support the man they elevated to President, or report the truth regarding his broken promises and failed policies.

Axelrod, Gibbs and company clearly believe that when push comes to shove, or hippie punching as we now know it, that the liberal blogosphere and MSM will continue blindly support President Obama’s agenda.  All they have to do is command their servants in the media to promote the party Obama line.

To quote Sarah, “How’s that hopey changey thing working out for you?”

Our friends at the Gateway Pundit bring us this story of how far the President’s star has fallen:

Over at the left-wing Daily Beast, Gail Sheehy has a story that should make every Obamaite tremble in fear of November 2. As Sheehy reports it, in New York President Obama couldn’t even fill a room that holds 650 even though they slashed the ticket prices from $500 to $100 a person to get in.

On the 22nd Obama appeared in New York for a fundraiser but organizers found that attendees were harder to come by than ever. As Sheehy points out, this is six weeks before the elections. Less than two months and Democrats can’t garner enough enthusiasm to sell 650 tickets to see the president up close and personal.

Sheehy goes on to say that even after cutting the ticket price to $100 and sending out repeated email blasts begging Obama supporters to show up, the organizers only managed to get 450 people to show up in a room setup to hold 650 people.  Of the 450, a number of them were there to protest President Obama.

In addition, poor attendance resulted in the fund-raising dinner with President Obama later that evening to be slashed to the bargain price of $15,000 a plate, which is far less than the $30,000 a plate fund-raising dinner that he held not that long ago.

At last week’s CNBC Town Hall, an Obama supporter told the President that she and others were tired and worn out from defending him, and asked when they would see the change he promised.  This week the President only manages to fill 2/3 of a 650 person room in New York City.

The question isn’t how far has the President’s star fallen, it’s how much farther will it fall.

This week we get the news that some health insurers have decided to stop offering child-only plans due to cost and Obamacare regulation compliance issues.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air explains:

Most of us outside of the White House understood that by forcing insurers to take on more risk while pressuring them to keep prices down, we would either see insurers stop offering certain policies or go out of business altogether.  ObamaCare advocates kept insisting that we had to help the children by proceeding apace with their government takeover of the industry.  The result?  Suffer the children:

Some of the country’s most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23.

The companies will continue to cover children who already have child-only policies. They will also accept children with preexisting conditions in new family policies.

Critics blast the insurers for their “immoral” decision, but they had little choice.  The federal government mandate requires them to accept any child at any time, regardless of any pre-existing condition, but doesn’t yet require parents of healthy children to buy policies for them.

There is a commercial out there that starts “this is the biggest no brainer since…” and I think that’s an appropriate phrase to use here.  Anyone that claimed this would not happen, or couldn’t have been foreseen, either had their head buried in the sand or have chosen to intentionally mislead others.

The very concept of insurance and risk pools has been ignored in the abomination law known as Obamacare.  Unless your goal is to drive insurance companies out of business (can you say single payer system?), it is not reasonable to tell insurance companies to increase coverage (no pre-existing conditions, no life time limits, etc.), but then tell them they can’t increase costs.

As opposed to the individual mandate as many Americans are, the reality is that the ONLY way that requirements such as no lifetime coverage limits and no pre-existing conditions can possibly work is to require every one in America to purchase coverage.  However, as the Obamacare law was designed to win elections in the November 2010 elections and get Obama re-elected in 2012, Pelosi, Reid and company chose to implement ‘benefits’ just before the mid-term elections, but wait until after the 2012 Presidential election to implement the unpopular aspects like the individual mandate.

Nancy Pelosi famously said that we have to pass the bill to know what’s in it, but the fact is that even now that it’s passed, most Congressmen and American citizens have not read the bill, and don’t know what’s in it.  More importantly, they still don’t understand the negative ramifications of the bill.

Foolishly, most Americans assume that Congressmen actually READ the bills they are voting on and no what’s in it BEFORE they vote on it.  Silly us.

Politico recently reported that NO Democratic incumbents are using health care as one of the platforms they are running on for reelection.  What is supposed to be the crowing achievement of the Democratic party.  A decades old goal that has finally been reached.  The “this one’s for Teddy” accomplishment that will bring America in line with the rest of the civilized world.  Yet, not ONE single Democrat is running on the fact that they passed Obamacare.

The question of why, has to be asked.  Is it because they still haven’t read the bill and don’t want to be caught off guard by questions from voters who actually have read the bill?  Is it because they finally read the bill and realize that it contains a LOT of bad stuff that will raise costs and not keep their promise of “if you like your health care plan you can keep it”?  Is it because premiums are already going up for individuals and small businesses, due to the provisions of the law that go into effect next month?

Maybe it’s because roughly 2/3 of Americans aren’t in favor of the law.  Possibly, it’s because while Democrats took political cover by falsely claiming it would reduce the deficit, but now enough real data (including the docfix that they delayed to get a falsely positive CBO score) has come out to prove that it is far from a deficit reducing law.

Regardless of the reason, Democrats are running away from Obamacare as fast as they can as they campaign for reelection.  That should tell you something.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey explains how the administrations attempt to front load the ‘good’ stuff in the bill to garner support, has actually already begun to backfire:

After the polls showed that the newly-passed ObamaCare bill remained deeply unpopular with voters, the Obama administration reshuffled the rollout in order to convince Americans what a great deal they would get.  By “front-loading” the most popular provisions to make them effective immediately, the White House hoped that the momentum would shift to support for the one legislative achievement of Barack Obama’s turn — or at least neutralize its negative influence.  Instead, ObamaCare remains as unpopular as ever, and the bill will come due just before the midterms:

Health insurers say they plan to raise premiums for some Americans as a direct result of the health overhaul in coming weeks, complicating Democrats’ efforts to trumpet their signature achievement before the midterm elections.

Aetna Inc., some BlueCross BlueShield plans and other smaller carriers have asked for premium increases of between 1% and 9% to pay for extra benefits required under the law, according to filings with state regulators.

These and other insurers say Congress’s landmark refashioning of U.S. health coverage, which passed in March after a brutal fight, is causing them to pass on more costs to consumers than Democrats predicted.

Even though the bill has passed, which according to Madam Pelosi should allow us to know what’s in it, a dirty secret that most still don’t understand is the incredible control that HHS will have of their health care.  Almost all aspects of insurance, and as a result insurance costs and covered (or not covered) treatments, will be dictated by HHS regulations.  HHS will dictate what insurance plans must contain.  HHS  will dictate how much an insurance company can charge.  HHS will determine whether or not you can keep the plan that you have and like, and CBO analysis shows that the vast majority of Americans will NOT be able to keep the plan they have, even if they like it — contrary to what President Obama promised.

If Democrats believed so strongly in Obamacare that they had no qualms about using parliamentary tricks and dirty politics to get it passed into law, why are they hiding from it now that they are trying to get re-elected?

We all know that every time we purchase a new car, or new home appliances, that the new ones are more energy efficient than the old ones.  The only problem is that the cost savings often don’t justify the cash we have to lay out to get the new energy efficient models.  The same is true with businesses.

In many cases, when a businesses makes capital investments to upgrade a plant to make it more productive, a by product of that is replacing old, energy sucking, environment-polluting equipment with newer, more efficient, greener varieties.  However, like the consumer, it can be difficult to justify the capital outlay.

Christopher Horner of Big Government explains how President Obama’s plan to allow businesses to accelerate their deductions for capital expenditures will not only help the economy, but also help his green agenda:

The logic is simple and the Dutch actually showed (again, accidentally) how this works to reduce emissions: business do not replace capital equipment as early or often as they might like because the tax code disincentivizes it, with depreciation schedules instead of treating it like other business expenses. They therefore postpone purchasing newer, more efficient (and typically more energy efficient) equipment.

Change that, and they will pull through new technology into use.

In a way that is moving investments forward, a la cash for clunkers. But in other ways it is just smart and the right thing to do.

Here’s the downside: yes, you get emission reductions and not by harming economic growth, but actually encouraging it. However, the political class do not get to reward their constituencies with cap-n-trade wealth transfers from you and me to them, don’t increase the cost of energy, and obtain no new control over our lives.

And as many of you know, that is the whole point behind the scheme urgently needed to combat “climate change” (why not continental drift?) that actually would have no detectable impact, according to anyone, on climate.

It will be interesting to see if the President promotes this as helping America move to a greener economy, or if instead shies away from that type of statement.  While if he was true to his convictions about reducing carbon emissions and having a greener economy, he would embrace this type of change without mandate, the tax credits have two major flaws when viewed by his liberal base:  first, they will be seen as pro-business by his base who believe corporations should pay more tax, not less.  Second, it fails to redistribute wealth, which is one of the main goals of cap and trade, or cap and tax as many call it.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air breaks down the surprising Washington Post/ABC poll:

Three months ago, the WaPo/ABC sample had a nine-point Democratic advantage in the partisan split, with a D/R/I of 34/25/38.  Today’s poll has a D/R/I among registered voters of 31/26/37, with a five-point advantage still being too high and both Democrats and Republicans slightly underrepresented.  Both Rasmussen and Gallup this year have the actual partisan gap at a single point.

…

Obama’s 46/52 is the first underwater rating of his term in office from the Post/ABC poll, which shows readers what creative sampling can do.  He’s been underwater on the economy for most of the year, though, with a term-low 41/57 at the moment.  His numbers haven’t changed much on the deficit or on Iraq, despite his Oval Office speech on the latter.  He gets a 49/45 for following the Bush playbook, from 48/42 in July — hardly an improvement.

In April, WaPo/ABC showed that 39% believed that Obama’s economic policies were making the economy better, while 26% said they were making it worse, and 32% believed they had no effect. In the most recent poll, 30% said they were making the economy better, 33% making it worse, and 36% believe that Obama’s economic policies and hundreds of billions of dollars spent have had no effect on the economy.

In addition to showing failing support for President Obama and his economic policies, there was bad news for Democrats with the mid-term elections less than two months away.

• 40% of registered voters say they have move confidence in Democrats and 38% say they have more confidence in Republicans.  Three months ago Democrats had a 12 point margin. (note, this polls was heavily weighted in favor of registered Democrats)
• 47% of voters said they would vote for the Republican in their Congressional district, and 45% said Democrat.  However, when looking at those that said they were likely to vote, the numbers favored Republicans 53%/40%.
• 55%/39% voters say they would rather have Republicans in control to keep Obama in check, rather than Democrats in charge of Congress to support the President’s agenda — this gap is double what it was three months ago.

The American people clearly no longer believe in the President’s message of hope and change.   After 20 months of hearing the President blame George Bush and the Republicans for everything that goes wrong, even though Democrats have controlled Congress for four years and they had a near unprecedented super majority for Obama’s first year in office, voters are no longer buying what President Obama is selling.  Promise after promise has been broken, from campaign promises about being the most transparent administration ever to not raising taxes on those making less than $200,000 to unemployment not going above 8% if his union-endorsed spending stimulus bill was passed.

People are growing weary of the Campaigner in Chief who relies on the Teleprompter in Chief , and who has failed to become the Commander in Chief and lead this country in a time of great need.

It's good to be the King

Here’s some more commentary on President Obama’s continued spending orgy.

While millions of Americans can’t find a job, millions more have given up looking, and millions more are struggling to keep their homes out of foreclosure, President Obama is living the high life.  Sending his wife to vacation in Spain at the tax payer’s expense, taking family vacations in Florida and Cape Cod, choosing golf over visits to the Gulf oil disaster, and taking Michelle to New York for ‘date night’, all while telling us we need to be more frugal.

Apparently, it’s good to be the King.

We now know that the summer of recovery actually was a description of his multiple family vacations and many rounds of golf with his fat cat buddies  Now that President Obama has ‘recovered’, he’s ready to spend more of your hard earned dollars.  Even though roughly a third of the $800+ billion of his first failed stimulus bill is still unspent, President Obama is pushing for a new $50 billion spending spree.  Doctor Zero details it:

President Obama “unveiled” his new “stimulus” plan in Wisconsin today.  It was a lot like watching an alcoholic unveil his new plan to get sober by switching to lite beer:

We’re going to “fire up sluggish economic growth” by plowing another fifty billion deficit dollars into roads, rail, and airports?  It’s hard to believe even the American media would be lazy enough to write such a headline with a straight face.

Does anyone seriously think our economy is just waiting for another fifty billion dollars’ worth of roads to come roaring back to life?  I guess business owners have all sorts of property staked out for new factories and shops.  They’re just waiting for someone to build roads leading to them.  Does all of this Administration’s economic knowledge come from playing “Sim City” computer games?

…

The Administration assures us its little espresso shot of new stimulus spending will be revenue neutral, paid for by “ending tax breaks for oil and gas companies.”  Oh, that’s just wonderful. Those tax hikes on oil and gas will be passed directly along to the consumer, in addition to hindering investment in the development of new energy resources.  The last thing a fragile, recessionary economy needs is an increase in energy costs.  I’m all in favor of tax simplification, but it has to be across the board.  Adding another few thousand pages to our ridiculous tax laws, to target unpopular companies for cash to fund more pork spending, plays up the worst aspects of a dysfunctional system.

The Obama plan:  Increase spending and debt until the point it is declared unsustainable, and then claim the only option is to raise taxes on corporations and the rich.

The result, businesses are not expanding due to concerns of looming tax increases, which means they also aren’t hiring.  No growth in hiring, means no growth in spending, which results in a floundering economy as confirmed by the recent falling GDP numbers.

Now, with hundreds of billions of unspent stimulus dollars, President Obama wants to spend another $50 billion in infrastructure spending which accomplishes two things, neither of which is economic growth:  first, it provides an excuse to raise taxes on energy companies; second, it let’s them put up more pretty signs around the country advertising how the Dem spending orgy is helping YOU, which they hope will overshadow 20 months of bungled administration policies and avoid a Democratic blood bath in November.

Does anyone really believe that after President Obama promised unemployment would stay below 8% if his first stimulus bill was passed (the one written in large part by union special interest groups), and after he promised the summer of recovery would turn the economy around, that now his latest spending bill will “fire up sluggish economic growth” as he claims?

So, is this really change you can believe in?

The only problem is that the first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem.  Unfortunately for America, President Obama hasn’t reach the stage of accepting he has a spending problem.   So, the Democratic spending orgy is set to continue.

Ed Morrisey of Hot Air nicely sums up the latest round of spending the President is pushing:

What happens when over a hundred billion dollars in borrowed cash gets plunged into infrastructure spending and it fails to kick-start the economy?  According to this administration, spend another $50 billion on the same failed policy.  Barack Obama will unveil his new economic stimulus plan in Wisconsin today, while Russ Feingold looks for a place to hide:

US President Barack Obama unveils plans Monday to spend at least 50 billion dollars to expand and renew US roads, railways and airports, in a fresh bid to fire up sluggish economic growth.

Obama, under intense pressure over November’s mid-term congressional elections in which his Democrats fear heavy losses, was set to make the announcement in a speech in Wisconsin, an official said. …

A White House official said that the “bold” infrastructure plan will be front loaded and make significant investments in the first year, in a bid to stimulate the sagging economy and boost jobs growth.

While some don’t think another stimulus can pass before the mid-term elections, Morrisey isn’t so sure.  He points out that stimulus bills like this are a way for Congressmen to get pork for their states and districts, and “showing the pork” might be the only thing that can get some Democrats re-elected this fall.

The fact that $100 billion has already been spent on infrastructure as part of the Democrat’s massive $800+ billion stimulus bill last year and that it did nothing to create sustained job or economic growth doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the President’s decision to spend some more of your money — to create more debt for your children and grand children.

It’s important to see this for what it is, an attempt to win votes for Democrats in the fall.  Even Vice President Biden admitted that they had structured the first massive spending stimulus bill to spend the most money and create the most jobs in the first half of this year — well over a year after it was passed.  It was to be part of their now infamous recovery summer, which would so enthrall the masses that they would line up at the polling stations in November and vote to re-elect the Democrats that created this economic nightmare we are suffering through.

Unfortunately, as has been the case time and time again, the Obama administration underestimates the intelligence of the American people.   All indications are that come November he will find out just how badly he has underestimated their intelligence.

The age of changing the way Washington works and the most transparent White House ever, appear to be as fictitious as the claims that no one earning under $250,000 will see one dime of a tax increase, the health care debate will be televised on CSPAN, and that there would be no lobbyists hired by the Obama administration.   How Fleetwood Mac put it?  Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies…

Ultra liberal Helen Thomas has railed against President Obama’s attempt to control the press saying that even “Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try… I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well–for the town halls, for the press conferences,” she said. “It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.”

There is no better example than the way Robert Gibbs has not only refused for months to answer questions about the alleged Sestak bribe, but has also mocked the media that has asked him to explain Sestak’s claim that he was offered a job to drop out of the Senate race.  It’s the same level of arrogance displayed up and down the Obama administration, from Gibbs, to Axelrod, to Emanuel, to the President.

Dick Morris says that the Administrations arrogance and disregard for the law could be in for a rude awakening through something called universal jurisdiction:

The Pennsylvania Attorney General, Tom Corbett — who is the Republican nominee for Governor this year — has ample jurisdiction to convene a grand jury to get to the bottom of the scandal and answer the key questions:

1. Who offered a job to Sestak?
2. What job was proffered?
3. And did the president know of the offer?

Corbett’s jurisdiction stems from the concept of universal jurisdiction, now accepted virtually everywhere…  This principle gives jurisdiction to law enforcement in the place wherever any act occurred that may have resulted in a crime.

Thus, if Cong. Sestak was in one of his homes, in PA or VA, when he received a telephone call offering him a job if he withdrew from the PA Senate primary against Sen. Arlen Specter, law enforcement authorities in PA and VA — both of which have Republican state Attorneys General — can subpoena Cong. Sestak to testify before a state grand jury and compel him to answer the who, what, when, and where that everyone has a right to know.

The people of the United States and, particularly the people of Pennsylvania, want these questions to be answered honestly.  They will not settle for a Democratic stonewall that refuses to let the truth emerge.

After months of stonewalling, Robert Gibbs said on Sunday that “nothing inappropriate” took place.  If that was the case, then why did the White House refuse for months to answer questions about Sestak’s claim?  Why has the Obama controlled justice department failed to open an investigation and prove that nothing inappropriate took place?  Guilt? Arrogance? Contempt for the law?  Take your pick, but the end result is the same.  An allegation of serious misconduct has been made and the White House has ignored all requests to explain what took place with Joe Sestak.

It remains to be seen whether or not Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett chooses to investigate the alleged attempt to influence an election by bribery, because the Obama justice department has refused to do their job.

Either way, this story is likely not going away any time soon, and the arrogance that Robert Gibbs and the rest of the Obama administration has shown on this matter likely isn’t helping stop Obama’s free-fall in the polls.

Update: Shortly after posting this, I read on Hot Air that there are allegations that the White House offered other candidates jobs to drop out of races.  Specifically, that Andrew Romanoff was offered a job to drop out of the Colorado Senate race against Michael Bennett:

The White House denied it at the time, natch, but the Post cited “several top Colorado Democrats” for corroboration. Just wondering: How many of these strangely similar allegations, any or all of which could conceivably violate federal law, are needed before Eric Holder decides it’s worth taking a closer look? That’s not to say anything will come of it — Michael Mukasey, Bush’s AG, explained to Dave Weigel today how easy it is to phrase these offers in a way that makes them hard to prosecute — but surely it’s worth finding out what, precisely, was said. In fact, Mukasey himself called for a special prosecutor. How about it, champ?

The last month has been no different, when he attacked Arizona’s attempt to curb the out of control illegal immigration that is bankrupting that state, along with focusing on attacking BP as yet another greedy business who will be kept in check by the President’s foot on their throat.  He’s repeatedly attacked corporate America and large financial institutions, and acts surprised when the stock market remains skittish and on the verge of another crash.

President Obama, time and again, tries to ride the populous wave, attacking whatever group he thinks will play best with American voters, regardless of whether their are any grounds for his attacks, or whether he has even read a short 16 page bill that he keeps mischaracterizing.

Dick Morris explains how President Obama is seeing a backlash in his approval numbers as a result of focusing more on populist politics than solving the serious problems America is facing:

The oil spill, the Arizona law, and the fallout from the Greek crisis are a trifecta of issues that are driving Obama’s job approval ratings to an all time low. After four months of hovering between a low of 46% and a high of 49% in the daily Rasmussen polls, Obama has dropped precipitously to only a 42% approval rating.

The three issues that are depressing his ratings have a great deal in common. In each case, the president originally seized on the issue to make populist political hay. Then, when the problem wouldn’t go away, voters began to realize that Obama is, in fact, the president and, logically enough, blamed him for the three ills that beset them.

When oil started to spill into the Gulf, President Obama saw a partisan opportunity to blame Republicans who had chanted “Drill, Baby, Drill” all during the summer of 2008 as high gasoline prices gave the McCain candidacy new steam. Even though he had, with lamentable timing, conceded and allowed expanded drilling a few weeks before the rig exploded, the impetus for drilling was clearly seen as Republican and the disaster hurt Republican ratings. Obama couldn’t resist also piling populist scorn on British Petroleum, lambasting big oil for the spill.

But then the oil did not stop flowing. Now the American people are tired of hearing about BP’s faults and are demanding presidential action to stop the spill. As the oil seeps onto the beaches of Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, it also seeps into Obama’s poll numbers and drags them down.

A week after the spill, at which point the Obama administration had done basically nothing to evaluate or mitigate the damages from the oil spewing into the gulf, Obama’s solution was to snap at a staff members, “plug the damn hole.”   A month later, with little more having come out of the White House than those four ridiculous words, the oils is still gushing into the gulf.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air talks about Obama’s brilliant solution, and about the press finally beginning to turn on Obama:

If Bush had uttered something as mindlessly self-evident as “plug the damn hole” during crisis management, there’d already be t-shirts on sale on lefty blogs with that phrase emblazoned over a picture of him looking like a baboon. What’s doubly bad for The One right now, of course, is that spill anxiety is reaching a crescendo just as the story of the White House trying to bribe Sestak to drop out of the race is taking off again. The left’s grudgingly turning on him over that too, first with Tim Kaine admitting over the weekend that, yeah, maybe the White House should come clean and today with Dick Durbin(!) piling on

A couple days ago we reported on the fact that while Obama administration officials are making the Sunday talk show rounds reiterating how they will keep the boot on BP’s neck and shove them out of the way if they don’t get the job done, the Louisiana marsh lands are awash in oil, because President Obama sat on the sidelines or stood on the stump  making sure he didn’t let this “crisis go to a waste”, rather than giving Louisiana permission to dredge up sand to create a barrier to protect the delicate marshlands.

The only real question is what the next phase of the White House plan to not let America’s blackened beaches and dieing coastal ecosystem be a crisis that they let go to waste.  Expect President Obama to try and exploit this tragedy in at least three areas:

1. Use this as an excuse to apply some type of windfall profits tax on oil companies, possibly in the guise of a clean up fund for future spills.
2. Announce a reversal of his largely worthless decision to open up new areas to off shore drilling.
3. Use this to hard sell green energy and his cap and trade bill.

President Obama will use the gulf oil spill, the Arizona illegal immigration crisis and any other crisis that strikes America for his own political gain.  He has shown that clearly in his first sixteen months in office and there is no indication that he plans to stop campaigning and start governing any time soon.

First and foremost, before the massive oil spill could become Obama’s “Katrina” the liberal mainstream media would have to stop worshiping at the Altar of Obama and provide some unbiased reporting.  This type of reporting has been few and far between.

Allahpundit of Hot Air sums up the hypocrisy of the media:

Well, look on the bright side: If nothing else good comes from this disaster, at least now we have a roughly quantifiable sense of how long it takes for media outrage to build towards Obama versus towards Bush. Figure Dubya would have been under fire for dragging his feet on the spill after, what — maybe three days? It’s now 34 days since BP’s rig exploded and only yesterday did frustration really start bubbling on the Sunday chat shows.

Beyond the MSM mostly producing puff pieces or apologies for any of President Obama’s mistakes, there is the simple question of “did he do anything wrong?”

Initially, I looked at the “Obama’s Katrina” statements as nothing more than politics as usual.  An attempt by the right to return the favor for the blame that President Bush received due to the ineptitude of the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans.  I am not a proponent of unfairly criticizing President Obazma, only because the press and left unfairly criticized President Bush.

However, now that we are over a month in, President Obama is clearly handling this massive disaster in a disastrous way.  Not only is he attempting to gain populous, political points by attacking BP and big business, which is Obama as usual, but more importantly he isn’t do anything to address the problem.  As an example, Louisiana has been waiting to get approval from the Corp of Engineers to use dredging ships to create a sand barrier around the Louisiana barrier islands.  Doing this would protect the delicate marshlands, but the Corp of Engineers refuses to approve the dredging, claiming they have to determine what impact it will have on the area first.

What “impact”?  Could it possibly have more impact than millions of gallons of oil flooding the marshlands, killing plant and animal life?

Rather than getting his hands dirty and helping solve the problem by picking up the phone and giving Louisiana permission to dredge and build the sand barrier islands, Obama is simply trying to make political hay by attacking BP and big business.  Talking about how he will keep his foot on the neck of BP and make them clean up their mess.

It’s time for the President to realize the American people don’t care about where his foot is, they care about their coastline.  He needs to get off the political stump and get to work solving the problem.  Start working with the Gulf Coast Governors to come up with solutions. Get them the oil booms, ships and skimming equipment they need.  There will be plenty of time for Obama to exploit the disaster for his political gain ‘after’ the spill is under control and the cleanup is done.

Is it Obama’s Katrina?  No, it’s far worse than that.

Now comes round two.  The Climate Change bill The Cap and Trade bill The American Power act is an attempt by Obama and the Democrats in Congress to emulate what they see as a model green economy, Spain.  Prior to the election, President Obama admitted that his view of a green economy would include massive cap and trade taxes applied to energy, which would make electricity (and other energy) sky rocket.  In his view, this is a good thing, as the increased cost to the American public will create the pressure needed to spur on the development renewable energy.

The fallacy with Obama’s approach is that every place that renewable and green energy production has been forced, energy costs have skyrocketed (one of the main factors in Los Angeles being on the verge of bankruptcy) and have caused massive economic burdens.

Pajamas Media has received a leaked report that documents the massive failure of Spain’s green economy.

But today’s leaked document reveals that even the socialist Spanish government now acknowledges the ruinous effects of green economic policy.

Unsurprisingly for a governmental take on a flagship program, the report takes pains to minimize the extent of the economic harm. Yet despite the soft-pedaling, the document reveals exactly why electricity rates “necessarily skyrocketed” in Spain, as did the public debt needed to underwrite the disaster. This internal assessment preceded the Zapatero administration’s recent acknowledgement that the “green economy” stunt must be abandoned, lest the experiment risk Spain becoming Greece.

The government report does not expressly confirm the highest-profile finding of the non-governmental report: that Spain’s “green economy” program cost the country 2.2 jobs for every job “created” by the state. However, the figures published in the government document indicate they arrived at a job-loss number even worse than the 2.2 figure from the independent study.

The document itself, which is actually a slide presentation, doesn’t go into a lot of detail (presumably, an oral presentation accompanied it), but it does show large increases in green energy and renewable energy costs, which resulted in large increases in energy costs being passed on to the end consumers (industry and individuals).  This also appears consistent with California’s complete failure when it legislated renewable energy be used in the state and completely underestimate the cost burden that would be put on the state, and cities such as Los Angeles.

Despite these dismal failures in California and Spain, President Obama continues to promote his cap and trade agenda, which will put a massive financial burden on an already reeling American economy with the imposition of large energy tax increases to industry and consumers.

Combine the massive cap and trade taxes (estimated to be between $1,000 – $3,500+ per family) with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the expected increase in the death tax next year (which doesn’t just hit the rich, but also family businesses like farms that are passed on to children), all the Obamacare fees and taxes that will be passed on to consumers, and the looming VAT tax.

That’s a massive new tax burden on American citizens.  Not just the rich, but ALL Americans, or at least all Americans that are working and paying taxes.

If we thought the economy was in bad shape the last 18 months, just wait until all those new taxes start piling up.

Call it a continuation of the Obama global apology tour.  Call it a continuation of the administrations attacks on America and long standing American allies, while bowing to and hugging the dictators of the world.  You can call it a lot of things, but unfortunately you can’t call it good diplomacy or common sense.

Posner said in addition to talks on freedom of religion and expression, labor rights and rule of law, officials also discussed Chinese complaints about problems with U.S. human rights, which have included crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination.

He said U.S. officials did not whitewash the American record and in fact raised on its own a new immigration law in Arizona that requires police to ask about a person’s immigration status if there is suspicion the person is in the country illegally.

…

QUESTION: Was there any areas in which China sort of turned the tables and raised its own complaints or concerns about U.S. practices around the globe or at home? Can you give some examples there -

ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Sure. You know, I think – again, this goes back to Ambassador Huntsman’s comment. Part of a mature relationship is that you have an open discussion where you not only raise the other guy’s problems, but you raise your own, and you have a discussion about it. We did plenty of that. We had experts from the U.S. side, for example, yesterday, talking about treatment of Muslim Americans in an immigration context. We had a discussion of racial discrimination. We had a back-and-forth about how each of our societies are dealing with those sorts of questions. …

QUESTION: Did the recently passed Arizona immigration law come up? And, if so, did they bring it up or did you bring it up?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society. [emphasis added]

As usual, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air sums it up nicely:

In other words, China didn’t even mention it — the Obama administration did.  They managed to apologize for a law that, technically and practically speaking, the Department of Justice hasn’t even yet reviewed.  Eric Holder hasn’t read the sixteen-page bill after a month of criticizing it, and it seems highly doubtful that Posner has even “glanced” at it.  Besides, the same law has existed in California for years — and the White House hasn’t so much as breathed a word about California’s penal code.

It doesn’t make the Obama administration sound “mature” to call Arizona racist for tasking its law enforcement agencies with enforcing the law.  It makes them look illiterate, closed-minded, and weak.  Maybe Posner should focus on China’s long record of oppression, slave labor, political executions, and heavy-handed censorship — and join Arizona in demanding that the federal government start enforcing the laws that have existed for decades on immigration.

This is an ongoing theme with this administration.  Whitewash the wrongs done by countries like China, Iran, Venezuela, etc., while at the same time demonizing America and apologizing for our sins.

It would be bad enough if the sins were real, but more often than not, like with the Obama administrations constant politically-motivated mischaracterization of the Arizona law, the apologies aren’t for real sins, but instead are simply anti-American statements meant to gain the favor of the leaders of China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and the Muslim community.

Obama’s foreign policy appears to be a twisted variation of Field of Dreams “build it and they will come.”

Obama’s Field of Dreams approach is “tear down and demonize America and the rest of the world will open their arms and embrace us.”

Prior to Napolitano’s admission — yes, that Janet Napalitano, the one that is responsible for the security of our borders and our ‘homeland’ — Eric Holder spent weeks criticizing the Arizona law, implying the law was discriminatory and racist, while later admitting in a Congressional hearing that he hadn’t read the 16 page bill he had been criticizing every time he stepped in front of a camera or was approached by a reporter.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air tells us about Napolitano’s admission that she hasn’t read Arizona’s highly criticized law:

First Holder, now this. Second verse, same as the first: It would take 20 minutes to read through the statute and less than two to read the key provisions that have raised concerns about racial profiling. But if you read it then you’re responsible for what you say about it, and we can’t have that with the midterms less than six months away. So here’s the deputy border-enforcer-in-chief admitting that she hasn’t found the time yet to review “in detail” an immigration law that’s been the talk of the country politically for about a month now.

Two top ranking Obama Administration officials, one our nation’s top attorney and the other in charge of our homeland security, have both failed to read a 16 page law, yet of have paraded in front of the media for weeks claiming the Arizona law is racist, discriminatory and unconstitutional.  Since those assertions clearly weren’t based in fact, and neither top official could be bothered to take a couple minutes to read a law they have been criticizing for weeks, we have to ask ourselves what other assertions of ‘fact’ these two have made over the last 16 months have been nothing more than biased political propaganda.

The American Spectator reports that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was given the analysis by the Medicare actuary, which showed that Obamacare would have many negative side effects.  Sebelius refused to review, and as a result publicize, the report, claiming she didn’t want to influence the vote.  By not wanting to influence the vote, she meant she didn’t want to do anything to hurt the chances of Obamacare passing, even if that meant burying facts that Congress and the public should have had BEFORE the final votes were taken.

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

Grace-Marie Turner of National Review Online summarizes the report that Sebelius buried until after the Obamacare vote:

But looking at the details of Foster’s report shows the many, many danger signs for Obamacare and how many of its promises will be broken:

1. People losing coverage: About 14 million people will lose their employer coverage by 2019, as smaller employers terminate their plans and workers who currently have employer coverage enroll in Medicaid. Half of all seniors on Medicare Advantage could lose their coverage and the extra benefits the plans offer.

2. Huge fines for companies: Businesses will pay $87 billion in penalties in the first five years after the fines trigger in 2014, partly because they can’t afford to offer expensive, government-mandated coverage and partly because some of their employees will apply for taxpayer-subsidized insurance.

3. Higher costs for consumers: Tens of billions of dollars in new fees and excise taxes will be “passed through to health consumers in the form of higher drug and devices prices and higher premiums,” according to Foster. A separate report shows small businesses will be hit hardest.

4. A program created to fail: The new “CLASS Act” long-term-care insurance program will face “a significant risk of failure,” according to Foster. Indeed, he finds, “there is a very serious risk that the problem of adverse selection will make the CLASS program unsustainable.”

5. Spending increases: Under the new law, national health spending will increase by $311 billion over the coming decade. And instead of bending the federal spending curve down, it will move it upward “by a net total of $251 billion” over the next decade.

6. “Free-riders”: An estimated 23 million people will remain uninsured in 2019, roughly 5 million of whom would be undocumented aliens; the remainder would be the 18 million who decline to get coverage and who will pay the penalty.

7. Spending reductions are fiction: Estimated reductions in the growth rate of health spending “may not be fully achievable” because “Medicare productivity adjustments could become unsustainable even within the next ten years, and over time the reductions in the scope of employer-sponsored health insurance could also become an issue.”

8. You can’t keep your doctor: Fifteen percent of all hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers treating Medicare patients could be operating at a loss by 2019, which will “possibly jeopardize access to care for beneficiaries.” Doctors are threatening to drop out of Medicare because cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates mean they can’t even cover their costs.

9. Coverage but no care: A significant portion of those newly eligible for Medicaid will have trouble finding physicians who will see them, and the increased demand for Medicaid services could be difficult to meet.

This is an objective report by administration actuaries that shows this sweeping legislation has serious, serious problems.

And there’s more: Joint Economic Committee Republicans explain in a new report the impact of a rarely mentioned $14.3 billion per year tax on health insurance, effective in 2014. They find this tax will be mostly passed through to consumers in the form of higher premiums for private coverage. It will cost the typical family of four with job-based coverage an additional $1,000 a year in higher premiums and will fall largely, and inequitably, on small businesses and their employees.

Whether you are for or against Obamacare and a move towards nationalized health care, it is hard to defend burying a report by the Medicare’s office of the actuary that detailed the negative impacts that passing Obamacare would cause.  Anyone that watched the votes on C-SPAN or simply watched President Obama’s sales pitches leading up to the votes would know that the picture that Democrats painted was far different than what the Medicare actuary and the CBO stated.   Obama and Congressional Demorats painted a picture of reduced costs, increased coverage, deficit reduction and so much more.

There is also a report that the White House Legislative Affairs office received a copy of the report prior to the Congressional vote.  Ed Morrissey of Hot Air discusses this:

If the Obama administration had this information before the vote — and it should be noted that this comes from a single, anonymous source — then it deliberately misled Congress on the cost estimates.  That may not be a crime, but it’s highly unethical at the least, and makes Barack Obama’s claims to operate with transparency absolutely laughable, if true.  As the Prowler’s source points out, the entire reason CMS provided an analysis was to ensure that everyone knew the ramifications of passing this legislation.  Deliberately withholding it would have stripped Congress of that transparency, if that’s indeed what happened.

The CBO, once you dug into the numbers, clearly showed that Obamacare would not reduce the deficit, but instead massively increase it.  The CBO report stated that premiums would rise faster under Obamacare than if no legislation was passed.  The HHS report, once  Sebelius stopped burying it, showed the same, an increase in costs, and millions losing their coverage or being unable to find physicians willing to treat them.

Are the lies and Chicago style politics ‘really’ the change that American’s voted for in November of 2008?

Hillary is an interesting prospect, because as a former Senator, tradition indicates that Republicans in the Senate won’t filibuster the vote on her confirmation.  After spending over a year fighting to pass the hugely unpopular Obamacare, there is speculation that President Obama does not want the Senate tied up for months fighting over a High Court nomination, which will be the result if Obama nominates someone from far-left.  While Hillary is certainly liberal, as a former Senator her nomination will likely move to an up or down vote much quicker than almost anyone else that Obama might nominate.

It would seem that Orrin Hatch broke this story, but it is unclear where he heard it:

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, one of the top Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Monday morning that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been mentioned as a possible nominee to the Supreme Court.

“I even heard the name Hillary Clinton today, and that would be an interesting person in the mix,” Hatch said on NBC’s “Today Show.”

The senator said he would not pre-judge whether any potential nominee would be an appropriate candidate to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, but he had general praise for the secretary of state.

“I happen to like Hillary Clinton, I think she’s done a good job for the Democrats — Secretary of State’s position,” Hatch said, “and I have high respect for her, and think a great deal of her.”

At the same time, putting her on the Supreme Court would eliminate another major problem that Obama sees looming.  While as an incumbent, traditional thinking would be that Barack Obama will walk through the Democratic primary, the fact is that his approval rating continues to fall.  He has passed a hugely unpopular health insurance bill, has massively increased the national debt, put through the largest tax increase in US history and appears headed towards a broad-based tax increase to pay for his massive increase in social programs.

Hillary Clinton might be the only candidate that could give Obama a real challenge in the Democratic primary, and putting her on the Supreme Court almost assures him of smooth sailing to the Democratic nomination in 2012.

Ed Morrissey discusses some of the benefits Obama would gain from putting Clinton on the High Court:

Politically, Obama gets a win by putting another woman on the court.  Unlike with at least one of the apparent short-listers (Elana Kagan), no one will doubt Hillary’s liberal bona fides.  But best of all, Obama would be dispatching the one Democrat who could conceivably win a primary race against him in 2012 if his numbers continue to fall.  Once on the Supreme Court, Hillary would not step down to run for President, and Bill Clinton would be effectively neutralized as well.

Morrissey goes on to discuss some possible negatives of a Clinton nomination. First, at 63, she is older than liberals would like, since she might only be on the court for 20 years.  Second, nominating her replacement for Secretary of State could lead to a contentious vote.  It would give the Republicans an opportunity to highlight the many diplomatic and foreign policy blunders by the Obama administration.

When it’s all said and done, I do not think that Hillary will be nominated.  All indications are that President Obama is ignoring his falling approval and the continued decline in support for Obamacare, and instead is emblazoned by the passage of Obamacare.  Just as he did following his election, he mistakenly sees the passage of Obamacare as a re-affirmation of a mandate to push his far-left agenda.  Look for Obama to nominate a far-left candidate that will put progressive ideology over adherence to the Constitution.

Rasmussen also found that both a national sales tax and taxes on junk food and soft drinks remain very unpopular.  These are two taxes that have been associated with the Democrats in Washington.  The justification for the junk food taxes is that these foods are unhealthy and therefore the nanny (US Government) will penalize you for eating it.  The national sales tax or VAT tax is expected to be pushed as the solution to pay for the massive deficit that Obama, Pelosi and Reid have created over the last 15 months.

It was reported last week that 47% of Americans will pay NO federal income tax.  Yet a new Rasmussen poll shows that the vast majority of Americans (66%/25%) believe America is already overtaxed.

Allahpundit of Hot Air breaks down the numbers:

If you think the “over 100K” crowd is grumbly now, check back with them after a few years of Obamanomics. As for the “under 50K” group, the amazing number really isn’t the “less than fair” column; after all, aside from the occasional hyperrich progressive imbecile, no one believes he or she should be paying more tax. The amazing number is, of course, the “more than fair” column. Surely this group forms the bulk of that 47 percent that pays no federal income tax — in fact, a couple with two kids making slightly over $50,000 can now achieve zero federal tax liability — and yet, somehow, 36 percent still say they’re paying too much. Why?

This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone but the most naive amongst us.  Even before he was elected, many detailed the path that Barack Obama would lead us down if he was elected.

First, massively increase the deficit through a rapid expansion of government and huge increase in entitlement programs.

Second, declare that if the deficit spending is not gotten under control, the US will face bankruptcy.

Third, claim raising taxes is the only option to prevent the out of control deficit and the doom predicted in step two.

We have seen nearly a trillion dollars spent under the guise of stimulating the economy, even though most of the spending had little to do with jobs or infrastructure, and more to do with expanding social programs and funneling money into Democratic districts.

The Democrats rammed through Obamacare, which will likely have a true ten year cost of a trillion dollars or more.

Now, with Obama running up the deficit annually almost as much as President Bush did in eight years, a White House advisor slipped and publicly stated what many of us knew was coming down the road.  However, Obama wanted this to come from his “blue ribbon” deficit reduction panel, rather than having one of his advisers let it slip.

Allahpundit of Hot Air reports on how White House adviser Paul Volcker let the cat out of the bag:

We all know it’s coming, but I’m reasonably sure Volcker missed a memo instructing advisors not, repeat not, to mention this publicly until, oh, say, the day after Election Day 2012.

As it is, look for Gibbsy’s spin tomorrow to be, “B-b-but he was Reagan’s Fed chairman!”

Volcker, answering a question from the audience at a New York Historical Society event, said the value-added tax “was not as toxic an idea” as it has been in the past and also said a carbon or other energy-related tax may become necessary.

Though he acknowledged that both were still unpopular ideas, he said getting entitlement costs and the U.S. budget deficit under control may require such moves. “If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes,” he said.

While this isn’t a definitive declaration from the White House that Obama will push for a VAT tax,  the fact is that the Democrats spending spree is unsustainable, and there are only two choices.  Stop spending, or pass a broad-based tax increase.  Clearly, Obama and company have no intention of curtailing their spending, so that means it’s only a matter of time until they push for an across the board tax increase, most likely in the form of a VAT tax.

To quote the former Governor of Alaska, “how’s that hopey, changey thing working out for ya?”

On Friday, President Obama made a much publicized trip to an advanced battery technology manufacturer and among other things touted how his economic program had halted a two year slide with 160,000 jobs having been added in March.  After explaining how great his policies have been for America, President Obama took questions.

One woman asked if it was wise to add more taxes with the Health care law, since as she put it, “we are over-taxed as it is.”

President Obama showed initial irritation with the question, and quickly took the offensive with:

Well, let’s talk about that, because this is an area where there’s been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I’m going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have.

Obama went on to spend over 17 minutes on his 2,500+ word answer.  President Obama wandered all over the place, from talking about the disinformation about Obamacare to how the US was (before his bill was passed) the only advanced country that allows citizens to have no health insurance (note he said 15 million, vs. the 30+ million he has used in the past when referring to the uninsured.

In the end, he wandered all over the place for 17 minutes, rarely addressing the actual question, which is about whether it’s smart to add more taxes when people are already over taxed.  About three minutes into the 17 minute filibuster, he said “and the final point is that” and continued to talk for over 14 minutes longer.

Here is the first 6 minutes of the answer from the DrudgeReportUSA YouTube channel:

Here’s the full transcript of that one question and answer:

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  We’re honored to have you here today.  I’m Doris Ravis (sp) from Lake Wylie, South Carolina.  I work at Celgard.  We have wonderful CEOs that take care of us and have really helped the company grow.  My question is, though, in the economy times that we have now, is it a wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care?  Because it — we are over-taxed as it is.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, let’s talk about that, because this is an area where there’s been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I’m going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have.  Here’s the bottom line:  Number one is that we are the only — we have been up until last week the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance, and the vast majority of those folks work.  It’s just that they don’t happen to work for a company that is either big enough or generous enough to provide them any coverage.

So that’s point number one.  There is a moral imperative that is important.  Number two, you don’t know who might end up being in that situation.  See, those of us who have health care right now ask ourselves, well, is this something that should be a priority right now, but anybody here who lost their job and then COBRA ran out, or COBRA wasn’t subsidized the way the Recovery Act made sure COBRA paid 65 percent of the cost of COBRA — and if you had somebody at home who was sick, or you had a child who got sick, you’d suddenly say to yourself, well, now I see the need.

And so part of what we have to do is always say to ourselves, there but for the grace of God go I — and have a basic safety net.  So that’s point number two.

Point number three is that the way insurance companies have been operating, even if you’ve got health insurance you don’t always know what you got, because what has been increasingly the practice is that if you’re not lucky enough to work for a big company that is a big pool, that essentially is almost a self-insurer, then what’s happening is, is you’re going out on the marketplace, you may be buying insurance, you think you’re covered, but then when you get sick they decide to drop the insurance right when you need it.  Or when you get sick they try to find what they consider to be a preexisting condition that would justify them canceling your policy.  Or there’s some fine print in there where you’ve got a lifetime limit, and it turns out you thought you had coverage, but it turns out the coverage only goes up to a certain point and then afterwards you have to start paying out of pocket.  And even after paying all those premiums, you’re now in the hole for $100,000 or $200,000, and you’re going bankrupt and you’re losing your house.

And the final point is that the costs of health care — setting aside anything we did in reform, I mean, if we just allowed the current trajectory to go on — is out of control.  I haven’t talked to Bob about what his costs are looking like for Celgard employees, but I can tell you that health care costs have gone up, the price of health care has gone up three times faster than wages.  So either the company is having to swallow those costs, which means that’s less money that they could use for hiring new workers or investing in new plants and equipment, or they’re passing on those costs to their employees in the form of higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher co-payments.

And what’s happening federally is, because the costs are so out of control, all the programs that we already have — Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program — all those things are completely out of control.  So if you’re concerned about the deficit, what you’re really concerned about is the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and all the other programs that are already in place.

So here’s what we did.  What we said is, number one, we’ll have the basic principle that everybody gets coverage.  And the way we’re going to do that is to say that most people individually shouldn’t buy health insurance on their own because they have no leverage and the insurance companies take advantage of it.  Instead what we’re going to do is we’re going to set up a big pool, a marketplace, that allows everybody to buy into this pool — that members of Congress, by the way, will be a part of so you know it’s going to be a good deal — because members of Congress, they’ve got to look out for their own families; they wouldn’t vote for it if it wasn’t going to be a good deal.  And just like Walmart is able to leverage a really good price from its suppliers for everything because they’re such a big purchaser, well, this pool will be a big purchaser and it will be able to get a better deal from insurance companies.

So that’s point number one.  That will drive down the prices for people who are participating and it will allow everybody to get a decent deal on insurance.  And what we do is we provide tax credits to people who still can’t afford it so that they can afford it.  That’s point number one.

Point number two is we’ve got the strongest insurance reforms in history.  So all those things I told you about — you not being able to get insurance because of a preexisting condition; you finding yourself getting dropped even though you’ve been paying premiums for 15 years and suddenly they just decide, sorry, we don’t want you because you’re getting sick — those policies will be over.  And so you will be protected as a consumer to make sure you’ve got security and protection if you’ve got insurance already.  That’s the second thing we do.

The third thing we do is we actually put in place a whole bunch of mechanisms to start reducing the actual cost of health care.  So, for example, one of the things that we do is to say we’re going to start encouraging paying doctors not based on how many tests they take, but based on the quality of the outcome — does somebody end up healthy.

And it turns out that a lot of times if you go to the doctor you get one test.  Then you go — referred to a specialist, you get another test.  Then maybe you go to a third person, the surgeon, you get a third test — it’s all the same test but you’re paying three times.

So what we’re trying to say is, we’ll pay you for the first test and then e-mail the test to everybody.  Right?  (Applause.)  Or have all three doctors in the room when the test is being taken.

But that’s an example of the kinds of things that save money and will start reducing costs over the long term.  So what we’ve done is we’ve embedded in how Medicare reimburses, how Medicaid reimburses, all these ideas to actually reduce the costs of care.

So our hope is that over time, over the next three, four, five, six years, because of all these changes, that we’ve actually saved money from this, even though more people are covered.

And so now you’ll hear the critics and the Republicans say, now, that just defies common sense.  If you’re adding 30 million more people, then it’s got to cost more money.  And you can’t pretend like somehow that’s going to help us on the deficit.  I’ve heard this criticism, I understand it.

But let me give you an example.  If you’ve got a house and you’ve got a big hole in your roof, and it’s raining and snowing through that roof and there are some people who are inside the rooms where the roof is okay and they’re nice and warm, and then you got a few — your family members in that room where there’s a big hole in the roof and they’re shivering, and they’re cold — if you repair the roof, that’s going to cost some money.  But if all the water damage from your floors and all the heat that’s going out of the roof, you count all those savings, over time it may turn out that it actually is saving you money and, by the way, all those family members now are warm, too.  You’re not the only one who’s warm, right?  That’s essentially what we’re trying to set up.

Now, last point I want to make.  All those savings that we’re anticipating, we don’t even count those when it comes to making sure that this is deficit-neutral.  Here are the two ways that we’re paying for this thing:  Number one, we are eliminating a whole bunch of waste, fraud, and insurance subsidies that were being paid out under Medicare that aren’t making our seniors any healthier.  I mean, you’ve got a pretty sweet deal for insurance companies right now in a program called Medicare Advantage where they get $18 billion a year paid to them to manage a Medicare program that about 80 percent of seniors are getting directly from the government, and it’s working just fine.  It’s just a subsidy to them that doesn’t make anybody healthier.  So what we’re saying is, well, let’s eliminate the subsidy.  So that’s about how we pay for half of this thing.

The other half of it, it is true that we have identified some additional taxes that we think are fair.  And let me describe, just to give you an example — I don’t think this will affect you, but I don’t know — I don’t know your family’s circumstances.  Right now, if you’re on salary, you get your salary from Celgard or any of the companies around here, you’re paying your Medicare tax on all of that, right?  You see it on your — it’s part of your FICA.  But if you’re Warren Buffett and you get most of your money from dividends and capital gains, you don’t pay Medicare tax on that.  You’re eligible for it.  You’re going to get the same Medicare benefits as anybody else.  But because your source of income is what’s called unearned income — capital gains and dividends — you don’t have to pay this.

Well, I’m thinking to myself how is it that the guy who is cleaning up the office is paying the Medicare tax and the guy who is making capital gains isn’t?  So what we said was, look, if you make more than $200,000, $250,000 a year, then that money that you make over $200,000, $250,000 a year that’s unearned — that’s from capital gains and dividends — you should have to pitch in to Medicare just like everybody else, because you’re going to be using it like everybody else.  So it’s a concept of fairness.  (Applause.)

Now, what the Congressional Budget Office has said — I’m sorry, by the way, these questions sometimes are — or these answers are long, but I want to make sure you guys — that I’m really answering your question.  I hope you feel like I really want to respect the importance of your question.  What the Congressional Budget Office has said is that as a consequence of the savings from the waste and fraud, combined with the new revenue sources I just mentioned, that this thing is going to actually reduce our deficit by over a trillion dollars — over a trillion dollars.  We’re actually saving money for the government — because we closed the roof, the house is now insulated, it’s warm.  And by the way, in the meantime we’ve got a whole bunch of people who were left out in the cold who are now being taken care of.

That’s the concept.  But I know that for a lot of people, they’ve got a legitimate concern about, gosh, it just seems like government spending is out of control.  I understand that.  I feel that.  But understand what happened:  When I walked in, we already had a $1.3 trillion deficit.  That’s an annual deficit of $1.3 trillion.  That’s — the day I got sworn in, before I did a thing, we had $8 trillion in accumulated debt from the war in Iraq — not paid for; the prescription drug plan, Medicare Part D — not paid for; Bush tax cuts — not paid for.

So we already had all this debt that had just been piled up, but nobody had noticed because things were going kind of good.  Just like a lot of folks didn’t notice their credit card was going up or that their home equity loans were going up because when things are going good you tend not to notice.

So all that debt had already accumulated.  We then had to spend $787 billion on the Recovery Act to do all the things — unemployment insurance; COBRA; what’s called FMAP, which is essentially helping states to keep their budgets afloat so that they didn’t have to lay off teachers and cops and firefighters — all of which if that had happened would have further depressed the economy and we would have recovered a lot later; the investments we’re making in clean energy and things like Celgard to help spur economic growth.

So we had to spend that, but that’s only a fraction of what our debt was.  And in addition what happens is when the economy goes south, there are fewer tax revenues.  And so you’re putting more money out to help people with unemployment insurance and things like that, but you’re getting less money in because folks are out of work and businesses aren’t making money.

Bottom line is, we now have a significant debt that has to be paid down.  That’s why I’m freezing government spending.  That’s why we reinstated what’s called pay-as-you-go.  You can’t start a program without paying for it.  Our health care program is paid for.

But the big thing, if you’re really worried about leaving debt to the next generation, which I know you are, the most important thing we’re going to have to tackle is our health care costs, because Medicare is by far — Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest things that are looming in the horizon in terms of what our debt is going to be.  Nothing else comes close.

If this health care bill never existed, if I didn’t do anything about it, we’d actually be a trillion dollars worse off over the long term.  But even with the saving we’re getting from health care, we’re still going to have to do more.  And if you don’t believe that, go on our Web site — www.whitehouse.gov — and you can look at how the federal budget works.

A lot of people think if you just eliminated foreign aid we could balance the budget, or if you just eliminated earmarks you could balance the budget.  Earmarks — pork projects, what everybody calls pork — those account for about 1 percent of the budget, less than 1 percent.  Foreign aid accounts for about 1.5 to 2 percent of the budget.

Most of the budget is Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, defense spending, and interest on the national debt.  That accounts for about 70 percent of the budget.  And so all this other stuff that sometimes we argue about, that’s not the big stuff.  We’re going to have to tackle the big stuff if we’re going to get our budget under control.

Boy, that was a long answer.  I’m sorry.  (Laughter.)  But I hope everybody — but I hope I answered your question.  (Applause.)  All right, I’m going to — I’ve got to make this the last question.  I’m going to ask this young man right here.

This characterization has been evident for a while, but since Obamacare passed, it has become clear that attacking the Tea Party is at the center of the Democrats plan for the mid-term elections.

The fact that the Democrats, including the White House and liberal press, are attacking the Tea Party movement this aggressively shows just how much the left fears the Tea Party and the impact its members will have in November.

If the result of the Winston Group poll that The Hill reported today are accurate, Obama’s aggressive attack strategy may backfire come November:

The national breakdown of the Tea Party composition is 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic, according to three national polls by the Winston Group, a Republican-leaning firm that conducted the surveys on behalf of an education advocacy group. Two-thirds of the group call themselves conservative, 26 are moderate and 8 percent say they are liberal.

The Winston Group conducted three national telephone surveys of 1,000 registered voters between December and February. Of those polled, 17 percent – more than 500 people — said they were “part of the Tea Party movement.”

“It’s a good sample size,” said David Winston, the polling firm’s director. “It will certainly give us an initial base to follow where these folks are.”

In addition. the poll found:

• 61% believe infrastructure spending creates jobs
• 63% believe reducing unemployment is more important than fixing the deficit
• 71% view the GOP favorably
• 75% view the Democratic party unfavorable
• 95% believe that “Democrats are taxing, spending, and borrowing too much”
• 80% disapprove of the job President Obama is doing
• 82% disapprove of Obamacare

In addition to the Winston Group poll, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air details the demographics of the Tea Party that a Gallup poll found:

Is the Tea Party as racist as the media and leading Democrats have portrayed?  Gallup’s demos of the Tea Party look very close to that of the overall American demos on ethnicity.  Whites make up 79% of the Tea Party and 75% of the population; blacks, 6% of the Tea Party and 11% of the population; and “other” in the Tea Party exactly matches the general population at 15%.

Numbers like that from a group where 40% are Democrats and Independents, and that is being continuously attacked by the White House, Congressional Democrats and the main stream media, appears to be another indication of how bloody November may be for the Democrats.

The Scott Brown victory in January was due to Independents and moderate Democrats voting against the Democratic candidate in large part to send a message to the Democrats in Washington.  While it was a local election, it became a national campaign.  As the Democrats clearly did not get the message from the Brown election in Massachusetts, don’t be surprised if a great number of Independents and moderate Democrats opt to resend that message in November.

President Obama’s demands on Israel seem to have done nothing more than damage US/Israel relations and give the Palestinians an excuse to refuse to hold legitimate peace talks.

Dick Morris poses two questions that President Obama should be asking himself:

Why is President Barack Obama so obviously humiliating Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu? Why is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton negating everything she said when she represented New York state and piling on the Jewish state?

Morris goes on to explain the cycle where by the Palestinians continue to demand more from Israel, while using US aid and land that Israel conceded to stage attacks on Israel.

Any peace deal with the Palestinian Authority will not be binding on Hamas, and the pattern of Gaza will likely play out again: First, Israel cedes land to the Palestinian Authority. Second, Hamas seizes the newly ceded land through elections or military action. Third, Hamas refuses to recognize the peace deal and uses the newly acquired territory as a base from which to launch further attacks against Israel.

Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome each time.

When Hillary Clinton and President Obama explode in indignation against Israel for building apartments in East Jerusalem, they deliberately miss the point: There is no reason for Israel to catalyze peace negotiations when there is no single entity that is both committed to peace and speaks for the entire Palestinian people. Without a peace partner, negotiations are either a trip to nowhere or a slippery slope to more Gaza-like concessions that do nothing but strengthen the enemies of Israel without providing any advancement to the cause of peace.

The merits of building in East Jerusalem or the need for a moratorium on all settlement construction are quite irrelevant as long as a substantial body of Palestinian opinion wants a war with Israel and the prevailing political authority in Gaza insists on the Jewish state’s eradication.

So why are Obama and Clinton so intent on raising the profile of the construction issue and publicizing it? One suspects an effort is afoot to link Israeli resistance to the peace process with the ongoing loss of American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, if not to the global terrorism of al Qaeda.

As President Obama continues to verbally chastise Israel, embarrasses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by treating him worse than a third world dictator and sends US aid to the Palestinians, it’s hard to figure out what his end game will be.  Unless the President’s goal is destroying US/Israel relations, in order to garner support from those that wish to see Israel destroyed, it’s hard to understand the actions of the Obama administration.

Last year President Obama’s arrogance resulted in French President Sarkozy reportedly calling President Obama Naive and grossly egotistical in regards to Obama’s response and handling of Iran’s nuclear program.  A response that to date appears to be a complete failure.

Now, President Obama showed a complete lack of respect to a visiting head of state, when after negotiations did not go to his liking, he simply walked out on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu:

For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.

“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.

…

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, cast doubt on minor details in Israeli accounts of the meeting but did not deny claims that it amounted to a dressing down for the Prime Minister, whose refusal to freeze settlements is seen in Washington as the main barrier to resuming peace talks.

Prior to humiliating the Prime Minister by walking out rather than having dinner, Obama refused to allow press or photographers access to his meeting with Netanyahu.  Obama failed to hold a joint press conference, or even issue a press statement, both of which are expected when hosting a visiting head of state.

Apparently, President Obama decided to play hard ball and insult Netanyahu as retribution for what he saw as Israel showing disrespect to Vice President Joe Biden.  ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air explains:

In a nutshell, the right-wing part of Netanyahu’s government announced the building of new settlements in east Jerusalem on the day Biden came to visit, which allegedly sent The One into a snit over what he considered to be an insult. Never mind that Netanyahu himself apparently didn’t know about the timing of the announcement and that building in east Jerusalem, which would almost certainly remain Israeli in any peace deal, was routine. Obama wants to make a show of standing up to the Zionist entity for our Islamic “partners in peace” in the naive belief that that’ll help bring about the ever elusive solution to the crisis.

Some have said that he treated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu like a third world dictator, but the fact is we have seen President Obama bend over backwards time after time to the dictators he thinks he can convince to become US allies simply by showing them the ‘softer’ side of the United States, while time and again he shows a lack of respect to our long-time allies.

The Republicans found a provision that guaranteed Pell grants into the future without providing funding for them, leaving that to a future Congress.  As this provision does not reduce spending, it was not eligible to be in the reconciliation bill.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air touches on two points related to sending the bill back to the house:

If that’s all that gets struck from the bill, the only effect will be to lengthen the debate on health care.  Obviously, that’s exactly what the Republicans want.  With 62% of voters wanting the GOP to keep fighting against ObamaCare, their leadership has no reason to let up.

The big surprise here is that House leadership allowed themselves to screw up on minor points.  The process of reconciliation isn’t that arcane, and they certainly had the time to double-check their work.  They’ve been working on this strategy since Scott Brown won his election in mid-January.  To have the bill boomerang back because of Pell grants in a health-care bill is an embarrassment.

While this is mostly a delaying tactic by the Republicans, there is some significance to the delaying tactics.

First, a CBS poll released yesterday, which was conducted in the two days leading up to the House health bill vote, showed that 62% of American, including 41% of Democrats, wanted the GOP to continue to fight against Obamacare.  In addition, that survey showed 57%/18% that people believed that regardless of the Democrat’s claims of a great CBO score, that the bill would in fact increase the deficit.

Second, House and Senate Democrats had not only been working on the Reconciliation strategy since the Brown victory, but had spent weeks leading up to the vote working directly with Senate Parliamentarian Alan Frumin to insure that errors like this were not contained in the bill.  So, not only is it an embarrassment that these small errors existed, but also highlights the fact that the Democrats piggy backed a takeover of the student loan program onto Obamacare.

Finally, in addition to the minor victory of sending the bill back to the house for a new vote, and as a result keeping the ‘process’ in the news cycle, yesterday’s GOP tactics served another purpose.  The Republicans put forth close to three dozen amendments.  While they had no real hope that any would pass, many of the amendments were put forth, because voting against them will look bad for vulnerable Democratic Senators in November.  For instance, voting against an amendment that would forbid raiding Medicare to pay for the Obamacare bill.

President Obama and the far left have been reinvigorated with the passing of Obamacare.  While only a few weeks ago it seemed that Obama’s far left agenda had been stalemated and unlikely to have any real chance of being pushed through Congress, many believe that has now changed.

As Nancy Pelosi so famously said, “we will have to pass the bill to see what’s in it”.  Unfortunately, for the American voters, that has been the truth.  Many lies have been told about Obamacare, such as the President stating over and over that if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it.  Those that have read the bills know that isn’t the case, since it requires that once your plan changes (premium amount, deductible change, any coverage change — like a change in Rx benefits) require that you must move to a plan that is exchange-qualified.  That means for most people, once that regulati0n goes into affect, at their next plan renewal (when in most cases, something in the plan changes) they will have to move to an exchange-qualified plan and CANNOT keep the insurance plan they like.

It is likely that there will be a short-term bump in public opinion for Obamacare, as the President starts his PR campaign, which he will soon take on the road.  President Obama will keep focusing on the small number of popular consumer protections that go into effect quickly, while either not mentioning, or misstating the many negative regulations that will soon go into effect and will be hugely unpopular once voters understand what they mean.

However, it’s important to note that while a Gallup poll released yesterday did show a bump in public support for Obamacare, a new Bloomberg survey shows that a majority of Americans believe that health care is a private matter and that Obamacare is a federal take over of health care.  It also found that six out of ten Americans believe that individuals should be responsible to make sure their health care needs are met.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air discusses the Bloomberg Survey:

If Democrats felt heartened after yesterday’s Gallup poll showing a plurality of support for their new ObamaCare plan, Bloomberg’s survey should bring them back to Earth.  The survey asked over a thousand adults their opinions of the ObamaCare bill during and after its passage, and like almost every poll taken in the last several months, a majority of respondents opposed it.  Moreover, a majority also consider it a government takeover of the American health-care system.

…

It also presents another problem for Democrats, which is that they will own every failure within the American health-care system from this point forward.  Had Republicans successfully blocked ObamaCare, they would have owned them, but now it all falls on the Democrats.

The fact that people can’t really keep their insurance if they like it, is just one aspect of Obamacare that will likely result in a backlash from voters. It’s one thing for people to say “yes, everyone should be covered, if it doesn’t change my coverage”, but that sentiment changes very quickly when people realize that their insurance coverage will soon change drastically, and for many Americans that will also mean higher premiums.

Since Obama, Pelosi and Reid know they have to ride the wave of positive press and re-energized liberal base, expect a major push to pass the remaining big, liberal agenda items.  What can we expect to see a major push to pass?

Immigration reform:  They started talking about this last week in order to wrap up some needed votes on the Health care bill, but this isn’t just about buying votes for Obamacare.  The Democrats see offering amnesty to illegal immigrants as an immediate increase in the size of the block of voters that automatically vote Democrat.  Most of the illegals given amnesty will receive some form of government subsidy, including for Obamacare, and therefore will want to keep the Democrats in office in order to keep their entitlements.

Cap and Trade:  Senator Kerry has already said that the Senate needs to move quickly to pass Cap and Trade.  They realize that weekly more cracks are forming in the ‘science’ surrounding global warming, or climate change as it’s now called, and therefore they must strike quickly.  Like with Obamacare, the American public does not believe Cap and Trade should be passed, but after just passing one major piece of legislation in contradiction of the will of the people, expect a major push to pass another.

Card Check:  President Obama owes the unions his election, a fact that Andy Stern of SEIU keeps publicly reminding him, when he says that the SEIU spent over $60 million to get President Obama elected.  Unions are one of the main contributors to the Democratic party.   Union membership in private sector companies is near an all time low, which is troubling to both union leaders and Democrats that count on that major source of funding and votes.  Card Check, or Employee Free Choice Act as the Democrats falsely named it, will eliminate the secret ballot and as a result, bring back ugly intimidation by union organizers.

These are not the only items on the far-left wish list, but they are among the most important to the liberal base and the most damaging to the United States.   Like Obamacare, these have been on the liberal wish list for a while, and the only chance of passing them is with the type of massive majority that the Democrats hold in Congress.  Like with Obamacare, they will push to get them passed quickly, hoping to leave enough time between the passage of these bills and the November elections, counting on these unpopular bills to no longer be in the public’s focus when they go to the voting booth.

In the coming days, I will post more information on each of these upcoming pieces of legislation.

President Obama set the tone for both Houses of Congress, when leading up to the passage of the first stimulus bill, his response to Republican leadership concerns about not being involved in drafting the stimulus bill was simply to state that he didn’t have to involve them, because as he said “I won”.

Dick Morris has been warning Democrats for a while that there will be a very steep price for defying the will of the American public.  He now says they will pay a heavy price in November for that defiance:

The Democratic Party’s decision to deform our health care system in the name of reforming it amounts to a suicide pact. With America decrying the legislation by 60-40 margins, the legislators lined up and dutifully drank the Kool-Aid.

…

The anger of the voters at this total disregard of public opinion will power Republican candidates throughout the nation and will impel one of the greatest reversals of Congressional alignment in history.

But the aftershock of this political earthquake is yet to come. It will be upon us in the fall when Congress must decide whether to proceed with the Medicare cuts (particularly to cut in doctors’ reimbursement rates) or to postpone or cancel them and add the cost to the federal deficit.

…

This vote transforms the political landscape in a way that we have not seen in our lifetimes and the results will be cataclysmic for the Democratic Party

The next seven months will be interesting.  Starting today, the Democrats will begin selling the benefits of Obamacare in an attempt to mitigate the damage in the mid-term elections come November.   Only time will tell how successful they will be with their sales job.

As to paying for their defiance, one has to now wonder about the Stupak bloc.  They claimed that their principles could not be compromised.  Bart Stupak said that if the Senate language, which provides for the public funding of abortion, was not amended then Stupak and his group could not and would not vote for it.  They did.

The White House wrote them a “here’s some cover for the mid-term elections” Executive Order, but they know, and the American public will soon know, that the Executive Order does nothing to prevent the public funding of abortion that Stupak has been decrying for months.

Not too many people thought the President could get this many Congressmen to fall on their swords for him.  If Dick Morris is right, the dismantling of the Democratic majority might be Obama’s greatest accomplishment.

Stupak claims that this executive order will address all concerns about public funds being used to pay for abortion, but Stupak did not address the mandate that all men and women buying insurance from exchange-qualified health care plans will be required to pay $1 a month (or more) that will go into a pool to pay for abortions within that plan.

Further, that Executive Order can be rescinded by President Obama or a future President, and more importantly does not trump legislation enacted by Congress.  Therefore, the Executive Order does nothing except give Stupak cover in the upcoming mid-term elections.

The following is a draft of Obama’s Executive Order posted on Major Garrett’s Foxnews blog:

EXECUTIVE ORDER

- – - – - – -

ENSURING ENFORCEMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ABORTION RESTRICTIONS IN THE PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (approved March ¬¬__, 2010), I hereby order as follows:

Section 1. Policy.

Following the recent passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“the Act”), it is necessary to establish an adequate enforcement mechanism to ensure that Federal funds are not used for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered), consistent with a longstanding Federal statutory restriction that is commonly known as the Hyde Amendment. The purpose of this Executive Order is to establish a comprehensive, government-wide set of policies and procedures to achieve this goal and to make certain that all relevant actors—Federal officials, state officials (including insurance regulators) and health care providers—are aware of their responsibilities, new and old.

The Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to the newly-created health insurance exchanges. Under the Act, longstanding Federal laws to protect conscience (such as the Church Amendment, 42 U.S.C. §300a-7, and the Weldon Amendment, Pub. L. No. 111-8, §508(d)(1) (2009)) remain intact and new protections prohibit discrimination against health care facilities and health care providers because of an unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.

Numerous executive agencies have a role in ensuring that these restrictions are enforced, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Section 2. Strict Compliance with Prohibitions on Abortion Funding in Health Insurance Exchanges. The Act specifically prohibits the use of tax credits and cost-sharing reduction payments to pay for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered) in the health insurance exchanges that will be operational in 2014. The Act also imposes strict payment and accounting requirements to ensure that Federal funds are not used for abortion services in exchange plans (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered) and requires state health insurance commissioners to ensure that exchange plan funds are segregated by insurance companies in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, OMB funds management circulars, and accounting guidance provided by the Government Accountability Office.

I hereby direct the Director of OMB and the Secretary of HHS to develop, within 180 days of the date of this Executive Order, a model set of segregation guidelines for state health insurance commissioners to use when determining whether exchange plans are complying with the Act’s segregation requirements, established in Section 1303 of the Act, for enrollees receiving Federal financial assistance. The guidelines shall also offer technical information that states should follow to conduct independent regular audits of insurance companies that participate in the health insurance exchanges. In developing these model guidelines, the Director of OMB and the Secretary of HHS shall consult with executive agencies and offices that have relevant expertise in accounting principles, including, but not limited to, the Department of the Treasury, and with the Government Accountability Office. Upon completion of those model guidelines, the Secretary of HHS should promptly initiate a rulemaking to issue regulations, which will have the force of law, to interpret the Act’s segregation requirements, and shall provide guidance to state health insurance commissioners on how to comply with the model guidelines.

Section 3. Community Health Center Program.

The Act establishes a new Community Health Center (CHC) Fund within HHS, which provides additional Federal funds for the community health center program. Existing law prohibits these centers from using federal funds to provide abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered), as a result of both the Hyde Amendment and longstanding regulations containing the Hyde language. Under the Act, the Hyde language shall apply to the authorization and appropriations of funds for Community Health Centers under section 10503 and all other relevant provisions. I hereby direct the Secretary of HHS to ensure that program administrators and recipients of Federal funds are aware of and comply with the limitations on abortion services imposed on CHCs by existing law. Such actions should include, but are not limited to, updating Grant Policy Statements that accompany CHC grants and issuing new interpretive rules.

Section 4. General Provisions.

(a) Nothing in this Executive Order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: (i) authority granted by law or presidential directive to an agency, or the head thereof; or (ii) functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This Executive Order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This Executive Order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity against the United States, its departments, agencies, entities, officers, employees or agents, or any other person.

First, it’s important to note that while this is a slim sliver of hope, Foxnews and many other agencies believe that Pelosi has 216, if not more.  They believe that Pelosi continues to try and win yes votes only to pad the numbers so that no Democrats can be pointed to as the ‘deciding vote’ during the upcoming mid-term elections.

That said, less than an hour ago, The Hill reported that Pelosi is still short of 216 and that Stupak’s office is still calling him a firm no:

If every member votes, Democratic leaders can only afford 37 defections. According to The Hill’s whip list, there are 39 Democrats planning to vote no.

Furthermore, The Hill also has seven Democrats in the undecided/unclear column: Reps Jim Cooper (Tenn.), Kathy Dahlkemper (Pa.), Paul Kanjorski (Pa.), Alan Mollohan (W.Va.), Mike Quigley (Ill.), Bobby Rush (Ill.) and Loretta Sanchez (Calif.).

There have been various reports on Sunday that Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and other anti-abortion lawmakers have agreed to an abortion deal involving an executive order from the Obama administration. However, Stupak’s office are strongly denying those reports.

AllahPundit of Hot Air says that Stupak may decide the fate of Obamacare:

I thought for sure that Lincoln Davis and John Tanner voting no meant that Pelosi had made it and was now releasing vulnerable Dems, but it ain’t so.

If the Stupak bloc is still back in the driver’s seat, the question remains:  will Stupak stand by his word or will he simply look for some political cover to help him in November?

The Executive Order will do nothing to stop the mandate that every man and women buying exchange-qualified insurance plans will have to pay $1+ a month into a trust to pay for abortions.  This is the very language in the Senate bill that Stupak said he could not vote for, but now the rumblings are he will vote for it as long as Obama gives him a meaningless Executive Order for him to wave in the air in November and say, “see, I got something from Obama, re-elect me.”

UPDATE:

Ok, this doesn’t look promising.  AllahPundit is reporting that Stupak has scheduled a press conference for 4:00 PM EDT, which almost certainly means he is announcing his yes vote.

UPDATE 2:

While we need to wait about another five minutes for the Stupak Press conference, the Hill is reporting that a deal has been reached with the White House and the remaining members of the Stupak bloc will flip to yes:

“Eight or nine” Democrats, including Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), will announce the deal at a 4 p.m. press conference, according to an anti-abortion Democrat.

“We’ve changed [our votes],” said Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio).

Driehaus said he’s seen the executive order and can now vote for the healthcare bill.  He said Stupak has signed off, as well.

As the day progressed, reports began to surface that Pelosi might still be short and that President Obama was considering issuing an executive order regarding the public funding for abortion.  The goal of the executive order would be to win the votes of Bart Stupak (D-MI) and nine other pro-life Democrats that won’t vote for the Senate bill while it contains public funding for abortion.

This evening, Gateway pundit is reporting that Pelosi remains short.  While we previously reported on Space and Matheson declaring their no votes, the news about Davis and about Clinton being brought in to make calls:

Glenn Reynolds reported– REPS. SPACE & MATHESON WILL BOTH VOTE NO. I’m also getting email reports that Rep. Lincoln Davis’s (D-TN) office is saying he will vote no, though I haven’t been able to find a published report to that effect.

There are reports that the socialists democrats even recruited Bill Clinton to make phone calls.

Gather.com has news that CNN is reporting that President Obama has recruited Bill Clinton to call undecided Democrats and try and convince them to vote yes for Obamacare:

Just a quick update: despite what you may be hearing from Fox, which has strangely had a more optimistic count for Democrats than even liberal websites, Pelosi DOES NOT have the votes yet.

…

Update #1 (5:48 PM EST): Zack Space just came out as a “no.” The Firedoglake count has him at undecided, so by their count, we just hit 216 no votes for the very first time. Will it stick? Who knows, but getting over the threshold is important.

The liberal site Firedoglake has the current count at 205 no, 204 yes, with 12 undecided and 10 they believe are holding firm with Stupak.  If their numbers are right, and they got all the undecided votes, then Pelosi would either have to cave and offer a deal to the pro-life Stupak group and come up with some language to address the Senate bill’s public funding of abortion.

Since it is a near certainty that the Senate would not act on any resolution or bill to ‘fix’ the Senate health carebill and remove the public funding for abortion, that really only leaves two choices.  First, Stupak and his group vote no.  Second, they go back on their word and vote for a bill with public funding for abortion.  It’s possible that Pelosi will help them by giving them some political cover by including some language to remove the public funding for abortion, even when she knows the Senate will never act on it.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air reports on a possible executive order on abortion aimed to win Stupak 10:

NRO says this “still isn’t nailed down,” but it sounds like the final stumbling block may be some sort of executive order about abortion to bring the Stupakers on board. And the pro-choicers are apparently okay with it. Gulp.

When President Bush left office, 43% of people strongly disapproved of his job performance.  This was after years of fighting two unpopular wars, and a presidential campaign that saw Obama, Clinton and other Democrats sole strategy being to demonize President Bush and claim any Republican elected would simply be four more years of George Bush.

It is amazing, that after the years of war, near collapse of the economic system, and two plus years of Democratic Presidential candidates demonizing Bush, that Obama has equaled his strongly disapprove numbers in just a little over a year.

Today, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air reports on today’s Rasmussen Reports poll:

Today’s Rasmussen numbers from their daily presidential poll puts Barack Obama into an unusual position.  In just 14 months, he has made himself more unpopular than his predecessor, at least by the measure of strong disapproval.  Obama’s approval index has tied its lowest mark yet at -21:

Rasmussen describes the new low for President Obama:

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-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President (see trends).

And from the “do they really not get it” category, Rasmussen explains what we have seen repeatedly over the last year, which is the more Obama pushes Obamacare on the American public, the lower his approval rating goes:

Each time the President leads a big push for his health care plan, his job approval ratings suffer. For Members of Congress, the impact may be more tangible. Just 34% say they’re more likely to vote for someone who supports this legislation. Fifty-percent (50%) are less likely to vote for a Member of Congress who supports the health care reform plan proposed by the President and Congressional Democrats. …

Overall, 45% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. Fifty-five percent (55%) disapprove.

It is simply amazing that a President that had an approval ratings in the high 60′s or 70′s (depending on the poll) when he took office, now only has a 45% approval rating.  Even more stunning is he is approaching the point where half of America ‘strongly’ disapprove of the job he is doing.

For instance, they are instructed not to use the total of 23 million people that will still be uninsured once the plan is in place, but instead to say 95% are covered. They say that 95% insured sounds better than 23 million uninsured. Also, the memo stated that saying that there would still be 23 million people uninsured after Obamacare is fully in force, would make President Obama’s statement to the joint sessions of Congress in September look bad, when he said that there were 30 million uninsured, which is why they needed to pass Obamacare.

While the memo warned in general about not getting into the specifics of CBO analysis numbers, it specifically warned that staffers and their bosses (the Congressmen) should not discuss the Medicare doc fix at all.  The memo stated that they would pass legislation with the doc fix in it after Obamacare was passed, but they did not include it in the Obamacare bill, because it would destroy the bills deficit neutrality.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey has made the scanned memo available here.

Democrats in Congress are claiming the memo did not come from the Democratic leadership.  The Talking Points Memo has more details:

A senior Democratic leadership aide told TPMDC in an interview the memo, printed by Politico and leading the Drudge Report this afternoon a few days ahead of the health care vote Sunday, is “a hoax.”

“We have checked with every Democratic office, no one has ever seen it. It did not come out of a Democratic office,” the aide said, adding that media outlets printing the memo have not checked with leadership offices if the memo is authentic. A second Democratic leadership aide confirmed the memo was not sent by the Democrats. A third Democratic aide also said the memo is fake, citing the “draft” stamp and saying no one uses such things.

“If this were a Democratic communications person who wrote this, they should be fired, because this looks like Republican talking points,” the third Democratic aide told TPMDC.

There are likely no areas where President Obama has equaled President Bush.  Bush didn’t do everything right, but he shot straight with the American public and he let the cards fall where they may.  A stark contrast to President Obama who routinely misstates the truth, attacks the former administration and outright lies about his mythical bi-partisan efforts.

The President’s approval rating has been on a steady decline.  Specifically there has been a steady and severe increase not only in the number of people that disapprove of him, but those people moving from the ‘somewhat’ disapprove category to the ‘strongly’ disapprove category.

Rasmussen reports, via The Volokh Conspiracy, has released new poll numbers that show after only a little over a year, the number of people that strongly disapprove of President Obama is equal to President Bush’s numbers when he left office:

When George Bush left office he was deeply unpopular: in Bush’s last month, according to Rasmussen 43% strongly disapproved of the job Bush was doing, while only 13% strongly approved, for a staggering negative rating of –30%. Rasmussen’s Thursday release shows that after 14 months in office President Barack Obama has achieved Bush’s 43% of the people strongly disapproving of his performance, but Obama is still 10% ahead of Bush in those who strongly approve (23% v. 13% for Bush).

I suspect that the main difference in their overall approval ratings is among African-Americans, not whites.

Imagine how unpopular Obama would be if the press and the late night comedians (who are at least as important as the press) treated Obama as they treated Bush.

It’s important to understand that when President Bush left office, not only had we been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, but we just finished the longest Presidential campaign ever (Senator Obama started his campaign years before the election), with the Democrats main platform being the demonization of George Bush and the claims that any Republican elected would be four more years of George Bush.

In that article, I outlined two major manipulations that President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have been utilizing to force the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to score the bill as costing less than one trillion dollars in the first ten years, and reducing the deficit during that same time frame.

The ‘manipulations’ that I highlighted, along with those I didn’t, might be the greatest scam or fraud ever perpetrated on American citizens in our countries history.

The two manipulations that I focused on were the ten years of tax revenue vs. only six years of Obamacare expenses, and Pelosi and Reid blocking all attempts to pass the Medicare ‘doctors fix’, until after the CBO scored the reconciliation bill and Obamacare is passed.

Unfortunately, with CBS and other news agencies touting the “CBO certified” numbers and trumpeting how Obamacare will reduce the deficit, many Americans don’t understand the true cost or that the CBO summary numbers are meaningless, because of the manipulative limitations that the Democrats required the CBO to follow.

The Weekly Standard breaks down the real cost of the bill:

For a variety of reasons, this tally doesn’t remotely reflect the bill’s real ten-year costs.  First, it includes 2010 as the initial year.  As most people are well aware, 2010 has now been underway for some time.  Therefore, the CBO would normally count 2011 as the first year of its analysis, just as it counted 2010 as the first year when analyzing the initial House health bill in the middle of 2009.  But under strict instructions from Democratic leaders, and over strong objections from Republicans, the CBO dutifully scored 2010 as the first year of the latest version of Obamacare.  If the clock were started in 2011, the first full year that the bill could possibly be in effect, the CBO says that the bill’s ten-year costs would be $1.2 trillion.

But even that wouldn’t come close to reflecting the bill’s true costs.  The CBO projects that over the next four years, less than two percent of the bill’s alleged “ten year” costs would hit:  just $17 billion of the $940 billion in costs that the Democrats are claiming.  In fact, the costs through President Obama’s entire presidency, should he be reelected, would be $336 billion.  What would the president leave behind for his successor?  According to the CBO, he would leave behind costs of $837 billion during his successor’s first term alone.  If his successor were to serve a second term, he or she would inherit a cool $2.0 trillion in Obamacare costs — about six times its costs during Obama’s own tenure.  This legislation is a ticking time-bomb.

To see the bill’s true first-decade costs, we need to start the clock when the costs would actually start in any meaningful way: in 2014.  The CBO says that Obamacare would cost $2.0 trillion in the bill’s real first decade (from 2014 to 2023) — and much more in the decades to come.

But $2.0 trillion wouldn’t be the total ten-year costs.  Instead, that would merely be the “gross cost of coverage provisions.”  Based on earlier incarnations of the proposed overhaul, the total costs would be about a third higher (the exact number can’t be gleaned from the CBO’s analysis, which is only preliminary and is not a full scoring) — making the total price-tag between $2.5 and $3 trillion over the bill’s real first decade.

How would we pay for all of this?  According to the CBO, by diverting $1.1 trillion away from already barely-solvent Medicare and spending it on Obamacare, and by increasing taxes on the American people by over $1 trillion.  Among the Medicare cuts would be cuts of $25,000 in Medicare Advantage benefits per enrollee — up from $21,000 in the previous scoring.

That is the time based manipulation and massive cuts to Medicare.  Here is why Pelosi and Reid refused to pass a new ‘doctors fix’, even though the last one will expire on April 1st, resulting in a 21% cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctors.  All in the name of getting a good, if completely fictional, CBO score:

We’d also pay for this through increased deficits.  Under strict instructions from the Democrats, the CBO gave Obamacare credit for over $400 billion (from 2014 to 2023) in phony “savings” that would allegedly result from cutting doctor’s payments under Medicare by over 20 percent and never raising them back up.  As the CBO notes, one of two things could happen:  Congress could either follow through on these severe pay cuts — in which case doctors would view all Medicare patients as if they have the plague — or, Congress could eliminate these pay cuts — as everyone in Washington expects to have happen under the so-called “doc fix” — in which case the CBO projects that this bill would raise deficits by over $100 billion from 2017 to 2019 alone.

Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) appeared on Fox and Friends and explains how the CBO score and deficit reduction numbers that Pelosi and other Democrats touted yesterday have nothing to do with the real costs:

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air comments on the IRS expansion buried in Obamacare:

We’ve heard the double-counting argument (and it’s a good one), but the IRS expansion makes for a better, more immediate argument. Do we need the IRS checking on us every month to enforce the health-insurance mandate? Do Americans think hiring an additional 15,000 IRS agents to get even more involved in our lives is a great idea for reform?

As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, the rumblings are growing that the Senate may not even pass the reconciliation bill.  Instead, they will simply let the House pass the current Senate bill, or should I say “deem it passed” and then refuse to take up the House reconciliation bill in the Senate.   Leaving tax payers not only with the massive increase to the deficit, but also all of the special deals the Senate bill contains.

He promised that no families making less than $250,000 would receive a tax increase.  I suppose technically, forcing them to pay more for insurance coverage isn’t raising their taxes, but that doesn’t mean that it will be any easier on middle class families.

While Obamacare will add a 3.9% Medicare tax to investment income for the first time on families making over $250,000, the hardest hit families will likely be those having combined incomes around $100,000.

These folks will be too “rich” to qualify for ObamaCare’s subsidies, but probably too poor to easily afford the pricey insurance that the president’s plan forces them to buy.

Many of these $100K families will be obliged to buy a policy costing an average of $14,700 for the mid-level, “silver” health plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates. After income taxes, they’ll be spending almost a quarter of their net income for health insurance.

During the health care summit, President Obama stated as fact, a completely inaccurate statement.  He claimed that if Obamacare passed, insurance premiums would go down.  However, at that time, the CBO had already stated that while there would be a very minor decrease in premiums for large corporate plans, there would be a 10-13% increase in premiums for individuals purchasing insurance on their own.

The budget office concluded that premiums for people buying their own coverage would go up by an average of 10 percent to 13 percent, compared with the levels they’d reach without the legislation.

As always, it is very difficult to know whether the President simply doesn’t know what is contained in the health care bills he is forcing on the American public, or if he is being intentionally deceitful.

In his interview with Bret Baier, the President stated that all ‘special deals’ were being removed from the Senate bill, except those provisions that would apply to all states.  He used the Louisiana provision as an example of one that has been incorrectly characterized as a special deal for Louisiana, when in fact it applies to all states.

Unless the Louisiana purchase has been rewritten in the reconciliation bill, then either President Obama intentionally lied or clearly doesn’t know what is in the Senate bill, which coincidentally House Democrats are terrified of voting on.

In his interview with Bret Baier, the President stated:

Something that was called a special deal was for Louisiana. It was said that there were billions — millions of dollars going to Louisiana, this was a special deal. Well, in fact, that provision, which I think should remain in, said that if a state has been affected by a natural catastrophe, that has created a special health care emergency in that state, they should get help. Louisiana, obviously, went through Katrina, and they’re still trying to deal with the enormous challenges that were faced because of that.

That also — I’m giving you an example of one that I consider important. It also affects Hawaii, which went through an earthquake. So that’s not just a Louisiana provision. That is a provision that affects every state that is going through a natural catastrophe.

Now I have said that there are certain provisions, like this Nebraska one, that don’t make sense. And they needed to be out. And we have removed those. So, at the end of the day, what people are going to be able to say is that this legislation is going to be providing help to small businesses and individuals, across the board, in an even handed way, and providing people relief from a status quo that’s just not working.

Now lets look at the Language of the Senate Bill:

8 ‘‘(2) In this subsection, the term ‘disaster-recovery

9 FMAP adjustment State’ means a State that is one of

10 the 50 States or the District of Columbia, for which, at

11 any time during the preceding 7 fiscal years, the President

12 has declared a major disaster under section 401 of the

13 Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assist

14 ance Act and determined as a result of such disaster that

15 every county or parish in the State warrant individual and

16 public assistance or public assistance from the Federal

17 Government under such Act and for which—

There is only one state, that in the preceding seven fiscal years, would qualify under the senate language.  Hawaii and their mythical earthquake would of course not qualify.

So, unless the reconciliation bill removes the “preceding seven fiscal years” and changes this to an ongoing relief for states where disasters are declared in every county following a natural disaster, it can and does only apply to Louisiana.

That then leaves us with two options.  Either the President intentionally lied to Bret Baier and the American public or contrary to his claims, he doesn’t know what the Senate language contains.

I think Cassy Fiano of Hot Air sums it up well:

This moment, from Bret Baier’s interview on Fox News with Obama, might just be one of the biggest “WTF?!” moments from Obama’s presidency yet. Obama is either completely making things up, living in an alternate reality, or really, really confused.

The gang of three (Obama, Pelosi and Reid) are guilty of what is tantamount to lying to the American public.  They have crafted and re-crafted their health care bills, until they get CBO (Congressional Budget Office) scores that they can ‘sell’ as reducing the deficit over the next 10 years.

Two of the most blatant examples of this are:

1. Having ten years of tax revenues, but delaying the implementation of the majority of the health care bill for four years, so there are only six years of costs.
2. Continuously pulling the Medicare ‘doctors fix’ from House and Senate bills, because if the fix is delayed, the CBO is not allowed to count the $300+ billion of cost in their bill costing and deficit calculations.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could use the ‘budgeting’ scheme that Obama, Pelosi and Reid are using?  When you are trying to get a loan and the bank asks for your income and expenses, you could say, “well, this is how much my salary is for the year, but for my expenses, I’m not going to count January 1st through April 15th, because that would make it look like I couldn’t afford the house, so I am only going to count my bills after April 15th.”

No bank would accept that approach, but that is exactly the manipulation that exists in the Democrat’s health care bill, so that Obama, Pelosi and Reid can say, “it reduces the deficit over the first decade.”   Of course it does, if you manipulate the numbers, include ten years of tax revenues, but only six years of program costs, you are able to make it look good for that first ten years.

Even using this manipulation, Pelosi and Reid have had to play ping pong with the CBO, because even with four extra years of tax revenues, they have not been able to show any ‘paper’ deficit reductions, without including all kinds of subtle manipulations to the language of the bill, such as mandating fictional cost savings in certain programs.  As I write this, Pelosi has not been able to provide language for the health-care reconciliation bill, because the CBO score keeps coming back too high, which won’t allow them to perpetuate the lie that it will reduce the deficit.  The bill was supposed to be published online days ago.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air comments on Pelosi’s game of continuous CBS scoring:

The entire political world waited yesterday for a report from the Congressional Budget Office that would either allow Democrats to schedule a vote on Saturday for ObamaCare or collapse the effort altogether.  The six PM deadline came and went without a peep out of the CBO, pushing any potential vote into next week.  What happened?  The Washington Times reports today that the CBO has found itself buried under the task of continually re-scoring ObamaCare proposals — and they’re not alone.

The second, and equally egregious, manipulation relates to the doctors fix.  For years, the Medicare reimbursement schedule  has been flawed, and as a result, each year Congress passes a doctors fix, so that doctors will be paid a reasonable reimbursement.  This year, not passing the ‘doctors fix’ would result in doctor’s Medicare reimbursements being cut by 21%, which would result in most doctors immediately stopping the treatment of all Medicare patients.

However, there is a problem, in order to get a CBO score that shows Obamacare reduces the deficit over the next decade, the ‘doctors fix’ cannot be current law.  The CBO can only count the proposed legislation it is scoring and enacted law.  Reid and Pelosi have killed each bill that has been introduced that includes the doctors fix, because they know that their ‘fictional’ deficit reduction of $130 billion or so over the next decade, would immediately become a $200+ billion deficit increase.   Note: several independent reviews of the Senate bill show a REAL first decade actual cost adding $1 trillion to the deficit, vs. the fictional $130 billion deficit reduction.

The reason for this is that by delaying the doctors fix, the CBO is required to count that 21% that will be added back with the doctors fix, as a cut to Medicare.  So, from the CBO score’s perspective, Medicare has been cut by $300+ billion, when in fact it will be added back as soon as the doctors fix is finally passed.

The order of passage of the bills is key to Pelosi, Reid and Obama’s deception.  So, if health care does pass this weekend, then expect to see a doctors fix bill rushed through next week and signed into law.  It’s important to note, that the gang of three are all on record saying that Medicare reimbursements won’t be cut by 21%, but will be fixed separately, they just don’t come clean with the fact that the reason for doing them separately is to manipulate the CBO score.

Mr. President, is this what you meant by “changing the way Washington works”?  Is lying to the American public really the hope and change you promised?

A survey by the New England Journal of Medicine cites fears of increased patient loads and decreased pay, along with already having large debt loads, as reasons why they would not recommend the medical profession to others and would consider leaving if Obamacare passes.   Nearly 50% of primary care physicians are considering leaving or feel they will be forced out of their medical practices if Obamacare is passed.

CNS News reports on the New England Journal of Medicine Survey:

More than 29 percent (29.2) percent of the nearly 1,200 doctors who responded to the survey said they would quit the profession or retire early if health reform legislation becomes law. If a public option were included in the legislation, as several liberal Senators have indicated they would like, the number would jump to 45.7 percent.

The medical journal published the results in its March and April edition, saying: “While a sudden loss of half of the nations physicians seems unlikely, a very dramatic decrease in the physician workforce could become a reality as an unexpected side effect of health reform.”

Kevin Perpetua, managing partner for the Medicus Firm, reported that a reform bill could be “the final straw” in an already financially precarious industry.

“Many physicians feel that they cannot continue to practice if patient loads increase while pay decreases,” Perpetua said in the study. “The overwhelming prediction from physicians is that health reform, if implemented inappropriately, could create a detrimental combination of circumstances, and result in an environment in which it is not possible for most physicians to continue practicing medicine.”

“With an average debt of $140,000, and many graduates approaching a quarter of a million dollars in school loans, being a doctor is becoming less and less feasible,” Perpetua said. “Health-care reform and increasing government control of medicine may be the final straw that causes the physician workforce to break down.”

The survey shows that many doctors already find their situations difficult:

– 36 percent said that they would not recommend medicine as a profession to others, regardless of whether health-care reform passes;
– another 27 percent would still recommend medicine as a career, but not if the current reform proposal passes.

In total, 63 percent of doctors would not recommend the profession after health-care reform passes. Just 12 percent do not recommend becoming a physician now but think they would if current reform proposals pass.

Primary-care physicians, those who work in the critical fields of family and internal medicine, not only feel that they would want to quit but that they might be cast out of medicine. 46.3 percent of those physicians said that they would either want to leave medicine or that they would be “forced out” by the changes to the system.

As dirty as the process appears, the results of Obamacare will be so much worse.  Pajamas Media describes the liberal thinking that has led to the failures of the post office and the city of Detroit, and how the lessons we didn’t learn from their collapses will be re-lived in the health care system if Obamacare is passed:

Before casting “yea” votes in favor of a government health care grab later this week, wavering House Democrats may want to struggle out of the left’s ideological fog for a moment and consider the sad, but instructive, tales of the U.S. Postal Service and the city of Detroit.  Both are poster boys (excuse me, poster persons) for how government can get almost anything gloriously wrong.

That the U.S. Postal Service is swimming in red ink isn’t news. The nation’s postal service, despite its first-class mail monopoly, swims in red ink a lot. The important news to Americans as they follow Washington’s three-ring health care circus is that U.S. Postmaster General Joe E. Potter wants to drop Saturday mail delivery as a cost-cutting measure.

To repeat, the postmaster general wants to reduce service in an effort to staunch red ink. That’s service as in mail delivery, the U.S. Postal Service’s bread and butter. Imagine a hamburger joint announcing to its customers that it plans to stop selling hamburgers a day or two a week to cut costs. Of course, a hamburger joint wouldn’t limit the sale of hamburgers to keep its costs down. The guy who owns the hamburger joint would get creative in his marketing and pricing to sell more hamburgers. He might trim costs operationally but not at the expense of selling as many hamburgers as he and his help could flip. Why the difference? The hamburger joint can go out of business. The U.S. Postal Service, being immune to risk, cannot.

…

Detroit is upside-down liberal thinking gone wild — almost literally. What’s happening in the Motor City gives us a hint to what may lie ahead for government-run health care. Stick with me on this one.

Mayor Dave Bing, a former NBA standout, plans to raze areas of Detroit that are blighted or abandoned. Bing plans to replace ramshackle plots with green spaces and trees. The total area in Detroit that the mayor wishes to raze surpasses all of Youngstown, Ohio, in square miles. Mayor Bing says that razing decrepit and abandon sections of Detroit is a cost-cutting move that will save the city millions of dollars in police and fire services, among others.

What’s the joke many are telling:  Government Health Care — Post office efficiencies, with IRS compassion.

While Stupak’s primary concern is the Senate bill’s public funding of abortion, that isn’t his only concern.  He says that there are other problems with the Senate bill that he and other House members fear will never be fixed if they agree to pass the Senate bill.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air comments on the interview:

Bart Stupak not only says that the dozen members in his coalition aren’t “really” wavering, the Democratic Congressman also says that abortion isn’t the only problem with the final ObamaCare push. Stupak notes that there are “250″ bills passed by the House languishing in the Senate, and wonders why anyone would assume the Senate would act any more enthusiastically on a reconciliation bill.

It would appear that Pelosi is busy playing Harry Reid’s game of lets make a deal, trying to win votes by cutting special deals, to meet their self imposed deadline of an up or down vote no later than the 21st.

Last week, during one of President Obama’s Obamacare pep rallies, he claimed that his bill would save money and reduce the deficit by $1 trillion over the next decade.  Even with the double counting of the cuts to medicare, and without counting the ‘doc fix’ bill, the best CBO score that they were able to get is about $140 trillion deficit reduction over the next decade.  Of course, independent analysis of the bill from organizations like the Wall Street Journal state it will actually add around $1 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.  Yet, the President states that it will reduce the deficit by $1 trillion.

Even in light of the Teleprompter, one might assume that was a ‘mistake’.  Yet, he made the same statement again, a few days alter.  It appears that President Obama has reached the stage where the truth is irrelevant and he believes the means justify the ends, even if it includes lying to the American public.

Yesterday in Ohio, President Obama claimed that his health care reform would reduce health care premiums by 3,000 percent:

Monday in Strongsville, Ohio, President Obama said  that ObamaCare will reduce health insurance premiums by “3,000 percent.” Considering that a 50 percent decrease in premiums would mean that we’d be paying half as much as we now pay for health insurance and that a 100 percent decrease in premiums would mean that we’d be paying nothing for health insurance, President Obama is telling us that insurance companies will actually start paying us money to keep our health insurance.

President Obama has tried to create a wave of anger towards insurance companies in order to get support for Obamacare.  He routinely tells the American public that insurance companies are to blame for the high cost of health care.  Yet, as is often the case with this White House, the truth is far different than the rhetoric:

Whatever their sins, insurers are mainly intermediaries; they pass along the costs of the delivery system. In 2009, the largest 14 insurers had profits of roughly $9 billion; that approached 0.4 percent of total health spending of $2.472 trillion. This hardly explains high health costs. What people need to know is that Obama’s plan evades health care’s major problems and would worsen the budget outlook. It’s a big new spending program when government hasn’t paid for the spending programs it already has.

Mr. President, the campaign is over.  It’s time to stop making campaignesque lies, and start shooting straight with the American public.

He told President Clinton that his legislation (Hillarycare) was so complex and far reaching, and would effect so many people, that the American people needed to know what was in it, and that the Senators needed to know what was in it.

If you removed the date he refers to and the name Clinton, everything he says applies to what President Obama is trying to do with Obamacare.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February, keeping the flood of red ink on track to top last year’s record for the full year.

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the February deficit totaled $220.9 billion, 14 percent higher than the previous record set in February of last year.

The deficit through the first five months of this budget year totals $651.6 billion, 10.5 percent higher than a year ago.

The Obama administration is projecting that the deficit for the 2010 budget year will hit an all-time high of $1.56 trillion, surpassing last year’s $1.4 trillion total. The administration is forecasting that the deficit will remain above $1 trillion in 2011, giving the country three straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits.

AllahPundit of Hot Air puts this massive deficit in perspective:

All I can do is try to contextualize this for you: According to CBO, based on an analysis of the deeply deceitful numbers presented to it by Reid and Obama, the national panacea of health-care reform will save us $132 billion over the next 10 years. Which means the feds blew through our big decade-long ObamaCare refund in about … 17 days last month. (Savings from 2020 to 2029 are estimated to be $1 trillion, but follow the “deeply deceitful” link for insight into that. Even CBO scoffs at trying to predict any numbers that far out.)

This follows a day after the CBO said that it projected the deficit over the next 10 years to be $1.2 trillion higher than the Obama administration has estimated.  The CBO projects the deficit to be $9.7 trillion vs the $8.5 trillion the White House has estimated for the next decade.  That would put the national debt in 2020 well over $22 trillion, which is a number that many people consider unsustainable.

That $22 trillion national debt doesn’t even take into account the real costs of the health care bill if it is passed.  Through manipulation of the CBO scoring, the gang of three (Obama, Pelosi and Reid) were able to get a CBO score showing a deficit reduction over the next decade of $130 billion or so.  Independent analysis of the health care bill put the real cost at about $1 trillion over the next decade, which would raise the 10 year deficit to close to $11 trillion and the national debt in 2020 to over $23 trillion.

Joe Biden, speaking on the CBS Early Show, stated that the Stimulus Bill was designed in two stages, with the job creation portion of the bill in the second stage, which will kick in this year:

This is actually a pretty amazing assertion by the Vice President.  The White House ‘inherrited’ a country that was hemorrhaging jobs.  The Democrats in the House and Senate, along with President Obama, passed the stimulus practically overnight, without allowing debate on the bill, nor giving members of Congress a chance to read it, because it was critical that the bill was passed in an emergency fashion, because we needed to stop the job losses and start creating new jobs.  We all remember President Obama’s promise that if the Stimulus bill was passed that unemployment wouldn’t top 8%.

Now, Vice President Biden says that the bill was designed so that the job creation portion of the bill wouldn’t occur until the second year, which just coincidentally is an election year.

On its face, it appears that from the start Democrats sacrificed the American economy to create a massive spending bill that they hoped would create great photo ops and news stories 14-18 months after the bill was passed, just in time to help Democrats campaigning for the mid-term elections.

The latest attack is being launched at the Governor of Virgina:

Democrats have targeted Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell in their effort to paint Republicans as hypocritical when it comes to stimulus money.

The Governor’s office confirmed Monday that Virginia will receive $24 million in federal funds over the next four years to use on health care information technology.

That money comes from funds made available to states by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

McDonnell has emerged as  a rising star in the Republican party since his landslide election victory last November.

McDonnell’s office released a statement on Monday heaping praise on the funding, “I thank U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius for approving Virginia’s application for cooperative funding…”

However, during his campaign McDonnell said the stimulus bill would bring dangerous long term debt.

The DNC wasted no time in jumping on the issue.

“The spate of Republicans being exposed for seeking stimulus dollars under the radar, proves that either Republicans were just being sarcastic when they assailed the stimulus and they actually love the Recovery Act, or their objections are based on politics and not principle,” said  Hari Sevugan, DNC spokeswoman.

As always, it’s hard to tell whether Democrats are really so totally confused on the difference between opposing a stimulus bill they believe is bad for the country and their state or district receiving stimulus money once the Democrats passed the bill.

Senators and House Representatives are sent to Washington to represent the best interest of the people in their districts.  Virtually all Republicans opposed the stimulus bill, because they didn’t believe the orgy of spending and the resulting deficit ballooning was good for the voters of their district, state and country.

However, once the Democrats in Congress passed the $850+ billion stimulus bill then Republicans have an obligation to their constituents to request funds for their home states and districts.  Their constituents, along with their children and grandchildren, will be paying for the trillions of dollars of new debt the Democrats are racking up, so therefore Republicans would not be doing their job if they ‘stood on principle’ and refused to take stimulus dollars.  The people of their districts are going to have to pay for this stimulus bill for a very long time, so therefore they must receive an equal share of it.

The reality is that the Democrats making these accusations of hypocrisy know that there is a big difference between Republican opposition of the bill, and those same Republicans now ‘accepting’ or ‘requesting’ funds for their districts.  However, that fact doesn’t matter.  This week has been decreed a “promote the stimulus” week by President Obama.  He has Cabinet members flying around the country for photo ops and to spin how great the stimulus bill has been.  Therefore, by default, the President’s decree also makes this an ‘honest free’ week.

A school superintendent in Rhode Island is trying to fix an abysmally bad school system.

Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, each lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring.  The teachers’ union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands.

The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000.  This exemplifies a nationwide trend in which public sector workers make far more than their private-sector counterparts (with better benefits).

This happened in a poor town, where reportedly 50% of students were currently failing their courses, and they had a graduation rate of only about 50%.  In order to try and turn the school around, the teachers’ union was asked to give a small number of concessions on time and extra help for the students.  They refused.

As always, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air offers a good perspective:

This is a good argument for getting unions out of the public-employee business altogether.  Not only does the marriage of unions and the public sector create too much of an impulse to expand bureaucracies, it twists the priorities away from public service and towards entitlement thinking.   To their credit, most educators, law enforcement, and emergency response personnel successfully resist that impulse, but this jaw-dropping standoff in Rhode Island shows that it does exist.

The average public sector job is in the $75-80k range, while the average private sector job is in the mid $40k range.  Support for unions and union memberships are near all-time lows.  When given a choice, employees around the country are saying no to unions. Professor Mark J. Perry on his Carpe Diem blog reports that in the ’50s nearly one in three employees were members of unions.  Now, the number is around 12%, or about one in eight workers.

However, there is one exception.   While the number of private sector union workers has been on a steep decline, in 2008 the number of public sector union workers actually exceeded private sector workers for the first time and continues to grow.

While most Americans are rejecting unions, the liberal arm of the Democratic party is fighting to revive one of their largest sources of campaign funds.  This is the reason that Reid, Pelosi and Obama are working hard to get card check passed.  If they succeed in passing card check, then union thugs will be able to intimidate workers into voting for unionization when they otherwise would not and America will suffer the consequences.

President Barack Obama, defending his economic stimulus plan on its first anniversary, is dispatching his Cabinet across the country to try to calm an anxious public as Democrats head into potentially devastating midterm elections.

A weeklong push to highlight the stimulus program’s first year was starting with a Tuesday trip by Vice President Joe Biden to hard-hit Saginaw, Mich., to tour a small business, a jobs training program and a solar factory that all received Recovery Act dollars.

Obama’s fellow Democrats planned to tout programs putting people back to work under the $787 billion spending bill. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was touring a medical center in Atlanta on Tuesday; Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was promoting stimulus projects in Virginia and Texas the same day.

In all, senior administration officials are scheduled to visit 35 communities before Friday to counter Republican claims the massive deficit-spending program has failed. Obama plans to surround himself at the White House on Wednesday with people who have jobs because of the stimulus plan, then travel to Colorado and Nevada.

This is simply a continuation of the strategy that President Obama described following the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts.  It is centered on Obama’s belief that the American people don’t “get it”.  He has tried to make the case that he spent so much time creating and passing policy last year that he forgot to stop and clearly explain to the American voters exactly what he was doing.  He indicated that he assumed incorrectly that the American people would be smart enough for them to “get it”, if he simply kept working hard.  This from a President that has done more interviews, Town Hall meetings and prime-time TV appearances in his first year than any other recent President.

In keeping with his belief that if he just explains his unpopular policies, he will somehow make them popular, the White House is now blowing more tax dollars on a stimulus promotional tour.

While watching the press coverage of these promotional events, here are a couple things you probably won’t see his minions talk about.

First, since the stimulus money has trickled out, with only about 1/3 of it spent after the first year, and only 10% or so spent in the first six months, why was it necessary to pass it in an overnight rush, where nobody had a chance to read the bill before it was voted on?

Second, with Obama and the Democrats calling the GOP the party of no and claiming the Republicans are the reason there is no bipartisanship in Washington, will they give Obama credit for getting the ball rolling.  It was a year ago when in response to Republican leaders complaining to the President about being excluded from the stimulus discussions and raising objections to some parts of the $750+ $850+ billion stimulus bill, that the President responded to the Republican leadership by simply laughing and stating “I won” and therefore he would get to choose who was allowed to give input on bills.

Instead of being the great uniter as he promised, President Obama’s policies and personal arrogance has not only further divided Washington, but the entire country.  His Cabinet members making three dozen photo ops this week is not going to undo the damage that President Obama has done in his first year in office.

The woman that poses as Barack Obama on all his social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter is connected to the far-left organization MoveOn.org.

For those scratching their heads, the President in theory is a member of these websites. However, he obviously isn’t responsible for typing in the little messages that are going out to his followers almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal revealed the identity of the current Twitterer as Mia Cambronero.

Sheppard goes on to explain that Cambronero is a senior fellow at the New Organizing Institute, which is a radical branch of MoveOn.org.

Some might argue that it is no big deal if a woman that types messages on Twitter and Facebook for President Obama was previously a part of a political group like MoveOn.org.   Maybe that’s true, maybe not.  However, the important thing that this discovery reinforces once again, is how much President Obama has surrounded himself with far-left liberals and extremists.

Responding to Biden’s apparent attempt to take credit for the positive results of the surge and other decisions that Senators Obama and Biden had opposed, Cheney had this to say about Iraq:

“If they’re going to take credit for it, fair enough, for what they’ve done while they’re there,” Cheney said Sunday. “But it ought to go with a healthy dose of ‘thank you, George Bush’ up front and a recognition that some of their early recommendations, with respect to prosecuting that war, were just dead wrong.”

…

Asked about Biden’s comments, former Vice President Cheney said, “If they had had their way, if we’d followed the policies they’d pursued from the outset or advocated from the outset, Saddam Hussein would still be in power in Baghdad today.”

Senator Barack Obama campaigned on his opposition not only of the Iraq war, but that he would fight President Bush’s decision to increase troop levels in Iraq (the surge) and later claimed that the surge was making things worse in Iraq:

Senator Obama January 2007:  “I am going to actively oppose the president’s proposal. I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Senator Obama November 2007: “Not only have we not seen improvements, but we’re actually worsening.”

Senator Obama May 2008: “We don’t need more spin about the surge that was supposed to get the Iraqis to step up. We don’t need more leaders who just see what they want to see in Iraq. It’s time to recognize where we are in Iraq.”

The invitations have gone out to leadership in both parties to attend Barack Obama’s ostensibly bipartisan summit on health care.  Is this the event of the social season, a political debate, or Kabuki theater?  Depending on who answers, it seems that no one is quite sure what to expect from any of the participants, assuming the debate takes place at all.

Many Republicans fear that this summit will be nothing more than political theater aimed at helping provide cover for the President and Democrats in Congress as they continue to work behind closed doors to come up with a plan to pass Obamacare via budget reconciliation.

The format that the White House has laid out has done little to alleviate Republican fears.  After opening remarks by President Obama, followed by a Republican and a Democrat, President Obama will moderate a discussion among the 37 law makers invited to the meeting.  Considering what the President has invested in the Democratic bill, along with the deals he has cut with union leaders, Pharma and the insurance industry, many don’t feel he can be an impartial moderator.

Making matters worse is the fact that the White House and Congressional Democrats have not been able to keep quiet the fact they continue to work on a compromise bill between House and Senate Democrats, along with trying to win the support of 51 Senators, which is needed to ram Obamacare through via reconciliation.

In fact, on the same day that President Obama sent out his summit invitations, a Democratic member of the Senate said the decision has been made to proceed with reconciliation:

“I think a decision has just been made — we’re just going to go ahead” with a reconciliation bill, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, told reporters on Friday.

All indications are that the Democrat’s strategy is to have their compromise bill, along with a reconciliation plan, ready to go prior to the Health-Care Summit on February 25th.

Then on the 25th, President Obama will hold his summit, which will have been carefully orchestrated to showcase the revised health care bill that the White House, Congressional Democrats and special interest groups have been working on behind closed doors for nearly two months.   Once the summit is over, they will be able to say, “we had the meeting, we tried to get Republican support, but they still want to do nothing but obstruct health care reform.  We have no choice but to pass health care reform by using reconciliation.”

This is all political theater, because if the White House and Democratic leaders were truly interested in coming up with a bipartisan solution, they wouldn’t be continuing to work on their partisan bill behind closed doors, and they wouldn’t have already made the decision to proceed with reconciliation.

Scott Brown ran in Massachusetts by saying, “I will be the 41st vote to stop the Senate health care bill.”  That promise resulted in nearly two thirds of the independents in the bluest of blue states voting for a Republican.  Add to that, poll after poll shows that the American public is not happy with the Democrat’s health care bills.

There can be no doubt left that the majority of Americans don’t want the Democrat’s health care bill, which they continue to work on in the back rooms of the White House and Congress.

Democrats are betting on the fact that voters have very short memories, as the mid-term elections are less than nine months away.

President Obama ran on the promise that he would not raise taxes on any individual making less than $200,000 and any family making less than $250,000.  It was a promise he made repeatedly on the campaign trail and continued to make after being sworn in.

As many conservatives expected would happen, President Obama is laying the groundwork for an across the board tax increase.   The President now says he is ‘agnostic’ on tax increases on the middle class and open to any solutions to get the deficit under control.

President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”

Obama repeatedly vowed during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he would not raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 and households earning less than $250,000 a year. When senior White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner suggested in August that the administration might be open to going back on that pledge, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs quickly reiterated the president’s promise.

President Obama went on to say that the problem was not the spending increase last year, but simply that there is a ‘mismatch’ between the amount of money coming in and going out, and “that is going to require some big, tough choices that, so far, the political system has been unable to deal with.”

It isn’t very hard to read between those lines.  He’s agnostic on a tax increase on middle class families.  He doesn’t feel the spending Orgy that Reid and Pelosi have conducted and he has encouraged and signed into law, is the problem.  But, because there is a mismatch between the spending and revenue, tough choices must be made.  In other words, taxes will be raised on the middle class to pay for his $4 trillion budget and $1.6 trillion deficit.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air gives his take on Obama’s reversal on a middle class tax increase:

What changed? Obama’s economic policies have had the effect that we predicted they would during the campaign. The White House sees trillion-plus budget deficits for most of the next ten years, thanks to massively expanding federal budgets and the drag they put on economic growth. Either Obama has to drastically reduce federal spending and the intrusion it creates in American lives, or he has to hike taxes in a broad manner to generate enough income to offset the spending. Taxing just the upper 5% isn’t an option.

What Obama is signaling was predicted by conservative strategists and blogs since before candidate Barack Obama was elected.  It was always expected to happen in the order we are seeing it.  First, Obama would ratchet up spending in massive way.  Then, they would use the historic deficits to justify a broad-based tax increase.

It’s unclear in what form the tax increases will come, but they almost certainly will appear in some form or fashion.  It’s possible that we could see a national sales tax or VAT tax.  It could come in the form of increased gas and energy taxes.  However, the most likely scenario is simply an across the board increase in income taxes.

Common sense would say that the Democrats in Congress afraid of losing their majority in the November elections would probably not be willing to vote in a tax increase before the election.  That would mean they would have to pass a tax increase after the elections, but before the new Congress is sworn in.  That might be easier said than done, especially if Reid loses his reelection bid.

Instead, if the Democrats are not able to pass the tax increase they want, they can accomplish it by simply doing nothing and letting the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year.  Then, when the Republicans attempt to extend the Bush tax cuts, the Democrats will simply block any attempts to extend the tax cuts, which they will be able to do whether or not they still control both Houses of Congress next year.

The first President Bush felt the wrath of  American voters when he broke his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge.  Time will tell if President Obama feels that same wrath.

A new CBS News/New York Times poll shows the President’s continued decline:

Mr. Obama’s job approval rating stands at 46 percent, matching his previous low from early January. As many as 45 percent of Americans disapprove of the job he is doing – his highest disapproval rating to date. More than anything, Americans are critical of how Mr. Obama is handling domestic issues like the economy.

Still, the president is more often viewed as representing and understanding Americans’ interests more than either Congress or Republicans are.

Most Americans, 57 percent, say Mr. Obama is more interested in serving the American people rather than interest groups, while 35 percent say the opposite is true. By contrast, just 13 percent of Americans think Congress is more interested in serving the people they represent over special interests.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has highlighted some of the specific areas where Obama’s approval has taken a big hit:

There is a lot more in the poll breakout, but here are a few highlights:

• Economy – down 10, 42/52
• Health care – down 20, 35/55
• Deficits – down 27, 31/58
• More people feel angry or dissatisfied (51%) at the Obama administration than enthusiastic or satisfied (47%)
• 56% think he has no clear plan to create jobs

Be sure to visit Hot Air to read the rest of Ed’s breakdown of the latest poll results.

President Obama has stated that the American voters just don’t ‘get it’.  He claimed that the backlash witnessed in Massachusetts was due to the fact that he was so busy creating and passing his policies, that he didn’t take enough time out to explain to the common people voters exactly how good for America his policies would be.

Fast forward a month, and President Obama has been on TV almost daily ‘explaining’ to the voters what his policies mean.  The fact is that the more President Obama ‘explains’ his policies, the lower his poll numbers go.

Here’s a free tip, Mr. President:  It isn’t that American voters don’t understand your policies, it’s that they don’t agree with those policies or the Chicago-style politics you are using to attempt to implement them.

The Senate proposal, which is more narrow than the one analyzed by CBO, is estimated to cost about $10 billion. That would add 80,000 to 180,000 jobs over the course of a year. The U.S. economy, meanwhile, has lost 8.4 million jobs since the start of the recession.

That CBO analysis of a more generous “payroll tax holiday” found that it would only create 8-18 jobs per $1 million in cost.  Making it a very inefficient means of creating jobs.

While Reid had scheduled a vote on this second stimulus bill, he has yet to produce a bill for Republican Senators to read.  While the back-to-back blizzards that hit DC in the last week resulted in the scheduled vote being canceled, it is likely that the vote will be rescheduled before a bill is produced.  To date, Reid refuses to produce the bill or a draft of the bill.  Earlier in the week a draft of the new stimulus bill was leaked, but Democratic leaders responded by stating that the bill that would be voted on would look far different than the leaked bill.

Senator Mitch McConnell has asked with no success for Harry Reid to produce the bill for Republican Senators to review prior to voting on it:

McConnell also requested that Democrats formally release the bill text so his party could read it.

“My members need to be able to feel like they understand what they are being called upon to support,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

Only about a third of the last $850+ billion stimulus bill has been spent, but that $250+ billion has proven to be totally ineffective.  As an example, the stimulus had money earmarked to create the kind of  ‘green jobs’ that President Obama keeps telling us will be the key to the future of the United States.  New information shows that 80% of the money going to develop wind power has gone to Chinese manufacturers:

“Most of the jobs are going overseas,” said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He analyzed which foreign firms had accepted the most stimulus money. “According to our estimates, about 6,000 jobs have been created overseas, and maybe a couple hundred have been created in the U.S.”

Even with the infusion of so much stimulus money, a recent report by American Wind Energy Association showed a drop in U.S. wind manufacturing jobs last year.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the flow of money to foreign companies an outrage, because the stimulus, he said, was intended to create jobs inside the United States.

The good news is we are creating green jobs.  The bad news is that most of those jobs are in China.

Michelle Malkin gives some insight into “porkulus II“:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that the Porkulus II plan – reportedly with an $85 billion price tag — was a “really nice piece of legislation.” But you’ll have to take his credibility-damaged word for it.

Despite anticipated votes on the bill before President’s Weekend, no one outside the Democrat leadership and K Street had seen an actual bill as of Tuesday afternoon. Few will read the whole thing before casting their hasty votes. And once again, we’ll only be informed of the last-minute sweeteners, Cash for Cloture handouts, and backroom deals after the ink of the president’s signature is dry.

Reportedly, public-sector unions are pushing hard to include their precious card-check plan, which would allow Big Labor bosses to sabotage workers’ rights to a federally supervised, private ballot election.

While the fact that only Democrats, lobbyists and union leaders have seen the bill is disturbing, possibly the most disturbing nugget here is about card check.  There have been increasing rumors that the Democrats will try and pass card check by attaching it to the second stimulus bill.  Obama, Reid and Pelosi are receiving increased pressure from unions like the SEIU that are angry that the millions of dollars spent to get Obama and other Democrats elected (likely $100+ million, as SEIU alone spent $60 million on Obama’s campaign) has not been repaid with legislation such as card check and other liberal, union friendly bills. Andy Stern of SEIU has threatened that if the legislation they have paid for isn’t passed, they might not finance the Democrats in the mid-term elections.

A brief explanation of card check.  It is the answer to shrinking union membership in the US.  The law would eliminate the secret ballot, and instead a company would become unionized if more than 50% of the employees signed a card saying they want a union.  Until now, in order to avoid union intimidation of employees, the open signing of these cards by a majority of the employees then led to a secret ballot.  In many cases, employees that were intimidated into signing a card to bring a vote, would then vote against the union during the secret ballot.  To prevent this from happening in the future, Democrats and union leaders want to eliminate the secret ballot and rely ONLY on the public ballot.  Anyone that saw union members shoving voters around during the summer town hall meetings, or saw reporters being harrassed and shoved around while covering the Massachusettes’ special election, understands the danger of relying only on public voting.  When two 300 pound pipe fitters knock on your door and invite themselves in and ask you to sign the card saying you want a union at work, what are you going to do?

Back to stimulus II.  Until we see a bill, we won’t know exactly what it contains, but based on what we know, only 10-15% of it will be tax incentives to hire employees.  Ed Morrissey of Hot Air further explains why the tax breaks won’t work:

In other words, if you’ve taken Econ 101, you know the problem with this bill.  Businesses hire people to meet demand, and they don’t hire people until that demand creates opportunity for profit beyond the price of the employee.   Otherwise, the business loses money and eventually fails, or more likely, reduces its work force to meet the actual demand for its products or services in order to survive.

…

To put it directly, this subsidizes nothing more than the normal business decisions made by growing companies.  It won’t incentivize anyone in their right mind to start a hiring spree.  That’s why the CBO scores it as low as they do.  And at that scoring, the best the proposal will do is increase jobs by 180,000 over the course of the year — which is less than we’ve lost in most of the months in 2009.

So, what will make up the remaining $70-120 billion of spending that this bill is likely to contain?  Until Harry Reid is willing to produce a bill, we can’t say for sure.  However, based on the draft that was leaked, it is simply going to be a laundry list of spending that has nothing to do with job creation.

Dick Morris says that based on current Rasmussen polling, the Republicans could pick up 10 seats:

If the Republican Party wins every senate seat in which it now holds a lead, according to Rasmussen’s polls, it will capture eight Democratic seats while holding all of its own. The two remaining pickups, to assure control, could be in Indiana where former Senator Dan Coats may run against Senator Evan Bayh and in California.

The two remaining pickups, to assure control, could be in Indiana where former Senator Dan Coats may run against Senator Evan Bayh and in California. Even if Coats does not run, former Congressman John Hostettler is only behind Bayh by 44-41. And, in California, former Hewlitt Packhard CEO Carly Fiorina is also only three points behind Senator Barbara Boxer.

A lot is left to be written in this story.  The Republicans have to hold on to their own seats while picking up 10 Democratic seats.  This is no simple feat.  Public opinion needs to remain negative towards President Obama and the Democratic Congress for such a large swing to occur.

That public opinion will likely be defined by three key issues:

1. If the health care debate remains a long, drawn-out process marked by back room deals, many Independents will continue to lean right.  On the other hand, if it is quickly passed OR dropped, support from Independents could begin to return for the Democrats.
2. Jobs and the economy.  Most Republicans and Independents believe the stimulus has been a failure and waste of money.  If America continues to hemorrhage jobs, and if the second stimulus bill Jobs Bill appears to simply be more reckless spending and pay offs to liberal special interests, we will likely see Independents break the way they did in Massachusetts.
3. Card check and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  There is talk that the Democrats may try and back door card check by attaching it to the second stimulus bill.  The theory being that if they can sell the bill to the public as having big tax breaks for small businesses and the middle class, and containing other benefits meant to create jobs, then the Republicans will have a hard time keeping all 41 GOP votes in line for a filibuster, even with card check hidden in the bill.  On top of that, Obama has signaled that if the Senate does not confirm Craig Becker to head the NLRB, that he could make him a ‘recess’ appointment, thereby bypassing Senate confirmation.  As polls have shown, America is no longer a union-friendly country.  There could be a large public backlash from Obama bypassing the Senate and putting one of Andy Stern’s VERY radical SEIU guys in charge of such an important position.  Especially considering the fact that SEIU spent $60 million dollars helping Obama get elected, and that Obama and Congressional Democrats paid the unions back when they cut a $60 billion deal to give union members tax breaks that no other US citizen would get.  This of course happened during their televised on C-SPAN closed-door health care meetings at the White House last month.  If Obama and Congressional Democrats ram through Becker’s appointment and slip card check through as an amendment on the second stimulus bill, it will confirm once and for all that the hope and change that Independents bought when electing Obama, really was just a campaign lie.

There are certainly some other issues on the table that could sway voters in either direction over the next nine months, but these three issues will go a long way in determining what message voters will send President Obama and Congressional Democrats in November.

Today, President Obama made a surprise appearance in the briefing room and took questions for a little over 30 minutes.

Video of Obama’s question and answer session are embedded below in four parts.

Earlier today, I was preparing a post questioning why the President hadn’t taken questions from the White House press corpses corps since July of last year.  Prior to today’s surprise press conference, the last press conference the President held, where he took questions from White House correspondents, was the now infamous blunder where he stated that the Cambridge police department acted stupidly and strongly insinuated they did so in a racist manner:

“I don’t know – not having been there and not seeing all the facts – what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two that he Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home,” Obama said in response to a question from the Chicago Sun-Times’s Lynn Sweet.

Gates, Obama allowed, “is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don’t know all the facts.”

However Gates, he continued, “jimmied his way to get into [his own] house.”

“There was a report called in to the police station that there might be a burglary taking place – so far so good,” Obama said, reflecting that he’d hope the police were called if he were seen breaking into his own house, then pausing.

“I guess this is my house now,” he remarked of the White House. “Here I’d get shot.”

Since that time, President Obama has made a great many appearances on TV, but almost always in highly controlled one-on-one interviews or staged town hall events, where the President is able to focus on the one or two points that are part of the message he wants to promote, rather than responding to the questions that the White House correspondents want answers to.

In President Obama’s first year, he only had question and answer sessions with White House correspondents 47 times vs. 147 times for President George W. Bush and 252 time for President Bill Clinton.  However, most of Obama’s Q & A sessions with the press corps came before August, with only 16 brief sessions since the President’s blunder that led to the now famous Beer Summit.

In contrast, Fox News reports that “Obama has granted 161 interviews, compared to 50 for Bush and 53 for Clinton.” It should be noted that only a few of those interviews have been granted to Fox News.

Helen Thomas, who had been a big supporter of the President and his agenda during his campaign and early in his Presidency, began to publicly grumble in July when she accused Robert Gibbs and the White House of controlling the press.  Stating that even President Nixon’s White House didn’t control the press like Obama’s administration does:

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.

“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.

“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well–for the town halls, for the press conferences,” she said. “It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.”

On Monday, Chip Reid of CBS, Chuck Todd of NBC and Helen Thomas again complained about President Obama’s refusal to take questions from White House correspondents:

“It’s a source of great frustration here,” says Chip Reid, CBS’s White House correspondent. “It’s important for us to hold the president’s feet to the fire.”

NBC White House reporter Chuck Todd calls the situation a “shame,” saying the administration is trying to control the message rather than allowing Obama to be seen “unscripted.”

Hearst columnist Helen Thomas said the president has “gone an obscenely long time, not holding one.”

Apparently succumbing to the growing outcry from the White House press corps and the media in general, President Obama made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room and took questions from the press corps for over a half hour today.

If you missed the press conference, we will have video of today’s Q & A session online shortly.

UPDATED:  You can watch a video of the press conference here.

This morning on Fox and Friends, during a live shot from the White House that was interrupted by a backhoe moving behind Goler and trucks beeping, Wendell Goler explained that the White House is moving a full grown tree.  It appears that they don’t want to cut down the tree, so they have a crew of people and equipment lined up to ‘save’ the tree.

Anyone want to calculate what kind of carbon deficit this little operation will create? How much energy and carbon emissions will it take to move this tree vs. the CO2 that tree will remove in its life?

I wonder if they have a tree surgeon on standby and an Arborist emergency room prepped, just in case the tree suffers a trauma during this delicate operation.

In yet another highly controlled, one-on-one interview, President Obama told Katie Couric that he has not ruled out trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City, even though New York officials and Congressmen are saying that they don’t want the trial in Manhattan.

However, the thing that stood out in that part of the interview was that President Obama stated that 190 terrorists had been successfully convicted in federal courts:

He also defended his decision, noting again that the administration of former President George W. Bush had handled terror suspects arrested in the United States in the same way.

“They prosecuted 190 folks in these Article III courts, got convictions and those folks are in maximum security prisons right now. And there have been no escapes,” Obama said. “And it is a virtue of our system we should be proud of.”

Just last week Eric Holder stated that 300 terrorists had been tried and convicted in federal courts.  It’s important to note that Attorney General Holder told a Senate panel in November that he would produce a list of the 300 terrorists convicted in federal courts, including what the actual charges were, and to date he has failed to live up to that promise.

As is often the case with the Obama administration, the ‘message’ changes based on who is speaking and who they are speaking to.  A few weeks ago, when Axelrod, Jarret and Gibbs made the rounds of Sunday talk shows, their ‘claims’ of jobs ‘saved or created’ ranged from thousands to two million.

In the case of these terrorist convictions, we have heard hundreds, 200, 300 and now 190, but the White House has continued to promise, but not deliver, a list of these convicted terrorists.

Michelle Malkin has more on the unprecedented spending on this years census:

The U.S. Census Bureau will squander $2.5 million on a half-minute Super Bowl ad starring D-list celebrity Ed Begley, Jr., plus two pre-game blurbs and 12-second “vignettes” featuring Super Bowl anchor James Brown. It’s a drop in the Census boondoggle bucket (otherwise known as the tax-subsidized National Democrat Future Voter Outreach Drive). The Obama White House has allocated a total of $340 million on an “unprecedented” promotional blitz for the 2010 Census. That’s on top of $1 billion in stimulus money siphoned off for increased Census “public outreach” and staffing. In all, the Census will triple its total budget from 2000 to $15 billion.

While the spend without limits Democratic Congress and White House is causing Americans to become so desensitized to spending in the trillions, that $15 billion seems like chump change.  The fact is that it isn’t chump change.  It’s just another example of wasteful spending that is adding to our ever growing national debt.   Last year President Obama told Americans that just as the American public needs to start living within their means, so does the federal government.  Clearly, that was yet another hollow promise. Simply more campaign-style rhetoric from a President that doesn’t seem capable of transitioning from campaign mode to governing mode.  Democrats in Congress just gave the federal government a credit limit increase, when they voted to increase the US debt ceiling by another $1.9 trillion.  The fact that Paul Kirk, the interim Senator from Massachusetts, was the 60th vote, when legally he shouldn’t even have had the right to cast a vote, is the subject of another post.

The point is that the US government is having to borrow the money to pay for that Super Bowl ad.  It’s having to borrow the $340 million for advertising and promoting the census.  It’s having to borrow the $10 trillion extra when they decided to triple the census budget.

Every time you read that the federal government is spending $300 million on this, or $15 billion on that, just remember that is money we are having to borrow from the Chinese and other foreign countries in order to pay for the Obama spending orgy.

Speaking of Orgies, Malkin also reports on the Census Bureau road show that will be driving 13 buses and vans around the country attending big parties like Mardi Gras and the Super Bowl, as well as blowing our tax dollars in Las Vegas, which President Obama just told us was a no-no for private companies and hard working families:

“When times are tough, you tighten your belts,” President Obana lectured us. “You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas.” Coincidentally, the Census Road Tour junketeers just wrapped up a visit in Vegas. Next stop? You guessed it: The Super Bowl in Miami. Taxpayers should start crying foul.

Apparently President Obama’s advice only applies to the private sector, not to the government agencies he controls.

In early November, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be tried in federal court in New York City.  While Holder did not make a claim of 200 or 300 terrorists convicted in court at that time, the liberal media and blogs defended his decision with the figure of 200 terrorists convicted in criminal courts since 2001. In his announcement, Holder indicated a far lower number by saying “federal prosecutors have successfully met these challenges and have convicted a number of terrorists who are now serving lengthy sentences in our prisons.”

The following week, when addressing a Senate panel, Holder stated that 300 terrorists had been successfully convicted in civilian courts.  At that time, on November 18th, Holder was asked for a list of the 300 to which he responded, ““I will supply you with those 300 names and what they were convicted of,” Holder said. “I’ll be glad to do that.”

To date, Holder has refused to produce the list he promised the Senate nearly three months ago.  This week Eric Holder repeated his claim that 300 terrorists have been tried and convicted in federal courts:

“Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the practice of the U.S. government, followed by prior and current Administrations without a single exception, has been to arrest and detain under federal criminal law all terrorist suspects who are apprehended inside the United States,” Holder writes in the letter. “In keeping with this policy, the Bush Administration used the criminal justice system to convict more than 300 individuals on terrorism-related charges. “

While Holder has refused to produce the list, it appears the White House is trying to redefine what the term ‘convicted terrorist’ means, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air explains:

As Byron York points out, they have also attempted to alter the meaning of “terrorism” as a fallback position. The men in Gitmo weren’t captured because they had a “history of” or “nexus to” terrorism, neither of which alone would cause a federal judge to throw a defendant in prison.  We captured them in the acts of terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism, and furthermore, we captured them abroad with military and intelligence assets, not with policemen.  “History” and “nexus” should be construed to mean, We didn’t convict them of terrorism but of other crimes instead.

This type of liberal slight of hand and distortion of the truth is the very reason Liberal Whoppers was started.  The liberal mantra is that “if we keep repeating something and claim it is a fact, regardless of having no supporting evidence or even contradictory evidence, then before long our statements that it ‘is a fact’ will become the evidence that it is a fact”.

I know that is a convoluted explanation, but that’s the beauty of their strategy — throw up a cloud of dust and nobody will be able to separate the truth from the lies.  They repeat something over and over, distribute their talking points to the Democratic strategists and liberal bloggers, so that their ‘fact’ gets repeated over and over on TV, in print and on blogs, to the point where for many people, it really does sound like a ‘fact’.

Whether it’s nearly a decade of hearing “the debate is over on global warming” or now hearing that “300 terrorists have been convicted and are being held in federal prisons”, or any of the other multitude of Liberal Whoppers the left tells, you will find that they simply keep repeating their whoppers until one day their ‘facts’ stands on their own.

Not only did Kathleen record Blame, but she also recorded “It Ain’t Your Money to Spend”, which of course the title describes very well.

Check out Blame by clicking on the player below, or visit Kathleen’s site to listen to her other songs or to check out her CD “Take Back America.”

After the gang of three (Pelosi, Obama and Reid) was unable to ram Obamacare through while holding massive, filibuster-proof majorities in both Houses of Congress, Obama now says he wants to hear Republican ideas:

He said Thursday he wants to go through the legislation in detail with Republicans to examine their ideas and Democratic ideas to see whether there are better ways to improve the nation’s health care system than have already been proposed.

Where was President Obama’s bipartisan spirit when he had Democrats and union leaders at the White House working on a health care ‘compromise’?  Where was his bipartisan spirit when he went behind closed Senate doors with Senate Democrats or invited them to the White House to urge them to pass Obamacare?

Only now, after a year of Democrats holding complete control of Congress and the White House, but failing to pass his very unpopular Obamacare with NO attempt to involve Republicans, does the President offer to elevate Republicans to the same level he holds union leaders, and allow Republicans to participate in negotiations on the health care bill.

In what is becoming business as usual for Reid and Pelosi, Democratic leadership has stated that they will schedule an initial vote for the Second Stimulus Bill Jobs Bill on Monday.  In order to accomplish this, Reid will move to cut off debate on the bill, which has yet to be produced, on Friday or Saturday.

No, the bill has not been online for five days, or even 72 hours, and not even the Democrats that have already committed to voting for it have seen it.

To make matters worse, not only have they once again schedule a vote on a bill that nobody has read and are pushing it through in a manner that prevents any input from Senate Committees or floor debate, but there is talk that they will once again attempt to fund a second stimulus bill with TARP money.

“It’s against the law to pay for it out of TARP. It’s an outrage and an insult. We were assured when the TARP was passed that that money would simply go to stabilize the financial institution in America — and would be spent for no other reason,” McCain told reporters.

By law, unused TARP funds and any returns coming back from the program are to be used to pay down the debt.

There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America’s critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?

…

Administration officials defend what happened in Detroit and assert, against common sense and the holy truth itself, that they got valuable intelligence — and so what more would you want? But Abdulmutallab went silent before terrorism experts from Washington could get to him. It has been more than a month since he last opened his mouth, and even if he resumes cooperating — a deal may be in the works — he now knows just a bit more about the present-day location of various al-Qaeda operatives than does Regis Philbin.

The announced closing of Guantanamo has also suffered from a peculiar Obama-style naivete. It is now apparent that there are some bad people there who should be detained way past the time they are eligible for AARP membership. It’s true that the world does not like Guantanamo, but then it’s also true that the world is not an al-Qaeda target.

KSM, Abdulmutallab and other accused terrorists should be tried. But these two are not Americans, and they are accused of terrorism, tantamount to an act of war — a virtual Pearl Harbor, in KSM’s case. A military tribunal would fit them fine. If it is good enough for your average GI accused of murder or some such thing, it ought to be good enough for a foreign national with mass murder on his mind.

Poll after poll shows that the American people know what the Washington Post is finally figuring out, and what the Obama administration is still blind to.  Their policy of “if we extend our hand, they will like us and not attack us” is naive and VERY dangerous.  President Obama is playing a very dangerous game with our national security, and he doesn’t even seem to understand the rules of the game.

The Daily Caller reports on the tax hike on charitable giving:

The Obama administration’s fiscal 2011 budget proposes cutting the tax deduction for charitable donations, alarming both philanthropists and non-profits across the country.

The White House is expecting to collect an additional $291 billion over the next decade by reducing the write-off for families earning over $250,000 despite the fact Congress roundly rejected such a measure last year. While the administration is portraying this as a populist move, experts have said the end result will be a significant blow to charities and non-profits already reeling in the midst of the recession.

Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center said the rule change would make it about 10 percent more expensive for individuals affected to donate to charity. He estimated that would correspond to a $10 billion drop in donations out of the $300 billion Americans give annually.

Last year the Obama administration defended the move, claiming that the $100 million included in the Recovery Act for charities and non-profits would help cover the gap, along with the natural rise in donations following the economic recovery. Those arguments will be even tougher to make this year with the country still mired in double-digit unemployment and no second stimulus for charities in the works.

Slublog posting on Hot Air shares his personal experience:

I once worked for a not-for-profit healthcare organization that relied upon such donations to survive and provide services to clients. Grants provided some of the funds, but members of the community played a very large role in allowing the organization to continue its work. Most who gave did so because they believed in our mission, but I’m sure the ability to write off donations helped. I would go so far as to say without those donations, the organization would not survive.

This move by the White House isn’t surprising.  First, it continues the populist trend of attacking Wall Street and the rich.  Class warfare has been a foundation of Democratic politics for a very long time.  Second, it moves charitable giving from the individual to the federal government.

Rasmussen Reports shows that most Americans simply don’t believe the President’s claims:

The president in the speech declared that his administration has cut taxes for 95% of Americans. He even chided Republicans for not applauding on that point. However, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that taxes have been cut for 95% of Americans. Most (53%) say it has not happened, and 26% are not sure. Other polling shows that nearly half the nation’s voters expect their own taxes to go up during the Obama years.

The president also asserted that “after two years of recession, the economy is growing again.” Just 35% of voters believe that statement is true, while 50% say it is false.

Obama claimed that steps taken by his team are responsible for putting two million people to work “who would otherwise be unemployed.” Just 27% of voters say that statement is true. Fifty-one percent (51%) say it’s false.

…

As for the claim about two million jobs, 46% of Democrats say it’s true, while 77% of Republicans say it’s not. As for those not affiliated with either major party, 24% say it’s true, and 59% say it’s false.

The last part is a killer for the President and helps explain what happened in Massachusetts.  Nearly 60% of independent voters don’t believe the President’s claim about putting 2 million people to work.  Not even 50% of Democrats believe the President.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has more analysis on voters not believing the President:

The “saved or created” Porkulus fable gets some interesting results in the internals.  Rasmussen mentions that only a plurality of Democrats believe that, and black voters by an even more anemic 38%, with 47% unsure.  The only demographic that has a majority belief in that claim is self-professed liberals, 58% to 18% disbelief.  In every age and income demographic, a majority or plurality reject that claim, including those who make less than $20K a year — where many of the potential hires for new jobs would come.

The numbers get worse for Obama on whether he accomplished what he set out to do in his first year.  An overwhelming majority of 70% say no, including a plurality of Democrats (49%) and liberals (56%).

Many people felt that President Obama would make a turn to the center in his State of the Union address.  Instead, the President simply recycled old campaign promises, and patted himself on the back for accomplishments that most American voters simply don’t believe he has actually accomplished.

As one voter said, President Obama is the greatest recycler on the planet, because he keeps recycling the same campaign promises over and over again.

It’s big news when the AP publishes a story like this about President Obama, as the AP was firmly in the Barack Obama’s corner during the election and during the first year of his term.

The Associated Press reports on the growing discontent that Democratic Congressmen have with Obama:

The list of White House failures is growing: It hasn’t galvanized the legions of 2008 Obama backers in three major statewide losses. It hasn’t prevented primary challenges for at least two vulnerable Senate Democrats even though Obama endorsed them. And it hasn’t recruited strong candidates for Senate seats once held by Vice President Joe Biden and the president himself.

“I get the sense that it’s all about them … and that if they do get involved, it should be magic. But, in my experience, it hasn’t been,” said Democratic Rep. Marion Berry of Arkansas.

Based on roughly two dozen interviews with lawmakers, party leaders and political operatives nationwide, it’s clear that many Democrats feel Obama hasn’t fully embraced his role as party chief. It has them questioning the strength of his political muscle and faulting his advisers for paying too little attention to the fast-approaching 2010 midterm contests.

Some of these Democrats complained on the record. Others asked for anonymity to avoid angering Obama and his team. Altogether, they described an ineffective political operation. They suggested Obama’s team is overly focused on his likely 2012 re-election bid. And they blamed the White House for a muddled message about what he’s trying and accomplishing as president.

Now that the fact checking has begun, even the MSM can’t ignore the whoppers that President Obama told last night during the State of the Union.

The Associated Press lists Obama’s top whoppers from last night’s State of the Union address.  Here’s a couple of them:

OBAMA: “Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t.”

THE FACTS: The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than 1 percent of the deficit — and that’s if the president can persuade Congress to go along.

Obama is a convert to the cause of broad spending freezes. In the presidential campaign, he criticized Republican opponent John McCain for suggesting one. “The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel,” he said a month before the election. Now, Obama wants domestic spending held steady in most areas where the government can control year-to-year costs. The proposal is similar to McCain’s.

…

OBAMA: The president issued a populist broadside against lobbyists, saying they have “outsized influence” over the government. He said his administration has “excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.” He also said it’s time to “require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress” and “to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office.”

THE FACTS: Obama has limited the hiring of lobbyists for administration jobs, but the ban isn’t absolute; seven waivers from the ban have been granted to White House officials alone. Getting lobbyists to report every contact they make with the federal government would be difficult at best; Congress would have to change the law, and that’s unlikely to happen. And lobbyists already are subject to strict limits on political giving. Just like every other American, they’re limited to giving $2,400 per election to federal candidates, with an overall ceiling of $115,500 every two years.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air expands on one of Obama’s Whoppers:

Let me add at least one other whopper that the AP doesn’t mention.  Obama repeatedly insisted that he inherited massive budgetary problems from George Bush, but the Con Law professor may want to retake his high-school civics class.  Congress passes budgets, not the President, and the last three budgets came from Democrats.  In three years, they increased annual federal spending by $900 billion, while the admittedly profligate and irresponsible Republican Congresses under George Bush increased annual federal spending by $800 billion — in six years.  And during the last three years before taking office as President, Obama served in the Senate that passed those bills, and he voted for every Democratic budget put in front of him.

It was clear to anyone that watched the State of the Union speech last night that President Obama has yet to start ‘listening’ to the American people and has learned nothing from Scott Browns victory in Massachusetts.  He is still focused on blaming the previous administration; using moral equivalency as a defense for his back room deals and broken promises; and, continues to try and convince America that his ONLY mistake was not taking time from the grueling task of creating and passing policy to actually explain it to the American public, because he thought we would ‘get it’ without him having to explain it to us.

This from the prime-time president who is rumored to have been offered Leno’s 9 PM time slot, and a slot on ABC after Lost, so they can give him the air time he craves without continuing to juggle their schedule to accommodate the President of the United States.

The absurdly high number of national addresses, speeches, town hall meetings and press conferences have been documented ad nausea, so I won’t regurgitate those totals.  However, the point is that it is ludicrous for the prime-time President to attempt to make the case that he failed to take the time to ‘explain’ his policies to America.

Newsflash:  No matter how many times you explain them, Mr. President, America simply doesn’t like your policies…

Vice President Biden (who heads up the task force) and Tim Geitner met with about a dozen members of the White House middle class task force that President Obama setup about a year ago.  They were to review the work the task force has been doing.

President Obama stopped in at the end of the meeting to chat with the dozen members of the task force and just for fun, brought his teleprompter.

You can visit Flopping Aces to also see a video of his ‘address’ to his tiny task force.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air explains that unlike the other ‘teleprompter moments’ this one is far worse, because it was not a press conference, but instead a committee meeting:

This isn’t a press conference, a speech, or even a White House briefing. It’s a committee meeting. As Rich said, people used to poke fun at Reagan’s notecards. Either he needs this much help to get through opening remarks in a normal business meeting, or he’s become a little to attached to the TOTUS … and neither option makes him look very professional.

What is even more amazing than the fact that the President of the United States needs to use a teleprompter to speak to his own task force or to update the press on his visit to a sixth grade classroom, is the fact that the White House believes publishing pictures and video of the President having to rely on a teleprompter to address his own task force is a ‘positive’ image.

In an extreme misuse of the reconciliation process, the Democrats are planning to convince House Democrats to pass the Senate bill as is, while being promised that Senate Democrats will ‘fix it’ by passing a reconciliation bill.  By ‘fix it’, they mean adding back in the Union pay off (repaying unions $60 billion for the $60+ million that SEIU and other unions spent on Obama’s campaign) and the other special deals that were negotiated behind closed doors at the White House by House and Senate Democrats, President Obama and Union leaders.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air explains how the GOP will counter the Democrats attempt to circumvent and bastardize the normal legislative process:

I kind of hope they do it now, because this would simply be traffic gold.

The GOP Senate leadership has privately settled on a strategy to derail health reform if Dems try to pass the Senate bill with a fix through reconciliation, aides say: Unleash an endless stream of amendments designed to stall for time and to force Dems to take untenable votes…

Senator Judd Gregg is getting some attention today because he vowed to make it an “extraordinarily difficult exercise” for Dems to pass the Senate bill through the House while getting the Senate to fix the bill with a “sidecar” through reconciliation…

[T]here’s no limit on the number of amendments GOPers can offer, [a Republican] aide said, or on their subject matter. A senior Democratic aide confirmed that this is the case — and that it’s a concern weighing on Dems.

“If you bring a reconciliation bill to the Senate, it’s a free for all of amendments,” the GOP aide said, cautioning that this was only part of the overall strategy. “There is no way to limit the number of amendments that are voted on. You can’t close debate. Democrats will have to vote on every politically perilous amendment that you can possibly think of.”

Bayh and Lincoln came out today against reconciliation, but that was expected and their votes aren’t needed anyway. More interesting is Dodd, who called for an ObamaCare “cooling off” period after Brown won the Massachusetts election and is now pushing Reid to invite the GOP to the table to forge a compromise bill. Presumably he thinks McConnell et al. will walk away and the Dems can then claim they have no choice but to go with reconciliation, which should soften public disapproval of the tactic.

Visit Newsmax for more information about how you can help stop Obmacare:

In the movie Top Gun, there was an oft-repeated quote of “son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.”  In this case, President Obama is writing checks his Congressional disciples can’t cash.

Today, Marion Berry (D-AR) announced his retirement and says that the health-care story is a rerun of ’94.

“I began to preach last January that we had already seen this movie and we didn’t want to see it again because we know how it comes out,” said Arkansas’ 1st District congressman, who worked in the Clinton administration before being elected to the House in 1996… “I just began to have flashbacks to 1993 and ’94. No one that was here in ’94, or at the day after the election felt like. It certainly wasn’t a good feeling.”

Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs “off into that swamp” of supporting bills that would be unpopular with voters back home.

“I’ve been doing that with this White House, and they just don’t seem to give it any credibility at all,” Berry said. “They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’ We’re going to see how much difference that makes now.”

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air has this analysis:

Berry came to Congress in 1997. The representative he replaced? Blanche Lincoln, another Arkansan poisoned by her support for The One, who’s reportedly now being pressured by the Democratic leadership to make her act of political seppuku official by retiring herself. I’ve got a ton of poll news in the pipeline illustrating just how ironic Obama’s comment to Berry has become, but there’s no way I’m going to dump it at the end here. It’s simply too sweet. To tide you over until the next post, enjoy this new Pew survey asking voters what their most urgent policy priorities are. Health care finishes … eighth.

When asked if the President actually made those remarks, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responded:

“I have not talked to the president about that,” Gibbs said, employing one of his favorite dodges.

Gibbs seemed to suggest that he shared that view, whether or not President Obama said it.

“I hope it’s not newsworthy to think that the president hopes and expects to be an effective campaigner in the midterm elections,” Gibbs said.

This is the very arrogance that is turning more and more Americans against the President and his policies.  This is the arrogance that resulted in French President Sarkozy reportedly calling President Obama Naive and grossly egotistical in regards to Obama’s response and handling of Iran’s nuclear program.

The President is ordering his legion to fall on their swords for him and his response is “you’ve got me.”

On Thursday, there were rumors that Pelosi was presenting to the Democratic caucus a plan similar to what Dick Morris describes below.  The reports on Thursday said it was derailed for two reasons.  First, the feedback Pelosi received, especially from the liberals, about not being willing to pass the Senate version of Obamacare.  Second, because it was reported that Reid could not get 51 Senate signatures promising to ‘fix’ the Senate version of Obamacare via reconciliation.

According to Morris, the gang of three have not dropped their plan to bastardize the legislative process:

President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate leader Harry Reid have all agreed to the basic framework of the plan.

Their plan is clever but can be stopped if opponents of radical healthcare reform act quickly and focus on a core group of 23 Democratic Congressman. If just a few of these 23 Democrats are “flipped” and decide to oppose the bill, the whole Obama-Pelosi-Reid stratagem falls apart.

Here’s what I learned top Democrats are planning to implement.

Senate Democrats will go to the House with a two-part deal.

First, the House will pass the Senate’s Obamacare bill that passed the Senate in December. The House leadership will vote on the Senate bill, and Pelosi will allow no amendments or modifications to the Senate bill.

How will Pelosi’s deal fly with rambunctious liberal members of her majority that don’t like the Senate bill, especially its failure to include a public option, put heavy fines on those who don’t get insurance and offering no income tax surcharge on the “rich”?

That’s where the second part of the Pelosi-deal comes in.

Behind closed doors Reid and Pelosi have agreed in principle that changes to the Senate bill will be made to satisfy liberal House members — but only after the Senate bill is passed and signed into law by Obama.

This deal will be secured by a pledge from Reid and the Senate’s Democratic caucus that they will make “fixes” to the Senate bill after it becomes law with Obama’s John Hancock.

But you may ask what about the fact that without Republican Scott Brown and independent Democrats like Joe Lieberman, Reid simply doesn’t have the 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster that typically can stop major legislation?

According to my source, Reid will provide to Pelosi a letter signed by 52 Democratic Senators indicating they will pass the major changes, or “fixes”, the House Democrats are demanding. Again, these fixes will be approved by the Senate only after Obama signs the Senate bill into law.

Reid has also agreed to bypass Senate cloture and filibuster rules and claim that these modifications fall under “reconciliation” and don’t require 60 Senate votes.

Now, in the President’s defense, it appears he ‘winged it’ when talking to the sixth graders, but while he joked with reporters about them looking funny sitting in the student’s desks in the room the White House press  corp was assembled, he proceeded to step up to a full blown podium/teleprompter setup to use to address the press.

Yet, the President appears to be continuing to make one blunder after another.  On Wednesday, President Obama told ABC that the only mistake he made was that he forgot to take the time to talk directly to the people, as he instead focused his time on creating policy, because he just assumed the American public would ‘get it’ without him explaining it to him.  The fact that the American people do ‘get it’ apparently is lost on President Obama, because he still doesn’t realize the problem isn’t that he didn’t spin his actions well enough, but instead the American public doesn’t like the actions he’s taken.

Paul Rahe of Big Government tells us what advice he believes Bill Clinton would give Obama:

I have no doubt what advice Clinton would give Barack Obama if the latter were to make that call. He would tell him to jettison Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod; to hire a David Gergen, and a Dick Morris; to leave Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and their minions twisting in the wind; and to announce in his State of the Union Address that the era of big government is once again at an end.

Clinton would instruct him to drop healthcare reform, fall silent on the global warming scam, abandon cap-and-trade, and forget about closing Guantanamo and trying terrorists in civil courts. He would advise him to cut a deal with the Republicans and with endangered Democrats from swing states and swing districts and join with them in passing tort reform, in trimming domestic spending, and in making permanent the tax cuts first introduced by the younger Bush.

With an eye to encouraging employers to rehire those laid off, Clinton would urge Obama to join with that coalition to institute a temporary cut in the payroll taxes businesses pay the Social Security administration; and, if the economy did not quickly turn around, he would urge him to team up with John McCain, sing, “Bomb, bomb, bomb! Bomb, bomb Iran!” — and take out the nuclear program of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Here’s what he said:

Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country.   The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.   People are angry, and they’re frustrated.  Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.

Axelrod says the Massachusetts win isn’t about health care, but is about the bad economy that Obama inherited:

So I wouldn’t make — I mean, there are messages here. We hear those messages, but there is a tendency in this town — not that you guys would do it — but to overblow things, even beyond their importance. And I don’t think it’s about that one particular issue. I think there’s a general sense of discontent about the economy and there’s a general sense of discontent about this town. That’s why we were elected. We are committed to doing something about it.

These quotes from Axelrod and Obama today, are consistent with the White House message of the last few days, which is that if Brown was to win in Massachusetts, it would not be an indication of Americans being unhappy with President Obama or Health Care, but instead that they are angry about the eight years of Bush and Cheney, but that Coakley didn’t do a good enough job of explaining that fact to the voters.

With logic like that, is it any wonder that President Obama couldn’t get a health care bill passed in a year when holding a huge majority in the House and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate?

In his press briefing yesterday, Robert Gibbs used the words ‘anger’ or ‘angry’ 15 times when referring to the American people.  Gibbs, like Obama and Axelrod, was trying to make the case that Brown only won because Americans are angry, not over what has happened in the last year, but what happened in the eight years prior to Obama getting elected.

Another theme that President Obama stated in his ABC interview, and was a Democratic talking point for days leading up to the election, was that the only failure of the White House and Democrats in Congress in regard to the health care bill has been a failure to fully explain it in a way the American public could understand.  They are trying to make the case that they were so focused on trying to pass the health care bill that they failed to properly explain it to America and if they had, then the American public would be fully supporting the bill.

It’s hard to imagine that Obama or the Democrats in Congress really believe that the Brown loss is a backlash from anger at George Bush.  It’s hard to imagine that they believe that the discontent with Obamacare is because the Democrats haven’t explained it well enough, rather than people being angry about the partisan approach and specials deals that are being cut behind closed doors.

Even though Obama has been on prime time TV so often that ABC has considered giving him a permanent time slot after Ugly Betty, he says that he underestimated the American public realize how good a job he was doing and just assumed we would ‘get it’:

“That I do think is a mistake of mine,” Obama said. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air responds to President Obama’s assertion:

Ask yourselves this: was Obama’s big problem in 2009 getting too involved in legislative efforts and not spending enough time in front of the cameras talking about himself?  On his signature domestic-agenda issue, Democrats in Congress repeatedly complained that Obama wasn’t involved at all.

Just for the record: according to Mark Knoller at CBS, in 2009 Obama gave 42 news conferences (most of them joint “availabilities” with foreign leaders), 52 addresses or statements specifically about health care, with a total of 411 speeches, comments, or remarks.  In addition, Obama did 158 interviews in his first year in office.  He also held 23 town hall meetings, including two out of the country.  It’s not for lack of opportunity that Obama didn’t get to explain himself.

It’s hard to imagine that President Obama really doesn’t get it.  The more likely scenario is that he simply falls back to what he said in regard to passing the pork filled stimulus bill, “I won”, which he believes is all that matters.

Mr. Blair, in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, revealed a previously undisclosed disagreement among the Obama administration’s top officials over the handling of the Nigerian who is accused of attempting to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

The intelligence chief said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should have been questioned by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG, a special panel established by President Obama.

“We did not invoke the HIG in this case. We should have. Frankly, we were thinking more of overseas people. And, you know … that’s what we will do now. And so we need to make those decisions more carefully,” Mr. Blair told Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican and ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee.

The HIG was mandated in August to question terrorism suspects apprehended overseas in counterterrorism operations. It was a result of an executive order Mr. Obama issued in January 2009 that compelled all interrogations to adhere to the practices enumerated in the Army Field Manual.

Blair later said in a written statement that the HIG was not yet fully functional.  It is unclear what is more disturbing.  The fact that one year after Obama’s executive order the high value interrogation group (HIG) was still not fully functional.  Or, the fact that the Director of National Intelligence didn’t know that the HIG wasn’t fully functional and had to clarify that fact later.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air discusses Blair’s testimony:

You’ll be glad to know that Blair later amended his statement to say that the HIG couldn’t have interrogated Abdulmutallab because, um, it’s not fully operational yet. Evidently he didn’t know that either during his testimony. All of which sounds really bad, until you remember that the guy who could have made an executive decision here was so absurdly unprepared for his own Senate grilling on this subject a few months ago that he couldn’t answer a basic question from Lindsey Graham about whether we’d have to read Bin Laden his Miranda rights if we captured him.

This reaction from the White House is exactly the arrogance and refusal to listen to the American people that just caused a revolt in Massachusetts.  Where a Republican won a Senate seat in the bluest of blue seats.

Fox and Friends this morning reported on a NY Post story running today.  The Post laid out five lessons the President must learn from the Massachusetts’ race.

1.  Don’t negotiate health care in secret and pack it with sweetheart deals
2.  Responding aloofly to an attempted terror attack doesn’t inspire confidence
3.  Slow down the runaway spending, get a grip on the deficit and focus on Job creation
4.  Understand that the era of big government really is over
5.  Lose the arrogance, Mr. President

The President will be doing an interview today, on the one year anniversary of his inauguration, and we will begin to see whether a night of sleeping on the massive defeat in Massachusetts has finally gotten through to the President.  Whether he will begin to honor his campaign promises about transparency and changing the way Washington works, or if he will go back to ignoring the will of the American people and instead cutting backroom deals with union leaders and health industry lobbyists in order to ram through his liberal agenda.

Scott Brown ran a campaign that was in direct opposition to the President’s liberal agenda.  He promised to be the 41st vote against Obamacare and stop its passage. He said that we needed to not spend our money on lawyers for terrorists and enemy combatants, but instead buy guns to stop them.  He opposes giving constituional rights to these terrorists and enemy combatants.  He is in favor of cutting taxes, not raising them.  In every key area, his platform was completely opposite to what the President is doing in Washington and Brown not only had a decisive win in Massachusetts, but also created a nation groundswell of support for his campaign.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air describes the voters rejection of Obama’s agenda:

In the bluest of blue states, where the entire Congressional delegation consisted of Democrats until 10 pm ET last night, voters have rejected the Obama agenda.  Fifty-six percent of Massachusetts voters say that health care was the most important factor in their voting decision, and Brown got at least 52% of the vote by campaigning on his explicit promise to block ObamaCare.

But this shouldn’t surprise anyone.  Two months ago, we saw the same exact dynamic in Virginia and especially New Jersey.  Democrats lost big in both states, but pundits were reluctant to draw conclusions from it.  Virginia, it was said, was always a center-right state that merely came home after a poor candidate (Creigh Deeds) ran for Governor.  In New Jersey, that argument didn’t fly as well, as the Garden State elects Republicans to statewide office only slightly more often than Massachusetts.  Barack Obama campaigned there as well, and delivered almost the same result as Coakley got in Massachusetts — a solid loss to a Republican who had not won a statewide office before Election Day.

Mary Anne Marsh, Democratic Political Strategist, explains what the President faces the morning after the Brown victory, “the key now is to acknowledge what happened here, because to lead, people have to follow.  While voters still like him he is going to walk back into White House today, look at Capital Hill and I’m sure there is going to be at best panic across Capital Hill and the question is whether they will continue to follow President Obama. That is the question.”

President Obama has an a decision to make.  He can continue to ignore the will of the people and do what the White House said yesterday, which is that he will pass Obamacare not matter what it takes. Or, he can take a step back and during the State of The Union tell the American people that he has heard their message loud and clear and that he would tell Congress to go back to the drawing board and come back to him with a bi-partisan health care reform bill that the American public will accept.  A bill that doesn’t require Harry Reid to buy votes.  A bill that doesn’t include back room deals cut with union leaders and health industry lobbyists.

Mr. President, the ball is in your court.  Will you honor your pledge of reaching across the aisle, having the most transparent administration ever and changing the way Washington works.  Or, will you continue to say, “I won” and use Chicago style politics to impose your will on the American people?

President Obama has seen his approval rating plummet at an unprecedented rate.  He watched a grass roots movement grow behind Scott Brown and his promise to be the “41st vote against the health care bill in Congress”.  This groundswell of support, both in Massachusetts and across the nation, for Brown’s promise led Scott Brown to a decisive victory in the bluest of blue states.  A month ago, Coakley led by 30 points, today she lost Teddy’s seat to a Republican by 5 points.   If that isn’t a message to Obama, Pelosi and Reid, then I don’t know what is.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air chimes in on the skittish Democrats in Congress:

Remember, Lieberman and Bayh all but warned Obama earlier today to back off. About an hour ago, just as news of Brown’s victory broke, Jim Webb chimed in: “[I]t would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated.” That wouldn’t solve the ping pong problem, but the more Senate centrists there are speaking out against the bill, the softer the House Blue Dog coalition will get. Every last member of the 60-vote coalition needs to be asked if they’d be willing to vote for Reid’s bill again in light of what happened in Massachusetts. I’d be awfully curious to see how close you get to 60 again. Or 50, for that matter.

The rumblings over the last few days were that many Democrats in Congress were getting the message, even if the gang of three weren’t.  They realize that if President Obama and Harry Reid push forward with the nuclear option, the use of reconciliation to pass portions of the bill, then no Democrat up for reelection in November will be safe from the nuclear fallout that will follow their blatant disregard for the will of America.

In the first six months of President Obama’s first term, the SEIU president, Andy Stern and Richard Trumpka of the AFL-CIO visited the White House at least 30 times.  In fact, Andy Stern of SEIU visited the White House in the first six months more than any other visitor based on the visitor logs the administration released.

Earlier in the week the administration declared they were close to reaching a ‘compromise’ with union leaders that would allow the health care bill to pass.  Clearly, if President Obama had to negotiate with unions in order to pass Obamacare (something he hasn’t even done with Republicans in Congress), it must mean that unions are now the third House of Congress with equal standing to the House and Senate.

ABC is reporting that after a week of non-stop negotiations with unions, the White House and union leaders have reached a deal that will allow Obamacare to move forward to passage:

The White House, congressional Democrats, and labor leaders announced an agreement on a key sticking point in health care reform negotiations: how to handle a new excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans.

“The president is pleased with this agreement,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said in a conference call with reporters.

…

The new deal raises the threshold for plans considered “Cadillac” plans to $24,000 for families and $8,900 for individuals.

Significantly, it exempts insurance plans that were part of state and local collective bargaining agreements – union members – until January 1, 2018. They call this a “transition period” in which unions and re-adjust the way they’ve negotiated wages and health insurance in agreements with employers.

In addition, there will be three exemptions allowing adjustments in the threshold:

• one for “unexpected” rises in health care costs beyond what is predicted between 2010 and 2013;
• for various age and gender issues;
• for high risk retirees and those in high-cost states.

In addition, insurance coverage for vision and dental are not taxable.

These changes to the Cadillac tax would end up shaving $60 billion off the $150 billion in revenue expected to be generated under the original proposal, meaning it would raise $90 billion.

Just to make sure this is clear.  While the White House refuses to negotiate with Republican leaders over health care compromises, President Obama has spent the last week meeting behind closed doors (not on C-SPAN) with union leaders to reach a ‘compromise’ so that the health care bill can be passed.  Again, President Obama spent a week working on a compromise with union leaders so that a bill that will impact 1/6 of the nations economy can be passed.

The deal give unions an 8 year pass on tax increases that the rest of America will have to pay on high priced insurance plans, along with creating other exemptions so that they can write ‘clever’ collective bargaining agreements in the future to insure union members never have to pay the taxes that other Americans will have to pay.

Is there any wonder that President Obama refuses to honor his promise of televising health care negotiations on C-SPAN?

The president then turned to the accomplishments of the Democratic Congress, heaping praise on Democrats for their response to the financial crisis and recession, and the passage of a job-creation bill.  Mr. Obama then focused on health care, taking aim at Republican criticisms.

“I know everybody in the media is all in a tizzy [saying], ‘Oh, what is this [health care legislation] going to mean politically?’  Well, let me tell you something,” said President obama. “If Republicans want to campaign against what we have done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have.  If their best idea is to return to the bad policies and the bad ideas of yesterday, they are going to lose that argument.”

After a lengthy meeting at the White House the previous day, House and Senate Democratic leaders signaled they had made significant progress toward resolving key issues on health care.

I know it was a long week at the White House, with non-stop negotiations with unions in an attempt to reach a health care bill compromise (yes, in the Obama administration unions make up the third House of Congress), followed by partisan meetings with Democrats to sell whatever deals were cut with the unions earlier in the week, so it is understandable that President Obama has forgotten that he is the one that has cut deals with big Pharma and the insurance industry as part of his Obamacare debacle.  The back room deals he cut, but didn’t show on C-SPAN, despite promising to do so eight times on the campaign trail.

Hot Air gives some thoughts on how Obama’s obsession could lead to a landslide for the GOP in November:

A vignette from today’s Democratic policy meeting, in which a guy whose obsession with universal health care has so destroyed his party that a Republican’s on the brink of taking Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat decides to double down for the midterms. Fun facts: Support for ObamaCare is down to 34/54 in today’s Quinnipiac poll and Republican “insiders” tell Hotline on average that they expect the GOP will gain 33 seats next year.

Be sure to head over to Hot Air and watch the video of Obama going after the GOP on Obamacare.

While former President Bill Clinton is already in Massachusetts campaigning for Coakley, Obama has been pumping Coakley via email and Twitter and many expect him to make a trip Massachusetts if the race remains too close to call.

According to Brown, Obama may be heading to Massachusetts:

To counter Brown’s skyrocketing momentum – Brown’s campaign has raised more than $1.3 million in the past 24 hours, most of it from small donors – the president has jumped into the race behind the scenes. Obama blasted his massive campaign e-mail list with a letter praising Coakley and seeking support. Also, his Twitter feed urged supporters to make phone calls promoting Coakley’s candidacy.

So far the president has shied away from campaign directly on Coakley’s behalf in Massachusetts. But Brown says that may be about to change.

“I understand that he may be coming this weekend,” Brown told Fox News host Neil Cavuto on Wednesday. “President Clinton is here. Everybody who is part of the political establishment in Massachusetts is rallying around her … she’ll be a Washington insider and be part of the political establishment down there, be the 60th vote, shut off debate, ram things through.”

In his appearance on Fox, Brown painted himself as a determined underdog fighting the Massachusetts Democratic establishment, and openly pleaded for support.

“If people want to help, I need their help, nationally, locally – to fight the machine,” he said.

That Democrats are pulling out all the stops to win a race in dark blue Massachusetts is a shocker. Several polls now show the race is now too close to call.

With President Obama’s approval rating in the low-to-mid 40′s, and support for his Obamacare barely above 30%, it’s unclear how beneficial Obama’s campaigning will be.  In the last four months, President Obama is 0-2 in personal appearances meant to ‘close a deal’.  First, President Obama took the unprecedented step of flying to Copenhagen to make a personal plea to the Olympic committee to award Chicago the 2016 Olympics, which would have brought great financial reward to Obama supporters and friends in Chicago.  The Olympic committee opted for crime-ridden Rio de Janeiro over Obama’s home town.  Then, last month, he again traveled to Copenhagen.  This time his presence was supposed to create an international consensus on how to address climate change.  Instead, his speech and approach was uniformly criticized by the international community.

Next week we might get to see if President Obama has enough political pull left to actually get a Democrat elected in a solidly blue state.

Foxnews has more on the President’s Congressional trip:

Striving to reach a deal on health care, President Barack Obama planned a trip to Congress on Thursday to urge rank-and-file House Democrats to yield on key issues still standing in the way of a historic legislative achievement.

Obama’s late afternoon visit comes amid intense White House negotiations with Democratic leaders aimed at settling core differences between bills passed by the House of Representatives and Senate that must be resolved before the sweeping overhaul legislation can pass.

Reforming health care is Obama’s top domestic priority.

After having key Democrats and unions negotiating at the White House this week, President Obama now will go to Capital Hill to try and heal the divide forming between House and Senate members over differences in their health care bills.

However, he continues to fail to honor his campaign pledges.  He promised at least eight times to televise health care negotiations on C-SPAN to prevent back door deals, which he has failed to do, instead opting for closed door meetings on Capital Hill and at the White House, where deals with unions have been cut and buy offs of Senators have taken place.

Candidate Barack Obama also promised to reach across the aisle and work with Republicans on key legislation, but days after taking office he declared “I won” when locking the Republicans out of the stimulus bill negotiations.  “I won” now appears to be President Obama’s mantra as he continues to lock Republicans out of health care negotiations, while he chooses to work to cut a deal with Democrats, unions and health industry lobbyists to pass Obamacare.

The Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll shows 50% say they would probably or definitely vote for someone else. Fully 37% say they would definitely cast a ballot against Obama. Meanwhile, just 39% would vote to re-elect the pres. to a 2nd term, and only 23% say they definitely would do so. …

But as GOPers focus on taxes and spending, that message seems to be causing Obama the most harm. Among those who believe Obama’s policies have moved the country in the wrong direction, 45% cite spending and government regulation as a top cause for their opposition.

As Ed Morrissey of Hot Air says, they can’t blame this one on Rasmussen.  The stunning aspect of this poll isn’t just that Obama is trailing a potential opponent, but that he trails a ‘generic’ opponent by double digits.

These results are doubly bad.  Obviously, having half the country say they’d vote for a generic opponent isn’t good, but the sample type is the most Democrat-friendly a pollster can use.  “Adults” generate more left-leaning results than registered voters, and especially with likely voters.  If Obama can’t do better than 39% among adults, he is in deep trouble — and so are Democrats running in this year’s midterms.

It appears more and more that President Obama believes one of two things.

First, that passing his liberal agenda is worth the cost of being a one term President and that he accepts that forcing his unpopular policies on America is a suicide mission.

Second, that he believes that no matter how unpopular his liberal policies are that given enough time, he can ‘convince’ Americans that he went against their wishes for their own good, and that in the end they will thank him and reward him with a second term.

I believe that it is the second  option.  President Obama has shown time and time again that he uses a ‘close of the moment’ approach to campaigning and governing.  Saying whatever he believes his audience wants to hear, while having no intention keep any of the promises he made.  Believing, that down the road, he can ‘sell’ his audience again, based on his sheer star power and oratory skill.

The first indications of whether or not President Obama is right or wrong will come in the mid-term elections.  While he is not on any ballot, he will be campaigning heavily for the Democratic Congressmen.  If he is not able to sway voters to re-elect Democrats in tough battles, it will go a long way to sending the message that he won’t be able to convince Americans that going against their wishes was done for their own good.

This from Hot Air:

I never believed that House Dems would have the stones to walk away, but suddenly there are a lot of flares going up. Rangel’s warning that the bill won’t be done this month; Emanuel Cleaver’s telling nutroots bloggers that this is no fait accompli; and Politico’s reporting mounting anger over the “Cadillac plan” tax. Quoth Anthony Weiner, “We keep hearing them squeal like pigs in the Senate that they had a tough time getting to 60. Well, it wasn’t particularly a picnic for us to get to 218…The Senate Kabuki dance has lost its magic on those of us in the House.”

While once again no Republicans were present, and President Obama still refused to honor his promise to televise negotiations on C-SPAN, his morning meeting to finalize details on Obamacare turned into an all day battle:

What was expected to be a morning meeting with the president on health care turned into all-day, intense negotiations with Democratic leaders trying to find compromise on differences over House and Senate health care bills.

The meetings did not finally wrap up until after 6:30 p.m. ET.

Senior congressional Democratic sources told CNN that the White House is pushing them hard to move quickly to resolve differences on a broad range of issues. The president and his top aides are being more aggressive than ever before in trying to broker a deal.

Though Democratic leaders and White House officials are tight-lipped about specifics, there is a deep House-Senate Democratic divide over how to pay for health care reform.

While the consensus opinion is that in the end the Democrats in the House and Senate will pass a health care bill, it appears negotiations between the House, Senate, White House and the unions (yes, hard to believe the unions are in the negotiations) are not going smoothly.   Many believed that if the Senate was able to steal and buy enough votes to pass Obamacare before Christmas that Pelosi would simply rubber stamp the bill and have House Democrats pass the Senate version.  If it’s true that Pelosi agreed t0 do that, she clearly underestimated her ability to dictate to House Democrats how and what they should vote on.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele has said that the GOP will not gain control of Congress in 2010, which is understandable, conservative statement, since the Democrats have such a large majority in both houses.

Others feel that the American public is so angry that there will be a political revolution of sorts that will result in a massive victory by the Republican candidates on the tickets.  The basis for this belief is that the non-liberal American public is very angry at what appears to be a complete disregard by the Democratic majority for what most Americans want.  To make matters worse, while both Pelosi and candidate Barack Obama promised that under their watch we would see the most transparent Washington ever, the reality has been quite the opposite with meeting after meeting conducted behind closed doors, shutting out both Republicans and the American public.  While President Obama promised that health care negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN and that he would reach across the aisle, the reality is that within days of being sworn in he stated “I won” as justification for not involving Republican leaders in key legislation, and he has refused to televise health care negotiations on C-SPAN as he promised at least eight times on the campaign.

To make matters worse, while he refuses to honor his word of putting the health care negotiations on C-SPAN, he and his staff are meeting with union leaders to reach a compromise on Obamacare.  While he is hiding the negotiations from the American people, and refuses input from Republican leaders, he is having closed door meetings with union leaders to agree on a health care bill compromise.

Wasn’t President Obama’s promise of televising negotiations on C-SPAN specifically meant to prevent the kind of back-door deals that he, Pelosi and Reid are trying to cut with union leaders this week at the White House?

This is why the question is not whether there will be a backlash against Democrats in November, but instead how big a backlash it will be.

Dick Morris describes exactly how big the backlash could be and how it could lead to Republican control of both houses:

Pessimism is no more attractive in a party leader than it is in a high school cheerleader. And in the case of Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele, it is unwarranted as well. Despite his prediction, on Fox News, that GOP congressional control will not come “this year,” the Republican Party has a very, very good chance of taking both houses of Congress in 2010.

We are in the midst of a political tsunami. To judge that the water will only ascend a hundred feet or two hundred or three hundred is entirely speculative. Generally, once these things start, they go further than anyone would have thought likely. Only rarely do they fall short.

President Barack Obama’s determination to march ahead with his full socialist agenda, including the imposition of a healthcare system a majority doesn’t want, can only strengthen the winds and the tide that is approaching. The 60-vote Democratic Senate majority is empowering such arrogance and disdain for the democratic process that it is easy to see how it will trigger an equal and opposite reaction in the 2010 elections.

Be sure to visit DickMorris.com to read his full article that lays out the roadmap for how the Republicans can win enough seats to take control of both houses of Congress.

Obama told reporters that the new report is stunning, as he trumpeted the success of the stimulus bill.

President Barack Obama is trumpeting a new White House estimate that his top economist calls “stunning”: His stimulus plan has already created or saved up to 2 million jobs.

The analysis is part of the administration’s quarterly report to Congress on the controversial $787 billion package of spending and tax cuts he signed weeks after taking office.

Obama planned to highlight the report Wednesday during a visit to a Lanham, Md., training center for union electricians that specializes in “green” technology.

Republicans have denounced the stimulus plan as an expensive flop, pointing to a national unemployment rate stuck at 10 percent and December figures showing the economy shed 85,000 more jobs.

But the report from the President’s Council of Economic Advisers said the economy is a lot better off than it would have been without the stimulus. Citing its own analysis plus a range of private sector summaries, the council estimated the annual growth rate last year would have been roughly 2 percentage points lower, and there would have been 1.5 million to 2 million fewer jobs.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has some more on the White House’s latest attempt at spinning the success of the stimulus bill:

Why, I thought the White House had abandoned the “saved or created” mythology!  Apparently, they’ve only abandoned having to account for how they get the numbers.  The Washington Post reports that despite having their earlier number of 640,000 torn to shreds by the Associated Press and media outlets around the nation, the Obama administration has now tripled down on jobs saved or created.

What we do know is that President Obama told us that if the bill wasn’t passed, unemployment would reach double digits.  As we have seen, even with the passage of the pork-laden stimulus bill, unemployment reached 10%.  In fact, some estimates have the real unemployment rate between 15-22%, if you were to take into account the number of people that have fallen off the unemployment roles or who have been classified as no longer looking for jobs.

We also have seen story after story of companies that have been the recipient of stimulus funds (often as part of Congressional earmarks), where jobs were classified as ‘saved’, when in fact the number of jobs didn’t change and wouldn’t have changed whether or not the company had received stimulus funds.

So, while it is very difficult to know exactly how accurate or inaccurate this new report is, for most Americans it simply doesn’t pass the smell test.

A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows nearly 50% of Americans strongly oppose Obamacare:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 17% believe passage of the legislation will achieve the stated goal of reducing health care costs. Fifty-seven percent (57%) think it will lead to higher costs.

Fifty-two percent (52%) also believe passage of the legislation will lead to a decline in the quality of care.

Overall, 40% of voters nationwide favor the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. Fifty-five percent (55%) are opposed. As has been the case throughout the debate, those who feel strongly about the issue are more likely to be opposed. Just 19% of voters Strongly Favor the plan while 45% are Strongly Opposed.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has this analysis of the new poll results:

The internals on the poll are interestingly contradictory.  For instance, the youngest voters favor passage 58/34, but then they also believe that passage will make health-care quality worse, 38/28, with 21% believing it will stay the same.  That’s actually the best showing among age demographics for believing ObamaCare will make health care better.  Majorities believe it will make it worse starting from age 40 up, and 49% of thirtysomethings believe the same (against 11% who think it will improve health care).  Given that the youngest voters have poor turnout records, this is not a good sign for ObamaCare supporters in Congress this year.

These numbers reinforce why the Democrats have written the bill behind closed doors and attempted to pass it before the American public could read or give feedback to their representatives.  As has been the case all along, the more Americans learn about Obamacare, the less they like it.

Second, they know that the American people are clamoring to see how the final bill well be constructed.

In response to that request, Peolosi provided standard misstatements and spin (provided by WizBangBlog):

C-SPAN wrote a letter to congressional leaders today asking that TV cameras be allowed in negotiations to reconcile the House and Senate bills.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) defended Congress’s work on a healthcare bill today as having historic transparency as C-SPAN mounted an effort to open negotiations to TV cameras.

“There has never been a more open process for any piece of legislation,” Pelosi said at a press conference.

Pelosi said Congress had been transparent throughout the process, yet the American people have been in the blind, and Republicans in the Senate and House have been literally locked out of rooms where debate on the content of the bills were being constructed.

Now, they say that they are foregoing a standard bi-partisan conference committe to merge the House and Senate health care bills, but instead will only allow top Democrats to be part of this process.  Yet another end run around the established standards of creating US legislation.

At what point does the bastardization of our legislative system stop?

These statements keep being made despite the fact that meetings on the Senate bill were behind closed doors and only the Democratic caucus was allowed in the room — despite the fact that when President Obama met with Senators on Capital Hill and in the White House, it was only Democratic Senators.

Now, they are taking the bastardization of our legislative system to a new level.

According to Newsmax:

House and Senate Democrats intend to bypass traditional procedures when they negotiate a final compromise on health care legislation, officials said Monday, a move that will exclude Republican lawmakers and reduce their ability to delay or force politically troubling votes in both houses.

The unofficial timetable calls for final passage of the measure to remake the nation’s health care system by the time President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address, probably in early February.

Democratic aides said the final compromise talks would essentially be a three-way negotiation involving top Democrats in the House and Senate and the White House, a structure that gives unusual latitude to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

These officials said there are no plans to appoint a formal House-Senate conference committee, the method Congress most often uses to reconcile differing bills. Under that customary format, a committee chairman is appointed to preside, and other senior lawmakers from both parties and houses participate in typically perfunctory public meetings while the meaningful negotiations occur behind closed doors.

In this case, the plan is to skip the formal meetings, reach an agreement, then have the two houses vote as quickly as possible. A 60-vote Senate majority would be required in advance of final passage.

While nobody actually believes the Democratic talking points about the Republicans being welcomed participants in the formation of health care legislation, this latest move by the gang of three again confirms that President Obama, Pelosi and Reid have no plans to work with Republicans, nor pass legislation in line with what the American public wants.

As President Obama has said, “I won”, which he believes gives him the right to do anything he wants.

Now, the White House has stated that it was a ‘different’ Bertha Lewis, but declined to give any details or information on the new Miss Lewis so that it could be confirmed that the visitor in question wasn’t the CEO of ACORN.

However, it isn’t just that the White House had a visitor with the same name as the ACORN CEO, but who happens to be a ‘different’ person.  The White House visitor logs also have visitors with the names of Malik Shabazz, Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers.  However, again, a White House spokesperson claims that these are ‘different’ people than their infamous counterparts.

Andrew Breitbart of BigGoverment.com has this on the phantom visitors:

Since we have no information on how to hunt down the “other” Bertha Lewis — Ms. Psaki wouldn’t reveal who she is, citing “privacy concerns” — Big Government will err on the side of prudence and grant the White House its side of the story. I did ask Smith to find out biographical details on the other Wright, Ayers and Shabazz, but apparently privacy concerns apply to them, as well.

I end with this question: What is the point of the White House issuing visitor logs if those named can’t be identified and verified?  “Transparency” would seem to call for nothing less, especially when those innocent people could easily be confused with the head of an organization recently defunded by Congress, a controversial preacher who shouted “God Damn America,” and an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

So, while there certainly are lots of people in this country with the same name, we have to ask what the odds of having four people visit the White House that just happen to have the same names as four very controversial people that Barack Obama has had previous tight ties to?

President Obama pointed out that Yemen is grappling with crushing poverty, but left out the fact that the Nigerian terrorist came from a rich family that was only crushed by mint juleps and country club tea times.

What does Yemen’s poverty have to do with a rich kid from Nigeria trying to blow up a US airliner?

It’s time to stop making excuses for Muslim terrorists and start protecting this country, Mr. President.

The number one long term goal of President Obama and Democrats in Congress is to have a single payer system.   Most Democrats realize they have to do this in steps in order for the US citizens to accept it.  Some say like the old folk warning that if you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out, but if you put it in cold water and gradually raise the temperature, it will boil to death without ever realizing what was happening.  However, while most Democrats realize they have to take the ‘slow boil’ approach, others have said the only real reform is to immediately move to a single payer system, and simply expand Medicare to cover all US citizens.  Last month, prior to Harry Reid’s now famous payoffs to key Senators to pass his health care bill, a compromise that was discussed was expanding Medicare to all people 55 and older, which much to Reid’s chagrin, several Democrats in congress honestly admitted was a great triumph for those pushing for a single payer system.

In December, when Harry Reid was attempting to expand Medicare, the Mayo Clinic warned that an expansion of Medicare could force out of business many hospitals and doctors already struggling to stay afloat.   A spokesperson for Mayo said that last year the Mayo Clinic lost $840 million dollars treating Medicare patients.

On Thursday, the Mayo clinic announced that it would no longer treat Medicare patients in its Glendale Arizona hospital, and associated clinics.  They said that the Glendale hospital had lost $120 million last year treating Medicare patients.

Bloomberg (via BigGovernment) reported on further fallout that might be coming:

Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.

“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”

While I think their are many “amateur moments” that could have won the Obamateurism of the year award, I have no qualms with their choice of his public response to the Fort Hood shooting.  Like with the failed attempt to blow up the Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas day, when he made his initial public comments about the Fort Hood shooting, he appeared both disinterested and as if he was trying to down play the terrorist action.

President Obama gave a speech that could have be translated as “oh, by the way there was a little incident at Fort Hood today.  We are still getting details, but a decorated Major in the Army, who happens to be a devout Muslim and I applaud him for that, allegedly, and I want to emphasize allegedly, shot and I might add again, allegedly, killed 13 soldiers on the base.  While the details we have are still fuzzy, what we do know is that the civilian police officer who shot and paralyzed Major Hassan acted stupidly.  I had hoped after my teachable moment when I stated on national TV that Detective Crowley and the Cambridge police department acted stupidly for doing their jobs, that white police officers would be much slower to take action against minorities committing crimes.  While I’m sure she meant well, I think Sergeant Munley should be ashamed of herself for paralyzing a true Muslim hero, in Major Nadal.”

Ok, clearly I took some editorial liberties with my translation, but the point is that with President Obama, his friends and terrorists are innocent until proven guilty, EVEN when they have confessed to breaking the law, but the American men and women protecting this country as soldiers or police officers are presumed guilty, until proven innocent.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I guess that’s why Hot Air has plenty of material for their Obamateurism of the day.

On to the quote of the year. Hot Air nominated these quotes for their quote of the year:

• “You lie!”
• “Let me be clear”
• “I hope he fails”
• “The system worked”
• “Hide the decline”
• “B+”
• “I won”

While I believe that Representative Joe Wilson’s “You Lie” outburst during the state of the union will win, it is not what I would vote for in that poll.  While I think Wilson was wrong for how he called the President out, I believe he was accurate in his assessment.  Unfortunately, this President does lie to get what he wants.  Whether it is the fear mongering he does with his misstatements about doctors amputating feet for a quick $50 thousand dollars, or that parents should be afraid that their child’s pediatrician will cut out their kids tonsils for a quick buck, rather than giving them an antibiotic or sending them for an allergy test, he has consistently lied or told half truths in order to try and further his liberal agenda.  In the case of the State of the Union, the lies were in regard to illegals and abortions being covered by Obamacare.

However, while I think that quote was a big story this year, I think the four little letters that spell “I won” are the winners of the quote of the year.  Senator Barack Obama campaigned on changing how Washington works, and touted his long record of reaching across the aisle.  He told us how he would heal the deep divide between the left and the right, and that he would work closely with Republicans in Congress on key legislation.

Well, in the words of Joe Wilson, “you lie” Mr. President.

Just days after he took office, when he and the Democrats were saying we must pass an emergency stimulus bill or the economy would collapse.  The Republicans were completely cut out of the negotiations  that ultimately led to a $700+ billion stimulus package that also incidentally had 5,000+ earmarks.  Joe, let’s hear it again, “you lie,” since the President said he was serious about earmark reform and would go line by line through every bill put on his desk to make sure no bill loaded with earmarks was passed.

Back to the quote of the year.  When House and Senate Republicans went to the White House to voice concerns about the amount of spending and earmarks in the Stimulus bill, Obama’s reply was to simply state matter of factly, “I won.”

Those two small words, four little letters, set the tone for Obama’s first year in office.  He has not been the great uniter he promised.  He has not changed how Washington works (unless you count bringing Chicago style politics and intimidation to the White House as ‘change’).   Instead, the gang of three (Obama, Pelosi and Reid) are running Washington in a completely partisan fashion.  Literally and figuratively locking Republicans out from having any involvement or input on key legislation as the gang of three tick off items on their liberal wish list.

So, I believe that “I won” wins hands down, because while their might have been concerns that President Obama would lead a far left, partisan takeover of Washington, until he said “I won” we didn’t know for sure.

The disapproval for President Obama’s actions and decisions continues to grow, seemingly on a daily basis.

The newest Rasmussen Reports poll shows a clear disconnect between the American voters and Obama and the liberal elites.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% oppose the use of such techniques, and another 12% are not sure.

…

Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters think the attempt by the Nigerian Muslim to blow up the airliner as it landed in Detroit should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act. Only 22% say it should be handled by civilian authorities as a criminal act, as is currently the case.

Unlike the President and Pelosi and her gang of liberals outraged by the use of ‘advanced interogation’ techniques, the majority of Americans believe the government should use agressive interogation techniques on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and attempt to stop future terrorist attacks from killing American citizens.  The citizens of this country want the government to use all means to stop a future 9/11, which Obama and Janet Napolitano would simply call another ‘man-made natural disaster’.

Further, the poll shows a reaction consistant with the outrage over Obama’s decision to try the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in NYC, with an overwhelming majority of voters believing that the failed Christmas day terrorist attack should be investigated by the military and not civilian authorities.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air provides a further break down of the poll numbers:

Let’s look inside the numbers, where the responses get very, very interesting.  Rasmussen’s analysis says men are more likely than women to break out the waterboard, but a majority of women (54%) favor its use on Abdulmutallab, too.  Older voters may be less likely to approve of its use, but it still wins a plurality among 50-64 year olds (49%) and senior citizens (48%), outstripping opposition by double digits in both cases.  Democrats give waterboarding a thin plurality (43/41), while 60% of independents favor its use.  A majority of self-described moderates (51%) favor it as well.

So far, the response to using the criminal system is almost uniformly negative, with 71% saying that the military should be handling the issue.  Women are more likely than men (75/66) to have that reaction.  Among age demographics, the lowest percentage agreeing was 67% among the 50-64 demo.  Sixty percent of Democrats want it handled by the military, with only 30% agreeing with the Obama administration.  Even 50% of self-described liberals want the military handling Abdulmutallab, not the FBI.  Only among the political class does Obama gain majority support, 60/33 in favor of civilian handling of the terrorist.

The more time passes, the more it is clear that President Obama and his merry gang of liberals in his cabinet and in Congress simply are out of touch with what the American people want and believe in.  Or, a more likely scenario is that they fully understand what the American voters want, but simply don’t care, believing their liberal ‘dream’ for America is worth destroying the America we now know and love.

The President has alluded to being ‘tired’ in recent interviews, and his friends and advisers have talked about the same.  Stating that he is sleeping less than President Bush (it always seems to come back to the former administration in some way) and is often making due on less sleep than he needs.

Part of that comes with the job.  As the leader of the free world, the stress and fatigue a United States President faces is apparent to all.  Every US President can be seen to visibly age quicker and beyond their four to eight years in office.  However, part of the problem lays with Obama himself.  He has chosen to routinely travel the globe having made ten trips overseas.  Early on, he made multiple trips on his worldwide apology tour, where he continued to decry American policies and apologize to the world for what he believes are America’s mistakes.

Add to the apology tour his two failed trips to Copenhagen.  First, the unprecedented step of trying to sell the International Olympic Committee on the idea of having the Olympics in Chicago, which would have greatly benefited friends and supporters of Obama’s from his hometown of Chicago.  Then, earlier this month he went to Copenhagen for the climate change conference, where he received universal criticism from the international community for the speech he gave.  Sandwiched in between was his trip to Oslo to receiver his Nobel Peace prize, which still has most of the world scratching their head and wondering what the selection committee was thinking.

So, the President is tired.

The question remains, what kind of signal does his initial silence and continued vacation and seeming disinterest send to the American public?  A public that were struggling to come to grips with the news that a terrorist smuggled a bomb on a plane and only due to a malfunctioning  detonator, or incompetent terrorist, did hundreds of Americans survive that flight. A public that witnessed their Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano tell them that the ‘system worked’ when being asked on the Sunday talk shows about the failed terrorist bombing.  A public that has read that the terrorist bomber confessed to being trained by Al Qaeda and stated that he was the first of many plane bombers. A public that knows the bomber was on a US watch list and who’s father reported him to the US embassy, because of his radical views against America.  Yet, we have been told that the ‘system worked’ as designed.

But, the President is tired.

The President that has spent more time in front of the camera and had more prime-time national press conferences than any President before him, took three days to speak to America following the bombing attempt. When he finally did speak, even though the American public already had details of the type and size of the bomb and knew details of the confession, Obama’s brief exit from the golf course resulted in a few carefully chosen words about the ‘subject’ and ‘allegedly’ trying to blow up a plane, as if there was some other reason for the 80 grams of high-explosive PETN and detonator hidden in his underwear.

Michelle Malkin is among those that are less than impressed with President Obama’s handling of the attempted terrorist attack:

Five days after the Christmas Day bomber tried to blow up NWA Flight 253 over Detroit, President Obama is still on vacation in Hawaii. He has delivered two hasty, tie-less statements on homeland security from a makeshift podium in Honolulu whose underwhelming sum impact has been the equivalent of voting “present” (Obama’s career m.o.) By his own admission and in direct contradiction to his hapless DHS Secretary, the president acknowledged yesterday that “systemic failure” led to the breach.

Obama is not scheduled to return to Washington until Sunday. That’s four more full days of reinforcing his image as detached, aloof, and too damned tired to tackle the jihadi epidemic with the once-hyped energy and passion of a 48-year-old Super-Agent of Hope and Change.

Poll after poll shows that President Obama is losing the American public.  The fact that Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, insinuated that this attack was President Bush’s fault, will not change the growing public sentiment that unlike the Bush administration, the Obama administration is soft on terrorism.  President Obama has routinely apologized for what he sees as our ‘mistakes’ in dealing with the Muslim world.  He mandated that the term ‘war on terror’ not be used by his administration.  He believes terrorists and enemy combatants should be given the same rights as lawful US citizens, including mandating that FBI agents mirandize captured enemy combatants in Afghanistan and inform them of their ‘rights’ as if they were US citizens arrested on US soil.  He has made the unpopular decision to try in New York city the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks and destruction of the World Trade Center, giving them all of the rights and benefits of US citizens, rather than trying them in a military tribunal as originally planned.

Now, Obama’s ‘golf as usual’ reaction to the failed terrorist attempt to blow up a US airliner combined with what appeared to be disinterest in his belated address to the American public, leaves Americans scratching their heads and wondering what it will take, how many people will have to die, before President Obama is willing to declare a war on terrorism.

Over the weekend, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stuck with the Obama administration’s playbook, by insinuating that the blame for the failed airline bombing attempt should lay with the former administration.  Saying that because the Bush administration had put the focus on Iraq, the US had lost sight of the terrorists that mean to do the US harm.

Also on Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano made news when she declared that “the system worked” when discussing the terrorist attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet.  That ‘system’ allowed a man who had been reported to the US Embassy by his father, to board a plane with a bomb.  Only through his own incompetence or a technical malfunction, was the plane not destroyed and the passengers aboard it killed.

Then, yesterday, the President seemed disinterested, when after three days of security briefings, and press reports about the bomber confessing and saying that more bombers would follow him, the President referred to the subject ‘allegedly’ trying to ignite a bomb.

So, after three days of Presidential silence, which included blunders by his press secretary and Homeland Security Secretary, the President once again addressed the issue.  This time, the President referred to “the warning signs would have triggered red flags and the suspect would have never been allowed to board that plane for America,” Obama said. “A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable.”  He went on to add that a mix of “human and systemic failures” contributed to what could have been a “catastrophic breach of security.”

The ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air has some addition commentary on the President’s damage control:

And so we finally reach Step 5 of The One’s damage-control protocol. There’s nothing interesting about this except the politics of it: He had to undo Napolitano’s moronic gaffe from Sunday and the perception that he wasn’t taking this as seriously as everyone who isn’t lounging on Waikiki this week, so here’s the obligatory two-birds-with-one-stone CYA. The choice of the words “systemic failure” is, needless to say, no accident.

“Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home” said Obama on national TV.

Fast forward to today, and after taking three days to address the public about the attempted terror plot to blow up a US airliner, the President said:

Here’s what we know so far: On Christmas Day, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was en route from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit. As the plane made its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, setting off a fire.

Allegedly.  A decorated Cambridge police officer was tried and convicted on a national stage by President Obama when he didn’t have all the facts, but after days of being briefed by his national security staff, the Al Qaeda trained terrorist who attempted to blow up a US airliner is given the benefit of the doubt — allegedly.

Jonah Goldberg of the National Review Corner had this reaction:

If we know it, how “allegedly” can it be? And we do know it, right? I mean there are lots of witnesses, we have identified the device and the explosive and the guy has reportedly admitted what he was trying to do. And al Qaeda has admitted they were behind the plot (or at least an al Qaeda website says so). But the commander-in-chief still says “allegedly.”

Where does it end?  The President has declared that the phrase “war on terror” shall not be used by the administration.  He has conducted world-wide apology tours, decrying the mistakes and injustices the United States has committed against other nations.  He has made what at best can be termed a naive decision to have the terrorists that masterminded the 9/11 attacks put on trial in New York city, and given all the rights of US citizens.  He has mandated that prisoners captured in Afghanistan are mirandized by FBI agents before being questioned.  The list goes on and on.

The American people expect their President to begin standing up for them, the way he has for his friend Professor Gates, and the Muslim community at large.

Mr. President, sometimes words matter and after ‘allegedly’ being briefed for three days, we expected you to choose your words more wisely.

The AP is reporting that Obama left his golf outing abruptly for ‘personal matter’ and that an ambulance sped to first family’s vacation residence.

More to follow…

Update: What is being reported is that the child of one of Obama’s friends was hurt (bumped head) while taking a surfing lesson.  The father was golfing with Obama, and they wanted to get back to check on the child.  The child was treated at the scene and not taken to a hospital.