A very inconvenient question.

First, a short video with an important message. After that, a very inconvenient question.



Nothing disturbs me more than the attacks on the young people of this country. I have found the "sex offender" laws being applied to young people absurd, creating life-long victims of the sex hysteria by branding kids as sex offenders for what used to be rightfully seen as fairly normal activity. And the recent spate of suicides of gay youth, as a result of constant bullying, has been particularly disturbing. I certainly have been a vocal opponent of the loathsome Right-wing anti-gay agenda being pushed by the Republicans and the knuckle-dragging Christian fundamentalists.

But here is a thought that will disturb many of my friends on the Left, who agree with my sentiments.

Let us imagine the same scenario that is taking place today but let us pretend it is taking place during the administration of a Republican president.

There is a push to repeal DADT, but the Republican President refuses to give it any support. He drags the process out in ways meant to delay the repeal in the hopes it will shore us his crumbling approval ratings. Similarly this Republican President is a public opponent of marriage equality for gay people. If pressed, this Republican will say that gay people are welcomed citizens of the country and should be respected, but in practice, on the two main issues effecting gay people, his actions put him clearly in the camp of those who denigrate and insult gay people.

During this period, under this fantasy Republican, a spat of suicides of gay teens takes place. Many people start recognizing how politics is helping send a message to gay youth that they simply aren't as good as their fellow citizens. Hell, even the Republican president is telling them they are not yet worth to serve in the military, if that is their desire, and that they certainly should not have their relationship recognized on equal terms with that of their heterosexual siblings.

Let us literally imagine a scenario where instead of Obama in the White House, we have someone like Hillbilly Huckabee instead. But Hillbilly Huck otherwise takes the same stances as the current president.

Many on the Left, have made the same point that I have: that the message of inequality that is preached from fundamentalist pulpits, and from the political podiums of this country, enable the bullies and encourages them, while simultaneously sending the message to gay youth that they simply aren't as worthy as other kids.

So, here is the question: if a Republican president were acting this way, during a similar disturbing crisis of suicides among gay youth, would the Left be more vocal in condemning the presidents role as enabler-in-chief than they are now, with Obama as president?

How Obama and the Democrats Saved DADT

Don't Ask, Don't Tell should have been dead by now. That it isn't is testimony to the fact that Barack Obama has actively worked to scuttle measures to end the policy. His claims that he would abolish DADT were a campaign lie, not his intentions.

Consider that Obama has always had it in his power, as Commander-in-Chief of the military, to abolish the policy excluding gay people from the military. Truman abolished racial segregation by his orders and Obama could have done the same thing—had he wanted to do so.

The measure to abolish DADT only came up in Congress because House members wanted to get rid of it. The White House did not want the measure introduced and did nothing to help it pass.

Obama continued to try to ignore the matter entirely. Outside pressure got the measure introduced into the Senate. At this point repeal seemed a sure thing. There were more than a enough votes to repeal the measure. There were enough Republicans in support of repeal that it should have been a cake walk. And, had the measure been put up to a straight vote it would have been repealed.

But now the Democratic leadership, in the form of Senator Harry Reid, came up with a way to push pro-repeal Republicans into voting against the repeal.

Instead of a straight-up vote the measure was rigged to prevent the vote. And many in the normally pro-Democratic gay community have figured this out. Jim Burroway, at the gay news site Box Turtle Bulletin, wrote "we cannot forget that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rigged the process in order to squander the votes that were already there to break the filibuster. In failing to break the filibuster, Reid got what he wanted..." In other words, Reid wanted DADT to fail and he wanted it to fail in a way that he could blame on Republicans.

Wayne Beeson, at Truth Wins Out, reported that Alexander Nicholson, from Servicemembers United, the largest group of gay military personnel, "wondered if Reid was intentionally sabotaging the bill." Nicholson explains how Reid sabotaged the vote to guarantee failure:

Just more than 60 votes had been lined up to break a filibuster on (the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA) and allow the legislation to move forward for debate, amendments and a final vote before the Senate adjourns for yet another month-and-a-half-long recess. That was until Sen. Reid announced he was going to use his status as Senate Majority Leader to block the minority’s customary ability to also offer their amendments to the massive annual defense-spending bill.

This unusual and controversial move by Sen. Reid predictably enraged all Republicans, including the few who were previously prepared to help break the filibuster and allow a repeal-inclusive NDAA to move forward. And who can blame them? This isn’t a very fair move on Sen. Reid’s part, and it wasn’t a very fair move at points in the past when Republicans did it either.

Republicans, who supported repeal, publicly said that they had to vote against the measure because of Reid's dirty trick. And while Reid was doing what was possible to stop the measure from passing, the White House did absolutely nothing to try to pass the measure. In spite of Obama's campaign promises the reality was that he was, once again, refusing to do anything to repeal the measure.

Worse yet, Obama's recent appointee to run the Marine Corps made a visit to Congress where he urged them to vote against repeal.

Jim Burroway, one of the more perceptive writers in the gay community, wrote:

...[A]nyone with any powers of observation over the circumstances under which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid brought the bill to the floor cannot reasonably escape the conclusion that the filibuster suits his political purposes as well, as he and many other Senate Democrats struggle to hold onto their seats in tight mid-term campaigns. To not recognize that what happened yesterday was nothing but political theater, and that all the participants came away with something they wanted going into the final stretch of the campaign season — well let’s just say that just because Schoolhouse Rock didn’t cover political theater, it doesn’t mean it’s not an important byproduct of the legislative process, even if (or especially if) a bill fails to become a law. And in this case, that nasty byproduct was more important than actually doing the horse-trading it takes to pass the bill itself.

I think Burroway is right. The optimal thing for Democrats was to create the appearance of repeal without actually succeeding. The effort was supposed to shore up their support in the gay community as the only major party willing to fight for equality of rights. But, if the measure passed, it would just give theocratic Republicans another thing to bitch about. Given that the Democrats are already in trouble, due to their ramming through Obama's health care debacle, they didn't want to hand another issue to the loony Right to scream about. But they needed the measure to fail because of the Republicans.

And the Republicans didn't mind playing along because they want to reassure the religious fanatics who control the GOP that they are still doing the "will of the Lord" by legislatively bashing gay people, the way Jesus wants.

But there is one loose end out there: the court ruling that said DADT was invalid. U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips declared the law unconstitutional and she said she intended to issue an injuction restricting the federal government from enforcing the law.

Now, if Obama really wanted repeal, he could say "thank you, very much" and plead that the judge ruled and he had to obey. But Obama doesn't want repeal. At best he doesn't want repeal now. Instead his Justice Department has filed a motion asking "that Phillips refrain from applying her ruling nationally, or to the military overseas. Instead, the Department of Justice argued that the immediate effect of her decision should be to prohibit the military from expelling openly gay service members who belong to the Log Cabin Republicans."

Really! I'm not making this shit up. Obama's officials are saying that since the Log Cabin Republican brought the successful lawsuit to declare DADT unconstitutional then the ruling should only apply to members of that group. Gay Democrats, who stupidly campaigned for this clown, can, in legal terms, go fuck themselves. One of the most loyal groups to Obama has been the gay community and this is how he rewards them. Everything this man does reeks of a one-term wonder.

He has pissed off the majority of Americans and now he is alienating the one group that would have stood by him, no matter how incompetent he has been, if he just delivered on a simple promise: repeal DADT. Considering that a majority of voters support repeal, it was a safe bet. But Obama had his eyes on the November votes and he didn't want to give the Right another issue. But, considering how hard Obama has worked to make the Republicans look appealing to voters, what more harm could he have done?

The Obama administration told the court: "A court should not compel...an immediate cessation of the 17-year-old policy without regard for any effect such an abrupt change might have on the military operations, particularly at a time when the military is engaged in combat operations and other demanding military activities around the globe." Thanks for reminding us of another promise Obama reneged on.

The only thing Obama fought for was legislation meant to destroy private medical insurance over the long run. The few good things he promised are the things he has actively prevented from changing. He has not ended the wars, in fact he is now using the fact that he failed to keep that promise as a justification for keeping DADT.

In a comedic response to Obama's active betrayal of the gay community the Libertarian Party is now making a bigger effort to attract gay voters. Yet the Party keeps promoting the bozo, Wayne Root, a cultural conservative, as their clown prince for the nomination. It wasn't bad enough that they previously nominated anti-gay Republican Bob Barr as their presidential candidate, but they had to cement the tragedy by making Root their VP candidate—not that they could have put forward a reasonable candidate otherwise. The main alternative to Root and Barr would have been a disaster as well.

The fact is that the Libertarian Party just doesn't get what is going on. One day they want to be Republican-lites pushing a "tea party" image and the next day they want to appeal to gay voters. They have not been consistently pro-liberty and are now too closely tied to the anti gay Right to pull gay voters in their direction. These days the LP is having a hard time attracting even gay libertarians.

By the numbers: what the polls show.

Democrats to lose big time

The latest poll data shows the Obama-led Democrats will suffer as badly as did the Bush-led Republicans. Obama has proven himself to be another Bush, albeit more articulate—but I have plants that are more articulate than Dubya.

Poll data shows that the Republicans may have reached the "tipping point" where the House of Representatives changes hands, back to the GOP. Over at Gallup they say:

Last week the re-percentaged share of the vote for Democrats among registered voters was 47%. Again, that’s among registered voters. If things go as usual, the percentage of the vote for Democrats among likely voters would be even lower. In other words, if the voter sentiment we picked up last week was to prevail up to Election Day, the Democratic control of the House would indeed be in peril.

I think it very likely that voters will punish the Democrats for Obama's power-grab in health care, a very unpopular move with around 2/3rds of voters wanting the measure repealed. Writers at Gallup were saying that 47% share of the vote the Democrats were on the cusp of losing the House. But since then, Gallup's own poll shows that support for the Democrats dropped down to 43%. Republicans are now 6 points ahead in the generic poll and with likely voters the spread would be even higher.

My own guesstimate would be that the Republicans are going to pick up 40 to 50 seats, given them comfortable control of the House of Representatives.

Other signs of Democratic weakness is that voters are now split three ways regarding party identification. Equal numbers say they are Democrats, Republicans and independents. The modern mugwumps are the independent voters, who have been vacillating between the parties, voting for whichever party least disgusts them at the moment, but never really voting for anyone. With independents the Republicans have a 14 point lead.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want a short cut method of predicting poltiical trends look at where the independents are on the issue. They are the swing voters and which way they swing determines elections. I still believe they are also the most libertarian of the three main voting blocks, but neither party gives them someone to vote for, only candidates to vote against.

The tipping point in gay acceptance.

Another milestone was reached, according to Gallup. For the first time a majority of Americans say that it is morally acceptable for someone to be gay—how nice of them! I find the whole idea that such a poll is necessary to be absurd. As I see it we don't ask if it is morally acceptable to be a Catholic, though with the actions of the Vatican, we might want to. The recent annual Values and Beliefs poll found that 52% of Americans say that being gay is morally acceptable while 43%, no doubt the god-besotted, say it is morally wrong for someone to be gay. In 2001 the numbers were 40% to 53%, so tolerance has gained 12 points in the meantime.

What is particularly interesting is that the gains have come predominantly from men, who tend to be less tolerant on such matters—perhaps less secure, but I won't go there. Since 2006 the percentage of men saying being gay is morally acceptable has increased from 39% to 53%, and for the first time men are more accepting of gay people than women, 53% to 51%. Where acceptance gained 14 points among men, since 2006, the gain among women was just 2 points.

The largest gains were among men under the age of 50, or those 18 to 49. Younger men are now the most gay-friendly of the gender/age groups, with 62% saying being gay is okay. For men older than 50 the number is just 44% but this is still a 9 point gain from 2006. Among women under 50 those who are tolerant has grown by 4 points in the last four years, to 49%, and for women over 50 it is 43%. Even among older people men are now more tolerant than women.

As for the bellweather independent voters, they are in tune with the younger voters: 61% of them of them say it is morally acceptable to be gay, which puts them in a tie with Democrats. Republcians, once again prove themselves to be the organized force of intolerance in America, with just 35% of them saying it is morally acceptable to be gay.

The religion split is also interesting. The most anti-gay group in religious terms would be Protestants, as a generic group. This is where we would find the fundamentalists, of course, so this is no suprise. Only 42% of Protestants saying being gay is morally acceptable, where 62% of Catholics, 84% of non-Christians and 85% of the non-religious say it is morally acceptable. Gallup reports:

There is a gradual cultural shift under way in Americans' views toward gay individuals and gay rights. While public attitudes haven't moved consistently in gays' and lesbians' favor every year, the general trend is clearly in that direction. This year, the shift is apparent in a record-high level of the public seeing gay and lesbian relations as morally acceptable. Meanwhile, support for legalizing gay marriage, and for the legality of gay and lesbian relations more generally, is near record highs.

Support for marriage equality is also approaching the tipping point. Already 56% of Democrats are on board, a gain of 23 points since 1996. Bellweather independents are at 49%, a gain of 17 points, and Republicans are at just 28%, which is still a gain of 12 points since 96. In the East and the West support for marriage equality is at 53%, in the Midwest it is at 40% and in the Bible-belt South support is just 35%. The tipping point on this issue is not far away.

Iowa is an interesting case on this issue, and seems to be following the Massachusetts pattern. Marriage equality enrages the religious who organize and shout, foam at the mouth, and spit venom. But most people just sit back and watch the events unfolding. As time progresses what they see worries them less and less. KCCI television in Des Moines polled Iowans recently and found that the majority now supported marriage equality: 53% to 41%. This comes after one full year of marriage equality in the state.

Health deform still very unpopular.

Obama's health care power-grab is highly unpopular among voters. Rasmussen polls show that 60% want it repealed and only 36% say they want to save the program. Most believe it will increase the federal deficit and most think it will increase health care costs, a small majority also being it will reduce the quality of care in the United States. I side with the majority on this one.

DADT measure takes heat off Obama: nothing to applaud

Don't expect me to cheer the so-called repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which Congress is busy passing. But don't get me wrong either. DADT should be repealed. Today! But this "repeal" doesn't repeal anything. It is an artfully-crafted political maneuver designed to take the heat off the Democrats. It is a fraud.

When all is said and done, and this measure is "law," nothing will change. DADT will still be official policy. All this measure does is pass this political hot potato on to the Pentagon. The politicians can pretend they did something, while the status quo remains until the Pentagon gets off its fat, bureaucratic ass and does something constructive.

This measure basically says that DADT is repealed after the military spends millions to "study" the issue, and takes, well... just about as long as they want. After they take untold amounts of time to "study" the issue, and hold countless meetings, spending millions along the way, then the measure says the Pentagon has to have time to study their studies and see what they conclude. There is no time limit for that either, and no budget cap.

After they spend unspecified, limitless amounts of time studying the issue, and then appraising their studies, they can do the same for drawing up a program of implementation. Again there is no limit to the time period they may take to draw up this third phase. And how repeal is implemented is left entirely up to the Pentagon as well. They can "phase" it in, over years if they want. One military leader mentioned that with racial integration the military took five years. And that was following a presidential order from Truman, as commander-in-chief, to the military to integrate.

By the time the military finishes all the phases of the measure that Congress has given them, Obama will most likely be out of office, perhaps having gone to his reward due to old age. By the time the measure actually comes to any conclusion Congress may be back in the hands of the Party that represents the organized forces of hate in American politics: the Republicans. With almost zero Republican support for even this fraudulent measure, the GOP may well repeal the bogus repeal and mandate continued discriminatory practices—discrimination and the GOP today go together hand-in-glove. Given that this measure actually doesn't accomplish anything even Republicans could have safely voted for the bill.

This was the perfect political measure. It gives the appearance of doing something while doing absolutely nothing. It allows politicians to pass the buck to people who don't run for office and are not subject to the will of the voters—military bureaucrats.

Here is how the typical Congressweasel can deal with the issue. If facing an angry opponent of DADT, he can say: "We passed the measure to repeal DADT in Congress. We feel your pain and share your anger, which is why we did this."

If facing a Right-wing gay hater, the Congressweasel can say: "We didn't repeal DADT, that is a media fallacy. We said that only the military can decide on this matter and we trust them to do the right thing (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). This is in the hands of our military leaders and not subject to the whims of organized pressure groups now."

What this measure does is take the heat off the politicians. It effectively kills any chance that real legislation, that will end DADT, will pass anytime soon. This was not the Obama administration fulfilling a promise. This was the Democrats sabotaging any efforts at real reform anytime soon in order to save the sorry ass of Obama—a man who is proving himself to be every bit as bad a leader as George Bush.

There is nothing to applaud in this bill. This was done to kill repeal measures precisely as the Obama administration has been wanting all along. It solves a political problem but doesn't end the discrimination.

Thoughts about Kagan

Obama has nominated another justice for the Supreme Court, in this case one with a relatively limited record, which makes it difficult to draw good conclusions. But given that she is an Obama appointee I think we can assume she will be well left-of-center and rather authoritarian in her perspective.

First, let us cover the elephant in the room. Is Kagan gay and does it matter? Unfortunately many on the Right, who frequently remind me of adolescent boys who simply refuse to mature, seem to think that Kagan's sexual orientation matters. It does and it doesn't. It certainly doesn't tell us whether we should support her or oppose her.

Where it might matter is that it would make her more sympathetic to extension of equality of rights to homosexuals. That would be a good thing in my opinion. However, Kagan and the White House are playing a very different game. When a blogger at CBS news referred to Kagan as the first openly gay appointee to the Supreme Court the White House pounced on him in a very nasty way. The blogger, Ben Domenech, says he found the attack odd because the White House pounced on a blogger, "for someting mentioned in passed, and intended to highlight a political positive about a potential Supreme Court nominee."

The White House responded by saying this part of a series of lies about Kagan meant to impugn her reputation. Huffington Post blogger Sam Stein reports that "the White House reacted strongly to the assertion, relaying that Kagan is, in fact, straight." Yet I know gay writers who insist that Kagan is gay and are thrilled by her appointment.

But that worries me immensely. If Kagan is gay, but is being closeted about it, then I don't trust her on gay issues. To try and hide her own sexual orientation she could simply vote in a way that would be inconsistent with her own sexual orientation. I don't worry about a Supreme Court nominee who is gay but I would worry about one that is gay and trying to hide it.

And the way the White House responded is troubling. The blogger in question clearly thought Kagan is gay, as do many people who support her. Yet the White House acted as if being gay is some great slander or insult. About the only people who seemed convinced that being gay is a major insult or slander are the juvenile morons on the Right and the White House.

That sort of hysterical reaction certainly doesn't fit a White House that pretends to be enlightened about such matters. But in truth, Obama's talk on gay matters is rosy and fragrant but when it comes to carry through he's been nothing but a prick. The Obamatrons, however, will be reluctant to ever admit their messiah is a fraud. That's the problems with messiahs and true believers.

In the New York Times blog legal scholar Eugene Volokh says he thinks Kagan "might be more open to claims of presidential power than Justice Stevens was." He may be right and that is not a good thing. Surely after two terms of Dubya the last thing we want is a Supreme Court Justice who is "open to claims of presidential power."

Elsewhere Volokh says he thinks Kagan "might tolerate" further state "restrictions on pornography" he doesn't think she will go "much beyond restrictions on pornography that already fits within the 'obscenity' exception." Please note the obscenity exception is not in the First Amendment but was wholly created by the Supreme Court.

Charlie Savage, at the New York Times, reports that Kagan seems to be a fan of what I call the "imperial presidency." Before her official nomination he wrote:

Ms. Kagan also has a mixed record on executive powers, but one that suggests she might generally be more sympathetic toward the White House than Justice Stevens.

She worked as a White House lawyer during the Clinton administration, when it was facing off against a hostile Congress and seeking ways to act unilaterally. That experience shaped her major scholarly work, a 2001 law review article in which she explained and defended efforts by the Clinton White House to impose greater centralized control over executive agencies.

In the article, Ms. Kagan argued that even if Congress has given the authority to make a regulatory decision to an agency, the president has the power to control that decision unless a statute explicitly forbids him from interfering. She wrote that it was “ironic” that “self-professed conservatives” were associated with calling for stronger executive power in recent decades because a more robust presidency could achieve “progressive goals.”

Still, her defenders note that she also wrote, “If Congress, in a particular statute, has stated its intent with respect to presidential involvement, then that is the end of the matter.” And in 2007, she gave a speech celebrating the actions of Bush lawyers who battled the White House over the legality of the warrantless surveillance program.

That view appears to put Ms. Kagan in the camp that criticized the Bush administration for arguing that the president could bypass laws, but also left the door open to sweeping executive authorities as long as Congress can be plausibly said to have signed off on them.

Indeed, after Mr. Obama selected her to be his solicitor general, she publicly embraced an expansive interpretation of the Congressional authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda. Ms. Kagan also took a leading role on a legal team that has sought to suppress lawsuits using the state secrets privilege and fought a ruling granting habeas corpus rights to some detainees in Afghanistan.

In other words this is close to a continuation of the disastrous Bush interpretation of presidential powers. It certainly ought to worry anyone who prizes limited government and the Bill of Rights. This is especially true since, as Savage points out, retiring Justice Stevens "was a critical vote in a five-justice faction that rejected expansive assertions of executive authority by former President George W. Bush." Savage warns that if Stevens' "successor is more sympathetic to the vantage point of the Obama White House, the balance could shift to a new bare majority that is far more willing to uphold broad presidential powers."

Radley Balko, a well-informed critic of the rising police state, agrees and disagrees with Volokh. He agrees that Kagan would be a friend to expanded presidential powers and thinks she may be worse on the First Amendment than many conservatives. Radley warns that "Kagan's pro-government position extends to criminal justice issues, too. In her current position, Kagan and her subordinates have filed amicus briefs and argued the pro-prosecution, pro-law enforcement position in every criminal justice-related case to come before the Supreme Court since Obama took office."

Balko notes that Kagan's office "argued in favor of a federal law banning the sale of videos depicting animal cruelty, taking a broadly censorious position that First Amendment rights be balanced with 'societal costs.'" Legal scholars who start pushing the vague "social cost" theory to justify state intrusion are a very dangerous lot, in my opinion. The term is almost as meaningless as "social justice" and it is latched onto by would-be authoritarians on both the Left and Right precisely because it is so vague and meaningless. The fastest way to justify massively expanded state authority is to tie that expansion to a concept that can't be defined. If it can't be defined it can't be refuted, is how the authoritarians see it. It an excuse for a wish list of expanded powers for any second-rate resident of the White House (and we've pretty much had only second-rate residents for a long time now).

Balko notes that the Supreme Court "rebuked as 'preposterous' in an 8-1 opinion" Kagan's arguments. He says this means that Kagan is "more pro-censorship than Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, or Thomas. (She also argued the pro-censorship position in Citizens United, but while no less troubling, that's less surprising.)" If Balko is right, then Volokh is wrong and Kagan is also a threat to the First Amendment. Balko says does fit "Washington's definition of a centrist: She'll likely defer to government on both civil liberties and regulatory and commerce issues."

From the perspective of the classical liberal I don't see much about Kagan to cheer. So far the most depressing thing I've heard is that she is about as good as one can expect from Obama.

The other side of Obamacare: Bend over and take it.

The Obama Administration and the Democrats pumped the health deform legislation as a god-send. To do so they had to cook the books in way that would make Enron envious. They intentionally low-balled the costs, pretended it would create jobs (like their other fake job creation bills) and even went so far as to claim it would create revenue and bring down the deficit.

Let's look at some of the distortions about this bill. I say some, since no one really knows what is in this encyclopedic size piece of legislation. Certainly not a single Congressvermin who voted for the bill actually read it. These days bad politicians like Bush and Obama push through massive laws with intricate clauses, publish them at the last minute, push them through under "urgency" and pretty much guarantee that no one knows precisely what they are voting for. Obama promised transparency in legislation but then Obama made all sorts of promises that reneged on almost immediately.

First, consider the claim that 32 million uninsured Americans will get insurance. How will this be done? The government is making it illegal for you to not purchase insurance. This is not the old carrot and the stick routine—it is pure stick and the person being beaten up is anyone who makes the decision to not have health insurance. Government will fine individuals who do not have health care. People will be punished for not purchasing a product that they don't want, for one reason or another. Never before has the federal government forced people to directly buy a product against their will.

A second feature is that insurance companies will not be allowed to "discriminate" on the basis of pre-existing conditions. This basically destroys the fundamental nature of insurance. Insurance is risk based and Obama says risk can't be considered. So people who are already ill will be able to go buy hospital insurance covering their illness. It will be huge losses for insurance companies. They don't worry so much, for the time being, because those costs will be passed on to everyone else who is being forced to buy their product.

What will this mean? For most people it will mean much higher health insurance costs. The big lie from the Democrats was that their policies will reduce health care costs. That is bullshit. By bringing in 32 million people to the system, some of very expensive health care required, the Democrats are imposing huge costs on the insurance system. And that can only mean higher premiums for everyone.

The people most hurt by that will be the young. Young people tend to be poorer but much healthier than average. In a risk based system they would pay much smaller premiums. Older people, who tend to wealthier and less healthy, pay higher premiums. In the Obama system the young people, who often rationally decide to forgo health insurance due to their low risk and low wealth status, are forced to pay for it. Their premiums are used to help subsidize the risk of the older, wealthier, less healthy individuals. It is a transfer of income from poorer individuals to wealthier individuals.

Short term the insurance companies will have millions of extra, unwilling customers, who are coerced into buying policies they don't want. If they wanted the policies they were free to buy them already. And the costs of pre-existing conditions pushed into the system will be passed on to all individuals holding policies. So, in the short term it means higher profits for insurance companies. Who would be wise to take that money and invest it in non-insurance related businesses because long-term it is a destructive policy.

Why is that? Remember that the costs of health insurance for everyone will be forced up by Obamacare. The very poor will be given care by the government, as they are today. But with health insurance rates driven up artificially by the law it will be pushed out of reach of millions more Americans, who nonetheless, will be fined if they don't buy it. The political pressure will be to expand the definition of low-income to cover more and more Americans.

In other words, the increased costs will force more people out of the private insurance and onto the state roles. Politicians will heed the demands for expanding Obamacare to include wealthier people simply because Obamacare will push up health insurance costs so significantly that people who can afford insurance today won't be able to afford it tomorrow.

Over the long term the numbers who are privately insured will diminish and the numbers on state programs will increase. As that happens the risks will be spread over a smaller and smaller number of policy holders, pushing up private insurance rates even further. And the vicious cycle of Obamacare begins. Private rates are pushed up, which makes it unaffordable to more people who, being penalized for not buying it, demand an expanded state system to include them. The Democrats will continue scapegoating insurance companies and will pander to these demands in the name of compassion—compassion for career politicians who want to be reelected to cushy, overpaid positions. This double-blow forces more and more Americans to demand fully state-controlled health-care, but that is what it was intended to do. Obama has not hidden the fact that he wants state control of health care from cradle to grave.

Private businesses were told that their rates will go down. This is false and true depending on dynamics that no one can predict. Businesses that pay for health care for employees will be forced to pay for the pre-existing conditions of non-employees as well, via the increased rates for insurance. So for them, health insurance will be come more expensive. No worries to Obama, that is what he wants. It will force more and more business to line up behind state health care. Some business might see costs reduced as more of their workers end up with state provided health care instead. Of course the savings are illusionary: insurance premiums might go down to be replaced with taxes that will go up.

In the phase where they are paying high insurance costs it means the cost per employee has gone up. That will slow down any hoped-for recovery as employers will be less likely to expand the work force. Increased taxes will further reduce employment—the welfare state/tax system is one one reason Europe has been plagued by perpetually high unemployment rates.

Obama, appealing to the envy of many, said not to worry as some of these extra costs will be obtained by heavily taxing insurance companies. And how does Mr. Obama think the insurance companies will recoup those costs? Blank out. Of course, they will be recouped through higher premiums which will again push more people into the state-controlled system. The insurance companies will reap higher profits for as long as they can, before the system collapses because Obama intentionally made private insurance too expensive for the masses. Then everyone will be forced into the state-run system that was his original goal.

In addition to heavily taxing insurance companies Obama promised to impose heavier taxes on pharmaceutical companies. Again, how will those costs be recouped? By forcing up the prices of pharmaceuticals—that's how. Heavy taxation in many European companies forced pharmaceutical developers to the United States. Apparently Mr. Obama believes they will sit here and take what they wouldn't sit still for in Europe.

I spoke with a friend and regular reader of this blog who is working for a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. She was thinking of coming out to spend a couple of weeks visiting me and we were looking at going up to the Bay Area because the company she works for has bought out a major research company in Silicon Valley. We talk every weekend and she told me that the company is already looking to move significant sections of their acquisition out of the United States completely. If I were advising pharmaceutical companies I would be urging them to move as much of their company outside the reach of Obama as possible.

Of course, they already know this, whether I had advised them or not. So in those fields jobs will be destroyed. No doubt the Obamacare will create jobs for government bureaucrats who will do half the work as their private counterparts at twice the pay. I imagine Obama will call that economic stimulus.

In a nutshell I predict the following:

• Higher health insurance rates for everyone, with the young hit by the steepest increases.
• With involuntary customers forced by Obama to buy insurance the insurance companies will see short term profit increases.
• Because they know they are short-term they will pump the customer for as much as possible to maximize profits before the long-term negative impact is felt.
• As insurance rates increase more and more individuals will be forced to abandon private insurance plans.
• Facing penalties for not having insurance these people will lobby to be included in the "low-income" category for government provided care.
• Politicians will heed those calls and expand the "low-income" category on a steady basis.
• As more people are forced into the state system fewer private policy holders are left paying the bills forcing even higher rates starting the cycle over again.

Obama's doublethink

Obama's loaves and fishes: fraud or miracles?

The Obama Adminstration is perpetrating an intentional fraud on the public. They are lying. Obama is pretending that his stimulus package is creating jobs—it can't create jobs. At best it can only redistribute them from productive sectors of the economy to unproductive sectors. At worst, it redistributes fewer jobs than it destroys.

It is hard to measure all the jobs destroyed by the stimulus package but it is easy to show that the administration has created a system that makes up figures to support a bad policy. Associated Press reported that, according to official statistic, stimulus saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Action Coucil "an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there."

Associate Press reports that when they looked at "saved" jobs they found that the Feds were counting pay increases for bureaucrats as "saving" a job. So, a worthless, destructive, economic parasite is giving a pay rise and Obama pretends that "saved" a job. Actually the economy would benefit if those people were given pay cuts—or better yet, fired.

The Bergen County Community action Program got $213,000, almost all of which went to increase the pay of their employees. This was added into the Obama figures as 85 jobs saved.

Or take the pathetic math used by Myrtis Mulkey-Ndawula from another collection of bureaucrats at the Southwest Georgia Action Council. She says that she followed "the instruction we were given" by the Feds on how to calculate jobs saved. "She said she multiplied th3e 508 employees by 1.84—the percentage pay raise they received—and came up with 935 jobs saved." Actually that is pathetic math. The pay rise that was given was 1.84% per employee. Even if a pay rise should be counted as a job saved—which it isn't—the math she used was not 1.84% but 184%
Her conclusion is so far off that it illustrates bureuacratic innumeracy. No one this mathmatically inept should be running any agency, at any level.

The Council in question says that this was simply bad math and that "there was no effort made to deceive anyone." The correct figure should have been 9.35. Their math was only off 100 fold. Even, the correct math is deceptive as no jobs were saved, exisiting bureaucrats just got a pay increase and that is not hte same thing.

The New York Times reports that the Fayetteville National Cemetery, in Arkansas, spent $1047 in stimulus money to buy a lawn mower to cut grass. That one lawn mower is credited by the Feds with saving or creating 50 jobs. In comparison they report that Chyrsler, which received $52.9 million in stimulus bailout funds "claimed the money did not save a single job." Which is probably the case.

Even the Obama officials claim that half of all the jobs "created" or "saved" by the stimulus money was in the field of public education. "But some school districts said that they might not have actually laid off teachers without stimulus money." The Times reports that while Obama pretended that 90% of the "jobs" that stimulus was said to create, would be in the private sector, that the officials statistics shows that "well over half of the jobs claimed so far have been in the public sector."

And even the private jobs attributed to the stimulus boondoggle are clearly fake. "In one, a Kentucky shoe store reported that it had created nine jobs with an $890 order for work boots. In another, a $7960 contract for a 'Basketball System Replacement" in Ohio claimed three jobs."

Head Start in Wisconsin used the money they were given to increase the salary of their staff by 1.8%. This pay increase was listed as saving 113 jobs. The total they spent per "job created" was supposedly $160. A spokesman for the agency said: "We think the 113 jobs were preserved, but more importantly, the quality of teachers and Head Start child development staff was maintained." So pay rises given to the same people maintains their quality? Even if that is granted it there is no evidence it preserved a single job. The other thing is that this section of Head Start only deals with migrant workers.

I know the Obamatrons think he's the new messiah. So is this the Obama version of the alleged loaves and fishes miracle of Jesus? Obama takes $160 and gives it to a bureaucrate and magically creates an entire new job from it.

Exactly how many employees are there dealing with this relatively small number of workers? My research indicates there are about 6000 migrant workers in Wisconsin during any one year. So apparently, just this one division of one relatively small federal agency claims that it needs at least one employee per 53 people that it "helps." Even that is generous. According to this report there are about 5000 migrant workers in Wisconsin with about 1000 dependents.

Head Start is " a national program that promotes school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social and other services to enrolled children and families." This one section of Head Start has 113 employees allegedly helping the children of migrant workers. All the migrant workers in Wisconsin bring a total of 1000 dependents with them. And not all these dependents would be children in the age group that Head Start supposedly helps. At best this is one buureaucrat at Head Start per 10 individuals being helped.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that $7.3 million for a sanitary district projet is listed as creating or saving 100 jobs "even though the work won't start until this spring.... But that number is inflated by 95 jobs, Parkland Sanitary District treasurer Eric Shaffer admitted." Actually a series of errors took place there. The report was supposed to say 5. It got typed in as 50. And then the 50 jobs were counted twice. Even the 5 jobs are dubious.

If government takes a million dollars from the private sector jobs are contracted there as a result. To then redistribute that money to the state sector doesn't create "new" jobs. It just moves private, productive employment to unproductive, government employment. However, the Feds never count the jobs they destroy in their calculations. They pretend that the stimulus money didn't cost any jobs anywhere.

My view on this is not new. I've been saying for years that federal redistribution doesn't create new jobs. Instead, I have argued that at its best it redistributes them. But rarely do such projects work at their best. So the net result, I've argued, is to destroy jobs, not create jobs. And while Obama pretends his wasteful spending has saved or created some 600,000 jobs the most recent unemployment figures show that in October alone construction fire 62,000 workers, another 61,000 disappeared in manufacturing, retail lost 40,000 jobs and another 37,000 were destroyed in the leisure industry.

Unemployment was at 6.6% when Obama took office. After one year of his stimulus, job-creating programs, unemployment now stands at 10.2%. Of course, we also had a year worth of stimulation from George Bush prior to that. And, coincidentally perhaps, we have had 22 months of consecutive job losses in the United States.

If you want to understand the fraud of government "job creation" projects read Frederick Bastiat expose of the policy in his 160-year-old essay, "What is Seen and What is Not Seen."

Brother Obama's Traveling Healing and Salvation Crusade.

Here's a radical idea; let's dole out all the Nobel prizes the same way that the politicians in Norway gave out the peace prize to Obama.

My suggestion would be that we give the Nobel Prize in Medicine to the Roman Catholic Church. The reason: Lourdes, of course. Lourdes is where the faithful go hoping to be cured of illnesses and diseases. It tends to work with those problems most likely to be psychosomatic to begin with, but has a high failure rate with real problems.

However, actually healing people isn't important under the new Nobel Prize rules. All that matters is that the Church, by promoting pilgrimages to the spot where they pretend the Virgin Mary appeared, gives people hope. The Nobel politicians said that Obama got the prize, not because he's actually done diddly-squat to bring about peace anywhere—in fact he is quietly ratcheting up the two wars that Bush imposed on the country—but simply because he sounded so convincing when the promised so many things.

It is shocking to me how easily conned people are merely because someone sounds good. Obama has not done anything for peace, quite the opposite actually. But he stills goes out on the sawdust trail spewing out the Gospel of Progressivism and the faithful eat it up. Like most tin-horn evangelists on the revival circuit, he's a charlatan. His floozies are corporate lobbyists, war mongering generals, and power hungry bureaucrats. Obama can't resist their charms. And, because he is so deeply mired in sin in private, he has to preach louder, longer and with more fire than every before. Such is the plight of the hypocrite and the liar.

The more he betrays his principles in office the more fervent his sermons will become. He is not going to carry through on his promises, especially on the wars. That is what I predicted in my pre-election analysis of how Obama will act in office. Obama is not the great Black Hope. He's a career politicians who knows that substance isn't important, especially if you sound good. The naive Left gave him the office he holds and he will reward them by sounding more and more like them, while caving in to the corporatist interests in Washington. The more he sells-out his true believers the more fundamentalist he will sound to them. It's worked for every fake in a revival tent for centuries. Obama proves it still works.

Praise the Lord and pass the donation plate, here comes Brother Obama's Traveling Healing and Salvation Crusade. Sure, you'll still have cancer when its all over. But Brother Obama, in exchange for large donations on your part, will give you hope. Normally I'd say that "hope is cheap." With Brother Obama leading the campaign that is not the case. In this case hope is very, very expensive and you will pay through the nose. But you'll believe a miracle has happened right up to the moment of your demise. But, Praise the Lord, you had hope. Lot's of hope.

Obama protests hit DC: what are the numbers?

Matt Welch at Reason covered the protest against the Obama campaigns. Welch says the crowd was easily over 100,000 protesters. The media seems intent on playing down the protest. For instance, if you want to make a large protest look small, only show people close up and don't mention numbers. That seems to be what CNN did.



I was wondering if they would show any shots which would give an indication of the size of the protest. They quite scrupulously avoided doing so. I went to the New York Times, which leans so far left I'm surprised they haven't fallen over. Their headline on the rally only says "thousands." Farther down they say it numbered "well into the tens of thousands." The police monitoring the event refused to release a crowd size estimate. All the photos I saw there were relatively close-up shots which also never depicted what the article called "a sea of protesters."

The Washington Post said "tens of thousands of conservative protesters," apparently the Post believes one either supports Obama or is a conservative. No other option exists in their universe. Buried in the middle of a slide shows of photo is one that gives an inkling of the size of the protest.

Google news shows there are 10,427 stories on line about a rally Obama held in favor of government control of more areas of health care. On newspaper says that 15,000 appeared at the rally Obama orchestrated. While that rally got 10,427 mentions the counterprotest, which was multiples larger, got a total of 147 mentions. And most those mentions are not from mainstream media.

Someone did remember that there are traffic cams on line and here is a picture showing the protest marching down the street. It appears pretty massive to me.


The British press, however is a bit more interesting, though they may exaggerate in the other direction. The Daily Mail says: "Up to two million people marched to the U.S. Capitol today..." They showed the following photo which gives some crowd size indications.



Allow me to show you what the traffic cam showed. This is a time delayed sequence, meaning it only takes a shot every so often. From the indications of the timelapse video of the crowd marching past this intersection then Matt Welch is far closer to the mark than the mainstream media. Some press are pretending only 30,000 showed up. Some will estimate 70,000. But it sure looks like more to me.

How Obaman and the Radical Left are creating a Republican resurgance.

The socialist Left, as opposed to the classical liberal Left, is apoplectic about the criticism concerning Obama’s health care power grab. There are two reasons for this. First, they really, really want to nationalize health care so public opposition to their take-over is upsetting to them. Second, they stupidly assumed Obama’s electoral support was support for the candidate’s more authoritarian measures.

This blog argued that Obama was supported by independent voters for one reason: they were sick and tired of Bush and the Republicans. Any right-thinking person was sick and tired of the fumbling Dubya and his Jesus-drunk Amen chorus in the Republican Party. I prevously wrote that the Democrats were being foolish to interpret disgust with Bush as the same thing as support for Obama’s more extreme policies. Democrats don’t listen so they assumed the world was rallying around Obama, as opposed to rejecting Dubya.

When their first big power grab came up they expected it would be a cakewalk. They imagined that most voters worship the water that Obama walks on. That's just not the case. Polls continue to show that the bulk of the voters are NOT supporters of Obama’s health care legislation—whichever version of it may be current at the time.

So the statist Left has been foaming at the mouth and screaming that opposition to Obama is a “fringe” movement. To them it has to be “fringe” since they remain convinced that Obama was elected to expand state control of health care. Their initial error, in assuming that votes for Obama meant support of Obamacare, is leading to their current error: assuming that only “fringe” nut cases can oppose their regulatory orgy. That is leading to a second error in tactics.

Because the statist Left assumes the opposition is just the fringe, they are insulting the opponents of Obamacare. Instead of grappling with the concerns of the majority of the public the Left is attacking them. But, opposition to Obamacare wouldn’t go anywhere it if were limited to Republicans. The bulk of American voters see themselves as independents and the independents, by the standards of the classical liberal, are pretty decent folk.

When polls investigate the independent voter certain things stand out. They do tend to like low taxes and don’t want big government. They sound pretty conservative. But they also tend to support marriage equality and don’t want to enforce Biblical law, unlike the theopublicans. In other words, the independent voters tend to drift in a libertarian direction, and not toward either the authoritarian Left or the authoritarian Right.

The strategic error the Democrats are committing is that in insulting and attacking these people they are laying the groundwork for a Republican resurgence in next year’s Congressional election. Independent voters are not pleased by either the socialist Democrats or the theocratic Republicans. They aren’t drawn to either party. But they still vote, so they tend to look at which party disgusts them the most, and then vote for the other one. Bushian Republicanism absolutely nauseated them, so they voted Democrat. But now the Democrats are attacking them for not supporting Obamacare. My prediction is that this desperate strategy to save socialized medicine will push the independent voters back to the Republican Party. How long they stay there will depend on whether the Republicans are stupid enough to take that resurgence as support for their campaign to Christianize America.

One of the methods used to demonize opponents of Obamacare has been to not just insult the opponents to this care but to claim that they have been violent. Mary Katharine Ham, at The Weekly Standard, investigated these claims. She notes that there were more than 400 town hall meetings in August. Yes, there was violence in a only handful of these meetings. But most of that came from the statist Left, not from critics of Obama. Ham writes of one incident:

In St. Louis, several video cameras captured an altercation between Kenneth Gladney, who was selling "Don't Tread on Me" flags and buttons outside, and several purple-shirted SEIUGladney, who is black, was addressed by an SEIU member using the "n-word," who then assaulted him. Gladney went to the hospital with minor injuries, and two SEIU members, including the local SEIU public service director Elston McCowan, were among the six people arrested in St. Louis that night. An unidentified female was arrested in connection with the same altercation. A video of the event shows her approach an Obama critic filming the Gladney incident, and then smash the camera into the filmer's face. The female assailant was later cuffed by police at the scene, also on tape. The SEIU later claimed that Gladney was the aggressor, but a video shows a different picture. Gladney is outnumbered and visibly shaken as one SEIU member yells on tape, "He attacked America!" before challenging Gladney's defenders to a fight and hurling profanities at the filmer.

Ham itemized other such incidents. At a Pelosi meeting: “A Denver Post photographer caught one of those sign-bearers, a grim-faced woman in a "HOPE" Obama shirt, ripping a homemade anti-Pelosi sign from Obama critic Kris McLay's hands as she yelled in protest. The Obama supporter declined to be identified for the photo.” In Durham, NC, an Obama opponent was punched in the face for speaking against Obamacare. His attacker was from the local union.
Ham outlined all the documented cases of violence at these town hall meetings:

That's the full list of documented violence from the August meetings. In more than 400 events: one slap, one shove, three punches, two signs grabbed, one self-inflicted vandalism incident by a liberal, one unsolved vandalism incident, and one serious assault. Despite the left's insistence on the essentially barbaric nature of Obamacare critics, the video, photographic, and police report evidence is fairly clear in showing that 7 of the 10 incidents were perpetrated by Obama supporters and union members on Obama critics. If you add a phoned death threat to Democrat representative Brad Miller of N.C., from an Obama-care critic, the tally is 7 of 11.

To mischaracterize these few incidents as part of the strategy of Obama critics, and to attack those unhappy with the so-called “reforms” of health care as extremists, only strengthens the Republican Party. The far Left in the Democratic Party is doing what the Far Right in the Republican Party did – drive the great middle of American voters into the arms of the other guy.

One year after Obama’s election, let me quote this blog to remind you of my predictions regarding Obama’s performance in office.

I don’t expect Obama to make any major withdrawal from Iraq. In other words, I don’t expect he will end this illegal and unconstitutional war. Equally disastrous will be the likely “reluctant” support he will give to keeping the authoritarian Patriot Act in place. Do not expect Obama to do much to protect civil liberties, or to reclaim those stolen by the Bush Administration. What you can expect is lots of speeches with the same unspecified, vague rhetorical flourishes that Obama loves. What he won’t do is give any substance to them. George Bush was a bumbling speaker who gave specifics -- although his specifics were almost entirely evil. Obama will be a brilliant speaker who will use his florid style to cover up his lack of substance. I do think Obama will try to implement some policies -- all of them bad. I fully expect him to put bureaucrats and politicians in control of more our medical care than ever before.

So far I have no reason to revise advance estimation regarding Mr. Obama and his disastrous term in office. What has changed has been how badly the White House has bungled things. I expected them to be smoother than they have been. The shrill response from the Democrats has been a godsend for the Republicans.

I will reiterate my view that the Republicans, if they want to be a party of government for the long term, will still have to scuttle their links to the Christian lunatic fringe. Of course, the Democrats could do the same thing if they rejected the old tax, spend, regulate policies of their socialist ideologues. Until one of the two major parties wises up, and abandons the ideological albatross around their neck, the independent voters will swing the elections. But that is not necessarily a bad thing since these are people who tend to want sound economics, aren’t interested in Christian moralism, and aren’t too keen to police the world.

The ugly, raw authoritarianism of Obama.

The raw authoritarian nature of Barack Obama and a stinging critique from a well-known Left-wing commentator, who should be applauded for what she has done.

I almost fainted when I heard Obama speak how he wants to be able to impose preventative detention and thinks that it is just fine to do provided it is not the decision of "just one man" but that the courts and Congress have a role in. Yet the Constitution no where gives any one man or group of men that power. It simply doesn't exist. This is a blatant, raw usurpation of totalitarian power by Obama.

Nero fiddled, for Obama that would be an improvement.

Associated Press has a report out on the disastrous Bush/Obama deficit. I find the way it is worded a bit deceptive myself. I want to discuss how words are chosen to give people particular impressions that may, or may not, be accurate.

The headline is: “Meltdown 101: How did $1 Trillion deficit happen?”

This is a rather passive phrase. Deficits don’t just “happen” they are caused. Accidents happen; assaults are planned. To say something happened implies a lack of human causation. Tidal waves, earthquakes, and tornados happen. Budget deficits are planned and imposed. At the very least words that indicate active causation ought to have been used.

The report says that the projected deficit by the Obama White House is $1.84 trillion, which is “four times the size of last year’s deficit.” It is noted that the previous deficit “was the all-time leader at the time, at $454.8 billion—a figure that now seems puny in comparison.” Consider that the size of deficit has ballooned by 400% in just one year. The debt that the government now holds, and which it intends to hold you responsible for, amounts to $184,000 per person. For the typical family this more than pays off a home.

The cost of government is not just the lose of freedom through the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on obscenity, the war on poverty and the real wars. It is not just the burden of Obama’s auto czar, drug czar, health czar, energy czar, border czar, bailout czar, urban czar, regulatory czar (aren’t they all?), Middle East czar, and a couple of dozen others. (Remember when czar was a term for despot? It still is.) The cost of government is also the taxes that destroy jobs, create poverty, and strip people of the ability to pay for health care. And it is another $184,000 in debts that the Demopublican authoritarians have imposed on each and every American.

The AP story asks how America went from budget surpluses to deficits. It’s answer is again very passive—no causation, no human agents doing anything. “The surpluses at the end of the last decade reflected a boom-time economy, which was enjoying the longest uninterrupted expansion in U.S. history.

When the last recession began in 2001, that cut into revenues. Then the government's budget picture darkened even further after the 2001 terrorist attacks as government spending was increased to pay for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Things happened, see. No one increased budgets. No one spent more. Bush and Obama didn’t rush out and decimate the economy with unfunded, onerous spending. Bad things happened, no one is to blame.

The article says: ” Two things happened to make the deficit balloon: The country was hit by a severe recession that began in December 2007, and then those troubles were compounded by the worst financial crisis in seven decades, which struck in the fall of 2008.”

The article keeps alive the lie that government spending is “stimulus” that will solve the problem. Bush spent the savings of your unborn grandchildren. Obama spent the savings of their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren.

The only spending this article talks about is “stimulus spending” and “automatic stabilizers” such as “food stamps and unemployment compensation.” It doesn’t mention bad programs like ethanol, farm subsidies, foreign aid, and billions of raw pork, spent by dishonest politicians in both parties. That sort of spending apparently does not exist, or is not acknowledged.

The article also claims: “Economists say it is OK to run massive deficits now to stablize the banking system and get the economy growing again.” Notice that the way this is worded is as if there is unanimous consent by economists that deficit spending does these things. There is good evidence that deficits don’t stabilize but distort and that they prevent economic growth. Thousands of economists have spoken out against the disastrous spending of the Bush/Obama regimes. Associated Press doesn’t think they exist.

And remember that Obama isn’t finished. What he is seeking is state control over as much of the economy as possible. That which the State doesn’t control directly (socialism), it will control through regulations (fascism). Obama is an economic totalitarian.

And what sort of solution does Associated Press offer in this “analysis” of the problem. According to them, private economists believe we need some type of tax increases to convince foreign investors that the administration is serious about getting its deficits under control.”

How do you get deficits under control? Do you pick your neighbor’s pockets? Or do you cut spending? Obama doesn’t want to get the deficit under control by spending less. He has only two alternatives. One is to tax you directly and steal even more of your income. That means you consume less, jobs are destroyed and the economy shrinks even further. Or, he can spend wildly and monetize the debt through inflation. In that system he steals your income indirectly by reducing the value of the currency. Either way the Obama plan is to screw you over economically. You will have to cut your spending while Obama expands his. You will have to make do with less so he can have more.

As I see it the deficit of Bush was very bad. The deficit of Obama is four times worse. Bush was the worst president in American history, by my standards. Obama is set to be four times worse. Barack Obama is worse for America than the 9/11 terrorists. What those terrorists did was awful and killed thousands. What Obama is doing is wrecking the entire economy and inflicting misery on hundreds of millions of people. It is rather disgusting.

His one virtue was supposed to be his stand on civil liberties. Pass the air sickness bag on that one too. After raping you economically he’s still pumping up the police state of Homeland Security, he is still working to restrict first amendment rights, he is still imposing bigoted policies against gay people and he is still conducting the disastrous war on drugs. Obama is as bad on civil liberties, to date, as George Bush and he’s worse for the economy—as hard as that is to believe. It is claimed that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. One can't say the same for Obama. In his case fiddling would be an improvement. He's thrown gasoline on the flames.

The real class warfare: responsible vs irresponsible

The U.S. Congress is about to pass new legislation, the effect of which is to punish anyone who has credit cards and uses them responsibly. If you pay your bills on time you will be hurt. If you are irresponsible, or perhaps even intentionally dishonest, you will be rewarded.

Congress, in its infinite wisdom (read loads of sarcasm into that statement) wants to limit the penalties on irresponsible credit card users. The New York Times reports that one result of the legislation will be the “reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.”

One official of the American Bankers Association said: “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”

Lest you think the Times has sympathy for responsible people, worry not. They have not given up their political bias in favor of irresponsibility and profligacy. In the sidebar they even have a section called “Room for Debate” which invites readers to debate the issue of “Should responsible card users be penalized for paying off their monthly balance?” That the Times even thinks there is “room for debate” on that issue speaks volumes.

The paper also quotes a “consultant” who claims that responsible cardholders were “making out like a bandit” because they didn’t pay annual fees and collect points for travel and other perks.

Remember that each time you use the card with a company that company pays a percentage to the bank for the privilege of having your credit backed by the bank. Individuals who don’t pay their debts on time actually take money from card companies. So, of course, banks charge them more.

But in the world of the perverted morality of politics responsibility has to be punished and irresponsibility has to be rewarded. If you think the Obama/Democratic government is waging war on the rich think again. They don’t give a damn if you are rich or poor. They merely care if you are responsible or irresponsible.

If you are irresponsible you will be favored no matter your level of income. Obama proved that by pouring trillions of dollars into the coffers of some of the wealthiest corporations in America but only if they had proven to be irresponsible. In fact, the more irresponsible they were, the more they were rewarded. Under Obama’s bailout schemes the only people punished were the responsible corporations.

Why is this sort of perverse politics so popular with the ruling elite? I suspect there are two reasons.

First, most of these clowns have never run businesses or, if they had, they ran them badly. George Bush was a lifelong failure in business; Obama has never been in business. He never paid out a salary to another person with his own money. This is sadly true from many politicians.

Second, politicians identify with irresponsible financial management. They understand it; they practice it on a daily basis when they draw up the budget. They understand spending more than you have, wasting money in irresponsible ways, lying to creditors, and cheating people out of the money they have earned. That’s how they run the country and they simply can’t conceive of any other way of managing things.