Monthly Archives: January 2011

The Few, the Chosen, The Cheaters……..

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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jan/28/tawdry-details-of-obamacare-420960137/

Everyone remember part of this motto of the Marines– you know, the Few, the Chosen part?   Marines ARE honorable, brave men and women, who protect us and the Constitution every day that they serve.

However, the bunch I’m referring to are the sycophants of Obama who, by their wheeling and dealing, are exempted from Obama-scare.  Most of these few, chosen CHEATERS have donated money to Obama’s political career or promoted Obama.  Exempting your buddies from Obama-scare is a form of nepotism and should be stopped and reversed.  Obama-scare scares me plenty.  Most Americans did not want it.  Most Americans understand it will cost us jobs when businesses incur the added expense of this unwanted mandate.  Most Americans will pay the price for Obama’s minions who are exempted.

To quote the Washington Post:

Last year, we learned that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had granted 111 waivers to protect a lucky few from the onerous regulations of the new national health care overhaul. That number quickly and quietly climbed to 222, and last week we learned that the number of Obamacare privileged escapes has skyrocketed to 733.

Among the fortunate is a who’s who list of unions, businesses and even several cities and four states (Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee) but none of the friends of Barack feature as prominently as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

How can you get your own free pass from Obamacare? Maybe you can just donate $27 million to President Obama‘s campaign efforts. That’s what Andy Stern did as president of SEIU in 2008. He has been the most frequent guest at Mr. Obama‘s White House.

Backroom deals have become par for the course for proponents of Obamacare. Senators were greased with special favors, like Nebraska Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson and his Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Democrat Sen. Mary L. Landrieu and her Louisiana Purchase. Even the American Medical Association was brought in line under threat of losing its exclusive and lucrative medical coding contracts with the government.

Not only are the payoffs an affront to our democracy and an outright assault on our taxpayers, the timing itself of the latest release makes a mockery of this administration’s transparency promises. More than 500 of the 733 waivers, we now know, were granted in December but kept conveniently under wraps until the day after the president’s State of the Union address. HHS is no stranger to covering up bad news; in fact, this is becoming a disturbing pattern. Last year, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hid from Congress until after the Obamacare vote a damning report from the Medicare and Medicaid Office of the Actuary showing Obamacare would cost $311 billion more than promised and would displace 14 million Americans from their current insurance.

For this administration, transparency promises last only until the teleprompter is unplugged.

Chinatown, USA…or, just USA?

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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20110128/D9L1B1SO0.html

What’s wrong with a politician of Chinese descent criticizing Rush Limbaugh for imitating the Chinese language or leader?

Well, for starters, the politician is an AMERICAN who happens to have Chinese ancestry.  What’s it to an AMERICAN politician if an AMERICAN talk show host criticizes a foreign leader?  After all, that’s what talk radio does.

Secondly, enough of this PC stuff!  It seems as though every special interest group wants the censorship rights to free speech nowadays.  The Democrats complained about bullseyes on maps, even though they had previously labeled maps in the same manner.  The blacks want a “Black caucus” and the “NAACP”,  but find the idea of a “White caucus” offensive.  And, now, politicians seem to think that even mimicry, if it’s of something they hold dear, should be apologized for.

There is a much simpler method of handling free speech of which you don’t approve.  Shut it off.  Don’t listen to it.  Tell others, if you like, that you find the speech offensive.  But, unless the speech is libelous or slanderous, the speaker has every right to speak and YOU (the complainer) have a right to complain, but NOT to demand that the free speech be censored, stopped, or even apologized for!

My gosh. All of us have been insulted at one time or another and most of us didn’t make a federal case about it.   Learning to ignore insults should be second nature to a politician, and probably, a useful trick for everyone. Let’s understand that some people have views we don’t like and that some people will say things we don’t like.  But, let’s stop the public grandstanding right there.

Finally — a Cost cutting Congress —

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http://www.usnews.com/news/washington-whispers/articles/2011/01/20/house-gop-lists-25-trillion-in-spending-cuts

If you look through the list of programs that the Conservatives are hoping to cut,  it becomes obvious why our national debt is so outrageous.   Do we really need to give money to Egypt?….or, how about Ireland?…or, more locally, the National Endowment of the Arts?  As the list of spending largesse by our past Congress continues to be exposed,it becomes very obvious why our National Deficit is growing larger and larger, like something out of the worst science fiction tale.  Here are a few of the absurd ways that Congress has spent OUR tax dollars:

Economic Assistance to Egypt. $250 million annually.

International Fund for Ireland. $17 million annual savings.

Subsidy for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. $150 million annual savings.

The accumulation of debt that these programs represent cannot be allowed to continue.    Cut them all.

It’s encouraging to finally have representatives who are willing to stop the endless and growing spending by the Federal government!



Curing Obamascare

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Democrats claim that our health care system was sick and only the Federal Government could make it well again.  Unfortunately, the majority of Americans vehemently disagree and do NOT support Obama’s health care legislation.  Democrats claim that this will save money for all of us even though a majority of businesses are nervously contemplating the huge increase in costs and paperwork the new law necessitates.

Still, despite the taxpayers’ opinions, and despite that the Constitution forbids the Federal government from regulating what Americans MUST buy,  we hear that Democrats are going to fight the House majority who want to repeal the law.  Why?  Well, last night, Mara Liasson said on FOX that, after all, there are parts of the bill that people like, such as the requirement to cover pre-existing conditions.

What she doesn’t understand is that repealing  Obamascare does NOT preclude making changes to how health insurers do business.   There is no reason that individual concepts, like covering pre-existing health problems,  can’t be enacted as a stand-alone law.  Of course, such a law will raise the cost of premiums; but, if this is truly a favorite of the majority of Americans, so be it.

Many of us taxpayers believe that Congress should be voting on individual issues anyway, rather than hiding extraneous garbage, like ear marks, in a voluminous bill that most of Congress doesn’t even read!  If an issue is worth legislating, it surely is worthy of careful scrutiny and deliberation on ITS OWN MERITS.

After all, there are simple changes that could be implemented to improve the health care system, such as allowing interstate insurance premiums, that, unlike Obamascare, would cost the public nothing.  Competition is the only efficient means of improving costs.  Governmental regulation ALWAYS increases costs.

Republicans and anyone who cares about the future health of Americans should vote to repeal this monstrosity.  The only cure for Obamascare is to REPEAL it in its entirety.

Sticking to my guns!

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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47338.html

It never fails.  There is a tragedy and immediately, someone in Congress wants to create a new law to take care of a particular situation!  Is there anything that happens in our country that politicians don’t try to make into a poster for their political philosophy?  Well, the answer, unfortunately, is NO.

Guns, in and of themselves, do NOT kill people.  Everyone knows that.   It’s true that a gun can be a weapon used for murder, but then, so can almost anything.  Newspapers are filled with the infinite “tools”  that murderers use to kill their victims like knives or candlesticks or almost any common object.  But, I have yet to hear a Congress person declare that candlesticks should be banned.

The problem is that there is no way to guarantee the complete safety of anyone.  And, yet, whenever a gun is used by a criminal, the gun control freaks pop up like jack-in-the-boxes!  They demand gun control!  However, banning guns is a meaningless gesture since criminals aren’t going to abide by a law against guns.  Besides, if you carry that theory forward, you would notice that  murderers also drown some of their victims.  So,  should we outlaw water?

Somehow, politicians have to stop using events as political fodder for their pet causes.  Individual tragedies should NOT be the basis for a new law.  The law was meant to be an objective and logical method of dealing with issues and not a knee jerk response to a current event.  Our laws need to be written by objective people, not  fanatics obsessed by a current tragedy.   Writing a new law that bans guns now would be an emotional reaction to the Arizona tragedy, not the reasoned judgment of reasonable people.

That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to my guns!