At this time, the end of the first year of the Era of Obama, and in recognition of the job our elected leaders in Congress have done since being handed almost unfettered power, I offer the following as a look back over the last year and a look forward to what cannot be allowed to continue:
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. – Marcus Tullius Cicero
You deserve our leadership...
They own this mess now. Watch everything get worse.
UPDATE: Jim Lindgren: If You Like Your Health Plan, You Will NOT Be Able to Keep It. “I like my employer’s health plan. Today I learned that under both the Senate and the House bills, I won’t be able to keep my plan. Both bills require reductions in health reimbursement benefits under my plan. . . . Those who argued that President Obama could not possibly keep that promise were accused of spreading lies and disinformation, of using ’scare tactics.’ Now we learn that Obama’s critics were right.”
By the way, when the 1 a.m. vote took place, the Reid Amendment had been public for about 36 hours, and the public had not had a single business day to examine it. “Make no mistake,” said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a few minutes before the vote. “If the people who wrote this bill were proud of it, they wouldn’t be forcing this vote in the dead of night.” Referring to the Nelson buy-off and other special arrangements in the bill, McConnell said few people would have imagined that the health care debate would have ended “with a couple of cheap deals and a rushed vote at one o’clock in the morning.”
But that’s what happened. In the end, to no one’s surprise, the Reid Amendment moved ahead, 60-40, on a straight party-line vote. Democrats can blame Sen. Coburn and Republicans all they like, but the fact is, there is no reason, beyond the Christmas deadline, that the vote had to take place at 1 a.m.
Word is, Obama will take suggestions from his staff, advisers, and cabinet, mull over the issue for three months, and then maybe come up with a decision on how to respond to the increase in hostility. Then David Axelrod or Rahm Emmanuel will tell him what to do:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he “still” smelled sulfur after President Obama made a keynote speech at the Copenhagen climate conference Friday, accusing the American president of carrying same satanic Chavez believes followed Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.
Chavez, who was not included on the original list of speakers for the final day of the summit, ended the proceedings with bitter references to the Peace Prize-winning Obama as the “Nobel Prize of War.”
“The Nobel Prize of War just finished saying here that he is here to act. Well, show it sir. Don’t leave by the back door,” he said.
Three years after Chavez likened Bush to the devil during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the socialist strongman tore into Obama, claiming Friday that “it still smells like sulfur in the world.”
Given the disturbing news about the growing green business empire of Gore, Inc., the private jetting by grandees into Copenhagen to harangue us about our incorrect lifestyles, and the expansive estates of prominent green advocates, it seems that the movement is in need of a formal code of conduct to restore the reputation of climate-change advocacy. Here are five simple commandments that all prominent global-warming activists need to embrace after the blowback from Climategate and various disclosures about the big money involved in green advocacy:
(1) No green public advocate shall have personal business interests predicated on climate-change remedies.
(2) No green public advocate shall fly in a private jet.
(3) No green public advocate shall ride in a limousine.
(4) No green public advocate shall live in a mansion.
(5) Every green advocate shall limit transcontinental jet trips to one per year.
Iran on Wednesday test-fired an upgraded version of its most advanced missile, which is capable of hitting Israel and parts of Europe, in a new show of strength aimed at preventing any military strike against it amid the nuclear standoff with the West.
The test stoked tensions between Iran and the West, which is pressing Tehran to rein in its nuclear program. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said it showed the need for tougher U.N. sanctions on Iran.
“This is a matter of serious concern to the international community and it does make the case for us moving further on sanctions. We will treat this with the seriousness it deserves,” Brown said after talks with U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon in Copenhagen.
Wednesday’s test was for the latest version of Iran’s longest-range missile, the Sajjil-2, with a range of about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers). That range places Israel, Iran’s sworn enemy, well within reach, as well as U.S. bases in the Gulf region and parts of southeastern Europe.
The two-stage Sajjil-2 and is powered entirely by solid-fuel while the older, long-range Shahab-3 missile uses a combination of solid and liquid fuel in its most advanced form.
Iran has repeatedly warned it will retaliate if Israel or the United States carries out military strikes against its nuclear facilities, at a time when the U.S. and its allies accuse Tehran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran denies the claim, saying its program is intended solely to generate electricity.
Senator Mitch McConnell on the idiocy that Harry Reid is responsible for on behalf of the people of Nevada:
‘And here’s the most outrageous part: at the end of this rush, they want us to vote on a bill that no one outside the Majority Leader’s conference room has even seen. That’s right. The final bill we’ll vote on isn’t even the one we’ve had on the floor. It’s the deal Democrat leaders have been trying to work out in private’
Yeah, that’s how we do things in America…unpopular, destructive, poorly done things.
Add to these numbers the people who quit looking for work and you cannot say it is good news:
The number of newly laid off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week as the recovery of the nation’s battered labor market proceeds in fits and starts.
The Labor Department said Thursday that the number of new jobless claims rose to 480,000 last week, up 7,000 from the previous week. That was a worse performance than the decline to 465,000 that economists had expected.
“There are those who claim we have to choose between paying down our deficits…and investing in job creation and economic growth,” President Obama said last week. “This is a false choice.” During the same speech, he asked his audience to “let me just be clear” that his administration, having racked up the biggest budget deficits ever, is embracing fiscal responsibility, as reflected in his vow that “health insurance reform” will not increase the deficit “by one dime.”
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For connoisseurs of Obama-speak, the address featured a trifecta, combining three of his favorite rhetorical tropes. There was the vague reference to “those who” question his agenda, the “false choice” they use to deceive the public, and the determination to “be clear” and forthright, in contrast with those dishonest naysayers. These devices are useful as signals that the president is about to mislead us.
“In CBO’s view, this further expansion of the federal government’s role in the health insurance market would make such insurance an essentially governmental program, so that all payments related to health insurance policies should be recorded as cash flows in the federal budget,” the memo states.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." - The 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution
