September Politics

I know, I know…..Afghanistan is the good war and Iraq the bad one. But since we still have 130,000 troops in Iraq and are escalating the war in Afghanistan, isn’t this all just “more of the same”?

In fact, on many issues people were upset with Bush over, Obama is indeed more of the same, except worse. Bush was secretive. Obama is even more so. Bush spent billions in deficit spending. Obama is spending trillions. Bush allowed earmarking to get out of control. Obama has taken absurd pork barrel spending and deference to Congress to a new historic level altogether. Bush fired political appointees in the Justice department as it was his right to do. Obama fires non-political Inspectors that dare censure his buddies despite it being illegal to do so.

At least Bush basically told us what he wanted to do and followed through, for better and worse, on his promises to cut taxes and expand government in education and prescription drugs. Say what you want, but America knew what they were getting with Bush. Obama portrayed himself as a guy that would take a surgeon’s knife to the budget to cut spending; allow any bill to be posted so it can be read by the public first; have health care policy debates and discussions on C-span instead of behind closed doors; and not raise taxes (what is Cap and Trade if not a tax) on most Americans. He’s kept none of those promises. It’s like we elected Nancy Pelosi instead.

Oh yeah, and what about this energy independence stuff he talked about in the campaign after McCain and Palin brought it up? Wouldn’t that be a great way to create jobs and stimulate the economy? Instead of borrowing 750 billion to supposedly stimulate the economy, we could actually take the hundreds of billions we spend overseas EACH YEAR and spend it here creating millions upon millions of jobs for Americans. You’d think this would be a no-brainer and that the stimulus package would have focused on this.

Instead, we see an administration lending 2 billion to one of the largest corporations in North America to develop oil fields off-shore in Brazil. It helps that the corporation is owned by Brazil. We wouldn’t want some American, publicly-held stockholder company to benefit. That might help people’s retirement accounts and then they’d be less dependent on the government. No, we can’t have that.

Nor can we have a common sense approach on health-care. Defensive medicine drives up costs through the roof but nothing from Team Obama about limiting malpractice awards. Hmmm…..perhaps they are secretly thinking it wouldn’t be necessary if they can take over health-care entirely. Then, they could say no one can sue at all because its government owned and controlled. I don’t know if they are that Machiavellian or not. But why have health-care reform if you don’t do something so obvious to limit costs. That doesn’t mean no awards but let’s be honest with people. Doctors are going to make mistakes, even good doctors, and they will practice malpractice under the John Edward’s definition of the term. Medicine is not perfect science.

Obama and the Dems say they don’t want to ration health-care. Yeah, they just want to say what procedures will be paid for and at what price and make sure everyone uses “best practices”, but as Rahm Emanuel’s brother and adviser to the president says, society has to consider proportioning it’s funds on “productive” members of society first.

Sound familiar? It should, at least to those that remember the 40s.

Of course, the good doctor has since “evolved” his positions from that stance and is against such thinking now. Ok, so let’s give him a pass. They don’t want death panels.

Then, how will they save money? This is the crux of the matter as I wrote on an earlier blog. We absolutely do not have the money to cover Medicare benefits in the coming years. Even Obama admits to this. We could tax the rich at 100% and not even come close to what is needed. The demographics of the Baby Boom mean we won’t have enough working people and wages to tax in order to cover retiree benefits. The money has been wasted and still is being wasted, just at a faster rate under the democrats, though the Republicans were bad at it too. The real push here by the democrats is to find a way to keep expanding government and pork barrel spending. Medicare, Medicaid and social security were great cash cows for Congress while it lasted. They could tell people they were investing in their own retirement as a safety net while looting those funds to spend on their favorite programs and often getting rich, I might add.

Now the gravy train is over, and the government cannot keep its promises. So what can it do? Well, the simple answer is to just not pay the benefits. Ration health-care, kill people off early, and voila, they can keep spending out the wazoo as ever before.

Under Obamacare, I probably wouldn’t be here. I barely made it as it was. When I was born I almost died, and I am sure it was quite expensive to keep me in the hospital. I wasn’t a productive citizen as a newborn, and just think about it, a day earlier under today’s values and policies, I could have been aborted. So why spend all that money on a baby that has a dubious chance of survival?

Wouldn’t someone without health insurance that is an adult with a higher chance of survival be a safer investment of that money? How about the elderly? You need heart surgery and are over 70? At least there will be some free in-house counseling under Obamacare about options to make things easier while you are on a waiting list. It’s been tough to find cardiac specialists these days, you know. The waiting list is quite long.

And when did liberals and progressives decide protesting is now “UnAmerican” and disagreeing with Obama “evil” as some democrats in Washington are saying. It was fine and dandy for some of them to slander a general in the field, General Petraeus, as General Betrayus, but the Town hall attendees and tea party folks are now “low level terrorists.” And when did the progressives and liberals switch to favor government spying. Snooping to catch terrorists was a bad thing, but it’s OK if the government, as proposed under Obamacare, monitors the bank accounts and spending habits of each individual American. I don’t think too many realize that was in the bill. That’s right. The Democrats proposed that every single expenditure by all Americans be monitored by the government. EVERY transaction in your bank account.

No wonder Obama wanted the bill passed before the recess and anyone had a chance to read it.