Obama Says ‘We Don’t Need A Balanced Budget Amendment.’ What We Don’t Need Is This Fool-In-Chief

Barack Obama is on the record saying, “We don’t need a balanced budget amendment,” he said. “We simply need to make these tough choices and be willing to take on our bases.”  Obama says, “I think it’s important for everybody to understand all of us believe we need to get to the point where we can balance the budget,” Mr. Obama said at a White House press conference. “We don’t need a constitutional amendment to do that.”

We desperately need a balanced budget amendment.  What we DON’T need is Barack Hussein Obama and his endless rhetorical posturing.

The national debt that is acknowledged is currently more than $14.5 trillion.

Let’s take a brief trip down national debt memory lane.  Now, let’s see.  When Ronald Reagan left office, the national debt was $2.6 trillion.  By the time Bush I left office, the national debt was $ trillion.  By the time Bill Clinton left office, the national debt was $5.6 trillion (which is quite strange, given the constant claim that Clinton balanced the budget).  By the time Bush II left office, the national debt was $10.6 trillion.  It is currently at over $14.5 trillion, and Obama is not even through his first term yet.  He wants it increased to more than $16 trillion now.  Again, before the end of his first term.

And, of course that’s actually NOTHING.  $14.5 trillion, or even $16 trillion, is actually really chump change to how much the United States REALLY owes.  Read this figure published in a peer reviewed International Monetary Fund publication article that provides the grim reality:

News from globeandmail.com
The scary real U.S. government debt
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
NEIL REYNOLDS
Ottawa — reynolds.globe@gmail.com

Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. “Let’s get real,” Prof. Kotlikoff says. “The U.S. is bankrupt.”

Writing in the September issue of Finance and Development, a journal of the International Monetary Fund, Prof. Kotlikoff says the IMF itself has quietly confirmed that the U.S. is in terrible fiscal trouble – far worse than the Washington-based lender of last resort has previously acknowledged. “The U.S. fiscal gap is huge,” the IMF asserted in a June report. “Closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 per cent of U.S. GDP.”

This sum is equal to all current U.S. federal taxes combined. The consequences of the IMF’s fiscal fix, a doubling of federal taxes in perpetuity, would be appalling – and possibly worse than appalling.

Prof. Kotlikoff says: “The IMF is saying that, to close this fiscal gap [by taxation], would require an immediate and permanent doubling of our personal income taxes, our corporate taxes and all other federal taxes.

“America’s fiscal gap is enormous – so massive that closing it appears impossible without immediate and radical reforms to its health care, tax and Social Security systems – as well as military and other discretionary spending cuts.”

He cites earlier calculations by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that concluded that the United States would need to increase tax revenue by 12 percentage points of GDP to bring revenue into line with spending commitments. But the CBO calculations assumed that the growth of government programs (including Medicare) would be cut by one-third in the short term and by two-thirds in the long term. This assumption, Prof. Kotlikoff notes, is politically implausible – if not politically impossible.

One way or another, the fiscal gap must be closed. If not, the country’s spending will forever exceed its revenue growth, and no one’s real debt can increase faster than his real income forever.

Prof. Kotlikoff uses “fiscal gap,” not the accumulation of deficits, to define public debt. The fiscal gap is the difference between a government’s projected revenue (expressed in today’s dollar value) and its projected spending (also expressed in today’s dollar value). By this measure, the United States is in worse shape than Greece.

Prof. Kotlikoff is a noted economist. He is a research associate at the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a former senior economist with then-president Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He has served as a consultant with governments around the world. He is the author (or co-author) of 14 books: Jimmy Stewart Is Dead (2010), his most recent book, explains his recommendations for reform.

He says the U.S. cannot end its fiscal crisis by increasing taxes. He opposes further stimulus spending because it will simply increase the debt. But he does suggest reforms that would help – most of which would require a significant withering away of the state. He proposes that the government give every person an annual voucher for health care, provided that the total cost not exceed 10 per cent of GDP. (U.S. health care now consumes 16 per cent of GDP.) He suggests the replacement of all current federal taxes with a single consumption tax of 18 per cent. He calls for government-sponsored personal retirement accounts, with the government making contributions only for the poor, the unemployed and people with disabilities.

Without drastic reform, Prof. Kotlikoff says, the only alternative would be a massive printing of money by the U.S. Treasury – and hyperinflation.

As former president Bill Clinton once prematurely said, the era of big government is over. In the coming years, the U.S. will almost certainly be compelled to deconstruct its welfare state.

Prof. Kotlikoff doesn’t trust government accounting, or government regulation. The official vocabulary (deficit, debt, transfer payment, tax, borrowing), he says, is vulnerable to official manipulation and off-the-books deceit. He calls it “Enron accounting.” He also calls it a lie. Here is an economist who speaks plainly, as the legendary straight-shooting film star Jimmy Stewart did for an earlier generation.

But Prof. Kotlikoff’s economic genre isn’t the Western. It’s the horror story – “and scarier,” one reviewer of his book suggests, than Stephen King.

And what’s Obama’s response to all of this?

 

We are so screwed it is absolutely unreal.

And that’s just what the UNITED STATES government owes.  Let’s consider the leftist People’s Republic of Californication and see what IT’S actual debt is:

California’s $500-billion pension time bomb
April 06, 2010|By David Crane

The staggering amount of unfunded debt stands to crowd out funding for many popular programs. Reform will take something sadly lacking in the Legislature: political courage.

The state of California’s real unfunded pension debt clocks in at more than $500 billion, nearly eight times greater than officially reported.

That’s the finding from a study released Monday by Stanford University’s public policy program, confirming a recent report with similar, stunning findings from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.

Most other states are facing catastrophic implosion due to government union workers massive unfunded pension liabilities.  Take Obama’s own state of Illinois, for instance.

Yeah, you’re right, Mr. Fool-in-Chief.  We don’t need a balanced budget amendment.  Let’s go with your plan instead.  Let’s dig our own graves, slit our own throats, and then fall into a hole never again to crawl out.  Let’s sacrifice our children’s children’s children’s children and put the weight of a debt they will never be able to possibly repay as we continue to selfishly and wickedly vote ourselves benefits at their expense.  Let’s guarantee that the United States becomes a banana republic in the next fifteen years.

We’re going to collapse soon.  When it happens, it will seem to come out of the blue, but we will have been working steadily toward our own doom for generations.

Obama’s Keynesian approach has utterly and completely failed.  And only fools refuse to see that by now.

The beast is coming.  And Barack Obama, the Democrat Party and every single fool who votes for these fools, will be his useful idiots.

Liberals Seeking To Bring Chaos Of Islamic World To America

Liberals brought chaos to the Middle East.

Oh, yes they did.  Liberal Marxist terrorist professors like William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn and liberal Marxist terrorist organizations like Code Pink did everything they could to light matches to the Middle East powder keg by creating violent incidents such as the Free Gaza Movement flotilla.  You’ve had George Soros acting as a puppetmaster of pro-leftist destabilization for years.

Heck, as the entire Middle East now goes up in flames, with the uprising in Egypt being bracketed by Tunisia and now by bloody Yemen and even bloodier Libya, remember that Democrats “credited” Barack Obama with being behind the spark behind it all (see also here).  And Obama seems to want that credit himself.  Because it might end up becoming the spark that blew up the world.

It’s probably about time to finally understand that Obama has his roots as a leftwing community agitator.  And that while you can talk the man out of community agitation, you can never take the community agitator out of the man.

Obama is trying to do unto Wisconsin (and from there on to Ohio) what he apparently did in the Middle East.  Because vile leaders have always known that blood and unrest tends to benefit the vile:

The Democratic National Committee’s Organizing for America arm — the remnant of the 2008 Obama campaign— is playing an active role in organizing protests against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to strip most public employees of collective bargaining rights.

OfA, as the campaign group is known […has been] riding to the aide of the public sector unions… OfA’s engagement with the fight — and Obama’s own clear stance against Walker — mean that he’s remaining loyal to key Democratic Party allies…

OfA Wisconsin’s field efforts include filling buses and building turnout for the rallies this week in Madison, organizing 15 rapid response phone banks urging supporters to call their state legislators, and working on planning and producing rallies, a Democratic Party official in Washington said.

And with all of that evidence that liberals are burning up the powder keg in the Middle East and are trying to do the same thing in America, let me introduce the article that prompted me to write what I wrote above:

Documents show Wisconsin unrest orchestrated and spreading
February 19th, 2011 3:12 pm ET.

While part of the current unrest in Wisconsin is driven by local issues, new information has been uncovered indicating an orchestrated attempt to stir up ‘worker protests’ not only in Wisconsin but in at least a dozen states.  The coordinated effort is part of a ‘revolution’ spearheaded in part by a group called ‘Heartland Revolution,’ a Kentucky-based political action organization. The group was first envisioned by a Kentucky Democrat, John Waltz, who announced his candidacy in 2009 to oppose 2-term Republican Geoff Davis for the 4th Congressional District. Waltz was defeated in the November 2010 midterm elections but embarked on an effort to create ‘revolution’ throughout America, stemming from his anger toward what he terms ‘the hijacking of political discourse by right-wing propagandists.’ His group is invovled in the continuing Wisconsin protests of teachers unions upset over Governor Scott Walker’s plan to have them pay for part of their healthcare and pension benefits, to which they currently contribute very little of the total costs. 

Waltz frames his revolution in terms of a ‘political war,’ which he claims is being waged against the middle class by Republicans and corporate interests. His aim is to ‘shut down right-wing political cash machines’ using whatever means possible.

For example, in Wisconsin members of his organization were instructed to boycott a Subway Sandwhich Shop in downtown Madison during the protests.  The reason?  The owner of the deli is a large contributor to Governor Scott Walker.

The following Twitter alert from the Walsh organization was sent to Heartland protesters in Madison this morning:

02.19.11ALERT: If you are @ the protests in WI boycott the Subway in the square. The owners are the 2nd largest contributors to Gov. Walker

Waltz makes no attempt to hide the fact that he is a ‘progressive.’  The term is indicative of a mindset that wishes not only to hide the true intent of those who proudly own the description but promote an agenda that is based on a collectivist view of government and society where decisions concerning the personal lives of citizens can best be made by those in a centralized government complex.  The goal is to increase the scope of government so that workers, unions, and others can benefit from a confiscatory tax structure aimed at draining ‘the rich’ to pad the pockets of others.  

But perhaps the most troubling aspect of ‘Heartland Revolution’ is its coordinated efforts to create unrest across America, beginning in Wisconsin, but extending to Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, and New Jersey.

The map displayed here on the group’s blog page will reveal their upcoming plans and targeted areas, along with their Twitter messages to members.

Curiously, the group refers to its protesters as ‘boots on the ground,’ and war terminology abounds.  A cursory scan of Heartland Revolution’s website will reveal that members view their efforts as a war, a revolution, with boots on the ground that are determined to intimidate conservatives, overthrow politicans who represent the voices of taxpayers, and target the businesses of those who support them.

Far from being for the ‘working poor,’ as the group claims, Waltz and his minions are dedicated to preverving and expanding union power and protecting the high salaries and benefit structures enjoyed by many who work for various government entities.  For example, in Wisconsin  the average city school teacher earns over $100,000 per year including pay and benefits, and pays next to nothing toward their retirement or healthcare. The benefits are paid overwhelmingly by taxpayers. Waltz and his group, however, believe that asking these teachers to contribute more to their plans like most Americans do is tantamount to ‘waging war against workers.’

It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks if the average American agrees with him.

If America doesn’t want to burn, it had better vote out all these Democrats and make sure they don’t have enough fire to light anything.

Latest ObamaCare ‘Oopsie’: HealthCare Destruction Act Already Killing People

“It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.” – Robert Reich, lifelong Democrat “expert”

“A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people” – Obama Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein

“At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.” – The Hussein himself, informing a woman that it’s basically time to let her mother die.

“ObamaCare Factoid: Access To Health Care Doesn’t Mean Squat When Hospitals, Doctors And Pharmacists Bail” – Title of article by Michael Eden now factually demonstrated to have been completely right.

Before I provide the article of the day, allow me to show you some things that I posted/wrote nearly a year ago:

This is nothing compared to what might happen under Democratic health overhaul plans, which would slash Medicare spending by nearly $500 billion over 10 years. As Medicare actuaries recently pointed out in understated fashion, such cuts “may be unrealistic.” But, if Congress actually carried them out, about one in five hospitals, nursing homes and home care agencies could lose money, they warned in their report. As a result, such providers could drop Medicare, leaving seniors with less access.

[…]

Don’t think for a second that this isn’t directly related to the disaster known as ObamaCare.  Democrats are gutting Medicare reimbursements and blocking the essential “doctor fix” from their bill to create the contrived and bogus illusion that their boondoggle will provide “deficit neutrality.”  They are playing all kinds of games and gimmicks, such as taxing for ten years and only providing benefits for five, to support that illusion. It will fail, and a lot of people will die.

[…]

And so, what do you think will happen when Democrats cut the reimbursement rates?  People who have commons sense know: hospitals and doctors will begin to see fewer and fewer Medicare patients, as a matter of simple economic necessity.   That isn’t a “reform,” but a disaster.

And this stuff is why the dean of the Harvard Medical School gave ObamaCare a failing grade.  It’s why the California Medical Association recently came out strongly against the bill.  It’s why more and more state governors – Democrats as well as Republicans – are beginning to scream that ObamaCare merely turns Medicaid into a giant deficit-creating unfunded mandate on the states (again, to create the illusion of being “deficit neutral”).

And, now, without further delay, the article of the day’s latest demonstration that the Democrat Party is the political arm of the devil and Barack Obama is leading America into ruin not seen since the last time socialism devastated Europe when our grandparents were young kids…

It is somehow ironically fitting that this destruction of our health care system would be described in Obama’s hometown.

Medicaid cuts: teeth pulled, transplant called off
By The Associated Press
Posted Dec 15, 2010

CHICAGO —

In Illinois, a pharmacist closes his business because of late Medicaid payments. In Arizona, a young father’s liver transplant is canceled because Medicaid suddenly won’t pay for it. In California, dentists pull teeth that could be saved because Medicaid doesn’t pay for root canals.

Across the country, state lawmakers have taken harsh actions to try to rein in the budget-busting costs of the health care program that serves 58 million poor and disabled Americans. Some states have cut payments to doctors, paid bills late and trimmed benefits such as insulin pumps, obesity surgery and hospice care.

Lawmakers are bracing for more work when they reconvene in January. Some states face multibillion-dollar deficits. Federal stimulus money for Medicaid is soon to evaporate. And Medicaid enrollment has never been higher because of job losses.

In the view of some lawmakers, Medicaid has become a monster, and it’s eating the budget. In Illinois, Medicaid sucks up more money than elementary, secondary and higher education combined.

“Medicaid is such a large, complicated part of our budget problem, that to get our hands around it is very difficult. It’s that big. It’s that bad,” said Illinois Sen. Dale Righter, a Republican and co-chairman of a bipartisan panel to reform Medicaid in Illinois, where nearly 30 percent of total spending goes to the program.

Medicaid costs are shared by the federal and state governments. It’s not just the poor and disabled who benefit. Wealthier people do, too, such as when middle-class families with elderly parents in nursing homes are relieved of financial pressure after Medicaid starts picking up the bills.

Contrary to stereotype, it’s the elderly and disabled who cost nearly 70 cents of every Medicaid dollar, not the single mother and her children.

In California, Medicaid no longer pays for many adult dental services. But it still pays for extractions, that is, tooth-pulling. The unintended consequence: Medicaid patients tell dentists to pull teeth that could be saved.

“The roots are fine. The tooth could be saved with a root canal,” said Dr. Nagaraj Murthy, who practices in Compton, Calif. “I had a patient yesterday. I said we could do a root canal. He said, ‘No, it’s hurting. Go ahead and pull it. I don’t have the money.”’

Murthy recently pulled an elderly woman’s last tooth, but Medicaid no longer pays for dentures.

“Elderly patients suffer the most,” Murthy said. “They’re walking around with no teeth.”

States can decide which optional services Medicaid covers, and dental care is among cutbacks in some places. Last year’s economic stimulus package increased the federal share of Medicaid money temporarily. But that money runs out at the end of June, when the federal government will go back to paying half the costs rather than 60 to 70 percent. So more cuts could be ahead.

During the Great Recession, millions of people relied on the Medicaid safety net. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of uninsured Americans grew by more than 5 million as workers lost jobs with employer-based insurance. Another 7 million signed up for Medicaid.

Just when caseloads hit their highest point, the nation’s new health care law required states not to change the rules on who’s eligible for Medicaid. That means states can’t roll up the welcome mat by tightening Medicaid’s income requirements.

So states have resorted to a variety of painful options.

In Arizona, lawmakers stopped paying for some kinds of transplants, including livers for people with hepatitis C. When the cuts took effect Oct. 1, Medicaid patient Francisco Felix, who needs a liver, suddenly had to raise $500,000 to get a transplant.

The 32-year-old’s case took a dramatic turn in November when a friend’s wife died, and her liver became available. Felix was prepped for surgery in hopes financial donations would come in. When the money didn’t materialize, the liver went to someone else, and Felix went home. His doctor told him he has a year before he’ll be too sick for a transplant.

“They are taking away his opportunity to live,” said his wife, Flor Felix. “It’s impossible for us or any family to get that much money.” The family is collecting donations through a website and plans a yard sale this weekend, she said.

The choices are difficult for states that have already cut payments to doctors and hospitals to the bone.

“If we don’t see an economic recovery where state revenues rebound, they’re really going to be very strained on how they can make ends meet,” said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

States may consider lowering payment rates to nursing homes or home health agencies or further reducing payments to doctors, Rowland said.

“The problem here is the program is pretty lean, and payment rates are pretty low,” she said. Patients can’t find care because fewer doctors accept the low payments.

Prescription drug coverage in states is an optional benefit, another possible place to cut, Rowland said. “But if you cut back on people’s psychotropic drugs, is that penny-wise and pound-foolish? Do they end up in institutions where Medicaid pays more for their care?”

In Illinois, late payments became the rule.

Tom Miller closed his pharmacy in rural southern Illinois this summer and is going through bankruptcy, largely because the state was chronically late making Medicaid payments to him. Most of his former customers are in the program.

With the state sometimes months behind in payments, he couldn’t pay his suppliers. Five workers lost their jobs when his business closed.

“You can only fight it for so long,” said Miller, 54. He now works as a pharmacist in a hospital. He misses his old clients, the families he grew to know.

“I was in my third generation. I’ve had moms who had kids. I saw the kids raised, and they had their own children,” he said. As a neighborhood pharmacist, “you’re their friend. You’re family.”

The death panels are right around the corner.  To the extent that they’re not already here right now, as with the case of Francisco Felix, who is being denied life by being denied a liver by Medicaid.

Francisco Felix never stood in front of a death panel; but bureaucrats don’t need you wasting their time with bothersome questions when they decide to let you die a slow and agonizing death due to medical neglect (or maybe you’re fortunate enough to get that pain pill from Obama?).

We told you so.  We told you so.  We told you so.  WE TOLD YOU SO.

As one speaking from the lofty vantage point of one having a one-thousand percent batting average, let me forewarn you Democrats yet again: Someday, when you’re burning in hell for all eternity for your direct participation in the murder of 52 million innocent human beings in America alone through abortion, realize that God is going to turn up the fires a few billion extra degrees for the coming horror that is going to come to this country as a result of your ObamaCare disaster.

Federal Judge Rules ObamaCare Unconstitutional

A federal judge fired a massive shot across the bow of behemoth government run amok over the lives of the people today in ruling key aspects of ObamaCare violate the Constitution.

Federal judge deems part of ObamaCare unconstitutional
By Matthew Boyle – The Daily Caller
12/13/2010

A federal judge in Virginia has determined that the part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul that requires all Americans to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson deemed that part of the law unconstitutional in the first part of what is sure to be a case that will end up in the Supreme Court. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli led the fight in his state.

“I am gratified we prevailed. This won’t be the final round, as this will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, but today is a critical milestone in the protection of the Constitution,” Cuccinelli said in a statement.

Hudson said the part of the law that requires individuals to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional because it “exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.”

The judge focused on a the analogy that Obama and Kathleen Sabelius have repeatedly used (along with the government legal team) that health care was akin to auto insurance, along with the bait-and-switch tactics of Obama repeatedly promising the American people that ObamaCare would not raise their taxes, only to use the argument that ObamaCare actually was a tax when it was conenient.

Let me say this: by the Democrats’ own use of “auto insurance” as their analogy, we have death panels galore.

How many people have been forced to surrender their drivers’ licence or to auto insurance?

Don’t pay your registration fees or your insurance premiums?  Lose your license.  Can’t pass a test?  Lose your license.  Drive under the influence?  Lose your license.

So for all the screaming about how terrible Sarah Palin was for coining the phrase “death panels,” again, by the Democrats very own analogy, we’re going to have death panels galore.  If you don’t dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’, the federal government can take away your healthcare and allow you to die.

So the next time you hear a liberal tell you that health care is like a divers license or auto insurance, go ahead and say, “Alright you Nazis; so it is.”

Conservatives, for their part, have agreed with U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson in saying that ObamaCare is nothing like auto insurance or drivers licenses at all.  For the simple reasons that both auto insurance and drivers licenses are regulated by the STATES, not by the federal government.  And that the federal government is clearly usurping power – again, even with the Democrats’ own analogy – that at best the STATES SHOULD have.  And that, further, an individual is NOT in fact forced to purchase auto insurance or obtain a drivers license; as they can freely choose not to drive.

Or maybe I went to sleep and woke up to jackbooted government police kicking down doors and forcing every American to purchase an auto insurance policy.

And, again, conservatives have been loudly decrying the incredibly deceitful and cynical tactic of promising the American people that ObamaCare is not a tax, and that their taxes won’t go up “one dime,” only to say after it is passed (on the back of a demonstrable lie) that it really was a tax all along, after all.

Do we really want to foment a political system in which flagrent dishonesty with the American people is the best policy?  And the more outrageous the government’s lies, the better the chance they have in advancing their agenda?

Thank God this monstrosity finally hit a roadblock.  I guess in that extremely limited sense, ObamaCare is like driving a car, after all.

Obama Promised Dems Trip To Disneyworld; Failed To Mention It Involved Crashing Plane Into Florida

[The above title derives from a quip made by Newt Gingrich on the Greta Van Susteren program, for what it’s worth].

Unless “hope and change” meant total Democrat annihilation (which it does for me, anyway), I would submit that something went wrong on Obama’s trip to Utopia.

There was a cartoon from months ago that pretty much summarized the election results from November 2:

And the American people – and most certainly conservatives – tried to warn them.  Repeatedly.

Remember Virginia?  When Republican Bob McDonnell won the governorship in a major setback to Obama? Remember  Massachusetts? And the shock defeat by Republican Scott Brown to win Ted Kennedy’s seat? Remember New Jersey?  Where Chris Christie defeated Obama-backed Jon Corzine with independents running away from Democrats to give Republicans the governor’s mansion in the bluest of blue states? Remember all the town halls across the nation?  Where senior citizens were red-faced furious at Democrats for passing ObamaCare? Remember the tea party events across the country? And how they just kept getting bigger and bigger even as the Democrats and the mainstream media first ridiculed them and then demonized them?

Meanwhile, now former House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi assured everyone that Democrats would keep control of the House.  And assured them “for sure.” And daring Republicans to “bring it on” in the process.  And kept assuring.  And then assuring some more.

And it wasn’t just Nancy Pelosi who lived in a bubble.  Lots of prominent Democrats did.  Such as DNC chairman Tim Kaine, who was predicting Democrats would keep the House of Representatives only days ago.

And, of course, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen joined San Fran Nan the very day of the election to loudly assure the world that the Democrats would keep their dominance in the House.

And, even after the admitted shellacking, Barack Obama demonstrated loudly and clearly today that he STILL doesn’t get it.

I don’t know if Obama and Pelosi cared one way or another; but Democrats were slaughtered for the sake of Obama’s incredibly unpopular agenda.  Obama kept using the metaphor of a car and a ditch, but no matter how many “Danger, Bridge Out!” warning signs he passed, he refused to change his course as he drove his party right off a cliff.

It was not just a slaughter; it was a historic slaughter:

WASHINGTON — Republicans rolled up historic gains to seize control of the House on Tuesday, as voters disenchanted with the economy, President Obama and government dealt a strong rebuke to Democrats in every corner of the country.

The GOP ousted Democratic freshmen and influential veterans, including some considered safe just weeks ago. Republicans piled up their biggest House gains since they added 80 seats in 1938: By early Wednesday, they had netted 60 formerly Democratic seats and led in four more. The GOP victory eclipsed the 54-seat pickup by the so-called “revolution” that retook the House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years and the 56-seat Republican gain in 1946.

And it’s actually even worse than that.  Because the most recent counts show that Republicans have seized 64 seats from Democrats.  With more elections still not yet called, that could well add to the number.

What we just witnessed was the biggest pick up by any party in any election since 1932.

Here’s the latest political map.  For you liberals, you are the ones who are now so marginalized you practically might as well not even exist:

I mean, literally, I have more legitimate grounds to deny the existence of liberals than I do the Tooth Fairy right about now.

And just two years ago you so incredibly arrogantly ruled the universe.  And you were lecturing Republicans on the extinction of the Grand Old Party.

You were a ship of fools, captained by even grander fools.

But it gets even worse.  Because we haven’t talked about the governor’s races yet:

Governors-Stunning loss for Democrats
Published in November 3rd, 2010

America changed overnight in a very big way. Based upon election results at this moment, sixty percent of our country will now be led by Republican Governors. That number may grow as a few states with uncertain election results are solidified.

Yesterday, there were 37 Governor’s races and Republicans won 24 of them. Democrats took only nine, Independents took one and three are too close to call at this moment (Connecticut, Minnesota and Vermont).

This is an absolutely stunning loss for Democrats who, prior to the election, held 26 states to the 24 held by Republicans.

The balance of power has shifted and this will impact the 2012 elections as well as redistricting that will occur in each state as a result of the 2010 Census.

But as bad as that is, it gets even worse than that.  We’re talking about complete devastation for Democrats in the state legislatures, where Republicans picked up a never-seen-in-history 680 state legislative seats.  In doing that, they gained majorities in 14 states, and unified majorities (gaining control in both branches) in 26 states.

From the National Journal:

While the Republican gains in the House and Senate are grabbing the most headlines, the most significant results on Tuesday came in state legislatures where Republicans wiped the floor with Democrats.

Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures — the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats picked up 628 seats.

The GOP gained majorities in at least 14 state house chambers. They now have unified control — meaning both chambers — of 26 state legislatures.

That control is a particularly bad sign for Democrats as they go into the redistricting process. If the GOP is effective in gerrymandering districts in many of these states, it could eventually lead to the GOP actually expanding its majority in 2012.

Republicans now hold the redistricting “trifecta” — both chambers of the state legislature and the governorship — in 15 states. They also control the Nebraska governorship and the unicameral legislature, taking the number up to 16. And in North Carolina — probably the state most gerrymandered to benefit Democrats — Republicans hold both chambers of the state legislature and the Democratic governor does not have veto power over redistricting proposals.

It wasn’t just a power shift; it was a historic power shift.  It was a massive repudiation.

Now, for all of that butt-kicking of the Democrats and the Democrat agenda, how did the mainstream media react?  Predictably.

I turned the channel from reliable, trustworthy Fox News to MSNBC and CNN.  It was comical.  From their coverage, you’d think that the entire election consisted in Harry Reid’s, Barbara Boxer’s, and Jerry Brown’s Democrat victories.

Barack Obama’s own Illinous Senate seat will now have a Republican’s butt-print all over it.  That personalizes this ass whipping; Obama couldn’t even hold on to his own seat – even after all the previous shenanigans Democrats tried to pull.  And Republicans snatched at least five other Senate seats from Democrats.  But how about that Harry Reid win?

Laugh, liberals.  Laugh hysterically.  Laugh until you fall down and pass out.

Because you’re butt-kicking is just getting started.  From Politico:

If Senate Democrats think 2010 is a tough cycle, just wait two more years.

They’ll probably hold the Senate majority Tuesday — with a couple of seats to spare, most analysts believe. But 2012 is a different story.

By then, Republicans will be poised to take control of the Senate — with pickup possibilities scattered across the map and a much narrower base of their own to defend.

It’s not simply the lopsided mathematics — with at least 21 Democratic seats on the table in 2012, including two independents who sit with the Democrats, compared with 10 Republicans. It’s where the seats are located.

Start with Democratic seats in three states where President Barack Obama lost in 2008: Nebraska, North Dakota and Montana.

Then go down a list of where Democrats are poised to lose Senate battles this year — Ohio, Florida and Missouri, for example — and Democrats will be right back at it in 2012, defending seats there again.

Throw in some bona fide tossup states — Virginia and New Mexico — and it’s pretty hard not to picture Republicans picking off the handful of seats needed to take control, if Tuesday goes as well for the GOP as experts expect.

For the official record, Republicans won all three of those Senate battles in Ohio, Florida and Missouri.

The really funny thing is that not winning the Senate during a tough economy is actually a blessing in disguise for Republicans – who never had much more than a halfway decent chance at best to capture the Senate this year.

Obama could have run against the Republican-owned Congress, the way Bill Clinton was able to do against Republicans after they took control of both branches in 1994.

Back then, Republicans balanced the budget and reduced the deficit, and Slick Willie took credit for everything good that came along.

Instead, poor one-term Barry will have Harry Reid wrapped around his neck like an albatross in two years.  As all those Republican governors use the power of their offices to make sure he’s a one-term president.  Even as they supervise the redistricting to make it tougher for Democrats to make any kind of a comeback.

The Republican House doesn’t even have to do much, really.  All they need to do is vote on popular measures: the repeal of ObamaCare; permanently extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone; capping spending at 2008 levels; maybe ending the earmark process.  And if Democrats in the Senate don’t pass it, well, doom on the Democrats in the Senate.

I think of it as a beautiful case of poetic justice and dramatic reversal wrapped into two election cycles, a story where Dorothy gets to say to the wicked witch of the West (and that’s Nancy Pelosi, not Christine O’Donnell), “I’ll get you my ugly, and your little messiah too!”

Absolutely everything that the most über-hard-core conservative commentators (such as Rush Limbaugh) have said about Barack Obama has come to pass exactly as they predicted.  The corrupt Chicago community organizer was totally unqualified and unprepared for the presidency, and he has proven to be a total disaster and disgrace to his own political party, along with America.

The worst thing that ever happened to the Democrat Party – to go along with the United States of America – was the election of Barack Obama.  And Republicans aren’t going to let Democrats forget it.  And I’m talking for years to come.

Of All The Democrats Running For Office, NOT ONE OF THEM Admits To Voting For ObamaCare In Ads

There are some major condemnations against ObamaCare in the recent past.  The first major one may have been the announcement by many major corporations that they would have to take billions of dollars in write downs due to the new requirements that were going to be imposed on them.  Given that Obama had promised that businesses were going to love his new health care system, this was bad.  That was made even more glaring when the National Small Business Organization joined the lawsuit against ObamaCare.  Didn’t Obama assure us that small businesses in particular would love his beloved new health care system?

Then there has been the continual trickle of news that now at least 22 states are actively suing the imposition of ObamaCare on them, and a total of 38 are seeking to pass legislation to block its impact on their citizens.  That can’t be good, can it?  And how can this be, given how wonderful ObamaCare is supposed to be?

Then there came the revelations that the central, fundamental promise of ObamaCare was a lie:

Administration Defends Health Law Despite Medicare Report Hiking Nation’s Tab
Published April 23, 2010
FOXNews.com

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday defended the new health insurance law after a report from its own Medicare services agency showed the provisions will increase the nation’s health care tab over the next 10 years instead of bringing costs down.

The sobering assessment by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services concludes what Republicans had warned about during heated debate — that the double-counting of Medicare spending — as both savings and as a means to shore up the debt-ridden government fund for seniors’ health care — means the cost is unrealistic.

The analysis also found that the law falls short of the president’s twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years, or $311 billion, up from the $222 billion previous estimated.

Other studies are confirming that, yes, health care will be more expensive because of Obama’s meddling, and Americans will spend more out of their pockets.

Now getting caught in such a huge, fundamental lie is clearly bad.  But there you have it.

But we STILL haven’t plumbed the depths of the fallout yet.  Because now we’re seeing that not only do the numbers bear out that Democrats lied, but so also does their own actions.

Take this abandonment of central promises:

Dems retreat on health care cost pitch
By BEN SMITH | 8/19/10 4:55 PM EDT  Updated: 8/20/10 3:31 PM EDT

Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and the deficit and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.” […]

Now one of the foremost Democrat experts in heath care, who wrote part of and pushed for and voted for the ObamaCare “reform,” is now saying he doesn’t want anything to do with the monster he helped give birth to.  That’s right, Ron Wyden voted to pass that bill before he decided to try to protect his state from the bill he voted for.

And thus we keep sinking to the bottom of the sewer.  Because now the reality of ObamaCare and the fundamental lies that got this awful, heinous, evil collection of 160 new death panel bureaucracies passed silently scream at us.

Silently because most Democrats aren’t saying anything; they’re just walking away from the despicable new boondoggle they imposed on an American people who never wanted it and loudly said they never wanted it.

There are 231 Democrats running for national office [219 Democrats for the House of Representatives, and 12 Democrat Senators as incumbents], and NOT ONE SINGLE ONE OF THEM IS RUNNING A SINGLE AD ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THEY VOTED FOR OBAMACARE.

9/05/2010
Not one Democrat in House running ads saying they supported Obamacare

Dems are unwilling to run on their votes for Obamacare.

At least five of the 34 House Democrats who voted against their party’s health care reform bill are highlighting their “no” votes in ads back home. By contrast, party officials in Washington can’t identify a single House member who’s running an ad boasting of a “yes” vote — despite the fact that 219 House Democrats voted in favor of final passage in March.

One Democratic strategist said it would be “political malfeasance” to run such an ad now.

Democrats have taken that advice to heart; it appears that no Democratic incumbent — in the House or in the Senate — has run a pro-reform TV ad since April, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ran one.

Most of the Democrats running ads highlighting their opposition to the law are in conservative-leaning districts and considered the most endangered. They’re using their vote against the overhaul as proof of their willingness to buck party leadership and their commitment to watching the nation’s debt. . . . .

Democrats are running away from their own very own signature legislative accomplishment in a matter identical to cockroaches who are running away when the kitchen light is switched on.

You’ve got grim analyses such as this one, you know, by the people who were RIGHT ALL ALONG in saying that ObamaCare would cost FAR MORE than government functionaries said it would all along:

The bottom line is that you will lose your health care under this legislation, if not your job, your country as they bankrupt America, and maybe ultimately your life or the life of a loved one. All that to make dreamy, emotionalized, liberals happy, even though many of them are not happy because the socialism in the bill is not overt enough. Moreover, the promises made to the American people to pass the bill are shown in the study to be thoroughly false. This pattern of calculated deception, however, did not fool the American people, only members of Congress, many of whom will now pay with their jobs as a result.

Now, you can decide for yourself whether all the folks who were wrong before are right now, or whether you should believe a guy like Peter Ferrara who was right, and who says that these people STILL haven’t told you how bad ObamaCare will really be.  Me, I’m going with Pete.

This may be our last chance as a nation.  We either give Republicans enough power (by which I mean control of both the House and the Senate) to repeal and replace ObamaCare, or we may well go the way of the Dodo bird as a law that is so fundamentally terrible that even Democrats refuse to be associated with it begins to eat our nation like cancer.

ObamaCare Increases Health Cost By $311 Billion While Threatening Access To Care

Just in case you didn’t catch it, it’s official: ObamaCare was packaged and sold entirely based on lies.

CMS Study Shows Health Care Law Increases Costs–$311 Billion in 10 Years
By Tom White, on April 23rd, 2010, at 11:43 am

US Senate Morning Briefing

Last night, the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released his long-awaited report on the Democrats’ health care spending bill. The report states, “[W]e estimate that overall national health expenditures under the health reform act would increase by a total of $311 billion during calendar years 2010-2019. . . .” This was an assessment that was requested by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell prior to the final votes on health care in the House, but CMS told Republicans that they couldn’t complete an analysis in time for the vote. Given the report’s findings, it’s easy to see why Democrats decided to rush ahead with a vote before the report could be completed.Reporting on the CMS analysis last night, the AP wrote, “President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law will increase the nation’s health care tab instead of bringing costs down, government economic forecasters concluded Thursday in a sobering assessment of the sweeping legislation. A report by economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department said the health care remake will achieve Obama’s aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million Americans to the coverage rolls. But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president’s twin goal of controlling runaway costs. It also warned that Medicare cuts may be unrealistic and unsustainable, driving about 15 percent of hospitals into the red and ‘possibly jeopardizing access’ to care for seniors.”

But in the run-up to the vote, indeed throughout the year-long debate on health care, Democrats and President Obama repeatedly insisted that their unpopular legislation would control costs and save the government money. In December, President Obama announced, “We agree on reforms that will finally reduce the costs of health care. Families will save on their premiums. Businesses that will see their costs rise if we do nothing will save money now and in the future.” Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) insisted at the beginning of debate in the Senate, “The Republican Leader just a few moments ago says that this bill raises costs. With all due respect to my good friend from Kentucky, that statement is false.” And Democrats repeatedly cited a CBO report saying that if all the Medicare cuts are implemented, the bill could save $130 billion over the next decade. This was pointed to by everyone from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to rank-and-file House Democrats like Ohio Rep. John Boccieri.

But as the AP story explains, “The [CMS] report acknowledged that some of the cost-control measures in the bill — Medicare cuts, a tax on high-cost insurance and a commission to seek ongoing Medicare savings — could help reduce the rate of cost increases beyond 2020. But it held out little hope for progress in the first decade. ‘During 2010-2019, however, these effects would be outweighed by the increased costs associated with the expansions of health insurance coverage,’ wrote Richard S. Foster, Medicare’s chief actuary. ‘Also, the longer-term viability of the Medicare … reductions is doubtful.’”

As Sen. McConnell said when President Obama signed the health care bill, “Most Americans out there aren’t celebrating today. . . . People oppose this bill not because they don’t know what’s in it, but because they know exactly what’s in it. . . . They know you don’t have to slash Medicare by half a trillion dollars to get lower premiums. . . . People know you won’t save money on health care by spending another $2.6 trillion on health care. . . . They know you don’t reduce the deficit by creating a massive new government program that even Democrats have described as a Ponzi scheme. They know you can go a long ways towards doing all these things without creating a brand new entitlement at a time when we can’t even cover the cost of the entitlements we have.”

Once again, studies by neutral observers have shown that Democrats’ claims about their health care bill just do not match reality. This was a flawed bill rushed through because Democrats wanted to “make history.” But Americans know better. At a time of record deficits and debt, this irresponsible health spending bill should be repealed and replaced with legislation that actually addresses health care costs.

All one has to do is look at Obama’s plunging polls in the aftermath of the passage of ObamaCare to verify that the American people did not want and do not want this “boondogglization” of the American health care system.  Polls across the board show Obama’s approval plunging dramatically since health care “reform” was shoved down the nation’s throat: Quinnipiac has Obama’s approval at a lowest-ever-measured 44% – with a majority disapproving of him; top-pollster Rasmussen has Obama at only 47% – with a whopping 52% disapproving of him; and the RCP average has Obama WELL below a 50% approval.  Barack Obama is no longer in any way speaking for or representing the American people.

It turns out this is the same guy who is on tape at least eight times saying all the health care negotiations would all be on C-SPAN – and then he went to closed-door meeting after closed door meeting that resulted in a health care bill that NOBODY knows anything about.  It turns out that this is the same guy who promised he would unite the country in a bipartisan manner – and instead broke that promise and became the most polarizing and divisive president in history.   This is the same guy who said he would NEVER allow health care to pass by the awful partisan reconciliation tactic – and then he did exactly what he promised he wouldn’t do.  This is the guy who repeatedly promised that he wouldn’t tax anyone making less than $250,000 a year – and now everyone knows he’ll break that central, fundamental promise.  This is the same guy who demonized Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for doing what his own chief of staff had just done only the day before.

I can go on.  For example, I can talk about how his administration promised up and down that the $787 billion (subsequently massively upwardly revised to $862 billion) stimulus – which will actually cost $3.27 TRILLION – would keep unemployment under 8%.  Obama sold a massive lie to sell a massive porkulus.  And now we’re paying for a fat pile of lies.

Now we find out that this fundamental liar told yet another massive, fundamental lie.

Now we find out that Barack Obama personally and repeatedly lied to the American people about the cost of his precious boondoggle ObamaCare:

“I pledged that I will not sign health insurance reform — as badly as I think it’s necessary, I won’t sign it if that reform adds even one dime to our deficit over the next decade — and I mean what I say.”

You loathsome, vile LIAR.

You said whatever you thought you needed to say to get the American people to jump into bed with you.  Then you raped them.  And then moved on to the next lie and rape.  And the next lie and rape after that.

Now, you think this is terrible news about the terrible ObamaCare power-grab?  You aint seen NOTHING yet.  Have a gander at this:

Not one of its major programs has gotten started, and already the wheels are starting to come off of Obamacare. The administration’s own actuary reported on Thursday that millions of people could lose their health insurance, that health-care costs will rise faster than they would have if the law hadn’t passed, and that the overhaul will mean that people will have a harder and harder time finding physicians to see them.

The White House is trying to spin the new report from Medicare’s chief actuary Richard Foster as only half bad because it concludes that, while costs will increase, only 23 million people will remain uninsured (instead of 24 million previously estimated).

But looking at the details of Foster’s report shows the many, many danger signs for Obamacare and how many of its promises will be broken:

1. People losing coverage: About 14 million people will lose their employer coverage by 2019, as smaller employers terminate their plans and workers who currently have employer coverage enroll in Medicaid. Half of all seniors on Medicare Advantage could lose their coverage and the extra benefits the plans offer.

2. Huge fines for companies: Businesses will pay $87 billion in penalties in the first five years after the fines trigger in 2014, partly because they can’t afford to offer expensive, government-mandated coverage and partly because some of their employees will apply for taxpayer-subsidized insurance.

3. Higher costs for consumers: Tens of billions of dollars in new fees and excise taxes will be “passed through to health consumers in the form of higher drug and devices prices and higher premiums,” according to Foster. A separate report shows small businesses will be hit hardest.

4. A program created to fail: The new “CLASS Act” long-term-care insurance program will face “a significant risk of failure,” according to Foster. Indeed, he finds, “there is a very serious risk that the problem of adverse selection will make the CLASS program unsustainable.”

5. Spending increases: Under the new law, national health spending will increase by $311 billion over the coming decade. And instead of bending the federal spending curve down, it will move it upward “by a net total of $251 billion” over the next decade.

6. “Free-riders”: An estimated 23 million people will remain uninsured in 2019, roughly 5 million of whom would be undocumented aliens; the remainder would be the 18 million who decline to get coverage and who will pay the penalty.

7. Spending reductions are fiction: Estimated reductions in the growth rate of health spending “may not be fully achievable” because “Medicare productivity adjustments could become unsustainable even within the next ten years, and over time the reductions in the scope of employer-sponsored health insurance could also become an issue.”

8. You can’t keep your doctor: Fifteen percent of all hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers treating Medicare patients could be operating at a loss by 2019, which will “possibly jeopardize access to care for beneficiaries.” Doctors are threatening to drop out of Medicare because cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates mean they can’t even cover their costs.

9. Coverage but no care: A significant portion of those newly eligible for Medicaid will have trouble finding physicians who will see them, and the increased demand for Medicaid services could be difficult to meet.

This is an objective report by administration actuaries that shows this sweeping legislation has serious, serious problems.

And there’s more: Joint Economic Committee Republicans explain in a new report the impact of a rarely mentioned $14.3 billion per year tax on health insurance, effective in 2014. They find this tax will be mostly passed through to consumers in the form of higher premiums for private coverage. It will cost the typical family of four with job-based coverage an additional $1,000 a year in higher premiums and will fall largely, and inequitably, on small businesses and their employees.

States are fighting back. The Florida legislature voted Thursday to place a state constitutional amendment on the ballot that would ban any laws that compel someone to “participate in any health care system.” It requires a 60 percent vote to succeed. The legislation is modeled after the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, which has been introduced or announced in 42 states.

It just makes you want to cry.  Fifteen percent of hospitals are going to close, tens of thousands of doctors will leave medicine, and yet millions of people are going to start swamping the healthcare rolls.  If I wanted to destroy our healthcare system, that’s how I’d do it.

On top of that – something that will crash the system even sooner – is the fact that more and more healthier people will increasingly pay the fines and opt out of ObamaCare, will more and more sick people enter the system.  The result will be a social catastrophe.  Our very worst enemy couldn’t have engineered our downfall better.

Business after business have been and will continue to be writing down billions and billions of dollars in profits to cover the huge costs of ObamaCare.  These are businesses that would have hired workers, only now the skyrocketing costs of paying for ObamaCare for their employees will keep that hiring to an absolute minimum.

Barack Obama proudly and arrogantly said, “You Can Measure America’s Bottom Line By Looking At Caterpillar’s’” – and then he torpedoed Caterpillar’s bottom line.

Unemployment is going to be soaringly high for years – as even the Obama White House acknowledges.  Now you know why.

What’s the result of the Democrats’ idiotic policies?  Ask Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who just told us that sky-high “unemployment is likely to remain unacceptably high for a long time.”

The unemployment rate “is still terribly high and is going to stay unacceptably high for a very long time,” Geithner said.

Of course, if unemployment is going to stay “unacceptably high” for “a very long time,” you’re pretty much accepting it, aren’t you?

Meanwhile, there will be trillions of dollars in additional spending that Obama and the Democrats refused to allow the CBO to count: such as the SIX TRILLION DOLLARS it will cost Americans to buy ObamaCare policies or face fines.

The Titanic wasn’t as big of a disaster as ObamaCare.  If we can’t repeal and replace it, it will bankrupt the country.

States Working To Protect Citizens From ObamaCare

Why is it that Americans overwhelmingly now believe that the federal government is a threat to citizens’ rights???

Washington (CNN) — A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to the 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 has 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.

If ObamaCare is so wonderful and so popular as the Democrats claim, then why is it that the most Democrat state in the nation voted for a Republican who promised to be the 41st vote blocking the ObamaCare boondoggle, and why is it that nearly 70% of the states are trying to protect themselves from it’s abuses of citizens’ rights?

Va OKs 1st bill banning mandated health coverage
By BOB LEWIS (AP)

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia’s General Assembly is the first in the nation to approve legislation that bucks any attempt by President Barack Obama and Congress to implement the national health care overhaul in states like Virginia.

Without debate, the House of Delegates voted 80-17 Wednesday to accept Senate amendments to a bill that supporters say preserves Virginia’s prerogatives as a state.

Thirty-four other legislatures have filed or proposed similar measures rejecting health insurance mandates.

But Virginia’s legislature, scheduled to adjourn Saturday, is the first to finish work on a bill. The measure goes to Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, who plans to sign it.

The measures are advancing nationally as Republicans capitalize on voter discontent over Democratic-backed federal health care reform efforts in Congress.

The Democrats are going to make it a federal crime to live and breathe without buying their health insurance, like mobsters who break your windows and destroy your store if you don’t buy their “insurance.”

It is amazing.  Democrats in Congress and the Obama White House have spent a full year trying to push a massively expensive bill that will destroy our health care system even as states feverishly work to protect themselves from that very same ObamaCare.

States realize that the accounting gimmicks that deceitfully produce a “deficit neutral” bill end up creating the mother of all unfunded mandates for the states to pay.  That means vastly higher state taxes and fees for you.

There’s also a fair chance that you may lose the insurance plan you have as you are shoved into the inferior care provided by Medicaid.  ObamaCare promises to “nudge” approximately one in five Americans who presently aren’t in the Medicaid system into that system (see also here).

For the record, Medicaid is the system for individuals and families with low income and resources.  It is not the best quality care, and it is certainly not the care that the Congress that is forcing this monstrosity down our throats will have.  Republicans offered 11 amendments that would have required Congress to enroll themselves and their families in the plan they were trying to force on everyone else.  The Democrats voted every single one of them down.

Democrat politicians believe they’re better than everyone else.  Their children are better than your children.  Their attitude toward you as regards ObamaCare is “Let them eat dirt.”

Their families are going to continue to get the very best of care, while you and your family find yourselves getting shoved into a health care system designed for the poorest Americans.

The Democrats are playing every imaginable game with the Constitution and the political process to shove this 2,700 page boondoggle down the country’s collective throat.  It looks like the only thing that will protect Americans from the worst White House and Congress in our national history will be the states.

My Big Fat Greek Bailout – And What It Means For America

So Greece is going to get its big fat bailout.

The “Too big to fail” mindset wins yet again.  First it was big union-dominated automakers and high-risk lending institutions.  And now it’s entire countries, starting with Greece.  And after Greece comes Spain and Portugal, and then will come California and a bunch of other mostly decades-long liberal-progressive states like New York and New Jersey.  High taxation and out-of-control spending equal fiscal disaster as states and countries rack up enormous debts that they can never hope to repay.

Here are a couple of headlines for you:

California will go bankrupt

Is California Too Big To Fail?

And you know damn well it is.  California all by itself is the sixth largest economy on the planet.  And the inescapable logic of redistributionism means that the other 49 states are going to have to redistribute their wealth to bail out the People’s Republic of Pelosistan.

Beware Greeks bearing IOUs.  Hell, beware ANYBODY bearing IOUs.

In contrast to everything liberals believe, the higher the tax rates, the lower the revenues that are being collected as businesses relocate to states that DON’T hate them.  This has been proven throughout American economic history, and it is certainly being proven now: the states with the highest taxes are facing the largest revenue shortfalls.

Their understanding of free market capitalist economics comes primarily through the straw man created by Karl Marx, and so they fundamentally misunderstand and distrust the economic system that made America the greatest nation on earth.  They want redistributionism, and someone has to pay for my right to be a nonproductive bon-bon-eating couch potato.  That “someone” ends up being the only people with the resources to invest and create jobs.  But the rich aren’t stupid, and so they shelter their money to avoid the higher taxes.

I mean, even Oprah Winfrey does everything she can to avoid high taxes.  Even MICHAEL MOORE does everything he can to avoid paying more taxes.

And what do we do when the disaster these people created finally comes home to roost?  We bail them out, so they can do it all over again.  It’s called “moral hazard.”  Somebody in power should look it up and then quit doing it.

We keep making this giant ball of stink bigger and bigger and bigger, and we’re all wading through it now, and everything is going to sh*t all around us because our leaders don’t have the courage to simply let losers lose.  We’ve become bailout nation, where the people who had discipline and did things right prop up the reckless so they can continue being reckless until the system crashes.  Or to put it more precisely, until the system crashes bigger and badder the next time around.

Times are going to get harder.  China is announcing that they are dumping US securities in what appears to be an economic war declared against us.  That’s going to make it a lot more expensive for us to keep borrowing.  But the only way we can continue these insane liberal-progressive policies is to keep borrowing and borrowing.

There’s no question that we need to collect more taxes.  But raising rates isn’t the way to collect more taxes.  The Bush tax cuts stimulated an unprecedented 52-consecutive months of economic growth even as it generated MORE tax revenue.  Obama’s going back to “the failed policies of the past” from the Jimmy Carter era are going to create a lot of damage as Democrats refuse to learn the lesson of the luxury tax again and again and again.

There’s also no question we need to dramatically decrease our spending.  And along with that, we need to phase down the boondoggles we’ve created via Social Security (which is now in the red, paying out more than it collects) and Medicare/Medicaid (how does a ONE HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLAR unfunded liability strike you?).

The problem is that the federal government has expanded so far beyond its constitutional limitations that its not even funny – with the lion’s share coming from progressive-Democrat social programs.  The government which was supposed to be limited to defending the country and creating infrastructure is now involved in absolutely everything under the sun.

And Democrats will fight to the death for every single one of these programs.

There’s also the now-typical Democrat demand from the government:

Pay my mortgage.  Fill my gas tank. Buy my car.  Give me free health care.  Feed me.  Change my diapers.

Which means we can’t control our black hole-spending.  Which means we can’t reduce our never-before-seen-in-human-history debts.  Which means that we’re on the same road that Greece is on.  Only no one will be there to bail us out when we collapse.

The only question is how long it takes for us to get there.

All Immoral Democrat Gimmicks Aside, Senate Bill Funds Abortions

The Democrats’ deceit on health care is the most appalling thing I have ever seen.

They slash half a trillion dollars from the Medicare budget; dishonestly dodge the “Doc-fix“; force people to buy insurance in a flagrant abuse of the Constitution; raise taxes on people Obama REPEATEDLY SWORE he would not raise taxes on; and massively raise taxes in what amounts to an unfunded mandate for states across the board (well, except for Nebraska.  You get to pay their tab).  Not to mention they play every gimmick imaginable to create the illusion that the bill is “deficit neutral” so they can get a favorable CBO score.

Obama and Democrats – who demonized Republicans – promised that they would have the most open and transparent administration in history.  But they have been the most closed and opaque administration in history.  Obama promised he would put the health care care debate on C-SPAN for all to watch:

President Obama, “But what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”

Mind you, as Democrat National Committee Chairman Howard Dean pointed out, insurance companies have recently received all kinds of benefits from the Democrats behind closed doors.  Obama’s Democrats have become the people that Obama most fearmongered us about while on the campaign trail.

And in fact this has been such a secretive, closed-door, underhanded process that even many senior Democrats have publicly acknowledged being kept in the dark.

And we’ve literally got the chief executive of C-SPAN begging to cover the debate even as Democrats burrow the process even deeper into the underground sewers where they seem to live now.

These are fundamentally dishonest people who want to seize control of your ability to make medical decisions for yourself and your loved ones.

And we find out that even the “good” or “moderate” Democrats are bad.  Ben Nelson sold his vote – to the red-faced outrage of his own state – while dishonestly claiming he had protected taxpayer funds from being used to fund abortion.

And we find that that’s a lie, too.  Abortion IS funded by this bill, as even Democrats are openly acknowledging now (at least now that they got the vote they wanted).  Everything these Democrats are telling us is lies.

Kathleen Sebelius Admits, Covers Up Abortion Funding in Health Care Measure

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 22, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is getting attention for an interview yesterday in which she essentially admits that the American public would be forced to pay for abortions under the Senate health are bill and then relies on accounting gimmicks to suggests that’s not the case.

Sebelius spoke with BlogHer interviewer Morra Aarons-Mele yesterday and praised the new abortion language the Senate adopted in Harry Reid’s manager’s amendment.

The language, submitted by Sen. Ben Nelson in conjunction with Sen. Bob Casey and pro-abortion Sens. Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray, opens the door to massive abortion funding.

“I would say that the Senate language, which was negotiated by Senators Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray, who are very strong defenders of women’s health services and choices for women, take a big step forward from where the House left it with the Stupak amendment,” the pro-abortion Obama administration official said.

Sebelius said she thinks the language does a “good job making sure there are choices for women, making sure there are going to be some plan options, and making sure that while public funds aren’t used.”

She added: “That would be an accounting procedure, but everybody in the exchange would do the same thing, whether you’re male or female, whether you’re 75 or 25, you would all set aside a portion of your premium that would go into a fund, and it would not be earmarked for anything, it would be a separate account that everyone in the exchange would pay.”

“It is a bit confusing, but it’s really an accounting that would apply across the board and not just to women, and certainly not just to women who want to choose abortion coverage,” Sebelius concluded.

Ed Morrissey, a HotAir blogger, noticed the interview and pointed out how Sebelius essentially admitted everyone would pay into the exchange but denied that public funds would be used for abortions.

“What constitutes the notion of ‘public funds?'” he asked. “If the government forces us to pay into a fund, and then controls the distribution of those funds, are those funds not ‘public?'”

“Sebelius praises the abortion-funding language in the Reid bill, as it maintains a flow of funds for abortion coverage that everyone — and she means everyone — supplies,” Morrissey adds.

Morrissey says the health care bill’s system of government funding of abortion is “only confusing if you bought Ben Nelson’s dodge that Reid had changed the abortion-funding language in any significant way.”

“If the government forces it citizens to pay into premium exchanges and then controls the distribution of that money, then it becomes a public fund in any interpretation. That’s especially true if its intent is to be a slush fund for bureaucrats to apply to whatever purpose they see fit,” he concludes.

Sebelius could eventually play a major role in abortion funding because of the Mikulski amendment, which makes it so the Obama administration can define abortion as “preventative care” and force insurance companies to pay for them.

So that’s how the Democrat’s prevent public funding to pay for abortion.  They dishonestly, with clear malicious intent, lie and hide behind bureaucratic gimmickry to not just use public money to pay for abortions while denying their doing it, but to go for broke in forcing public money in for abortions in the guise of “preventative care.”

Abortion is an incredibly important subject.  And how it is treated is vital to the entire health care process.  And to dishonestly pretend one thing while doing another is a glaring demonstration of how profoundly deceitful and disingenuous Democrats have become.

This outrage violates the American spirit and is yet another liberal fascist tyranny.

Thomas Jefferson put it best:

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” –Thomas Jefferson

I believe abortion is a moral crime.  I believe that abortion results in the unjustified homicide of an innocent human being.

And to go even further, I believe this health care bill constitutes the socialist statist takeover of the most important and sacred 1/6th of our economy.  I believe that this bill will all-too soon result in medical rationing, and the death by medical neglect of millions of innocent human beings to resolve the next budget crisis.

And according to every single major poll, most Americans agree with me.

But it doesn’t matter to Democrats.  They see an opportunity to redefine America and make it something more far more akin to Karl Marx and Chairman Mao than to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.