Leading Democrat Expert On Health Care Turns Against Boondoggle ObamaCare

Apparently Ron Wyden joins such illustrious Democrat company as John Conyers (“What good is reading the bill…?”), Nancy Pelosi (“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”), and Ben Nelson (“I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill”), in not bothering to read the evil ObamaCare bill that he personally voted for and vigorously supported.

I’m wondering if the only Democrat who actually bothered to read the health care takeover bill he voted for is John Dingell, who accurately said of the bill, “It takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

Here’s the story of Democrat Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) actively turning against the ObamaCare boondoggle:

SEPTEMBER 3, 2010
Wyden Defects on ObamaCare
The Oregon Democrat breaks ranks with the White House.

Most Democrats have come to understand that they can’t run on ObamaCare, but few have the temerity of Ron Wyden. The Oregon Senator is the first to break with the policy underpinnings of the bill he voted for.

Last week Mr. Wyden sent a letter to Oregon health authority director Bruce Goldberg, encouraging the state to seek a waiver from certain ObamaCare rules so it can “come up with innovative solutions that the Federal government has never had the flexibility or will to implement.”

One little-known provision of the bill allows states to opt out of the “requirement that individuals purchase health insurance,” Mr. Wyden wrote, and “Because you and I believe that the heart of real health reform is affordability and not mandates, I wanted to bring this feature of Section 1332 to the attention of you and the legislature.”

Now, that’s news. One of the Democratic Party’s leading experts on health care wants his state to dump the individual mandate that is among ObamaCare’s core features. The U-turn is especially notable because Mr. Wyden once championed an individual mandate in the bill he sponsored with Utah Republican Bob Bennett. We have differences with Wyden-Bennett, but it was far better than ObamaCare and would have changed incentives by offering more choices to individuals and spurring competition among providers and insurers.

Mr. Wyden should have known better than to vote for ObamaCare given his market instincts and health-care experience. Even so, the price for his support included the Section 1332 waivers that he is now promoting. In addition to the individual mandate, states may evade regulations about business taxes, the exact federal standards for minimum benefits, and how subsidies are allocated in the insurance “exchanges”—as long as the state covers the same number of uninsured and keeps coverage as comprehensive.

Medicaid also grants some indulgences toward state flexibility, even if those waivers are difficult to acquire. The Secretary of Health and Human Services would need to approve the ObamaCare alternative of Oregon or any other states, and the waivers don’t start until 2017, three years after ObamaCare is supposed to be up and running. It is also hard to see how anyone in the current Administration would grant them.

These practical realities aside, Mr. Wyden’s move may be more important as a political signal. Mr. Wyden is running for re-election this year. And while he is now well ahead of GOP challenger Jim Huffman, in a year like this one he has cause to avoid becoming Barbara Boxer or Patty Murray, who may lose because they’ve remained liberals from MSNBC central casting.

This sort of thing also isn’t supposed to happen to newly passed entitlements. Democrats have long believed that once an entitlement passes, however unpopular at the time, voters and business will grow to like it and then Republicans begin to come around. The exception was a catastrophic-coverage program to replace private “Medigap” policies, which Democrats passed in 1988 and repealed a year later amid a public furor.

On ObamaCare, Democrats are having the first political second thoughts, at least in this election season. Mr. Wyden is essentially saying that what his party passed is not acceptable, and if such thinking builds, opponents may have a real chance to replace ObamaCare with something better.

Democrats are now actively running from the Democrat Party and the Democrat Platform.  Democrats are running campaign ads that literally omit the fact that they are Democrats.  They are running as opponents of Obama and his agenda.  They are running in droves as opponents of Nancy Pelosi (even when such Democrats actually VOTED for her as House Speaker).

These same cowardly and corrupt Democrats who were in lock step passing Obama’s Marxist agenda are now claiming that they will offer an “independent voice.” But no, they won’t.

Never forget, “Democrat” actually stands for “Demonic bureaucrat.”  And whenever Obama or Democrat leadership needs a vote from a Democrat, they’ll get it.  Votes are largely assigned in the party machine.  Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will allow vulnerable members to vote ‘no’ on their pork barrel bills if they have enough votes to pass them.  But virtually all of those representatives and senators who voted ‘no’ on bills like the $862 billion stimulus and ObamaCare would have voted ‘yes’ if it had been necessary for them to do so.

And just as many Democrats said they’d vote against ObamaCare until they voted for it (think Bart Stupak and his gang of supposedly pro-life Democrats) – often getting incredibly sweetheart deals for their treachery (think “Louisiana Purchase,” think “Cornhusker Kickback,” among others), the fact of the matter is that you can’t trust Democrats to follow through with whatever the hell they promise they will or won’t do.  If you like relentless liberal socialism, then vote for Democrats.  But don’t be stupid and vote for your Senator or Representative because they say they’ll oppose Obama.  Because the next time they’re needed, they’ll be right back on board, voting as they’re told to vote.

I mean, quit being Charlie Brown thinking Lucy will finally hold the football so you can kick it.  She won’t.  And Democrats won’t oppose the liberal agenda; they’ll support it, they’ll be its footsoldiers, just like they were the last two years.

ObamaCare is more than just bad.  It is evil and it will lead to rationing and Sarah Palin’s death panels in spades.  There are 160 new federal bureaucracies created under ObamaCare, in the nearly 2,400 incomprehensible pages of the bill, and every single one of them both individually and through bureaucratic pinballing will ultimately amount to a death panel.

The stimulus was equally awful for our economy.  And Americans overwhelmingly recognize that, just as they overwhelmingly recognize that ObamaCare was awful.

If you want less of this, please don’t vote for the party that imposed it.  Vote for the party that united against it: the Republican Party.

Democrats have repeatedly demagogued Republicans as “the party of no” even when THEY had been the party of no when Republicans were in charge.  But being the party of no is a GOOD THING when the party in power seeks to pass one awful, America-destroying bill after another.

66% of Independents Say Obama A Leftist – And What That Means

By a two-to-one margin, independents are saying that Obama is a leftist.  And only 14% of unaffiliated voters say they are more liberal than Obama.  And for those independents who have strongly made up their mind one way or the other, the margin dramatically increases to a six-to-one margin believing that Obama is a leftist.

For a story like this, we need to go back a little further, when we found out that Barry Hussein was THE most polarizing president in history:

In his first two months in office, President Barack Obama has succeeded in widening the political gulf among Americans more than any other president in modern history, according to a new poll. The “partisan gap” between Republicans and Democrats is 10 points larger than it was under George W. Bush.

The gulf – between Democrats and Republicans who say President Obama is succeeding – is also showing signs of further widening, according to a new Pew Research poll.

And widen it did.  It’s not just Republicans who overwhelmingly disapprove of Obama; it’s independents.  It’s the unaffiliated voters who now understand that Barack Obama misrepresented himself when he claimed he was a centrist who wanted what they wanted.

66% Of Independents Say Obama Is To Their Left
By Ed Carson
Tue., March 09, ’10

Supporters like to portray President Obama and his agenda as centrist. But those actually in the political center beg to differ. In fact, 66% of independents say their ideology is to the right of Obama, according to the latest IBD/TIPP poll. Just 14% say they’re more liberal.

Independents:

• Oppose Obama’s handling of the economy by 2-to-1. Among those with strong opinions, disapproval soars to 6-to-1 — 30% vs. 5%.
• On health care, 53% disapprove vs. 23% who approve. 35% say Obama’s doing an unacceptable job vs. just 9% who give him an A.
• 55% have a dim view of Obama on the budget. Just 17% who like his work. They strongly disapprove 34%-6%.

(Among all respondents, results were generally slightly less negative due to strong Democratic support for the president.)

These issues feed off each other. Obama and the Democratic Congress have spent vast sums on bailouts and a mammoth stimulus that are driving deficits to truly unsustainable levels. Ordinary Americans haven’t seen much benefit because job losses continue and unemployment remains near 10%.

But Democrats still haven’t made the economy their top issue. Instead, they spend their time and political capital on health care, even though voters have signaled they don’t like Democrats’ health plans.

That’s inspired and fueled the fast-growing Tea Party movement. A February IBD/TIPP poll showed 75% of independents favor that movement.

41% of Americans say they are more likely to oppose a candidate that supports the current health care bill, according to the IBD/TIPP poll. Just 27% say they would be more apt to vote for that person. Among independents, the ratio is 2-to-1 against.

These are all chilling results for Democrats facing re-election. How many from moderate districts will lash themselves to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s mast?

As for Obama’s overall approval rating, the IBD/TIPP Presidential Leadership Index dipped 0.2 point in March to 50, split between approval and disapproval. That’s down from 71 in February 2009, just after he took office.

Meanwhile, the IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index fell 3% in March to 45.4, the lowest in a year.

IBD/TIPP conducted the national telephone poll of 903 adults from March 1 to March 7.

And what’s the result of all of this?

A substantial majority of Americans now believe that the massive government this leftist president is trying to create represents a threat to their rights:

CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens’ rights
Posted: February 26th, 2010 09:00 AM ET

From CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser

Washington (CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.

The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.

According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken – though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what’s broken can be fixed.

So we find that 66% of independents believe that Obama is to their left, and 63% of independents believe that the government Obama is presiding over is a threat to their rights.  See the near perfect dovetailing?

What we are seeing is one of the most cynical and disingenuous presidents in American history attempt to establish himself as transcending political divides while simultaneously demagoguing and demonizing his opposition in a manner this generation has never seen.  And the mainstream media have broadcast his political narrative in a way very reminiscent of Joseph Goebbels broadcasting the narrative of his party.

Fortunately, this fascist technique hasn’t worked.  Mainstream media news outlets such as ABC, NBC and CBS are imploding:

The American mainstream media has been on a collision course with reality for several years.  It appears the day of reckoning has arrived as both ABC News and CBS News make announcements today that indicate deep financial woes.  In short, the mainstream media is going down as the big news giants begin to implode.

For quite some time now it has been widely known that NBC News and its sister networks MSNBC and CNBC are in dire financial straits.  That news was confirmed with the sale of the entity a few months ago.

Today, however, ABC News announced that it is cutting its news correspondent staff by half and that it will close all of its ‘brick and mortar’ news bureaus, except for its Washington hub.

In addition, CBS News is reportedly talking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper concerning an anchor position with the network. CBS has already been forced to cut Katie Couric’s salary, and Couric’s contract is set to expire in a little over a year.

The crash of big mainstream media is not confined to television, however.  Liberal, mainstream newspapers, such as the New York Times, continue to operate under heavy financial pressure as subscriptions tank and advertising revenues fall to historic lows.

Meanwhile Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and Rush Limbaugh are thriving.  After a year of unrelenting Obama demagoguing, Fox News is now THE most trusted name in news.

Shockingly (and I actually say that without irony), Americans still don’t want to be indoctrinated when they have a choice.

Obama has gone way, WAAAAYYYY downhill from the days when journalists and other passionate Obama supporters literally breathlessly compared him favorably to the divine Son of God.  I think of the Newsweek editor saying, “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”  I think of Chris Matthews saying he felt this thrill going up his leg as Obama spoke.  Here’s where “the One” stands after a year of gracing an undeserving wolrd with his exalted magnificence, according to Rasmussen:

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 22% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.  Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19 (see trends). […]

Overall, 44% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. Fifty-four percent (54%) disapprove.

And Democrats are swirling the drain for a massive defeat that might not only reach 1994-levels, but even make 1994 look like a good year for Democrats.  From Rasmussen:

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Republican candidates lead Democrats by seven points in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 37% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. Voter support for GOP congressional candidates held steady from last week, while support for Democrats is up a point.

Voters not affiliated with either major party continue to favor the GOP by a 42% to 22% margin, showing little change for several months now. In February, the number of unaffiliated voters increased by half a percentage point as both Republicans and Democrats lost further ground.

Republicans started 2010 ahead by nine points — their largest lead in several years — while support for Democrats fell to its lowest level over the same period. Towards the end of 2009, GOP candidates enjoyed a more modest lead over Democrats, with the gap between the two down to four points in early December. Since the beginning of the year, however, the Republican lead hasn’t dipped below seven points.

The latest numbers continue to highlight a remarkable change in the political environment over the past year. This time last year, Democrats led Republicans 42% to 38%.

On January 18, 2009, Democrats led Republicans 42% to 35%.  How the tables have turned.  That’s a 14-point swing since Obama started ruining the country.  And the trend has been going steadily down-the-drain-ward for Democrats.

Even Democrat polling shows Democrats are in big, big trouble:

The national mood continues to sour, with the share who see the country headed in the wrong direction moving up 4 points since mid-January, up to 62 percent, the highest mark in a year

The also left-leaning Washington Post, reporting on the Democrat organization’s polling, wrote in an article entitled, “Poll shows Obama, Dems losing ground,” that:

“The erosion since May is especially strong among women, and among independents, who now favor Republicans on this question by a 56 to 20 percent margin,” the pollsters said in their findings.

That’s really bad, considering that women have always been primary voters for Democrats, and it was independents’ votes that brought both Obama and Democrat over the top in 2008.

And what are Barry Hussein and Democrats going to do?  Prove every nasty thing that people now believe right.  Thus Democrats are pursuing a strategy that they themselves have said is immoral and unAmerican to pass a bill that Americans overwhelmingly do not want.

Why should Americans trust Democrats, given that they are now doing the very thing they themselves said was a terrible thing to do, and given all the Louisiana Purchases, all the Cornhusker Kickbacks, all the Gator-aids, and all the other illegitimate and even illegal acts of political sleazy backroom deals?

These same people promised us that unemployment would stay under 8% if we supported their now $862 billion stimulus.  And that was so false that only 6% of Americans believe it has created any jobs at all, according to a poll by the New York Times and CBS.

Why should we want that kind of massively expensive failure with our health care system?

Look at the numbers demonstrating how Americans think about health care:

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters say the health care reform plan now working its way through Congress will hurt the U.S. economy.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 25% think the plan will help the economy. But only seven percent (7%) say it will have no impact. Twelve percent (12%) aren’t sure.

Two-out-of-three voters (66%) also believe the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats is likely to increase the federal deficit. That’s up six points from late November and comparable to findings just after the contentious August congressional recess. Ten percent (10%) say the plan is more likely to reduce the deficit and 14% say it will have no impact on the deficit.

Underlying this concern is a lack of trust in the government numbers. Eighty-one percent (81%) believe it is at least somewhat likely that the health care reform plan will cost more than official estimates. That number includes 66% who say it is very likely that the official projections understate the true cost of the plan.

Just 10% have confidence in the official estimates and say the actual costs are unlikely to be higher.

Seventy-eight percent (78%) also believe it is at least somewhat likely that taxes will have to be raised on the middle class to cover the cost of health care reform. This includes 65% who say middle-class tax hikes are very likely, a six-point increase from late November.

Do you really believe that the government will reduce the cost of anything?  This is something that can very quickly begin to explode out of control.  And by the time it does, it will be too late to do anything about it.

Obama keeps assuring us that his plan will lower the deficit, but we can’t even trust him on his own budget figures: the CBO recently reported that the Obama budget deficit will be a massive $1.2 trillion more than Obama said it would.

You can’t trust Obama on keeping his promises, and you certainly can’t trust him on bringing down costs.  On energy prices, Obama said the following:

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

He doesn’t care about keeping his word, and he certainly doesn’t care about making vital services cost less.  The man is an ideologue – and he only cares about imposing his statist ideology.

The American people, including independents, don’t want statism, but they know they’ve got exactly that in Barack Obama.  They clearly don’t want a big government takeover of their health care, but the Democrats are apparently determined to impose it anyway.

China has had enough of the Democrats and their reckless spending: they are now preparing to sever the historic tie between their currency and that of the U.S. dollar.

Democrats are counting on the fact that the American people are simply too stupid to remember what Democrats did eight months before the election.  The question is, is that true?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi thinks the American people are dumb enough to buy anything, saying:

“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Let’s make a deal: give me trillions of dollars, and I’ll show you what’s in the bag I’m holding.

And pretty soon America is going to open their door in surprise to see a flaming bag filled with dog crap.  Try to stomp out the flames at your peril.

The United States of America is more vulnerable than it has ever been, due to deficits and spending that are simply out of control.

You independents – who are now beginning to at least understand the risk the president and party you voted for in 2008 presents to this country – had now better get off your butts and join Republicans in screaming this ObamaCare boondoggle down.  Because this incredibly partisan health care bill will very likely be the anvil that breaks this nation’s back if it is passed.

White House Implosion Approaching

We’re seeing growing sings that all is most certainly not well in the Camelot Part Deux that liberals wanted to recreate in the Obama White House.  Obama himself is cracking under the stress, smoking too much and drinking too much.  I think we’d all like it if the man who had the responsibility of imposing his will on an Iran determined to develop nuclear ICBMs had at least enough willpower to impose his will on the next pack of cigarettes.  Meanwhile, Obama’s Chicago-thug “fearsome foursome” who form his paranoid inner circle are taking all kinds of heat – and showing signs of meltdown from all the gear-clashing.

Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel – Mr. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” himself – has been under fire from liberals who want to blame him for the near-total failure Obama’s first year has been.  But Emanuel has some allies in the press as well, who have come out to make a strong defense (mayhap with Rahm’s help?) at the direct expense of Obama.  I mean, the mainstream media is blaming the failure of the Obama administration on Emanuel’s lack of discipline and management skills, while other parts of the mainstream media argue that Rahm Emanuel is the only thing preventing Obama from ending up worse than Jimmy Carter.  I mean, you know there are a lot of hurt feelings and dead bodies in closets at the White House with this stuff going on.

And now we see the glue is coming off the veneer of David Axelrod, too.

March 6, 2010
Obama Message Maven Finds Fingers Pointing at Him
By MARK LEIBOVICH

WASHINGTON — David Axelrod was sitting at his desk on a recent afternoon — tie crooked, eyes droopy and looking more burdened than usual. He had just been watching some genius on MSNBC insist that he and President Obama’s other top aides were failing miserably and should be replaced.

“Typical Washington junk we have to deal with,” Mr. Axelrod said in an interview. The president is deft at blocking out such noise, he added, suddenly brightening. “I love the guy,” he said, and in the space of five minutes, repeated the sentiment twice.

Critics, pointing to the administration’s stalled legislative agenda, falling poll numbers and muddled messaging, suggest that kind of devotion is part of the problem at the White House. Recent news reports have cast the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, as the administration’s chief pragmatist, and Mr. Axelrod, by implication, as something of a swooning loyalist. A “Moonie,” dismissed Mr. Axelrod’s close friend, former Commerce Secretary William Daley. Or as the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, joked, “the guy who walks in front of the president with rose petals.”

Still, it is a charge that infuriates Mr. Axelrod, the president’s closest aide, longest-serving adviser and political alter ego. “I guess I have been castigated for believing too deeply in the president,” he said, lapsing into the sarcasm he tends to deploy when playing defense.

No one has taken the perceived failings of the administration more personally or shown the strain as plainly as Mr. Axelrod, who as White House senior adviser oversees every aspect of how Mr. Obama is presented. As such, Mr. Axelrod, the president’s mustachioed message maven, has felt the brunt of criticism over what many view as the administration’s failure to clearly define and disseminate Mr. Obama’s agenda and accomplishments for the country.

“The Obama White House has lost the narrative in the way that the Obama campaign never did,” said James Morone, a political scientist at Brown University. “They essentially took the president’s great strength as a messenger and failed to use it smartly.”

Mr. Axelrod said he accepts some blame for what he called “communication failures,” though he acknowledges bafflement that the administration’s efforts to stimulate the economy in a crisis, overhaul health care and prosecute two wars have been so routinely framed by opponents as the handiwork of a big-government, soft-on-terrorism, politics-of-the-past ideologue.

“For me, the question is, why haven’t we broken through more than we have?” Mr. Axelrod said. “Why haven’t we broken through?”

That question has dogged Mr. Axelrod in recent months and has preoccupied Mr. Obama’s inner circle, fueling speculation that the vaunted “No Drama Obama” team might be fracturing. Not surprisingly, the White House has no patience with the notion.

“You guys want to fit people into boxes and categories that are just not accurate,” Mr. Emanuel said.

Mr. Axelrod would not discuss what counsel he offered to Mr. Obama, though he denies any “fissure with my buddy Rahm” and any charge that he is too infatuated with the president to recognize the political risks of his ambitious agenda.

“Believe me, if we were charting this administration as a political exercise, the first thing we would have done would not have been a massive recovery act, stabilizing the banks and helping to keep the auto companies from collapsing,” he said. “Those would not even be the first hundred things he would want to do.”

But Mr. Axelrod argued that the president, confronted with “breathtaking challenges,” did not have the luxury of moving more slowly or methodically.

In a lengthy interview in his office on Wednesday, Mr. Axelrod was often defiant, saying he did not give a “flying” expletive “about what the peanut gallery thinks” and did not live for the approval “of the political community.” He denounced the “rampant lack of responsibility” of people in Washington who refuse to solve problems, and cited the difficulty of trying to communicate through what he calls “the dirty filter” of a city suffused with the “every day is Election Day sort of mentality.”

When asked how he would assess his performance, Mr. Axelrod shrugged. “I’m not going to judge myself on that score,” he said. But then he shot back: “Have I succeeded in reversing a 30-year trend of skepticism and cynicism about government? I confess that I have not. Maybe next year.”

The criticism of the administration’s communication strategy — leveled by impatient Democrats, gleeful Republicans, bloggers and cable chatterers — clearly stings Mr. Axelrod, as well as the circle of family, friends and fans he has acquired over three decades in politics as a consultant and, before that, a reporter for The Chicago Tribune.

“Every time I hear that the White House is getting the message wrong, it breaks my heart,” said Mr. Axelrod’s sister, Joan, an educational therapist in Boston. “I know he agonizes.”

Ms. Axelrod says that while her brother is devoted to Mr. Obama, he is not a sycophant. She paused when asked whether he admired the president too much. “He is very, very loyal, sometimes to a fault,” she said.

Added Mr. Gibbs: “The list of people who have to deliver bad news to the president is very small, and David is first on that list. I’m probably second.”

Mr. Axelrod’s friends worry about the toll of his job — citing his diet (cold-cut-enriched), his weight (20 pounds heavier than at the start of the presidential campaign), sleep deprivation (five fitful hours a night), separation from family (most back home in Chicago) and the fact that at 55, he is considerably older than many of the wunderkind workaholics of the West Wing. He wakes at 6 in his rented condominium just blocks from the White House and typically returns around 11.

Unlike other presidential alter egos, Mr. Axelrod is not viewed as a surrogate “brain” (like Karl Rove), a suspicious outsider (like Dick Morris in the Clinton White House) or a co-president (James Baker in the first Bush White House). Sometimes portrayed as a bare-knuckled Chicago operative, he is also a bantering walrus of a man in mustard-stained sleeves who describes himself as a “kibbitzer,” not a “policy guy.”

Sitting at his desk next door to the Oval Office last week, he was tearing into a five-inch corned beef sandwich on rye with a Flintstone-size turkey drumstick waiting on deck. “I am the poster child for the president’s obesity program,” he said.

A few minutes later, Mr. Obama walked in unannounced, scattering two aides like startled pigeons. “Hey,” Mr. Axelrod said by way of greeting (no “sir” or “Mr. President.”) Mr. Obama surveyed the spread on Mr. Axelrod’s desk with a slight smirk.

“What is this, King Arthur’s court?” he asked, then pulled Mr. Axelrod aside to talk about a health care speech he was about to deliver.

Mr. Axelrod is often at the president’s side; he sits in on policy and national security meetings and is routinely the last person he talks to before making a decision. He directs every aspect of the administration’s external presentation, overseeing polls, focus groups and speeches and appearing on the Sunday shows. Mr. Emanuel describes Mr. Axelrod as “an integrator of the three P’s” — press, policy and politics — “and how they make a whole.”

White House officials describe Mr. Axelrod’s focus as big themes rather than day-to-day sound bites. There has been no shortage of Democrats willing to second-guess his messaging approach.

“They made a big mistake right out of the box with the Inaugural Address,” said former Senator Bob Kerrey, adding that a president pledging bipartisanship should not have disparaged the previous administration in his speech, as many listeners believed Mr. Obama did.

Read the rest at the New York Times.

Of course, they are continuing to make the same mistake of blaming Bush over and over and over again on a daily basis over a year later.

And that does go to the core of the Obama failure: the inability to match his rhetoric with reality, or even his rhetoric with his own rhetoric.

The man who pledged bipartisanship and a transcendent ability to reach across the divide and bring the country together has blamed and demonized the Bush administration and the Republican Party every single time he “reached.”

The man who promised transparency, who promised repeatedly to open up the entire “bipartisan” health care negotiations on C-SPAN, has not never even bothered to try to do so (and dang I wish I could have seen the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, Gator-Aid, and various other acts of illegal political patronage being negotiated), but has routinely had closed door meetings which were not open to the press, the public, or certainly the Republicans.  Meanwhile, the Democrats have been so byzantine, so secretive, so wheeling-dealing, that even senior Democrats have had to acknowledge they were completely in the dark as to what in the sam hill was going on.

And of course now we have the same Obama who basically said that reconciliation was a totalitarian act of “simply majoritarian absolute power” that was both unconstitutional and as partisan and evil as Karl Rove is, now saying that it’s okay as long as he’s doing it “to maintain his strong presidency.”

That’s just health care.  You can take almost any other issue and find the same thing with Obama.  Foreign policy?  Take Renditions.  Take Eavesdropping programs.  Take the Patriot Act.  Take  Gitmo.  Take the surge strategy.  Take the Iraq War.  Take the  Iranian nuclear threat.  And now, take military tribunals.  In every single one of these cases Obama personally demonized the Bush position, and then did the same thing himself without ever once having the integrity to say that George Bush had been right and he had been wrong.  Energy policy?  Obama so completely abandoned his own stated energy policy promises that a senior Democrat was forced to say that Obama “is beginning not to be believable to me.”

I have to say I feel sorry for the messengers who are being hounded for not being able to get the White House message out: it’s full of lies and deceit; how do you make all the Obama lies look good without telling a whole bunch of other lies?

Then you’ve got the fact that a whole bunch of Democrats across the spectrum are just furious with the Obama administration for massively expensive policies that didn’t work and for sheer flagrant incompetence.

How do you make a turd look good?

The one word that most accurately frames this piece is, “Wah.”  The people who most successfully demagogued mainstream media narratives when it came to George Bush and Republicans are the biggest bunch of thin-skinned whining crybabies I’ve ever seen.  Someone else is ALWAYS to blame with these people.

And when they demonize Republicans for their criticisms when the Obama team has done nothing BUT demonize Bush and Republicans, it is beyond disgusting and even beyond despicable.

What couldn’t be more obvious about Obama’s inner circle – political rather than policy experts all – is that all they can do well is campaign.  So they constantly campaign in campaign mode, and then cry the moment anybody suggests they’re doing anything because of “politics.”  I mean, think about it: the same man who lambasts the press for their “every day is Election Day sort of mentality,” is the guy who is closer than anyone to Obama – and  who spends all his time as the “integrator of the three P’s” — press, policy and politics — “and how they make a whole.”

I mean, how DARE you people accurately describe us as what we are, and consider policies from the same uber-political perspective that WE consider them.  HOW DARE YOU!

The Obama inner circle lives in a bunker and embraces a “bunker-view mentality” to the world.  In contradiction to their statements to the contrary, they are hyper-hyper sensitive to any skepticism at all.  And their growing problem is that the nastiest skepticism of all isn’t coming from “the right” or from Fox News, but from their very own left and from media that should be in their pockets.

I don’t know how long it’s going to take before it happens, but this president and this inner White House circle are heading for a meltdown of epic proportions.

‘Jeopardized the country’? Pelosi And Rangel Jeopardizing Democrats

Following Nancy Pelosi’s vow that her Congress would be the most ethical in history, she has tolerated some of the biggest scumbags in history, such as William Jefferson, who was caught red-handed with $90,000 of bribe money in his freezer, and his fellow House Ways and Means committee member (and chairman) Charles Rangel, who was caught equally red-handed massively cheating on his taxes.

It should be pointed out that the House Ways and Means Committee writes the nation’s tax laws.

It’s almost as egregious a violation as, say, the Secretary of the Treasury being a documented tax cheat.  Oh yeah.  Never mind.

It is worth pointing out that if these guys had been Republicans, they would have been long, long gone.

A private citizen was attempting to confront Charles Rangel a full year ago.  And, of course, it was a well-known fact even as the Democrats were taking total power through a mainstream media campaign that falsely demonized the Republicans and falsely hyped the Democrats’ “change.”  It’s a shame that the mainstream media and the Speaker of the House were indifferent to this kind of corruption from the guy who writes everybody else’s tax laws.

Everybody should pay their “fair share” of taxes – unless they’re Democrats, that is.  Particularly Democrats who write or enforce the nation’s tax laws and selectively punish whomever they want to punish for doing the same damn thing they do.

Democrats are showing their true character.

I saw a “Kerry-Edwards” window sticker on a car from Minnesota in my church’s parking lot.  And I was utterly disgusted that somebody who actually thinks of himself or herself as a Christian supported such a putrefying pile of moral slime as John Edwards.

And of course, as a backdrop to all this, New York is having an impossible time finding a Democrat who isn’t lower than whale turds to govern the state.  Do you want the guy who rents prostitutes by the thousands, or do you want the guy who threatens beaten women to keep their mouths shut and not appear in court?  Patterson says he won’t run for reelection, and presumably New York Democrats are going to “hope” for the “change” that the third time’s the charm.

But let’s get back to Rangel.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – rather than make her claim to run the most ethical Congress in history anything other than the total depraved mockery that it always was – instead invented a “new threshold” which justifies keeping tax cheat Rangel in charge of writing tax laws.  From The Hill:

Rep. Charlie Rangel’s admonishment for violating House gift rules “is not good,” but his actions did not put the nation at risk in any material way, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday.

Pelosi said it is not her place to interfere in any investigations of the matter and said she would not get involved politically.

“But the fact is, is that what Mr. Rangel has been admonished for is not good,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “It was a violation of the rules of the House. It was not a–something that jeopardized our country in any way.”

I remember playing games with my kids.  They understood the concept of winning, but they did not understand the concept of fair play.  So they invariably kept changing the rules to benefit themselves at that particular moment of the game.

Which is exactly what Nancy Pelosi, the complete moral idiot and chief Democrat ethicist, is doing now.  With Charles Rangel, with reconciliation, with health care, with pretty much everything.

Well, it must be fine then.  It’s easy to be “the most ethical Congress in history” when you have such a personally vile sense of ethics.

It’s this kind of moral reasoning that leads to the Louisiana Purchase and the Cornhusker Kickback.  What is right and wrong is however we wish to define it at the moment; and we’ll change the rules again later when it fits our agenda to do so.

The Daily Beast, which runs decidedly to the political left, is running the following picture as “The Photo That Could Doom the Democrats“:

Of course, what the photograph depicts is Rangel on a foreign beach, enjoying the fruits of his tax fraud.

And the first words of the article are these:

Nancy Pelosi is protecting Rep. Charles Rangel, who failed to pay taxes on his Caribbean villa, among other miscues. But the ethically challenged congressional baron is endangering the Democrats’ control of Congress.

When we think about the “ethically challenged congressional baron,” we should immediately connect him to the ethically challenged congressional queen.

Throw the both out.  Throw the whole lot of them out.

Obama White House Accused By Democrat Of Federal Crime In Specter, Bennet Races

Richard Nixon was honest to a fault compared to Barack Obama – and Obama is displaying corruption in only a year (Nixon was into his second term before he got caught).

We have Obama on video telling what we now recognize were seven major lies in less than two minutes when he was lying his way to the presidency:

[Youtube link]

We’ve got Obama displaying a shocking pattern of corruption and lack of transparency in a case involving a friend and a sacred-cow program.  It is also a case of a president firing an Inspector General for the crime of investigating a crime in a manner that was not merely Nixonian, but Stalinist (link1; link2; link3; link4).  Rest assured that Obama has his own enemies list.

The case of the illegal firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin is far from over as it works its way through the legal system.

Getting closer to what we now have before us, we have the cases of the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, and a list of political bribery shenanigans that gets too long to follow.

All from an administration that deceitfully promised unprecedented transparency and openness and continues to shamelessly represent itself as being the best thing since sliced bread.

But this story – supported by the testimony of Democrats – may be in a whole new class of corruption:

White House Accused of Federal Crime in Specter, Bennet Races
By Jeffrey Lord on 2.22.10 @ 6:09AM

“Whoever solicits or receives … any….thing of value, in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.” — 18 USC Sec. 211 — Bribery, Graft and Conflicts of Interest: Acceptance or solicitation to obtain appointive public office

“In the face of a White House denial, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak stuck to his story yesterday that the Obama administration offered him a “high-ranking” government post if he would not run against U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary.”
— Philadelphia Inquirer
February 19, 2010

“D.C. job alleged as attempt to deter Romanoff”
—Denver Post
September 27, 2009

A bombshell has just exploded in the 2010 elections.

For the second time in five months, the Obama White House is being accused — by Democrats — of offering high ranking government jobs in return for political favors. What no one is reporting is that this is a violation of federal law that can lead to prison time, a fine or both, according to Title 18, Chapter 11, Section 211 of the United States Code.

The jobs in question? Secretary of the Navy and a position within the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The favor requested in return? Withdrawal from Senate challenges to two sitting United States Senators, both Democrats supported by President Obama. The Senators are Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and Michael Bennet in Colorado.

On Friday, Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak, the Democrat challenging Specter for re-nomination, launched the controversy by accusing the Obama White House of offering him a federal job in exchange for his agreeing to abandon his race against Specter.

In August of 2009, the Denver Post reported last September, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina “offered specific suggestions” for a job in the Obama Administration to Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff, a former state House Speaker, if Romanoff would agree to abandon a nomination challenge to U.S. Senator Michael Bennet. Bennet was appointed to the seat upon the resignation of then-Senator Ken Salazar after Salazar was appointed by Obama to serve as Secretary of the Interior. According to the Post, the specific job mentioned was in the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Post cited “several sources who described the communication to The Denver Post.”

The paper also describes Messina as “President Barack Obama’s deputy chief of staff and a storied fixer in the White House political shop.” Messina’s immediate boss is White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Sestak is standing by his story. Romanoff refused to discuss it with the Denver paper. In both instances the White House has denied the offers took place. The Sestak story in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reported by Thomas Fitzgerald, can be found here, While the Denver Post story, reported by Michael Riley, from September 27, 2009, can be read here.

In an interview with Philadelphia television anchor Larry Kane, who broke the story on Larry Kane: Voice of Reason, a Comcast Network show, Sestak says someone — unnamed — in the Obama White House offered him a federal job if he would quit the Senate race against Specter, the latter having the support of President Obama, Vice President Biden and, in the state itself, outgoing Democratic Governor Ed Rendell. Both Biden and Rendell are longtime friends of Specter, with Biden taking personal credit for convincing Specter to leave the Republican Party and switch to the Democrats. Rendell served as a deputy to Specter when the future senator’s career began as Philadelphia’s District Attorney, a job Rendell himself would eventually hold.

Asked Kane of Sestak in the Comcast interview:

“Is it true that you were offered a high ranking job in the administration in a bid to get you to drop out of the primary against Arlen Specter?”

“Yes” replied Sestak.

Kane: “Was it Secretary of the Navy?”

To which the Congressman replied:

“No comment.”

Sestak is a retired Navy admiral.

In the Colorado case, the Post reported that while Romanoff refused comment on a withdrawal-for-a-job offer, “several top Colorado Democrats described Messina’s outreach to Romanoff to The Post, including the discussion of specific jobs in the administration. They asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.”

The Post also noted that the day after Romanoff announced his Senate candidacy, President Obama quickly announced his endorsement of Senator Bennet.

The discovery that the White House has now been reported on two separate occasions in two different states to be deliberately committing a potential violation of federal law — in order to preserve the Democrats’ Senate majority — could prove explosive in this highly political year. The 60-seat majority slipped to 59 seats with the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, a Democrat, and the election of Republican Senator Scott Brown. Many political analysts are suggesting Democrats could lose enough seats to lose their majority altogether.

This is the stuff of congressional investigations and cable news alerts, as an array of questions will inevitably start being asked of the Obama White House.

Here are but a few lines of inquiry, some inevitably straight out of Watergate.

* Who in the White House had this conversation with Congressman Sestak?

* Did Deputy Chief of Staff Messina have the same conversation with Sestak he is alleged to have had with Romanoff — and has he or anyone else on the White House staff had similar conversations with other candidates that promise federal jobs for political favors?

* They keep logs of these calls. How quickly will they be produced?

* How quickly would e-mails between the White House, Sestak, Specter, Romanoff and Bennet be produced?

* Secretary of the Navy is an important job. Did this job offer or the reported offer of the US AID position to Romanoff have the approval of President Obama or Vice President Biden?

* What did the President know and when did he know it?

* What did the Vice President know and when did he know it? (Note: Vice President Biden, in this tale, is Specter’s longtime friend who takes credit for luring Specter to switch parties. Can it really be that an offer of Secretary of the Navy to get Sestak out of Specter’s race would not be known and or approved by the Vice President? Does Messina or some other White House staffer — like Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel — have that authority?)

* What did White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel know, and when did he know it?

* What did Congressman Sestak know and when did he know it? Was he aware that the offer of a federal job in return for a political favor — his withdrawal from the Senate race — could open the White House to a criminal investigation?

* What did Senator Specter know about any of this and when did he know it? .

* What did Governor Rendell, who, as the titular leader of Pennsylvania Democrats, is throwing his political weight and machine to his old friend Specter, know about this? And when did he know it?

* Will the Department of Justice be looking into these two separate news stories, one supplied by a sitting United States Congressman, that paint a clear picture of jobs for political favors?

* Will Attorney General Holder recuse himself from such an investigation?

While in recent years there have been bribery scandals that centered on the exchange of favors for a business deal (Democrat William Jefferson, a Louisiana Congressman) or cash for earmarks (Republican Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham), the idea of violating federal law by offering a federal job in return for a political favor (leaving two hotly contested Senate races in this instance) is not new.

Let’s go back in history for a moment.

It’s the spring of 1960, in the middle of a bitter fight for the Democratic presidential nomination between then Senators John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, Stuart Symington and the 1952 and 1956 nominee, ex-Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson.

Covering the campaign for what would become the grandfather of all political campaign books was journalist and JFK friend Theodore H. White. In his book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the President 1960, published in 1961, White tells the story of a plane flight with JFK on the candidate’s private plane The Caroline. The nomination fight is going on at a furious pace, and White and Kennedy are having another of their innumerable private chats for White’s book while the plane brings JFK back from a campaign swing where he spoke to delegates in Montana.

The subject? Let’s let White tell the story.

The conversation began in a burst of anger. A story had appeared in a New York newspaper that evening that an Eastern Governor had claimed that Kennedy had offered him a cabinet post in return for his Convention support. His anger was cold, furious. When Kennedy is angry, he is at his most precise, almost schoolmasterish. It is a federal offense, he said, to offer any man a federal job in return for a favor. This was an accusation of a federal offense. It was not so.

Let’s focus on that JFK line again:

“It is a federal offense, he said, to offer any man a federal job in return for a favor.”

With a fine and jail time attached if convicted.

What Larry Kane discovered with the response of Congressman Sestak — and Sestak is sticking to his story — combined with what the Denver Post has previously reported in the Romanoff case — appears to be a series of connecting dots.

A connecting of dots — by Democrats — that leads from Colorado to Pennsylvania straight into the West Wing of the White House.

And possibly the jail house.

“It is a federal offense,” said John F. Kennedy, “to offer any man a federal job in return for a favor.”

And so it is.

Obama – who is loudly and frequently patting himself on the back for how “bipartisan” he is, is the most radically ideological partisan who ever sat in the Oval Office.

And as Obama continues to push his ObamaCare boondoggle apparently to the very last Democrat, it is more than fair to ask: why on earth are we trusting these dishonest rat bastards with our health care system and literally with our very lives in the event that their government takeover succeeds?