Now they tell us

Seems the NY Times might be growing a tiny conscience.

The intended beneficiaries are identified in a cryptic, mysterious way: individuals exposed to environmental health hazards recognized as a public health emergency in a declaration issued by the federal government on June 17.

And who might those individuals be? It turns out they are people exposed to asbestos from a vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont.

For a decade, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, has been trying to get the government to help them. He is in a position to deliver now because he is chairman of the Finance Committee and a principal author of the health care bill.

Working for a 21st consecutive day, the Senate on Sunday pushed toward a final vote on Christmas Eve on the bill, which would provide health insurance for more than 30 million Americans. Democrats said on Saturday that they had secured the 60th vote needed to pass the bill, and a 60-to-40 procedural vote early Monday morning was the first in a series testing their ability to maintain party unity on the issue.

So, Senator Baucus has added a few little goodies for his state also.

This bill is clearly not about the American people, it is about party unity and passing a bill that makes President Obama look good.

Party unity? How about the American people?

What are the chances that the American people will unite and throw these bums out?

Another $100 million down the drain

Wasn't the snow storm in Washington DC on Saturday?

It is now Monday and the entire federal government in Washington DC is closed because of the snow, costing the people of this nation $100 million.

How much does a US Senator cost?

There is some good news in this. Americans know exactly what it takes to buy a US Senator into betraying them.
By the way, the idiot reporters who keep claiming that Senator Ben Nelson won some concessions for his vote, need to start telling the truth. Senator Nelson sold his soul and won not a single concession. Nelson's vote changed because he was bought, not by getting anything tossed out of the bill, but because his state will get more Medicaid funding than every other state. Senator Nelson conceded, nothing was removed from the bill.


The deep dark side of America's wheeling and dealing from its politicians has been utterly exposed.

Our government can be bought into betraying the will of the American people.

Is this the nation that our forefather's built?

America has been betrayed by the Democrats

In complete defiance of the American people, the Democrats vote for cloture on the health care bill. It is all but a formality that massive tax increasing/government controlling boondogle healthcare plan will pass the Senate.

NOT ONE SINGLE POLL SHOWS THAT AMERICA SUPPORTS THIS BILL IN ITS CURRENT FORM.

Not a single poll.

How does any single Democrat vote for this with a clear conscience and actually state that they did this for the American people?

Uh-oh Things did not go well for President Obama in Copenhagen

I was following Twitter a while ago and the American media is just gushing at President Obama's wisdom and leadership on ClimateGATE...er I mean Climate Change.

The worldwide media is not being so kind to President Obama. I guess the HopeyChangey fever is wearing off on the world stage.

But his speech offered no indication America was ready to embrace bold measures, after world leaders had been working desperately against the clock to try to paper over an agreement to prevent two years of wasted effort — and a 10-day meeting — from ending in total collapse.

Obama, who had been skittish about coming to Copenhagen at all unless it could be cast as a foreign policy success, looked visibly frustrated as he appeared before world leaders.

He offered no further commitments on reducing emissions or on finance to poor countries beyond Hillary Clinton's announcement yesterday that America would support a $100bn global fund to help developing nations adapt to climate change.

He did not even press the Senate to move ahead on climate change legislation, which environmental organisations have been urging for months.

The president did say America would follow through on his administration's clean energy agenda, and that it would live up to its pledges to the international community.

"We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say," Obama said.

But in the absence of any evidence of that commitment the words rang hollow and there was a palpable sense of disappointment in the audience.

Another unelected board raises taxes on Wisconsinites

As if this economy is not bad enough, a Milwaukee County District Board, not elected or unaccountable to the people, raised taxes in Milwaukee County.

Beginning July 1, consumers will pay a little more for food and beverages purchased in Milwaukee County.

As expected, the Wisconsin Center District board voted Wednesday to raise the tax from 0.25% to 0.50% in order to meet its own debt-service obligations. But the board also said it was interested in retiring the tax increase as soon as possible.

The district's taxes - it collects four in all - have not been raised since the district was formed in 1994, according to Franklyn Gimbel, the board's chairman.

The vote to approve the tax was 10-2. Voting against the increase was Wauwatosa Mayor Jill Didier and Jim Villa, the head of the Commercial Association of Realtors. The following board members voted in favor of the tax: Gimbel; restaurant owner Jack Weissgerber; Milwaukee Aldermen Willie Hines, Ashanti Hamilton and Terry Witkowski; W. Martin Morics, Milwaukee city comptroller; Joel Brennan of Discovery World; John J. Burke Jr., of Burke Properties; James Kaminski of Kaminski Consultants; and Stephen H. Marcus of the Marcus Corp.

Curious questions...Where does this money go? What is the debt obligation? What have these folks borrowed the money for? Who put these people in a seat of power allowing them to increase taxes?

God really does have a sense of humor

Blizzard in Copenhagen

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.

“Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days,” Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. “There’s a good chance of a white Christmas.”

Delegates from 193 countries have been in Copenhagen since Dec. 7 to discuss how to fund global greenhouse gas emission cuts. U.S. President Barack Obama will arrive before the summit is scheduled to end tomorrow.

Denmark has a maritime climate and milder winters than its Scandinavian neighbors. It hasn’t had a white Christmas for 14 years, under the DMI’s definition, and only had seven last century. Temperatures today fell as low as minus 4 Celsius (25 Fahrenheit).

Merry Christmas, Denmark!

Proving yet again, God is in Control. No one else, not even The One!

President Obama: America will go bankrupt without his healthcare plan

Now who is scaring people, Mr. President?

President Obama told ABC News’ Charles Gibson in an interview that if Congress does not pass health care legislation that will bring down costs, the federal government “will go bankrupt.”

The president laid out a dire scenario of what will happen if his health care reform effort fails.

Is this the same type of promise that if we do not pass a massive stimulus plan then unemployment will go over 8%?

As the President was promising these dire consequences, Congress increased the debt limit by $290 billion dollars.

The real question is, aren't we already bankrupt?

The stimulus is working, but...

The stimulus is working, but they need a lot more money.

As the House was preparing to pass a $150 billion bill for additional job creation, reporters on Wednesday evening pressed White House officials on why the country needs another fiscal boost even as the Obama administration argues that the first stimulus, with $787 billion, is doing the trick.

White House economist Jared Bernstein, stimulus overseer Ed DeSeve and press secretary Robert Gibbs assembled reporters to tout the impact of the $787 billion stimulus, saying it had helped turn the economy around even though much of its force will only start to be felt in the coming months.

But if the stimulus was working as planned, reporters asked, why were congressional Democrats and the White House talking about a new "jobs" package? After his recent "jobs summit," Obama announced that he would push for tens of billions more to jolt the economy.

The question still remains unanswered. Why is a second stimulus needed if the first one is working?

The whole point of taking this nation $787 billion in debt was to create jobs.

What was the original stimulus for, if not to create jobs?

Health Care bill is collapsing

This is interesting to watch. Support for healthcare legislation is collapsing right before our eyes.

In the Senate, the bill started with co-ops, those have been removed. The co-op was really just another form of government run health care. The bill then added a public option. It too collapsed and fell out of the bill. They then used Medicare expansion and a trigger option as their government run options. They too have now been removed.

With that removal, super libs at Daily Kos have encouraged the Senate to throw the bill out and start over again.

Yesterday, Howard Dean, Mr. Health Care reform crisis, has began calling on the Senate to kill the bill and go to reconciliation.

Just to put a little more pressure on this explosive situation, the unions have called an emergency meeting to discuss whether they intend to continue to back the bill.

Just to make matters worse, a whole new round of poll numbers are out and not one single poll shows support for ObamaCare.

Ben Bernanke- Person of the year?

Boy, the liberals desperately want the economy to recover before the 2010 elections. Liberal magazine, Time, has named Ben Bernanke as their person of the year. For heaven's sake, neither side of the aisle likes Ben Bernanke.

Has he saved this economy?

Er...not really.

AMERICANS OPPOSE OBAMACARE

I have listened and read cheesy excuses all over the internet for more than 3 months from liberals about healthcare reform. When a poll comes out showing Americans against ObamaCare, the liberals make the excuse that it is a right wing poll. Even if that poll shows that more Democrats were polled than Republicans and Independents.

The time for excuses is over. It is no longer just Rasmussen or Fox News showing a clear majority of Americans hate these new health care "reform" proposals. A clear and decisive overall majority oppose the steps currently being taken by our President and his Congress.

For a moment, ignore the labels of left wing and right wing poll. Let's look at the average of all of the polls.

Poll Date Favor Oppose Spread
RCP Average 11/19 - 12/9 -- 37.8 52.7 Against/Oppose +14.9

That is just the average of all of the recent polls.

Please, someone on the Democrats side of aisle, explain why it is you are defying the American people and proceeding with this garbage anyway?

New Senate ObamaCare will not save a penny

I read about this late on Friday and have been waiting to see the internet explode on this news. But as typical with Friday night releases, the media was too busy worrying about something else, like Tiger Woods.

However, Monday always comes.

Not only with the new ObamaCare policies increase costs to the average middle class American, it still does not cover anyone. In fact, according to the New York Times, only an additional 900,000 will be covered.

Even as the budget office warned of diminished revenues should more employers provide tax-free health benefits, there are two possible upsides for the Democrats.

One is that as many as 900,000 more people might gain insurance –- contributing toward a main goal of the legislation, which is to expand coverage to as many of the uninsured as possible.

900,000 and cost will rise??

More analysis from the LA Times shows much of the same:

Analysts in the Obama administration's Health and Human Services Department reported Friday that the nation's $2.5-trillion annual healthcare tab will not shrink at all under the Democrats' legislative blueprint as being pushed by happy Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader in the Senate.

Instead, they said, the nation's medical costs will actually grow faster under the new bill than....

...they would if that chatty crowd of Washington spenders did absolutely nothing nada zippo about it. And even if they did pass the existing version for all that money, 24 million Americans would still remain uncovered.
"Although several provisions would help to reduce healthcare cost growth," the report said, "their impact would be more than offset through 2019 by the higher health expenditures resulting from the coverage expansions" to millions more Americans.

This new plan that expands Medicare to millions more Americans starting at the age of 55 actually is a the worst idea to come out of late. The Senate is moving backwards, not forwards.

Do you remember that the Senate has already agreed to cutting Medicare by $500 billion? The Senate is calling it savings, but they are really cuts in services.

Now they plan on covering millions more Americans starting at the age of 55, and they still expect the $500 in "savings"?

That does not make sense to any common sense thinking Americans.

This is the new bill that President Obama lauded as the best evah, just this past week.

Bradford's Reality Check

I had a great time volunteering for Bradford's Reality Check. Since Bradford High School is in my district, I received an email request from the Educator's Credit Union; the hosts of the program.

Here is a little ditty in the Kenosha News about Reality Check.

I, of course, worked at the Government Station. The taxes were taken out of the kids paychecks before they even made it to our table. I worked the government station with Jeff Coe, an alderman from Racine, who had done these Reality Checks before at the Racine High Schools. Before the event started, Jeff told me I would have a blast.

He was not kidding. I did have a great time. Basically our job was to just try and help get these kids through the process. One young lady approached out table with about $1000 in her "checkbook", and needed to pay $821 in child support. She went ahead and paid the child support and had $179 left. Since we were trying to help these kids, we continued to ask the basic question. Do you have a roof over your head? Have you paid you electricity? Do you have a way to work? etc. I found out the young woman with $179 left in her account still did
not have a place to live. Yikes! I sent her to the "SOS" table to try and find a part time job.

The kids were well behaved and a lot of fun. The teachers milling around really did a great job in just trying to steer the students to the right tables and helping them balance their checkbooks.

Those from the Educator's Credit Union were so helpful and so attentive to the kids. They were also very organized and kept things moving pretty quickly for the 300 students moving through the process.

All in all, there were a lot of great students, great teachers and the hosts of the event were a lot of fun.

I appreciated the opportunity to work with this program.

Merry Christmas from the Kenosha Police Department

Sarah Palin can be funny

One of the benefits of not being the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin gets to events like this and starts hitting back.

Great sense of humor from the Governor, Conan and Captain Kirk.

Do we care?

Honestly, I have to take a moment and just share something with you all.

I could care less who Tiger sleeps with or the color of their skin.

Can we move on?

Staggering Debt

Just two days after Obama pointed the finger at Republicans for the deficit(yes, Republicans did screw up), pretending like he had nothing to do with this debt, the Democrats are now proposing raising the debt ceiling for the second time this year.

I am not sure if there has ever been a US government that has spent money faster than this Administration and this Congress. Holy cow! The Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling by another $1.8 TRILLION dollars.

I do not care if you are a Republican, Democrat or an Independent; that is a staggering amount of debt the Democrats plan on foisting on the American people.

In a bold but risky year-end strategy, Democrats are preparing to raise the federal debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion before New Year’s rather than have to face the issue again prior to the 2010 elections.

“We’ve incurred this debt. We have to pay our bills,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told POLITICO Wednesday. And the Maryland Democrat confirmed that the anticipated increase could be as high as $1.8 trillion — nearly twice what had been assumed in last spring’s budget resolution for the 2010 fiscal year.

The leadership is betting that it’s better for the party to take its lumps now rather than risk further votes over the coming year. But the enormity of the number could create its own dynamic, much as another debt ceiling fight in 1985 gave rise to the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction act mandating across-the-board spending cuts nearly 25 years ago.

Already in the Senate, there is growing pressure in both parties for the creation of a novel bipartisan task force empowered to force expedited votes in the next Congress on deficit reduction steps now shunned by lawmakers.

As introduced Wednesday, the legislation sets no specific targets for deficit reduction, but its 18-member task force — 16 of whom would come from Congress — is promised immense leverage to force change if they can first come together behind a plan.

“This is a defining moment,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), one of the lead sponsors, and New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the panel’s ranking Republican, is already maneuvering to try to add the legislation as an amendment to any bill tapped to carry the debt increase.

As explained by Hoyer and other Democrats, that will almost certainly be a pending $636.4 billion Pentagon appropriations bill that includes $128.3 in contingency funds for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Politico

Obama gives ACORNs for Christmas?

I should say that is quite symbolic and audacious for the President to do. He served ACORN shaped cookies at the White House Christmas Party.

I mean, really...Who serves ACORN shaped cookies at a Christmas Party? Is it a tradition? Perhaps it is?




Fox News

Any fan of Cookie Monster on Sesame Street knows that "C" is for cookie.

But at the Obama White House, "A" may be for acorn -- as in acorn cookies served at Monday's annual Christmas party.

The chocolate cookies shaped like an acorn were quite a hit with Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

"I didn't expect to see such stark symbolism," King said in an e-mail.

President Obama worked with the community organizing group ACORN in the mid-90s. But now ACORN faces a host of allegations related to voter fraud in the 2008 election and has been weakened by an undercover expose that shows employees offering tax advice to a couple posing as a pimp and prostitute.

Another day, another new low poll number for President Obama

Attention Liberals, stop pretending like everything is fine. Even the polling average is under 50%.

At 46%, President Obama's latest job approval rating is the lowest ever in Quinnipiac polls, and he has an upside down rating for his handling of health care.

The new survey (Dec. 1-6, 2313 RV, MoE +/- 2%), released this morning, finds 44% disapproving of the job Obama's doing. More than half (51%) of independents now disapprove of Obama's job performance, while 37% approve.

In the RCP Average, Obama's job approval rating has fallen to a new low of 48.5%.