State of the Union's Finances

Do yourself a favor and read this synopsis of our debt. Then watch I.O.U.S.A.

Our current national debt of $11 trillion is cause enough for concern, but that figure does not account for the gap between future promised and funded Social Securityand Medicare benefits, as well as a range of other commitments and contingencies the federal government has pledged to support. A full accounting of those exposuresshows that the federal government is in a $56 trillion-plus hole!

During the past 50 years, we’ve balanced the federal budget only six times. When you exclude the Social Security surplus, we’ve only balanced the budget once (in 2000) over the same period.

Why is this a problem? Given our AAA credit rating and the fact that the dollar is a global reserve currency, lenders, both domestic and foreign, have thus far been willing to finance our national debt. However, in light of projected deficit and debt burdens,this may change.

For example, in March 2009, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao publically expressed his concern regarding the credit worthiness of the U.S. government. For example, in 2008, the federal government ran a budget deficit of $459 billion. For 2009, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects a deficit of $1.7 trillion—the largest as a percentage of GDP since WWII.

Our national debt has doubled in the past decade, rising from about $5.5 trillion in 1998 to over $11 trillion as of March 2009.

By 2008, only 38 percent of the budget (including defense) was considered “discretionary” and funded through annual appropriation decisions, while 62 percent consisted of entitlement programs and other mandatory spending (including net interest).

Going to Missouri

I'm off on vacation for the next week. Back in a week. -Eutychus

Gold for Grandpa

Likewise to "Cash for Codgers", there is "Gold for Grandpa"

Cash For Codgers -- The President Lays Out New Universal Healthcare Program

So succesful was the "Cash For Clunkers" Program that the administration decided to use the concept to save healthcare dollars. Now when a young couple want to have a baby they can get the whole thing paid for by just bringing in an old person. I hear they pay extra for republicans...

"Cash For Codgers" -- The President Lays Out New Universal Healthcare Program from The Minority Report

Posted using ShareThis

Statement from the American College of Surgeons Regarding

CHICAGO—The American College of Surgeons is deeply disturbed over the uninformed public comments President Obama continues to make about the high-quality care provided by surgeons in the United States. When the President makes statements that are incorrect or not based in fact, we think he does a disservice to the American people at a time when they want clear, understandable facts about health care reform. We want to set the record straight.
Yesterday during a town hall meeting, President Obama got his facts completely wrong. He stated that a surgeon gets paid $50,000 for a leg amputation when, in fact, Medicare pays a surgeon between $740 and $1,140 for a leg amputation. This payment also includes the evaluation of the patient on the day of the operation plus patient follow-up care that is provided for 90 days after the operation. Private insurers pay some variation of the Medicare reimbursement for this service.

Three weeks ago, the President suggested that a surgeon’s decision to remove a child’s tonsils is based on the desire to make a lot of money. That remark was ill-informed and dangerous, and we were dismayed by this characterization of the work surgeons do. Surgeons make decisions about recommending operations based on what’s right for the patient.

We agree with the President that the best thing for patients with diabetes is to manage the disease proactively to avoid the bad consequences that can occur, including blindness, stroke, and amputation. But as is the case for a person who has been treated for cancer and still needs to have a tumor removed, or a person who is in a terrible car crash and needs access to a trauma surgeon, there are times when even a perfectly managed diabetic patient needs a surgeon. The President’s remarks are truly alarming and run the risk of damaging the all-important trust between surgeons and their patients.

We assume that the President made these mistakes unintentionally, but we would urge him to have his facts correct before making another inflammatory and incorrect statement about surgeons and surgical care.

About the American College of SurgeonsThe American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and to improve the care of the surgical patient. The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The College has more than 74,000 members and is the largest organization of surgeons in the world.
Web site: www.facs.org

The president's "most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation"

Camille Paglia, my favorite feminist, lesbian, liberal weighs in on "the administration's grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform." Out of the mouths of liberals....

From Salon:

Obama's aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land. The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.

You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.

I just don't get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks?...
The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.

How is it possible that Democrats, through their own clumsiness and arrogance, have sabotaged healthcare reform yet again? Blaming obstructionist Republicans is nonsensical because Democrats control all three branches of government. It isn't conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare legislation; it's the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves. No, the airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan -- it's the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves.

But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.

...

From one “radical, extremist, un-American, mobster” to another:

Washington D.C.’s response to the voice of the people: Name calling! How childish! How rude. How intimidating…. But that's not getting the job done...Obama sends out the SEIU thugs. How effective will it be? For how many years has the voice of the people been silent? Will our politicians’ tactic work at again silencing the voice of the “silent majority?”

One crisis after another has been created by Washington politicians to secure our consent and deflect attention from their unconstitutional actions. Now, finally…after a long slumber…at last the sleeping giant has been awakened by the audacity, the unbelievable presumptions of this congress and president.

What the politicians are seeing and what they fear is the formation of a 3rd political party in America. They are frightened not by what we are saying. They are afraid of what we are doing. Obama, a community organizer by experience who cut his teeth in Chicago, the heartland of political corruption...is most aware of what is happening.

We, the People are organizing against this administration's big government, "Big Brother" socialistic ideology! And we are at last on the road to creating a viable alternative to “business as usual” in Washington D.C.

It should be no surprise Washington D.C. fears that which they have been able to prevent since the founding of our nation: a viable new political party that will enforce constitutional constraints on Washington.

Have no doubt. Do not be dissuaded by the political rhetoric of those whose primary interest is sustaining their political power over us. If we fail in this attempt to stop progressive socialism…we may in the very near future wake up to a nation no longer a Republic, but rather a Totalitarian Democracy ruled by a new elite and all-powerful politician class.

With Obama's Chicago political machine past, and his former and current supporters from that mindset...there is little that we should not expect to be possible in what they will do to implement his vision of "change" for America.

There are without question actions being taken in this country that are unworthy of our American traditions…that are “un-American,” but these actions are not the voices, the courage of the protestors who are standing up for what once was common place in America…blind justice and fair and equal treatment for all regardless of gender, race, religious or political beliefs.

What amazes me is that in a time where we have chosen to assure equal rights for people based upon “sexual preferences” which many of us are morally opposed to, and many in congress are doing everything in their power to grant near full citizenship benefits to illegal aliens... we are now being told that it is right and just to take equal rights and benefits from a much larger group of people…from those who have grown up being called “baby boomers,” men and women who have honorably served in our military and paid Social Security taxes throughout their lives. As fate would have it... it is our generation that has the opportunity and power to decide whether or not we judge age to be a disqualification for equal and fair treatment in America.

The communist ideals of “social equality” through redistribution of wealth away from those who have earned it may not have bothered some of us, but the retroactive decision to disenfranchise seniors from the readily available best heath care services in the world on the bases that they are no longer a good investment by the government is unconscionable. If this does not make you MAD AS HELL, then what will?

If we allow our government to reapportion "entitlement" to medical care …the benefits that we have all paid for over a lifetime…then we are liable for the foreshortening of our own lives and dramatically undermining the quality of life for our remaining years . We, the people, the rightful sovereigns of this nation…we now are forced to decide if...through our own irresponsible, apathetic, failures to rule ourselves honorably if we are now also determined to destroy that which we spent a lifetime building… the greatest nation on earth.

Yes, there are without question a lot of people today who are guilty of “un-American” activities…but one group that is definitely NOT being un-American. And that group is the patriots, the moms and pops, the grandfathers and grandmothers who are only guilty of attempting to have their voices heard by politicians who refuse to remove the wax from their ears…politicians who would demonize their own constituents for the lawful demands for redress of grievances. God Bless America with courage to overthrow tyrants and those who would “transform” America into a second-rate world power and a third-world economy. May God bless and give strength to all the true patriots in America today.

A Euthanasia Mandate

Far from being an unfounded scare tactic the current healthcare bill has some troublesome language that may lead down some very dark roads. Think it couldn't happen? Well, it already has:

In an April 28 New York Times interview, the president spoke of having government guide a "very difficult democratic conversation" about "those toward the end of their lives [who] are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here." Those statements sounded a little creepy to us. Deciding who gets denied care at the end of life should not be dependent on government cost controls.

Presidential health care adviser Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and chairman of the Department of Bioethics at the Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health, has argued that independent government boards should decide policy on end-of-life care. He also has defended rationing care more strictly for older people because "allocation [of medical care] by age is not invidious discrimination."

...the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals this spring ruled that Georgia can override a doctor's decision about how much care is warranted for a handicapped child because the state is "the final arbiter" of medical decisions. ...

...the Oregon health plan last year refused to pay for a recognized drug to prolong the life of lung cancer patient Barbara Wagner even after her oncologist prescribed it. Yet the same bureaucrats told Ms. Wagner that the plan would indeed cover doctor-assisted suicide if she chose that option. ... (more)

Dingell compares town hall mobs to the KKK

You have just entered the Dingell Twilight Zone. Clearly, the American People do not want this bill, see Rasmussen Poll.

I am lost....they are going to commit political suicide by passing this thing, if they keep the party in line, yet they don't care. It goes against everything they stand for, you know, elitism, power, greed, aristocracy, royalty, etc. It doesn’t make sense.

WE ARE making a difference! The silent majority is being heard!

Washington Post: Obama's Plan Just Expands The Status Quo

From the WaPo:

One of the bewildering ironies of the health-care debate is that President Obama claims to be attacking the status quo when he's actually embracing it. Ever since Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health politics has followed a simple logic: Expand benefits and talk about controlling costs. That's the status quo, and Obama faithfully adheres to it. (more)

If Its Such a Good Deal Why Won't Congress Take It?

Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-MA) manages to answer the question that Keith Ellison (D-MN) and the rest of her Obama-care supporting colleagues in both the House and Senate have avoided.

I won’t take ObamaCare because I have better options. (HotAir)

Everyone wants reform, we're just asking for better options (and for Congress to read the bills and give us a chance to do the same.

On Health Care, 51% Fear Government More Than Insurance Companies

A new Rasmussen Poll cuts to the heart of the matter. You can reform an insurance company but Big Brother is untouchable...

They'll Pay You To Support Their Plan

From Newsbusters:
Take for example the following advertisement placed at the online website Craiglist for New York City Monday (h/t Patrick Ruffini):

**TALENTED LEADERS needed to work for health care reform $11-16/hour**
Now is the time to work for change
We need people like you—lots of people like you—to go out in communities around the country this summer and help make change happen. And you can earn money doing it. Earn $4,000-$6,000 this summer. (More)

What the protests are all about

Hot Air reminds us what the protests are really all about:

The anger comes from the blatant disregard of even the pretense of legitimate governance. Elected representatives from Congress openly admit they’re not reading the bills, while leadership in both chambers try to ram through complicated bills without giving anyone a real chance to learn what they say and what they do. It doesn’t help that the bills in question — health care reform and cap-and-trade — are both elitist policies that essentially puts Washington in charge of decisions that people should make on their own. Put all that together, and the only surprise should be that the anger took this long to develop.
Poor Harry Reid doesn't even have the guts to face his constituents. He'll be holding Town Hall meetings by phone from now on...

Instead, he will only do what's called "telephone town halls" where he and his staff have complete control over the questions being asked and who's asking them.

Should have been big news, right?

Well, according to LexisNexis and Google news searches, not one major media outlet felt it was important enough to share with the citizenry.

Not one. (Newsbusters)