Obamacare, Whether You Like It Or Not!

The Democrats are showing their true colors this week, as debate heats up over the so-called "bipartisan" health care summit.

First, President Obama has published his "health care plan" on the White House website...though when I was poking around the site, I couldn't help but notice that there are a lot of summaries and overviews.  If there is a way to view the actual legislative language of the president's proposal, I could not find it.  The site is primarily full of the same rhetoric we've been getting from Obama since before he was elected, so the site basically just amounts to a dressed-up Obama speech.

This, of course, is leading up to the summit that is scheduled for next week, and supposedly in response to rising health insurance rates...which begs the question: Why are health insurance rates going up so drastically all of a sudden?  Of course it has nothing to do with the fact that two branches of the federal government are actively working to put the medical insurance industry out of business and everything to do with evil corporations exploiting the workers for their own gain. 

House Republican leader John Boehner has issued a press release stating that Obama's health care bill is pretty much the same crap we've seen coming out of Congress thus far - and he's right.  The president isn't offering anything new; his proposals are the same old liberal tripe that came out of the House and Senate (including taxpayer funding for abortions).

This also proves that the upcoming health care summit is a sham.  Obama is claiming to have incorporated Republicans' ideas in his plan, and while this is true, it hardly makes Obama's plan bipartisan - and his claim that it is bipartisan only makes it blindingly obvious that he doesn't understand why Republicans and conservatives oppose both the House and Senate bills...which begs the question: is Barack Obama really that stupid?

Of course, there are more reasons why the summit is a sham: The Democrats have basically said that the Republicans can show up (which will gain them nothing), or they will pass a reconciliation version of the existing bills without them.  Using the reconciliation rules, the Democrats can pretty much jumble together whichever pieces of either bill that they want, and push it through despite Republican opposition.

So it all comes down to this: either Republicans can come to the summit and accomplish nothing (other than generating free publicity for the Democrats), or they can continue to fight.  Either way, we will get a health care bill that will increase taxes on all US taxpayers, turn the US health insurance industry into even more of a shambles, and screw over each and every hard-working, tax paying American.

The Right-Wing / Left-Wing Wacko

Yesterday, Andrew Joseph Stack flew a small plane into the IRS offices in Austin, TX.  This morning, I had the opportunity to read through his "manifesto," the rantings he posted online before committing his act of terrorism.

And that's what it was, terrorism.  US law enforcement agencies love to treat the people like sheep, telling us that a spade is not a spade, and that terrorism is not terrorism.

It's possible that Joe Stack's blindingly apparent act of terrorism doesn't fit the FBI's politically correct definition of terrorism, but he spelled out his intentions quite clearly in his suicide note: he wanted to terrorize America into changing the tax code.

Unfortunately, the punditry & the blogosphere are now running with the incident, the left trying to blame the right, and vice versa.

Truth be told, this guy made some points that could be considered right-wing, and some points that could be considered left-wing...but no matter what side he was coming from, he was an all-around nut.

He did make some good points about how confusing the US progressive income tax system is, but that's no excuse to commit terrorism.

So no matter what side of the political aisle you're on, I think we can all agree that this guy was crazy...so let's stop trying to blame this on one side or the other, and just stick with what we know: he was a nut.

Is Obama Actually Doing Something Right?

Barack Obama actually seems to be following through on one of his statements from the State of the Union: he is announcing an $8.3 billion loan guarantee for the building of new nuclear power plants.

While this is good news, I'm still skeptical as to whether Obama will follow through: for starters, the US government does not have the money (not that that would stop them from borrowing it from China), though it is a loan program, which means that the energy companies will need to pay the money back...but the second thing that makes me skeptical is that Obama is such a stereotypical left-winger, it wouldn't surprise me if he made this announcement and then bowed to the anti-nuclear lobby and didn't follow through.  After all, as the article points out, there are no timelines for the loan guarantees, which would make it quite easy for Obama to make the announcement and then never follow through.

I'll believe it when I see it, but if it does happen, this will be a step in the right direction.

Where is the outrage?

The main headline on the front page of Drudge this morning:  SEARCH SPY: GOOGLE TEAMS WITH NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY. 

Why isn't this everywhere in the media?

When the Bush administration passed the Patriot Act, there was outrage at the possibility that civil liberties may be curtailed.  Personally, I thought that some provisions of the Patriot Act were necessary, while others may have gone too far - but the Patriot Act had a sunset clause, which made it much more palatable: if Congress didn't vote to renew the Act, then it would die.

But Google already engenders widespread privacy concerns, as they are constantly collecting IP addresses and browser information and linking them to whatever search terms you put in when doing a Google search.  The volume of data they must collect on a daily basis is staggering.  The idea of Google being hacked is worrisome, but the idea of them teaming up with the NSA, which already collects who knows how much digital information on US citizens (and people across the globe) is a bit frightening.  Google says that the goal is to analyze a recent attack (presumably from China) in the interests of preventing future attacks, but any relationship is a two-way street.  

What is the NSA getting out of this deal?  We may never find out, but the time to start asking questions is now.