Health Care is Here

On Christmas Eve, the Senate held their final vote for their version of the health care takeover.  The vote came out 60-39, with the bill passing strictly along partisan lines.

The truth is, pretty much every vote on health care has been on partisan lines, because this is a partisan bill written for a partisan Congress on a partisan issue.

The Democrats have been complaining lately that the Republicans have done nothing but obstruct their health care legislation, as if that were a bad thing.  Truth is, the Left has been trying to ram socialized health care down the throats of the American people for decades, but until now they've been stopped at every turn because too many people knew that "free" health care was a lie, a way for politicians to take more and more power away from the people, all the while setting the stage for socialism in America.

And the truth behind the Republicans' so-called obstructionism is that it isn't the real reason it took so long for the health care bill to pass.  The entire issue of health care reform has been crafted in such a way that any Republican worth his salt would be insane to cast a vote for the bill at any step of the process.  The people who have truly been holding up the process are the Democrats who disagreed with the bill for one reason or another - and the party leadership & the White House quite clearly showed their willingness to twist any arm and offer any bribe to push through their health care socialization.  They bribed Ben Nelson by offering to pay his state's Medicare costs - around $45 million.  Mary Landrieu was given $300 million for her state.  Christopher Dodd was able to write $100 million into the bill for his state.  The entire bill is full of nothing but socialism, waste and bribery.

The Republicans should be applauded for fighting tooth and nail to stop this bill.  Any of the so-called "moderate" Democrats who voted for the bill should be run out of Washington on a rail, and count themselves fortunate that they got off that light.  Any Senator who held out until funds were secured for their state should be put up on charges for accepting bribes, and the Senate leadership should be brought up on charges for bribing them...and then, any Senator who voted for the bill should be thrown out for violating their oath of office, in which they swore to support the Constitution of the United States.

Iran Pushing for War?

The regime in Iran seems to think they can get away with whatever they want...and the sad thing is, they probably can.  They've been developing nuclear weapons for quite a while now, despite sternly worded warnings from the UN, and even trade sanctions haven't stopped them from trading with nations such as Russia and North Korea, who don't give a damn what the UN thinks, either.

Iran is like a three-year-old.  Give an inch, and they'll take a mile.  Let them get away with one thing, and they'll see how far they can go, testing the limits just enough so that the "global community" won't annihilate them, but also so they will have increased room to maneuver and plot and scheme.

Now, Iran is in the news for more than just nuclear weapons.  A group calling themselves the "Iranian Cyber Army" hacked into Twitter, shutting the site down for several hours.  The message they posted: "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army. U.S.A think they controlling and managing internet by their access, but they don't, we control and manage internet by our power..."  The message also included the statement "Hezbollah is victorious."

Was this hack perpetrated by the Iranian government?  Who knows...it's more likely that this is an Iranian/Islamic terrorism-sympathetic cyber-terrorist group, but it's really impossible to tell at this early juncture.  Nations have increasingly been getting into cyber-warfare, which makes me wonder whether the Iranian government would try to show some muscle by temporarily bringing down one of the "Great Satan's" biggest websites.

The other incident that has put Iran back into the headlines is much, much more serious.  Iranian forces have taken over an Iraqi oil well in what is no less than an act of war.  It's not being treated that way by those in power, of course, because there is so much pressure from the worldwide progressive movement to avoid war no matter what that we may as well just let the Muslim extremists and communist dictators take over the world now & save us the trouble of a long, drawn out ordeal.  After all, Saddam Hussein did everything he could to provoke the UN, and all he got were sanctions (rendered meaningless by backdoor dealings with France & Russia), empty resolutions, and sternly-worded warnings.  It took the "cowboy" George W. Bush to finally do something about Hussein, and even then the UN still protested!

It's no wonder nations like Iran and North Korea act like the US and the UN are nothing but paper tigers.  With George W. Bush in power, at least there was the threat of force to keep evil regimes at bay, but now that anti-war progressives are basically running the entire Western world, it's abundantly clear that they will be able to run roughshod over all of the resolutions and warnings with little or no consequences.

US Goverment Over the Debt Limit

According to CBS News, the US government has exceeded the debt limit - no big surprise there.  According to a "senior treasury official," the government uses "extraordinary accounting tools" to give itself some room to maneuver when they're getting close to reaching the debt ceiling.

In other words, the government has spent more money than is allowed, but when that happens, all they have to do is cook the books to make it look like they still have some breathing room.  If this was done by any corporation in the US, they would immediately be labeled as "evil" and the CEO would be jailed...but in the US government, crime is okay (after all, the Obama administration has tax cheats setting tax policy).  The real question is, why do they still call it the debt ceiling?  With the frequency that the Dems keep moving it up, it's more of a one-way elevator.

Congress was already set to raise the debt ceiling by $2 trillion, a move that was (thankfully) shot down by Republicans & Blue Dog Democrats.  The progressives wanted to raise the debt ceiling now so they wouldn't end up having to do it closer to the midterm elections, when there is a much better chance that voters will remember their actions in the voting booths.

But let's face it: the Democrats are setting records when it comes to spending.  Barack Obama has spent more money in his first year in office than any other president in history ever did in the same amount of time (and that's after adjusting for inflation).  If they're looking to save face with these kinds of cheap shenanigans, it won't work.

It's time to throw the bums out...and it wouldn't hurt to throw in some prison time for fraud while we're at it.

Reid: Opponents of Health Care = Supporters of Slavery

Harry Reid is at it again: this time, he has compared opponents of Obamacare to those who supported slavery, opposed women's sufferage, and opposed the civil rights movement.

Now, besides just being patently absurd on their face, Reid's comments show his utter ignorance of history: it was the Republicans who led opposition to slavery, and a Democrat who tried to filibuster the 1957 Civil Rights Act.  Conservatives and Republicans have historically stood on the side of liberty, and the situation with the health care bill is no different.  Conservatives want to reform the health care system in a way that uses less regulation on the health care system to give the people more freedom and increase competition in the health care market, which will inevitably drive prices down.  Liberals want to take power away from the people, impose higher taxes, and give the government further control over peoples' lives.

It's interesting how liberals try to ascribe a moral imperative to any piece of legislation that grants the government more power, no matter how much damage that legislation will do to the nation.  When Republicans want to outlaw (or even just outlaw taxpayer-funded subsidies of) abortion, or want to outlaw gay marriage, we are routinely told that "you cannot legislate morality."  When Democrats want to take over 1/6 of the nation's economy in a massive power-grab that will require all citizens to purchase health insurance or take a government health plan under penalty of fines and possible jail time, legislating morality is suddenly acceptable.  President Obama has even quoted the Bible to justify the health care takeover, justifying federal wealth redistribution schemes by saying that we should "be our brother's keeper" (taken from Genesis 4:9).  The irony is, Barack Obama's own brother lives in poverty in Africa.

But the moral imperative where health care is concerned is disingenuous on multiple fronts: we already have regulations in place requiring doctors to provide emergency care to patients in need, regardless of whether they can pay.  With that statute in place, there is no reason for the power-grab to extent health insurance to everyone in America (by the way, many liberals are now calling the current bill "health insurance reform," since Americans started catching on to the fact that it does more to change the insurance system than the health care system).  With emergency care required, we are already being "our brother's keeper."

The Progressives are only using the Biblical/moral (and in some cases, the race card) argument in an attempt to get the American people to hand over all of their freedoms to the progressive nanny state.  What is the end game?  That largely depends on which special interest is pushing which power grab at any particular time, but the bottom line is: keep ahold of power, no matter what.

Reids comments show clearly that they will say nearly anything to villianize anyone who opposes them.

Barack Has Fixed The Economy!

According to the AP, the jobless rate has dropped from its high 10.2 percent in October to an astoundingly low 10 percent in November!!!  Everybody break out the champagne!  The crisis is over!

The first line of the article states "Two years of steep job cuts all but ended last month, unexpectedly pulling down the unemployment rate and raising hopes for a lasting economic recovery."

It then goes on to say that the unemployment rate "unexpectedly" dropped by 0.2 percent, and the "real" jobless rate dropped 0.3 percent, moving from 17.5 percent to 17.2 percent  It also referred to the numbers as "better than expected."

Frankly, any good news on the jobs front is "better than expected," but to assume that this is a portend of the end of the current economic crisis laughable.  The government has done little more than spread some money around - so what will happen when the money dries up?  Nothing has been done that will lasting effects on the economy, but the media is so desperate for good economic news that an insignificant shift in the unemployment rate is reported as great news.

Rubbish.

Time To Save The Liberal Media

According to Henry Waxman (D-CA), it's time for the government to step in to bail out the failing newspaper industry.  This has been in the works for a while - after all, the government bailed out the banks, and the auto industry, giving handouts to their union allies all the while, so it was only a matter of time before they decided that the newspaper industry is "too big to fail." 

According to Waxman, the "depression in the media sector is not cyclical, it is structural."  Wouldn't that imply that a government bailout wouldn't help anything over the long term?  Of course, they aren't just talking about throwing money at failing newspapers, they're talking about offering tax breaks and even possibly allowing newspapers to be classified as non-profit organizations, as well as loosening up media ownership regulations for newspaper publishers (on a side-note: if loosening up regulations will help the newspaper industry, isn't it possible that it will help in other areas of the economy, such as health care?).


This is absolutely, totally, and disgustingly predictable.  When conservative talk radio succeeds, all we hear from liberal politicians is the need for government-regulated "fairness" on the airwaves.  When the liberal media fails, though, it's up to the government to step up and save them.


Henry Waxman is right: newspapers are facing a structural failure.  The problem with newspapers is that they are antiquated, fast being replaced by internet news.  Waxman speaks of his worry that the failure of the newspaper industry will result in "the loss of an informed public."  The truth is that the internet provides people to much more information every day than newspapers ever could, and the internet allows opposing viewpoints to be heard much more than newspapers ever would.