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Doug Giles, Townhall.com

 

Did anybody else notice feces fumes coming off Obama’s head during his last presser? I think after that methane emission Obama owes Al Gore a few grand for carbon offsets. This guy has taken lies, hype and spin to an all-new human level. I hear Beelzebub is jealous.

 

Watching Barack work his voodoo last Wednesday was like watching Michael Jordan airwalk, or Michael Jackson moonwalk, or Gary Busey simply walk. Or maybe it was like watching Rosie O’Donnell devour a five-gallon bucket of bacon grease sprinkled with lizards and broken eggshells in 30 seconds flat.

 

It was truly amazing to behold B-HO lie his mocha-chino off to America about his Health Care Reform Bill or Health Insurance Reform Thing-a-ma-jig or whatever the heck it’s called now. His ability to misrepresent like that must stem from his Muslim upbringing; y’know, the whole “end justifies the means” mantra.

 

So, where did Barack bend the truth a skooch? Well, Spanky, I’m glad you asked. According to AP News it was stuff like the following:

 

1. Obama – “(this bill) will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you're happy with it.”

 

That sounds cool, except of course in this legislation, a commission appointed by the government would determine what is and isn't covered by insurance plans offered in a new purchasing pool, including a plan sponsored by the government. The bill also holds out the possibility that, over time, those standards could be imposed on all private insurance plans—not just the ones in the pool.

 

2. Obama – “You haven't seen me out there blaming the Republicans.”

 

Except, of course, in his first breath when he was bashing Jim DeMint. He said something like, “I've heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it's better politics to ‘go for the kill.’ Another Republican senator said that defeating health reform is about ‘breaking’ me.”

 

3. Obama – “I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it.”

 

That’s nice of him, ain’t it? The president has said repeatedly that he wants “deficit-neutral” health care legislation, meaning that every dollar increase in cost is met with a dollar of new revenue or a dollar of savings.

 

But some things are more neutral than others. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag told reporters this week that the promise does not apply to proposed spending of about $245 billion over the next decade to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients. Democrats and the Obama administration argue that the extra payment, designed to prevent a scheduled cut of about 21 percent in doctor fees, already was part of the administration's policy, with or without a health care overhaul.

 

Beyond that, budget experts have warned about various accounting gimmicks that can mask true burdens on the deficit. The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget lists a variety of them, including back-loading the heaviest costs at the end of the 10-year period and beyond.

 

4. Obama – “I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”

 

The facts are in dispute between black scholar Henry “Yo Mama” Louis Gates, Jr. and the white police sergeant who arrested him at his Cambridge, Mass. home when officers went there to investigate a reported break-in. But this much is clear: Gates wasn't arrested for being in his own home, as Obama implies, but for allegedly being belligerent when the sergeant demanded his identification. The president did mention that the professor was charged with disorderly conduct. Charges were dropped.

 

Reverend Jeremiah Wright would be so proud of his former disciple. Now, if that spin didn’t win you, never fear! He tried to lure you in with illustrations from the Matrix, red pill/blue pill, and if that didn’t work he said the planets were aligning in recognition of his divine bill.

 

Planets are aligning? WTH? Is the moon in the Seventh House? Is Jupiter aligning with Mars? Is this the dawning of the Age of Aquarius? Perhaps for some, but for this freedom-loving, finger-flying redneck it seems more like the age of nefarious vs. Aquarius because of the way Obama is dividing, lying, socializing and looting America. Even the democrats are beginning to see it! Read article.

James Lewis, American Thinker.com

 

We have been taught to indulge craziness.

 

Obama's first crazy-making person was probably his father substitute in Hawaii. By all accounts Frank Marshall was a race-obsessed black guy. It's not that he was wrong to feel angry, at the time. There were a ton of injustices against blacks. It's rather that he turned his pain into fanatical campaign of hatred, spreading it around to everybody else. That was Obama's first father figure in Hawaii.

 

Enter Henry Louis Gates, Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Attorney General Eric Holder and Barack Obama: All of them built fame and wealth on paranoid race politics. Enter Ruth Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Barbara Boxer (I'm no lady, I'm a Senator!), and an endless Conga Line of victim feminists. Look what those folks have done to Sarah Palin -- a high-tech lynch mob, driven mad with envy of Palin's good looks, popularity and joie de vivre. In the universities raging feminists, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and Queer Studies nabobs -- among others -- have exploited the career specialty of victimology.

 

Humans have a hard time facing reality. Power-hungry people drift into their own fantasy world by cutting off the truth-tellers. This is the most fantasy-driven administration in US history. That will be their downfall, as we are already beginning to see right in front of our eyes. Read article.

 

Brent Bozell, Townhall.com

 

Martha Joynt Kumar, a scholar of presidential communications strategies at Towson University, reports that President Obama is almost everywhere in the media. In their first four months, Bill Clinton gave 11 interviews, and George W. Bush gave 18, compared with 43 from Obama. He has offered his eloquence to ABC News at least six times, seven times on CBS and nine times on NBC.

 

That large number doesn't count his latest TV interview blitz, or the four prime-time press conferences. But all this access to the media -- based on the strategy that Obama's charisma can overcome all objections to his policy nostrums -- isn't stopping the collapse of his attempts to rush the country into massive new spending and regulation schemes.

 

The public is getting bored. About 24.7 million viewers tuned in to Obama's latest TV show last week, according to Nielsen ratings, some four million fewer than watched his last evening news conference in April, and only half the number that saw his first one in February. The media are getting bored, too. Their decision to play up Obama's thuggish attack on the city cops in Cambridge, Mass., demonstrated Obama was losing control of the political narrative on the health-care front. Read article.

Mackubin Thomas Owens, Online WSJ.com

 

In foreign policy, President Barack Obama has demonstrated a disturbing propensity to curry favor with our adversaries at the expense of our friends.

 

The Czechs and Poles are rightly concerned that they will be sacrificed on the altar of better U.S. relations with Russia. And the Israelis fear that the Obama administration’s desired opening to the Muslim world will be achieved at their expense. Mr. Obama’s attempted bullying of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a case in point.

 

Mr. Netanyahu was sworn in as Israel’s prime minister on March 31. Shortly thereafter, the Obama administration confronted Israel’s new leader in a very public way regarding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, an area partially controlled by the Palestinian National Authority. This was an extremely unusual way for an American president to greet the new leader of a liberal democracy that’s a close ally of the U.S.

 

The Obama administration was not satisfied with a series of understandings crafted by the Bush administration that, while not freezing settlements, had nonetheless achieved a significant reduction in settlement construction. During a May press conference with the Egyptian foreign minister, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Mr. Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements—not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions.”

 

Subsequently, Mr. Obama demanded that Israel freeze construction in east Jerusalem. Of course, Mr. Netanyahu rejected Mr. Obama’s demand. He declared that Jerusalem is an open, undivided city “that has no separation according to religion or national affiliation.” Mr. Netanyahu added that “we cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase in all parts of Jerusalem.” Read article.

 

2009: A Diplomatic Odyssey

Barry Rubin, Gloria-Center.org

 

 

“‘Come here,’ they sang….`He who listens will go on his way not only charmed, but wiser, for we…can tell you everything that is going to happen over the whole world.’” --The Odyssey, Book 12

 

So sang the Sirens to Odysseus. They promised not material or carnal joy but wisdom, for they claimed to predict the future. And thus warble the two Sirens, those of America and those of Europe. And what do they sing to Israel?

 

More! More! More concessions; take a risk; take a chance; prove you want peace. If you make a deal with Arafat; if you give control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip; if you offer to come down from all the Golan Heights; if you withdraw from south Lebanon, if you withdraw from the Gaza Strip, if you offer a state, then we will love you and help you and you will live in peace! We know the future and it will be a future of peace if you only heed us, you silly, stubborn people!

 

Come the delegations, come the parliamentarians, come the journalists, to the shores and luxury hotels, and conference rooms. And those who comply are rewarded, for a short time, with honeyed words and nice media coverage. Blessed are those Israelis who make unilateral concessions for they are called “moderates.” And cursed be those Israelis who don’t make unilateral concessions, for they will be called “hawks” and “hardliners.”

 

But soon their bones, or rather those of their less fortunate countrymen, lay all around. And the Sirens reset and start all over again.

 

We are only looking for your own good, they say. We want to help you.

 

And what about the 2006 song: Stop the war with Hizballah and the UN will establish a strong force to patrol south Lebanon. Hizballah will not be able to return or to build military installations. Arms smuggling will be halted. For we are the entire international community, almost 200 nations strong.

 

And each time, the chorus goes: if this doesn’t work out, we will support you. We will recognize the risks you have taken, and the concessions you have given, and the losses you have suffered. And the name of Israel will be exalted as a great peacemaker. And the media will say nice things about you. Read article.

 

Pete Du Pont, Online WSJ.com

 

The fresh news about Washington--the White House and Congress--is that things are not going very well. A new president in full command of public-policy matters is having problems, from health care to taxes to massive federal spending and now to the Waxman-Markey bill, one of the oddest and most far-reaching pieces of legislation advocated by the new administration.

 

It passed the House a few weeks ago by a 219-212 vote--not much of a margin. Most interesting was the fact that of America’s 50 state delegations in the House, 28 voted no and 22 aye, and one quarter of the 219 majority votes came from New York and California. Most of America’s states and communities didn’t much like the bill.

 

No wonder, for it would regulate many things--energy, wages, imported goods, corporations, states, cities, buildings and houses, snowmobiles, lawn mowers, light fixtures, candelabra base lamps and many others--while containing broad exemptions for regulation of agribusiness, ethanol and biofuels. The Waxman-Markey bill would be without question the biggest expansion of federal government control over our economy since the 1930s.

 

The Heritage Foundation concludes it would reduce America’s real gross domestic product by $400 billion each year--a cumulative loss of $9.4 trillion by 2035--leading to almost 2.5 million job losses, and raise inflation-adjusted electricity rates by 90%. For a household of four, it would cost on average $2,979 annually and in 2035 the total family cost would be over $4,600 for everything, including power, food, supplies, gasoline and transportation.

 

Our federal government would have full control over global-warming matters. States would not be permitted to create their own cap-and-trade programs, but could be given emission allowances by the federal government which they could sell to generate funds for clean energy programs. Read article.

 

Paul R. Hollrah, NMJ.us

 

Barack Hussein Obama has now occupied the Oval Office for just 185 days. Under normal circumstances we might expect that a new president, supported by strong majorities of his own party in Congress, might have accomplished at least something of value in that length of time...but he hasn’t. In fact, he has dug such a political and economic hole for himself and his party that whatever prospects they might have envisioned have been frittered away and his entire legislative agenda now appears destined to failure.

 

As the first African American to have a real shot at winning the presidency, Obama had one major advantage. Although he was, by far, the least qualified, the most inexperienced, and the most intellectually flawed individual ever to seek the presidency, his ability to read a speech from a teleprompter with feigned conviction and sincerity captivated the vast majority of blacks and left-leaning whites. Indoctrinated in our public schools and lacking any real foundation in American history, they were especially in love with the idea that, by electing a black president, the ugliness of racism could be forever put to rest. They willingly put aside common sense and voted him into office.

 

As matters now stand, it appears that Obama will fail to achieve any of his primary agenda items. His tax increases fall heaviest on the poor and middle class and convert hundreds of billions of dollars in job-creating investment capital to government waste; his environmental proposals, primarily cap-and-trade, are guaranteed to place a heavy financial burden on the poor and middle class, eliminate millions of jobs, and throw a wet blanket over the entire economy; and his healthcare proposals are going nowhere because, while he insists that healthcare reform must be paid for, neither he nor the Democrat leadership have the courage to actually pay for it.

 

Every administration has a lasting image affixed to it that lives on in the minds of the American people in perpetuity. For the Bush Administration it is the indelible picture, taken at the exact moment of impact, of giant airliners crashing into the World Trade Center in New York.

 

For the Obama Administration, it will likely be the image described by a friend who recently found himself driving behind a new Cadillac Escalade on a Houston freeway. The rear window of the Escalade sported a Southern Methodist University Alumni decal; strapped to the top of the Escalade were several ladders and a few sections of scaffolding; attached to the Escalade’s rear bumper was a small trailer containing buckets, brushes, and other tools; and on the tailgate of the trailer was a magnetic sign proclaiming “I Will Paint Anything.” Read article.

 

Gerald Warner, Telegraph.co.uk

 

Are the people rejecting their saviour? Barack Obama’s approval rating has slipped to below that of George “Dubya” Bush at the same stage in his presidency and this is causing some concern among right-thinking (by which, of course, I mean left-thinking) people. This is by no means the death of the dream that began in January – approval ratings slide up and down erratically – but it is at least an early intimation of mortality.

 

For this is no ordinary presidency, this is the reign on earth of The One: his approval rating was intended to break the mould by rising inexorably to 100 per cent and beyond. The problem about a mega-hype like the Obama scam is that when it goes pear-shaped it will crash and burn like nothing we have seen since that other hot-air powered marvel, the Hindenburg. Here we are, six months into the great adventure and already our hero is in deep doo-doo.

 

How is it with the economic rescue package? Terrific – if you are a Wall Street banker. But if you happen to belong to that uncovenanted majority of the population, the lumpen salariat, you may be coming to the conclusion that crossing FDR’s depression-prolonging New Deal with LBJ’s Great Society is not the answer to your problems. This one will run and run; and so, eventually, will its instigators if they want to stay ahead of the mob with tar and feathers.

 

Health care? Hillary must be laughing into her handbag: she was burning her fingers on this red-hot brick when Barack was still at law school. It is no longer Republicans who are the problem about getting this package through Congress: it is Democrats. Even the American left balks at a socialist scheme for health care that would have had Nye Bevan shouting “Hold on a moment!” Your brainchild, Barack – enjoy. Read article.

 

Review & Outlook, Online WSJ.com

 

President Obama bills himself on the world stage as an empathetic guy, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a veteran of a famous “listening tour” of her own. Let’s hope the Administration was paying attention to India’s environment minister when he told Mrs. Clinton a thing or two about climate policy Sunday

 

“There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions,” Jairam Ramesh told Mrs. Clinton in a closed-door meeting, according to a copy of his remarks distributed after the session. “And as if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours.”

 

Mr. Ramesh was simply repeating the widespread consensus in India that it’s irresponsible to sacrifice economic growth benefiting hundreds of millions of mostly poor people for the sake of environmental absolutism. India’s per capita GDP is around $1,000. While its mostly state-owned energy industry is grossly inefficient and the country could benefit from less wasteful energy usage, emissions caps are the wrong way to go. Caps would send prices on energy and other goods higher, not to mention the longer-term damage to economic growth. China conveyed similar concerns at the Group of Eight meeting in Italy earlier this month.

 

Mr. Ramesh’s remarks point to another cost India could bear even if New Delhi resists imposing its own emissions caps: the cost of protectionist measures imposed by developed countries to shield their businesses from the costs of their own national emissions targets. The cap and tax bill recently passed by the U.S. House is explicit in proposing tariffs on goods from countries that don’t follow the developed world’s anticarbon line.

 

Instead Mr. Ramesh repeated New Delhi’s longstanding call for developed countries to finance the import of expensive green technologies, which would in theory help India reduce emissions without incurring as many out-of-pocket costs. At the same time, India has rejected any calls for legally binding emissions targets.

 

If this concept sounds familiar, it should. President George W. Bush proposed such a framework almost exactly four years ago. Read article.

 

John Fund, Online WSJ.com

 

President Barack Obama’s health-care sales pitch depends on his ability to obfuscate who is likely to get hurt by reform. At Wednesday’s news conference, for example, he was asked “specifically what kind of pain and sacrifice” he would ask of patients in order to achieve the cost savings he promises.

 

He insisted he “won’t reduce Medicare benefits” but instead would “make delivery more efficient.” The most Mr. Obama would concede is that some people will have to “give up paying for things that don’t make you healthier.” That is simply not credible.

 

While Democrats on Capitol Hill dispute claims that individuals will lose their existing coverage under their reform plans, on other issues many Democrats privately acknowledge some people will indeed get whacked to pay for the new world of government-dominated health care.

 

Democrats have been brilliant in keeping knowledge about the pain and sacrifice of health reform from the very people who would bear the brunt of them. They’ve done so by convincing health-care industry groups not to run the kind of “Harry and Louise”-style ads that helped sink HillaryCare in 1993.

 

Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) says the pressure not to run ads has been “intense, bordering on extortion.” “Groups were told if they did they’d give up their seat at the table,” says former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “What they weren’t told is that they’d be at the table as lunch.” 

 

The only way the House and Senate health plans can pass is if the costs they impose on vulnerable parts of the population continue to be hidden. Read article.

 

American Thinker.com

 

Shawn Tully of Fortune Magazine has a list of 5 aspects of health care that we have now that will be lost if Obamacare becomes the law of the land:

 

A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.

 

If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.

 

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.The only way the Democrats can sell this bill is by lying. That's all they have left. And the lies are getting bigger and more obvious as we go along.

 

The only way the Democrats can sell this bill is by lying. That's all they have left. And the lies are getting bigger and more obvious as we go along. Read article.