Obama Sells Access to the Rich, Shuts Out the Poor

White House tours close, but presidential dog-walker and calligraphers continue. The rules of the sequester game include shutting down things that will inconvenience the hoi polloi while continuing to cater to the rich and famous. We've seen it before. Budget measures that include: closing and reducing hours at DMVs, shutting rest stops on interstates and turnpikes, reducing post office hours, and generally anything that makes people upset. It's a political trick that both parties practice, but the Dems are EXPERTS! Remember Jimmy Carter shutting off the monument lights? How come they never cut the bridges to nowhere, the Hollywood special deals, and the other pork? Easy...it might stop their political donations. It's Monday and business as usual inside the Beltway!

The GOP is not our Saviour: Betrayal in North Dakota

It's time to stop voting party if you ever did. Republicans are not our saviours. Republican state senator Curtis Olafson should be targeted by every pro-lifer when he's up for reelection. Run a pro-life candidate against him in the primary and if he wins put up an independent pro-lifer in the general election. This smells to high heavens like a very calculated maneuver. Wonder what the payoff was.

Outrage after North Dakota GOP senator suddenly tables historic measure banning all abortions

Dick Morris is right: Purify the Republican Party and Get Rid of the Sellouts!

IT’S NO DEAL, IT’S A SELLOUT  By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann

John Boehner has just given away the Republican victory of 2010 at the bargaining table. Like the proverbial Uncle Sam who always wins the war but loses the peace, he has unilaterally disarmed the Republican Party by showing that he will not shut down the government and will, instead, willingly give way on even the most modest of cuts in order to avoid it. He now has no arrows left in his quiver. Continue reading...

Who Do They Think They're Kidding?

Debt Jumped $54.1 Billion in 8 Days Preceding Obama-Boehner Deal to Cut $38.5 Billion for Rest of Year

$38.5B Cuts in Boehner-Obama Deal Less Than 6 Percent of $653.4B In Debt Incurred Already This Fiscal Year

Feds Spent $142B on Thursday Alone—As Pols Dickered Over Cutting $33B or $40B for Rest of Year

President Obama: He'll Cut $100 million in spending...

Before you get too impressed with President Obama's cost-cutting measures, watch this visualization and see what it really means. Still impressed? Meanwhile, the national debt keeps on growing...and growing...and growing...and....

Obama's Health Care Country Club: Private and Exclusive

The Democrats have assured us that the Obama/Pelosi/Reid healthcare plan is the best thing since sliced bread. Everyone will have better health care at a cheaper price than ever before. Thirteen million new folks will be added, no one will be denied care for pre-existing conditions, children will be dependents on their parents' plans until they're 26, and it will be cheaper.

Have you stopped laughing yet?

One thing is very interesting about this wonderful plan that is good enough for the hoi polloi. Congress and the president exempted themselves from it. That's right. This wonderful health plan, this gift from God, this Christmas present in March that will solve everyone's health problems doesn't apply to the president and members of Congress. That's not all. It also doesn't apply to senior staff members, presumably including those who drafted the bill. Hmmm...they know what's in it and want no part of it.

A Washington Times editorial yesterday provided some interesting information:

Last year, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, spearheaded efforts to have all Americans included in the plan, but he ran into heavy opposition from unions representing federal workers - the same unions that were pro-Obamacare stalwarts. In September, the Senate approved a scaled-down amendment that covered members of Congress and their staff. When this provision later emerged from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office, the leadership and committee staff loophole had appeared. A move in December by Mr. Grassley and Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, to close this loophole and to extend the law to senior members of the executive branch - including the president, vice president and Cabinet members - was blocked by Senate Democratic leaders.

Now what exactly do they know about the plan that we don't. If it's so good why are they exempted? The Times put it well when they wrote:

At yesterday's signing ceremony, Mr. Obama said Americans will be "part of a big pool, just like federal employees are part of a big pool. They'll have the same choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves." But the American people will have a public pool; the executive branch and congressional staffers kept their country-club pool private....The special exemptions slipped into the health care law are another example of how those statists who rule consider themselves a privileged class, imposing burdens on the country that they will not accept themselves....Meanwhile, we await Mr. Obama's explanation why if his "historic" health care law is so great for America, it's not good enough for him and his family.

Your answer, Mr. President? 

(Read the complete Washington Times editorial. )

The Democratic Senators Did It! Now It's Time for Payback Starting with Harry Reid!

The months of debate over the federal government takeover of health care resulted in last night's Senate debacle of a partisan power grab by the Democrats. Not a single Republican voted for the monstrosity for good reason. It supports abortion, contains massive payoffs, punishes health care professionals, and will mean rationing and reduced care for millions especially the elderly. This is no "reform" but business as usual for the elitists in Washington, D.C.

That Ben Nelson caved in after being promised a big Christmas stocking full of goodies shows exactly how corrupt the process is. He and Mary Landrieu are the poster children for how to succeed on Capitol Hill. Hold out for the big bribe. All the Dems who got nothing, know that next time they should refuse to cooperate until the bribe machine ponies up bigtime in payment for their votes.

It's time for taxpayers to kick the bums out. Every single Democrat who voted for this tax and spend power grab needs to be sent home starting with corrupt senator-in-chief, Harry Reid.

It's such a relief to know that Obama has brought in a new kind of moral government - Hahahahahaha....

Obama nomination of donor as envoy put on hold

Every time we turn around Obama is putting one of his buddies in a job and deep-sixing his critics. And this is the new kind of government we were promised. I can't help laughing, but it's the kind of laughter that ends up in tears. I wonder what Obama's picture in the White House attic looks like? (For those raised in the liberal public school system who spent all their time studying sex ed manuals instead of good literature, I'm referring to The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.)

More Payback Goodies for Obama Buddies!

Remind us again about the "hope" and "change" promised by this administration. All the "hope" is for the president's community organizing friends and the only "change" is for the worse when Chicago-style corrupt machine politics takes over in Washington. This is all about using the taxpayers as the never-ending-ATM to pay back Obama's campaign workers in the unions. The little guys? Get in the bread line - if you can find one.

Obama puts union strings on federal jobs

"Delivering on President Obama's promise to boost the labor movement, the administration has announced a $35 million federal construction project in New Hampshire that requires union representation for the workers and forces nonunion employees to pay dues and contribute to a union pension fund....Critics say imposing the union-friendly rules on the New Hampshire job - the first federal construction contract with such stipulations since President Clinton was in office - will drive up costs, delay the project and force most of the workers to pay union dues and pension contributions for which they likely will never receive benefits...."

Public Safety and the Games Politicians Play

Isn't it interesting that whenever politicians want to raise taxes they shut down essential services. They'll target the police department or fire protection and claim they need higher taxes to fund it. Pork barrell spending rests secure. Planned Parenthood, homosexual programs in the schools -- they tend to be sacred cows that rarely get cut. (Massacusetts is in big financial trouble, but until parents organized a massive protest, they were keeping funding for homosexual indoctrination in the schools intact.) What do the politicians in Virginia shut down? Interstate rest stops. It's the manipulative game of our democratic leadership starting with Governor Tim Kaine.

Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall went out and spoke to folks at the rest stops. Nineteen are slated for closing and it's a terrible idea! I live near Interstate 81 and I'm continuously calling the state police about 18 wheelers parked on the entrance and exit ramps. You'll hear one trucker talk about the lawsuit he experienced from being hit on a ramp. I know of three people who were killed in accidents from trucks illegally parked on ramps. With more rest stops closed more trucks will be on the side of the road. Watch Bob's video and take action. Keep the rest stops open for safety's sake!

Remind us again of how the stimulus was going to help

Barack Obama told us the economic "stimulus" plan was absolutely necessary to improve the economy and prevent unemployment from hitting double digits. So where are we? A Washington Times editorial reports on the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers for May which shows the U.S. barrelling toward 10% with no end in sight.

"What is stunning is the speed at which the unemployment rate is increasing. Since January 1990, there have been just three months when unemployment has increased by 0.5 percentage points or more in a month. Two of those months - February and May of this year - have been under the Obama administration."

Three hundred forty-five thousand more jobs were lost in May. Those are real people with real families. That means more business failures, more foreclosures, and more poverty for the American people. So where are the indications that the liberals' economic fiasco is helping?

Of Elites and Wage Slaves

What do you think about Barack Obama preaching to the American people about tightening their belts and sacrificing while he and Michelle fly to New York for dinner and a show and take the family to Paris for a weekend sightseeing trip? I've lived in the Washington, D.C. area my entire married life and I can testify to the abundance of professional theatre right here in town. The Kennedy Center, the Folger, the Arena Stage, the Warner, the Shakespeare Theatre, and a whole panoply of semi-professional theatre is available. For heaven's sake, the president has his own box at the Kennedy Center! As for the Paris jaunt, what can one say? Sacrifice is for other people, not the leftist elite. The people can't afford Paris? let them visit London. But Barack is an egalitarian monarch. He didn't wear a tie on the outing to New York.

The journalistic pool, of course, accompanied the first couple on the little NY trip. Here's one report. It gives you an idea of the magnitude of such productions. How many helicopters, planes, limos, Secret Service agents, military support personnel, and police officers from the NYPD, etc. were involved in the outing? How much did it cost the taxpayers who are already in hock for trillions in increasing debt since Obama took over? And what did the Paris trip cost? Who knows? Will we get an itemized bill?

Part of the anger of people over the Obamas' extravagance isn't so much the trip; presidents have always traveled on the taxpayer's dollar. It's the sanctimonious hypocrisy. When GM CEOs came to Washington in their private (already paid for) jets, they were excoriated for their extravagance because of the financial crisis. Obama and other liberals, however, think nothing of using the taxpayers' money to fund their own extravagance despite a severe recession and mounting unemployment. Greed is greed is greed except when you're a liberal and see it as your divine right. (Or should that be divine left?)

I wonder what all the out-of-work GM workers think about the Obamas' trips. Maybe the first family should visit Detroit. Not nearly as much to see as in Paris, of course. And somehow I doubt the streets would be lined with cheering folks. But maybe I'm wrong. The capacity for people to deceive themselves is limitless. (Look at the Notre Dame commencement - those folks are Catholic?) Many probably still believe the Messiah of Washington will save them. They can send their mortgages to the White House or their foreclosure notices.

Unemployment here in the U.S. is reportedly 9.4%, higher than it's been in 25 years. One article I cited below says the "real" rate is 15.8% because of all the discouraged, no-longer-looking folks - and that's from an ultra liberal group that's still blaming the Republicans as they claim "the worst is behind us." What a pipe dream! As if spending three trillion more dollars you don't have can get you out of already massive debt. The solution for them is the money tree. Out of dollars? Get the presses rolling and "stimulate" the economy. Reminds me of my kids when they were little - "Just write a check, Mom." They didn't get the concept of needing money in the bank before you can write a check.

Liberals don't seem to get it either. But neither did the neo-conservatives in the Bush White House who worked for bigger, more intrusive government. Unless the Republicans return to their conservative roots, the U.S. of the Founding Fathers is finished. The American dream is already nearly dead - except for politicians who are becoming more and more the elite nobility instead of the servants of the people and, obviously, the ultra wealthy. Unless the middle class rises up in protest there soon won't be one. We'll see only the politicians, financiers, and entertainment elites at the top, and the wage slaves at the bottom.

For Christians there's always a note of hope, however. Today's Gospel passage tells the story of the poor widow who drops her two small coins in the Temple treasury while the rich contribute large sums. Jesus honors her for giving from her poverty, from all she had to live on, while the rich gave from their surplus. What does it mean in a spiritual sense to give from our poverty? I'm meditating on that question today. If things keep going the way they are, many of us will know first hand what real poverty is, not just poverty of spirit.

And a few articles for those interested:

Obamas' trip to Paris raises some eyebrows

Real Unemployment at 15.8%: Highest Level Since ADA Began Tracking

‘Great Recession’ Will Redefine Full Employment as Jobs Vanish

GOP takes aim at Barack and Michelle Obama's NYC trip

Obama's Idea of Honest Government?

Obama promised hope, change, and honest government. He's still making those noises even as he appoints tax evaders to his cabinet. Can anyone really believe that Tom Daschle overlooked $128,000 in errors on his taxes? Please. Then there's Tim Geithner who failed to pay almost $26,000 in self-employment taxes from work at the International Monetary Fund and also didn't pay taxes for his housekeeper who was working illegally during the last three months she was his employee. This guy is qualified to be Treasury Secretary when he can't even fill out his tax forms?

There are plenty of other scandals swirling around the Democrats, but somehow they always manage to be swept under the rug. Charlie Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committe, failed to report $75,000 in income over a number of years and when he ponied up the back taxes paid no penalties. Just to put a personal spin on this, last year my husband and I didn't have enough income withheld to please the IRS. At the end of the year when we paid the additional taxes we were FINED for not sending in enough during the year and owing too much. The feds have never sent us interest for paying too much, however. What a shell game for these politicians who just make "honest mistakes" that incur no penalty.

Add to the corruption, the mainstream media bias. Time Magazine included in its ten biggest scandals of the year Sarah Palin's wardrobe. Excuse me! What the Republican Committee did was perfectly legal and the wardrobe was donated to charity after the election - no scandal at all. Did anyone ever ask how much Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama's clothes cost? Or whether they were all donated by Hollywood fashion designers? Not that I can recall. But they couldn't get anything legitimate to trash the lady with so they had to fabricate a "scandal" out of thin air.

What happens when real criminal scandals occur? We hear the President of the United States calling tax evasion "honest mistakes" and the media gives him a pass. No, actually they downplay it as a "hiccup" or a "speed bump."

Of course there are crooks on both sides of the aisle, but it would be interesting to compare the disparity in treatment - both at the government level and with the fourth estate. As for Obama's promise of hope, change, and honest government -- it was all political posturing to achieve his goal, which once again demonstrates the philosophy of the father of community organizing , Saul Alinsky. Victory is all that matters.