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by SitasMom on 11 June 2009 - 17:06
What If Obama's Out of His Mind?
http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-crazy-0709
Seriously. And don't act as if you haven't wondered. Because if we ask nothing else about our presidents, we should ask if they're madmen.
What if he's crazy? Do we trust him, even though he's not talking amiably to the empty air? Are we comfortable having him around, even though he's the only one not playing with his toes in the punch bowl? Do we just ignore him, over there in the corner of the room, talking about the fact that there's not enough food, and that the sink in the kitchen is backing up, and that the fire in the laundry room is getting out of control, and that there's a hole in the floorboards where the stove just fell through while all the rest of us are worrying about the giant carnivorous bat-creatures — the ones only we can see — that are waiting to come swooping in through the windows if we dare open them to let a little fresh air into the place? If the village is full of idiots, what do you call the guy who has to sit on the wall and get the dung flung in his direction?
Listen to him. He's talking in what seems to be a glossolalic deluge of issues. One plan a week, each thrown out there while we're still digesting the previous one. He's moving too fast for us to keep up with him. He's talking a private language, to himself, like crazy people do, because he certainly can't be talking to us, his strange, atrophied people, our capacity for large projects and great achievement, let alone for the participation in enlightened self-government that such projects and achievements require, something safely kept reserved for HBO historical miniseries. The muscles have gone slack, the nerve endings gone dead. He's talking about phantoms, about ghosts, about things that aren't really there. He's speaking in tongues is what he's doing.
It took a county commissioner from Ohio to convince me. It is important to note here that county commissioners are of a lower political phylum than most other politicians. They do not walk entirely upright across the savanna, and their political thumbs are not necessarily opposable. As witness Mike Kilburn, a commissioner in Warren County in Ohio. In April, the county was supposed to receive $373,000 in federal stimulus money from President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan. This money was meant to go to the laudable purpose of buying buses and vans for the rural communities. The Warren County Board of Commissioners turned down the money, and Kilburn announced, with a curious kind of pride, "I'll let Warren County go broke before taking any of Obama's filthy money."
Until that moment, I didn't fully realize how deeply what Obama's been trying to do had penetrated the entire country, and how deeply it had sunk into the lizard brain that had controlled American society for the previous eight years. On January 20, Barack Obama became president of a deranged nation. He did so apparently taking no notice of the fact that a good portion of the country, a country that otherwise repeatedly voiced its support for him in poll after poll after poll, continued to be completely out of its mind. He was calm and reasoned, and he spoke in measured tones about the challenges he and the nation were facing. And then he seemed to go manic on us.
by SitasMom on 11 June 2009 - 17:06
Early this year, he put together an economic team full of Clintonian retreads and fashioned an economic plan that somehow joined John Maynard Keynes and Charles Schwab, arguing for economic stimulus spending while simultaneously hiring some overfed foxes — Larry Summers? Again? Is there a hiring hall somewhere for these people where they all sit around and wait for administrations to change? — to watch a chicken coop that their own economic philosophies helped burn to the ground. He went to Europe and wowed the crowds. He scored the biggest victory won by an American president over pirates since Thomas Jefferson. He got his kids a dog.
One week in early April, he got up before the country and said that it was time for comprehensive reform of the immigration laws, an issue guaranteed to inflame the passions of a goodly number of his fellow citizens to no good effect. A week later, he made a pitch for high-speed rail transportation. He went to Europe to mend fences, and he went to Latin America and told them that it's time to build bridges again, even to Cuba. He'll be on to health-care reform any day now. There isn't a single major public issue of the past twenty years that he hasn't at least addressed, and he's acted on most of them. At the same time, he shifted his promise to reinstate the ban on assault weapons to the back burner, and he was noticeably dilatory on the subject of the torture that had been carried out under the administration prior to his. If it's possible to move judiciously and precipitously at the same time, Obama managed to find a way to do it.
And what happened? Well, he got a lot of what he asked for, but he did so in the same deranged country out onto which he gazed in the third week in January, so nobody was entirely sure what had been accomplished. It all went by too fast. He was asking for feats of long-term memory in a country with a nasty case of ADD. By the time he was talking about immigration and supertrains, the political culture was still trying to figure out what he was up to with his economic plan. The putative opposition, the Republican party, had gone out of what was left of its mind. On April 15, all around the country, there was an inchoate outburst of public disapproval. There were caricatures of him dressed as Hitler and as Lenin, which is a considerable, if utterly ahistorical, parlay. There was the spectacle of thousands of lower-middle-class people making the noise of hundreds and expressing outrage that Obama intended to raise the marginal tax rate on people making more than $250,000 a year to somewhere around where it was during Ronald Reagan's second term. It was a pathetically thin if noisy spasm of ill-conceived outrage. And then, at last, there was Commissioner Kilburn, acting as though he were being asked to accept a briefcase full of unmarked hundreds from Pablo Escobar instead of being asked to take some of his state's own federal tax dollars back in order to make sure his elderly constituents had an easier time getting to the Wal-Mart.
That's when it became clear what Obama had done. By acting so quickly on so many things, he had forced upon his political opposition a kind of instant obsolescence. He had arranged things so that the country could look at the contortions of the lizard brain in comparison with the frenzy of political activity, and those contortions looked tepid and ineffectual, something out of a different and slower time. Say what you will about the policy implications of seeming to do everything at once. Politically, it came onto his opponents like Stonewall Jackson's soldiers pouring out of the forest at Chancellorsville. The basic, important subtext to what so bothered Commissioner Kilburn and so convinced me was that, Jesus, this guy's liable to do anything. In a radically different context, Richard Nixon once called this the "madman" strategy.
One week in early April, he got up before the country and said that it was time for comprehensive reform of the immigration laws, an issue guaranteed to inflame the passions of a goodly number of his fellow citizens to no good effect. A week later, he made a pitch for high-speed rail transportation. He went to Europe to mend fences, and he went to Latin America and told them that it's time to build bridges again, even to Cuba. He'll be on to health-care reform any day now. There isn't a single major public issue of the past twenty years that he hasn't at least addressed, and he's acted on most of them. At the same time, he shifted his promise to reinstate the ban on assault weapons to the back burner, and he was noticeably dilatory on the subject of the torture that had been carried out under the administration prior to his. If it's possible to move judiciously and precipitously at the same time, Obama managed to find a way to do it.
And what happened? Well, he got a lot of what he asked for, but he did so in the same deranged country out onto which he gazed in the third week in January, so nobody was entirely sure what had been accomplished. It all went by too fast. He was asking for feats of long-term memory in a country with a nasty case of ADD. By the time he was talking about immigration and supertrains, the political culture was still trying to figure out what he was up to with his economic plan. The putative opposition, the Republican party, had gone out of what was left of its mind. On April 15, all around the country, there was an inchoate outburst of public disapproval. There were caricatures of him dressed as Hitler and as Lenin, which is a considerable, if utterly ahistorical, parlay. There was the spectacle of thousands of lower-middle-class people making the noise of hundreds and expressing outrage that Obama intended to raise the marginal tax rate on people making more than $250,000 a year to somewhere around where it was during Ronald Reagan's second term. It was a pathetically thin if noisy spasm of ill-conceived outrage. And then, at last, there was Commissioner Kilburn, acting as though he were being asked to accept a briefcase full of unmarked hundreds from Pablo Escobar instead of being asked to take some of his state's own federal tax dollars back in order to make sure his elderly constituents had an easier time getting to the Wal-Mart.
That's when it became clear what Obama had done. By acting so quickly on so many things, he had forced upon his political opposition a kind of instant obsolescence. He had arranged things so that the country could look at the contortions of the lizard brain in comparison with the frenzy of political activity, and those contortions looked tepid and ineffectual, something out of a different and slower time. Say what you will about the policy implications of seeming to do everything at once. Politically, it came onto his opponents like Stonewall Jackson's soldiers pouring out of the forest at Chancellorsville. The basic, important subtext to what so bothered Commissioner Kilburn and so convinced me was that, Jesus, this guy's liable to do anything. In a radically different context, Richard Nixon once called this the "madman" strategy.
by SitasMom on 11 June 2009 - 17:06
How to Stop Socialized Health Care
Five arguments Republicans must make
By KARL ROVE
It was a sobering breakfast with one of the smartest Republicans on Capitol Hill. We can fix a lot of bad stuff President Barack Obama might do, he told me. But if Mr. Obama signs into law a "public option," government-run insurance program as part of health-care reform we won't be able to undo the damage.
I'd go the Republican member of Congress one further: If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state. To prevent this from happening, there are five arguments Republicans must make.
The first is it's unnecessary. Advocates say a government-run insurance program is needed to provide competition for private health insurance. But 1,300 companies sell health insurance plans. That's competition enough. The results of robust private competition to provide the Medicare drug benefit underscore this. When it was approved, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $74 billion a year by 2008. Nearly 100 providers deliver the drug benefit, competing on better benefits, more choices, and lower prices. So the actual cost was $44 billion in 2008 -- nearly 41% less than predicted. No government plan was needed to guarantee competition's benefits.
Second, a public option will undercut private insurers and pass the tab to taxpayers and health providers just as it does in existing government-run programs. For example, Medicare pays hospitals 71% and doctors 81% of what private insurers pay.
Who covers the rest? Government passes the bill for the outstanding balance to providers and families not covered by government programs. This cost-shifting amounts to a forced subsidy. Families pay about $1,800 more a year for someone else's health care as a result, according to a recent study by Milliman Inc. It's also why many doctors limit how many Medicare patients they take: They can afford only so much charity care.
Fixing prices at less than market rates will continue under any public option. Sen. Edward Kennedy's proposal, for example, has Washington paying providers what Medicare does plus 10%. That will lead to health providers offering less care.
Third, government-run health insurance would crater the private insurance market, forcing most Americans onto the government plan. The Lewin Group estimates 70% of people with private insurance -- 120 million Americans -- will quickly lose what they now get from private companies and be forced onto the government-run rolls as businesses decide it is more cost-effective for them to drop coverage. They'd be happy to shift some of the expense -- and all of the administration headaches -- to Washington. And once the private insurance market has been dismantled it will be gone.
Fourth, the public option is far too expensive. The cost of Medicare -- the purest form of a government-run "public choice" for seniors -- will start exceeding its payroll-tax "trust fund" in 2017. The Obama administration estimates its health reforms will cost as much as $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. It is no coincidence the Obama budget nearly triples the national debt over that same period.
Medicare and Medicaid cost much more than estimated when they were adopted. One reason is there's no competition for these government-run insurance programs. In the same way, Americans can expect a public option to cost far more than the Obama administration's rosy estimates.
Fifth, the public option puts government firmly in the middle of the relationship between patients and their doctors. If you think insurance companies are bad, ima
Five arguments Republicans must make
By KARL ROVE
It was a sobering breakfast with one of the smartest Republicans on Capitol Hill. We can fix a lot of bad stuff President Barack Obama might do, he told me. But if Mr. Obama signs into law a "public option," government-run insurance program as part of health-care reform we won't be able to undo the damage.
I'd go the Republican member of Congress one further: If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state. To prevent this from happening, there are five arguments Republicans must make.
The first is it's unnecessary. Advocates say a government-run insurance program is needed to provide competition for private health insurance. But 1,300 companies sell health insurance plans. That's competition enough. The results of robust private competition to provide the Medicare drug benefit underscore this. When it was approved, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $74 billion a year by 2008. Nearly 100 providers deliver the drug benefit, competing on better benefits, more choices, and lower prices. So the actual cost was $44 billion in 2008 -- nearly 41% less than predicted. No government plan was needed to guarantee competition's benefits.
Second, a public option will undercut private insurers and pass the tab to taxpayers and health providers just as it does in existing government-run programs. For example, Medicare pays hospitals 71% and doctors 81% of what private insurers pay.
Who covers the rest? Government passes the bill for the outstanding balance to providers and families not covered by government programs. This cost-shifting amounts to a forced subsidy. Families pay about $1,800 more a year for someone else's health care as a result, according to a recent study by Milliman Inc. It's also why many doctors limit how many Medicare patients they take: They can afford only so much charity care.
Fixing prices at less than market rates will continue under any public option. Sen. Edward Kennedy's proposal, for example, has Washington paying providers what Medicare does plus 10%. That will lead to health providers offering less care.
Third, government-run health insurance would crater the private insurance market, forcing most Americans onto the government plan. The Lewin Group estimates 70% of people with private insurance -- 120 million Americans -- will quickly lose what they now get from private companies and be forced onto the government-run rolls as businesses decide it is more cost-effective for them to drop coverage. They'd be happy to shift some of the expense -- and all of the administration headaches -- to Washington. And once the private insurance market has been dismantled it will be gone.
Fourth, the public option is far too expensive. The cost of Medicare -- the purest form of a government-run "public choice" for seniors -- will start exceeding its payroll-tax "trust fund" in 2017. The Obama administration estimates its health reforms will cost as much as $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. It is no coincidence the Obama budget nearly triples the national debt over that same period.
Medicare and Medicaid cost much more than estimated when they were adopted. One reason is there's no competition for these government-run insurance programs. In the same way, Americans can expect a public option to cost far more than the Obama administration's rosy estimates.
Fifth, the public option puts government firmly in the middle of the relationship between patients and their doctors. If you think insurance companies are bad, ima
by Elkoorr on 11 June 2009 - 18:06
Gosh, dont you have any dogs to train? Seems like every day you post some kind of political fency on here.
by beetree on 11 June 2009 - 18:06
SitasMom, careful there, your zeal is showing, we might not have to worry about Obama's sanity, but rather your own! 
You are worrying this topic to death, just like a dog with a bone! Give it, (US) a break. please! I can't be bothered reading the missives you are exploiting here, to tell the truth. It feels too much like work, rather than a diversion. JMHO
You are worrying this topic to death, just like a dog with a bone! Give it, (US) a break. please! I can't be bothered reading the missives you are exploiting here, to tell the truth. It feels too much like work, rather than a diversion. JMHO
by Dogs Rules on 11 June 2009 - 19:06
You people complaining about not wanting to hear the truth but go on about your life and let someone else care or someone else vote or give your opinion that is what Obama is hoping that no one will take notice at the plan to change this country to socialism by the time some of you wake up it will be too late. Glad someone is paying attention to his agendas it is about time!
by Two Moons on 11 June 2009 - 19:06
Isn't this the third thread on this topic?
Its like a feeding frenzy.
And just think, people want to talk about dogs.......
LOL.
It rained here last night, a real toad strangler, I bet I have muddy pups.
I'll try to get some pictures if its worth a look.
You guys carry on, your doing so well.
See if you can convince Obama to give all of us some of the money he's been printing out before its all gone.
What happened to talking care of the people?
Moons.
Its like a feeding frenzy.
And just think, people want to talk about dogs.......
LOL.
It rained here last night, a real toad strangler, I bet I have muddy pups.
I'll try to get some pictures if its worth a look.
You guys carry on, your doing so well.
See if you can convince Obama to give all of us some of the money he's been printing out before its all gone.
What happened to talking care of the people?
Moons.
by yellowrose of Texas on 11 June 2009 - 19:06
DOG RULES: YOU JUST HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD......GLAD YOU HAVE A HAMMER.......
by beetree on 11 June 2009 - 19:06
We're paying attention, just not cramming away on Obama, with every breath down every throat. A breath of fresh air, <gasp>, is that too much to ask? Obama ain't going anywhere, too fast, folks. Why not let this one brew a little. Don't you think all your conversations will change dramatically, depending on who wins the IRAN election?
by Tngsd on 12 June 2009 - 01:06
This letter you are about to read was written by a 4th grade teacher this past
week. She even gave the world her telephone and fax numbers.. We are in
dire need of more true American citizens who are proud of OUR United States
of America. WAKE UP AMERICA . . . please . . . before it is too late!
April 27, 2009
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington , DC 20500
Mr. Obama:
I have had it with you and your administration, sir. Your conduct on your
recent trip overseas has convinced me that you are not an adequate
representative of the United States of America collectively or of me personally.
You are so obsessed with appeasing the Europeans and the Muslim world that
you have abdicated the responsibilities of the President of the United States of
America. You are responsible to the citizens of the United States.
You are not responsible to the peoples of any other country on earth. I personally
resent that you go around the world apologizing for the United States telling
Europeans that we are arrogant and do not care about their status in the world.
Sir, what do you think the First World War and the Second World War were all about
if not the consideration of the peoples of Europe? Are you brain dead ?
What do you think the Marshall Plan was all about?
Do you not understand or know the history of the 20th century? Where do you get off
telling a Muslim country that the United States does not consider itself a Christian country?
Have you not read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States?
This country was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and the principles governing this country,
at least until you came along, come directly from this heritage. Do you not understand this?
Your bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia is an affront to all Americans. Our President does
not bow down to anyone, let alone the king of Saudi Arabia. You don't show Great Britain,
our best and one of our oldest allies, the respect they deserve yet you bow down to the king
of Saudi Arabia . How dare you, sir! How dare you!
You can't find the time to visit the graves of our greatest generation because you don't want
to offend the Germans but make time to visit a mosque in Turkey . You offended our dead
and every veteran when you give the Germans more respect than the people who saved the
German people from themselves. What's the matter with you?
I am convinced that you and the members of your administration have the historical and
intellectual depth of a mud puddle and should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you. You are
so self-righteously offended by the big bankers and the American automobile manufacturers
yet do nothing about the real thieves in this situation, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, Franklin Raines,
Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and the Freddie Mac bonuses. What do you intend
to do about them? Anything? I seriously doubt it.
What about the U.S. House members passing out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members -
on top of the $2.5 million in automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves? I understand
the average House aide got a 17% bonus. I took a 5% cut in my pay to save jobs with my employer.
You haven't said anything about that. Who authorized that? I surely didn't!
Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-
month period, that's $45 million more than the AIG bonuses. In fact, Fannie and Freddie executives
have already been awarded $51 million - not a bad take. Who authorized tha
week. She even gave the world her telephone and fax numbers.. We are in
dire need of more true American citizens who are proud of OUR United States
of America. WAKE UP AMERICA . . . please . . . before it is too late!
April 27, 2009
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington , DC 20500
Mr. Obama:
I have had it with you and your administration, sir. Your conduct on your
recent trip overseas has convinced me that you are not an adequate
representative of the United States of America collectively or of me personally.
You are so obsessed with appeasing the Europeans and the Muslim world that
you have abdicated the responsibilities of the President of the United States of
America. You are responsible to the citizens of the United States.
You are not responsible to the peoples of any other country on earth. I personally
resent that you go around the world apologizing for the United States telling
Europeans that we are arrogant and do not care about their status in the world.
Sir, what do you think the First World War and the Second World War were all about
if not the consideration of the peoples of Europe? Are you brain dead ?
What do you think the Marshall Plan was all about?
Do you not understand or know the history of the 20th century? Where do you get off
telling a Muslim country that the United States does not consider itself a Christian country?
Have you not read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States?
This country was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and the principles governing this country,
at least until you came along, come directly from this heritage. Do you not understand this?
Your bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia is an affront to all Americans. Our President does
not bow down to anyone, let alone the king of Saudi Arabia. You don't show Great Britain,
our best and one of our oldest allies, the respect they deserve yet you bow down to the king
of Saudi Arabia . How dare you, sir! How dare you!
You can't find the time to visit the graves of our greatest generation because you don't want
to offend the Germans but make time to visit a mosque in Turkey . You offended our dead
and every veteran when you give the Germans more respect than the people who saved the
German people from themselves. What's the matter with you?
I am convinced that you and the members of your administration have the historical and
intellectual depth of a mud puddle and should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you. You are
so self-righteously offended by the big bankers and the American automobile manufacturers
yet do nothing about the real thieves in this situation, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, Franklin Raines,
Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and the Freddie Mac bonuses. What do you intend
to do about them? Anything? I seriously doubt it.
What about the U.S. House members passing out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members -
on top of the $2.5 million in automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves? I understand
the average House aide got a 17% bonus. I took a 5% cut in my pay to save jobs with my employer.
You haven't said anything about that. Who authorized that? I surely didn't!
Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-
month period, that's $45 million more than the AIG bonuses. In fact, Fannie and Freddie executives
have already been awarded $51 million - not a bad take. Who authorized tha
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