Obama Cutting $100m from Budget Is a Drop in the Bucket

What does $100,000,000 actually look like? This 90-second video shows us visual learners the truth.

Cutting $100m from our current budget doesn’t seem like such a big deal now does it?

Hippie Bill Clinton, Hippie Hillary Clinton

Not sure why I hadn’t seen this before but it’s hilarious! Who says the hippie movement didn’t have a future?

Paths to Salvation, All Are Not Equal

The difference between religions can be seen in how they respond to opposition.

I received this photo from someone I follow on Twitter. It’s believed to be taken in Phoenix where no one was allowed to remove it for fear of being restrained by the Capital Police and Homeland Security persons on site.

In our country, freedom to express dissenting opinions, this time by illegal aliens who want to part of America, yet refuse to abide by our rules, is tolerated.

Contrast that with ultra violent responses by Muslims across the globe to the proposed burning in the Quran that never took place.

Quran Backlash: Protesters Burn US Flag, Effigies of Obama

Muslim rioters in Asia burned effigies of U.S. President Barack Obama in protests over the “desecration of the Quran.” Sixteen people, including a 13-year-old boy, were killed in the riots. In Iran, thousands of protesters burned the American flag.

Yet many, including our own President, claim there are many paths to salvation, all of them supposedly equal. *sigh*

Update Video: Police Watch as SB1070 Illegal alien supporters desecrate US Flag during National Anthem

University Says Change Beliefs or No Degree

As astounding as this might sound, Augusta State University is threatening one of their students to change her “central religious beliefs on human nature and conduct” or be expelled.

You see, Jennifer Keeton has some traditional views on homosexuals and transgendered persons so that can’t be tolerated by those who claim tolerance as a hallmark. Naturally, she’s filing a lawsuit and I hope she wins.

“[Augusta State University] faculty have promised to expel Miss Keeton from the graduate Counselor Education Program not because of poor academic showing or demonstrated deficiencies in clinical performance, but simply because she has communicated both inside and outside the classroom that she holds to Christian ethical convictions on matters of human sexuality and gender identity,” the 43-page lawsuit reads.

Universities have been the bastion of liberalism for decades but this boldness is new. Alternatives in education have been springing up lately and I, for one, am encouraged.

The End of America

Is it? Is this the beginning of the end? Today is Black Monday.

What made America great was Freedom. Our freedom has been eroding since the beginning of the government imposed Welfare program, even if they had good intentions.

Then came Medicare and more. I’m not a historian but even I can see that as government grows larger, the citizen’s freedoms shrink proportionately.

The Health Care bill is brings an estimated $435,000,000,000 in new taxes to a people already in recession and with relatively high unemployment. Divide that up between the 307,006,550 citizens and we each get another $1,416 in taxes, just for this new bill. Can you afford that? I know I can’t.

Let us thank our Democrat friends for blindly pushing forward against all reason. And to think they call us the extremists.

Taxes Disguised

My wife and I are taking a trip tomorrow. Just one more example of how greedy our government is, check out these ratios for 2 tickets:

Actual Air Fare – $719.96
Taxes & Fees – $264.60
Ratio – 36.75%

How ridiculous is that? Now, we are leaving the country so maybe it’s the greed of our politicians combined with the greed of this foreign country’s politicians?

Obama Wants to Own You

Scary, scary stuff here. Obamacare is socialistic medicine… no question about it.

Democrats Bribe Their Own to Pass Massive Healthcare Bill

Doing this with Christmas right around the corner is sad beyond words. Look at the latest.

With the bill hanging in the balance, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) won a provision exempting his state from paying the usual share of costs for new Medicaid patients. The deal, which critics have dubbed the “Cornhusker Kickback,” is expected to cost the federal government $100 million over 10 years.

Before a close vote last month, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) won an even larger break for her state — an estimated $300 million in extra federal spending, in a move now derisively called the “Louisiana Purchase.”

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) made sure that certain insurance companies in his state are off the hook from a new $7 billion dollar tax.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) got his kickback — a $100 million bonus for the University of Connecticut… to do with whatever they want.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) was “persuaded” to drop his concerns after Senator Reid offered his state a $10 billion grant for “community health centers”-money that could easily be funneled to facilities that perform abortions.

Three states — Pennsylvania, New York and Florida — all won protections for their Medicare Advantage beneficiaries at a time when the program is facing cuts nationwide.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) won a promise from Reid to support his plan to expand eligibility for health insurance.

The Senators from Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming will get the “Frontier Freebie” — they’ll see an increase in Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors, because “at least 50 percent of their counties are ‘frontier counties,’ defined as those having a population density less than six people per square mile.”

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate health committee, got a provision inserted to increase Medicare payments to certain “low-volume hospitals” in Grinnell, Keokuk and Spirit Lake, treating limited numbers of Medicare patients.

Even the Democrats themselves are starting to complain about this obvious “Cash for Cloture” bribing going on. When Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) couldn’t get past the reporters swarming Ben Nelson on her way to the cloture vote, she quipped, “I know I’m not as important as Senator Nelson. I didn’t get the money for my state. I was too stupid.”

Nationalize Healthcare and The Crippling of America

Lately, my blog has become mostly fluff. Life is just too hard to spend my free time on negative topics… like the Swine Flu or today’s politics. But today’s post is important. (Since I post so rarely about this stuff, it most certain must be.)

People routinely misunderstand Shakespeare’s Henry VI quote:

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

When taken in context, it’s understood that lawyers were the primary obstacle to the speaker’s desired revolution. Ahh… context, what a glorious thing. With today’s political runaway train, we might be needing our next revolution quicker that we might have thought.

The Democrats are trying to jam nationalized health care down America’s throat, consequences be damned.
“Don’t take time to consider the costs or implications,” they say.
“But what about our concerns?” we reply.
“We’ve got it covered,” they demand.

I, for one, am the last person on the face of the earth to trust a politician. (Where are term limits?!?) I’m far more admiring of the folks at NCAP who relayed this information today:

How will ObamaCare affect insurance premiums in the private health care markets? Despite indignant Democratic denials, the near-certainty is that their plan will cause costs to rise across the board, says the Wall Street Journal.

The latest data comes from the insurance company WellPoint Inc., which mined its own actuarial data to model ObamaCare in the 14 states where it runs Blue Cross plans. The study therefore takes into account market and demographic differences that other industry studies have not, such as the one from the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, which looked at aggregate national trends:

* In all of the 14 states WellPoint scrutinized, ObamaCare would drive up premiums for the small businesses and individuals who are most of WellPoint’s customers (other big insurers, like Aetna, focus on the market among large businesses).
* Young and healthy consumers will see the largest increases — their premiums would more than triple in some states — though average middle-class buyers will pay more too.

What distinguishes the Wellpoint study is its detailed rigor, says the Journal:

* Take Ohio, where a young, healthy 25-year-old living in Columbus can purchase insurance from WellPoint today for about $52 per month in the individual market.
* WellPoint’s actuaries calculate the bill will rise to $79 because Democrats are going to require it to issue policies to anyone who applies, even if they’ve waited until they’re sick to buy insurance.
* They’ll also require the company to charge everyone nearly the same rate, bringing the premium to $134.
* Add in an extra $17, since Democrats will require higher benefit levels, and a share of the new health industry taxes ($6), and monthly premiums have risen to $157, a 199 percent boost.
* Meanwhile, a 40-year-old husband and wife with two kids would see their premiums jump by 122 percent — to $737 from $332 — while a small business with eight employees in Franklin County would see premiums climb by 86 percent.

The story is largely the same from state to state, though the increases are smaller in the few states that have already adopted the same mandates and regulations that Democrats want to impose on all states, says the Journal.

We may not be able to avoid hyper inflation given how this and previous administrations have spent our tax dollars, but giving the government control of our entire health care system will certainly push us over the edge.

To counter any opposition who might claim that I have to answers to our “problem”… I say, sure I do. Tort reform.

Government Wastes Money

Just in case you didn’t know… our government wastes money. Not just a little, mind you, gigantic heaping TONS of money. Just how much? You take a guess. How about a cool $90 billion on “flawed projects”… IN A SINGLE YEAR!

In the words of Ricky Ricardo, “It’s just so ridiculous.”

Abortions Covered by Obamacare

It’s a sad state of affairs that mankind has come to this. Human life should be so easy to eliminate.

For those of you keeping track, the number of proofs that abortion is included in the health care overhaul officially hit seven yesterday at a townhall meeting in San Jose, California. House Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) did a fine job of making FRC’s case after a member of the audience specifically asked about the abortion mandate. The text of the exchange follows.

QUESTION: “[This is a ] health care plan that is covering abortion, which we know that over 90% of abortions are purely elective, not medically necessary. Why is this being covered when abortion is clearly not health care?” (Applause).
REP. LOFGREN: “[This is a] basic benefit plan developed by, um, health professionals… Abortion will be covered as a benefit by one or more of the health care plans available to Americans, and I think it should be.”

Obama Interview: End of Life & Healthcare

From the piece After the Great Recession by David Leonhardt.

THE PRESIDENT: Now, I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care — it’s a related one — is what you do around things like end-of-life care —

LEONHARDT: Yes, where it’s $20,000 for an extra week of life.

THE PRESIDENT: … Exactly. And I just recently went through this. I mean, I’ve told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall. So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.

And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart. I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life – that would be pretty upsetting.

LEONHARDT: And it’s going to be hard for people who don’t have the option of paying for it.

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

LEONHARDT: So how do you – how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

If 80% of costs come at End of Life then you better believe there will be a government “panel” that will determine which treatments are covered and which aren’t. With no competition, things will quickly become wildly expensive.

Tell your representatives to oppose the government takeover of healthcare or someday… you could be on the receiving end of news you don’t want to hear.

Obama Pushes Healthcare Takeover Against Public Opinion

This stuff is maddening. There’s never been a large United States program that was later scrapped. If Obama succeeds in pushing the healthcare legislation, that in the most conservative estimates is $1,000,000,000,000, then you can bet our economy will accelerate into a dangerous tailspin.

I have more thoughts, but can’t articulate as well as like Tony Perkins.

President Obama had hoped to celebrate his 48th birthday with a trillion dollar gift from Congress: a final bill authorizing his administration to seize control of the American health care system. Instead, his legislation is dead-locked, the public is outraged, and his team seems to be trying to prevent their liberal foot soldiers from retreating on the biggest domestic policy package in recent memory. Public resistance is a foreign idea for this President, who has managed to coast along for five months without focused opposition. Even his staff seems flustered, unsure how to respond in an increasingly hostile environment.

So far, no one seems to accept the cold, hard reality that the President’s health care plan is wildly unpopular. Instead, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs blames the national protest on an old standby: the vast right-wing conspiracy. He said K Street lobbyists were organizing the raucous town halls, where “angry mobs” are disrupting the “honest” conversations that Democrats are trying to have in their home districts. It’s “manufactured anger,” he told reporters yesterday. The Democratic National Committee echoed the spin, saying, “The Republicans and their allied groups… are inciting… a small number of rabid right-wing extremists…”

When the Left protested the war with graffiti on the Capitol steps, it was “civic engagement.” When conservatives ask questions about what’s included in health care “reform,” it’s orchestrated thuggery. As Michelle Malkin points out, “The DNC’s definition of ‘thoughtful’: Sitting silent about the lack of transparency, deliberation, truth in numbers…on the ObamaCare plan. The DNC definition of incitement: Asking out loud, ‘How can you manage health care when you can’t manage Cash for Clunkers?’” Isn’t inciting the heartland exactly what then-candidate Obama prescribed last September? Blogger Ed Morrissey pulled a quote from his campaign that demonstrates just how disingenuous the administration is. To make a case for his candidacy, Obama told supporters to get aggressive. “I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” Obviously the President’s rules of engagement–like his theories on tolerance and speech–are a one-way street, open only to liberals.

The atrocious part is that he’s purposefully lying about the idea than anyone will get to keep their doctors under the government plan. Employers will dump everyone into the government plan because it’ll be cheaper. Rationed healthcare will be just part of the nightmare. Has the government ever done anything efficiently? No.

Bottom line: Government Healthcare = Fewer Choices, Lower Quality, Higher Cost

If it weren’t so scary it’d be hilarious.

Dojo Info 7/2/09

1. RATT begins recording guitars
   Bet you didn’t see that link coming.
2. ‘Spam king’ could face criminal charges in Facebook case
   Most people consider white collar crime as far less worthy of punishment than other crime, and rightly so, but that doesn’t mean these idiots should skate. I hope the judge follows the letter of the law. Good for Facebook going after this loser.
3. Does Microsoft’s Bing have Google running scared?
   Anything Microsoft does in this pace concerns Google but “running scared”? Seriously CNET?!? Did think you were the sensationalist type.
4. Forrester: Tech recovery to start in fourth quarter
   Is this the beginning of the turnaround?
5. Video: Loaded: A PSP phone?
   That’d be kinda cool… I guess.

Does the Patriot Act Supercede the Constitution?

For Annette Lundeby, her son Ashton and their family, it has.

The following is from Teen homeschooler jailed under Patriot Act. Examples like this should show every reasonable people why citizens should want our government to have less power, not more; smaller government, not larger.

A 16-year-old homeschooled boy from North Carolina was taken away from his home in handcuffs two months ago and has been held by the FBI in Indiana ever since, a victim, his mother claims, of the Patriot Act spun out of control.

According to Annette Lundeby of Oxford, N.C., armed FBI agents and local police stormed her home around 10 p.m. on March 5, looking for her son, Ashton. The officers presented a federal search warrant and seized the tenth-grader’s computer, cell phone and bank statements.

Ashton was then taken to a juvenile facility in South Bend, Ind., charged with making a bomb threat in Indiana from his home computer.

His mother, however, told Raleigh’s WRAL-TV that she argued with the authorities, claiming someone must have hacked into her son’s IP address and used it to make crank calls. The agents’ search, she claims, also failed to uncover any trace of bomb-making materials.

“Undoubtedly, they were given false information,” Lundeby told the station, “or they would not have had 12 agents in my house with a widow and two children and three cats.”

Allowed little access to see her son over the last two months, facing a court date that keeps being pushed back and given no information by FBI agents sitting behind a gag order on the case, Lundeby now says the USA Patriot Act has unjustly imprisoned an innocent boy and stripped her son of due process.

“We have no rights under the Patriot Act to even defend them, because the Patriot Act basically supersedes the Constitution,” she told WRAL-TV. “It wasn’t intended to drag your barely 16-year-old, 120-pound son out in the middle of the night on a charge that we can’t even defend.”

Passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the USA Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism – or P.A.T.R.I.O.T. – Act armed law enforcement with new tools to detect and prevent terrorism. Among other measures, it better enables interagency cooperation and allows law enforcement a wider array of technological and surveillance tools to more quickly and stealthily investigate terrorist threats.

Dan Boyse, a former U.S attorney not connected to the case, explained to WRAL-TV how Ashton Lundeby could have been swept up by the Patriot Act.

“They’re saying that ‘we feel this individual is a terrorist or an enemy combatant against the United States, and we’re going to suspend all of those due process rights because this person is an enemy of the United States,’” Boyce told the station.

Boyce theorized that if an FBI agent came to the conclusion that Lundeby was a serious terrorist threat, the usual rules of law enforcement don’t apply.

“There’s nothing a matter of public record,” Boyce said. “All those normal rights are just suspended in the air.”

Ashton’s mother told the television station, “Never in my worst nightmare did I ever think that it would be my own government that I would have to protect my children from. This is the United States, and I feel like I live in a third world country now.”

This is about and unfair a situation as I recall having ever read. Spread the word. These people’s North Carolina representatives need to look into this.

Update 5/9: As is the case with most things, there’s more to the story than one side presents. Here’s some additional information from William Norman Grigg. And a piece by Wired.