The “Blue Dog” Democrats rolled over and played dead yesterday on the health care bill. They are portraying it as a great victory, but if you look at the details you will see they caved for nothing. All they got for their stance was some good press and some promises that are not worth the paper they are printed on. Democrats are well known for promising to talk about all sorts of reforms, then not implementing those reforms when the time comes. So, in essence the Blue Dog Democrats caved from their position and got absolutely nothing for their efforts. They did get some positive press, which might help them get re-elected if their opponent is not smart enough to realize that a promise is not the same thing as having it actually happen.

It is rumored that there are 3 Republican Senators that are negotiating with Democrats in the Senate. This is undoubtedly the bill that stands the greatest chance at passing. It will be the one that will have the fewest problems. The current House bill is a major disaster. The current Democrat bill in the Senate is an improvement over the House bill, but not by much. The 3 sellout Republicans bill will probably get the greatest amount of support. We can only hope that the “public” option has been taken off of the table. I doubt that very much.

The good thing that has come from the delaying by the Blue Dog Democrats is that the bill will not be considered by the House before the August recess. That gives people at home a chance to chew on their Senators and Congressmen to tell them that we do not want socialized healthcare in the United States of America.

Right now, we do not have a crisis of health care. Anyone who needs to see a doctor can see a doctor. They can see a doctor at the time they need to see the doctor. Everyone will be treated, whether they have insurance or not. The quality of care may be different if you have insurance or not, but you will receive care. Under socialized medicine, if it is not convenient for the doctors you do not receive treatment, even if it is an emergency. In Canada, they close the Urgent Care clinics on Sundays. Where are the Canadians going to come for health care if we are being forced to wait for months for care we used to get immediately?

I read a post on Hugh Hewitt’s blog this morning from a person with bladder cancer. He went over his treatment from initial diagnosis to now. In the letter, he tells how one doctor tells him that in socialized medicine countries his care is radiation treatment, instead of surgery and chemotherapy that he received. That made him question whether his treatment program was right. He was told that the reason that radiation is used in socialized medicine countries is that it is cheaper. The best way to treat the cancer this person has is by surgery and chemotherapy. The problem is that the treatment is also more expensive. The letter writer’s insurance company never questioned any treatment that he received.

The problem is supposed to be 47 million people that are uninsured. That may be a true number, I am not sure. Some people claim the number is high and others claim it is low. For the point to be made, it does not really matter. About 1/3 of that number are people who are not here legally. Any nationalized health care system would not cover these people anyway. About 1/3 are people that are young and unmarried. This is the indestructible period. They do not buy health insurance because they do not feel that they need health insurance. The remaining 1/3 contains two groups of people. One group makes enough money that they feel they can pay for their health care by themselves, without insurance. Rush Limbaugh falls into this category. The other part of the group are people that either have a pre-existing condition that makes it difficult or impossible to get health insurance or they cannot afford health insurance. It is this last group that is the problem and where all the efforts should be placed.

Instead of changing the entire system to cover a small number of people, just tweak a part of the system to get those covered who really need the insurance and cannot get it. This group numbers less than 10 million people. Develop some program for these people.

The other problem people are missing is the fact that Medicare and Medicaid are breaking us financially. If the government cannot run those two health programs properly, how could they run a massive new program with any degree of efficiency? If you want to know what socialized medicine will be like, spend a day at the DMV. In a report I saw from Canada, many of their clinics offices looked like DMV offices. It gave me the chills to think that I might have to endure that kind of horror in the near future.

The time to stop Obamacare is during this Congressional Recess. If we show up at the Townhall meetings that the Senators and Congressmen hold over the break, we might get it through to them. If we fail at this time, then the United States will fail to last as a country. The experiment in self-government will be called a failure and it will be our generation that lost the dream. I do not want that on my head. What about you?

Last week at a press conference on the health care debate, Barack Obama made an unforced error. He acknowledged before making his statement that he did not have all the facts, which meant that he should have kept his mouth shut on the issue. But, he felt compelled to speak. He then talked about his friend Professor Gates from Harvard and the fact that he had been arrested in Cambridge, MA. Barack Obama echoed Professor Gates in calling the arrest racial profiling and racism. He added that the police department had “acted stupidly” in this issue.

Barack Obama is used to getting what he wants on almost every issue. He is not used to being confronted with facts on an issue. When he said the police had “acted stupidly”, he expected everyone to agree with his assessment regardless of the facts. The Cambridge Police Department and the Police Union took exception to the world-wide denigration of their character. They decided that they were not going to take it and called for a full investigation of the issue.

My natural inclination is to take the side of the police in any issue like this. The reason is that I served as a Deputy Sheriff for 4 years in Colorado. That gives me a bias towards police and sheriff’s departments in any issue. I still feel a comradeship with my fellow law enforcement officers. That does not make me blind to wrong doing. If I see or hear about wrong doing, I am one of the first to call for the measures necessary to clean up the situation.

I also have a bias against someone when they cry racism. There are legitimate times when there are racist situations. When they occur, I denounce them and call for a resolution of the problem. The problem with the cries of racism is that about 95-99% of the time the cry of racism is just an attempt to get out of trouble on the part of the criminal involved in the situation. In the usual cries of racism, they only go one way. The usual cries are that whites are oppressing blacks. The usual cries never acknowledge that racists exist in every racial group. The ones crying racism only acknowledge racism if the person is white. They never see racism by any other racial group, even if it goes on right before their eyes.

An example of racism on my campus was in the hiring of a teacher. The person in charge of the committee made the statement that the person selected will be the best person for the job and a minority. There was nothing wrong with the statement, until you added the minority. If you want the best person for the job, you may get a white male. If you only want a minority, you do not necessarily want the best person for the job. To the administration on campus, they had no problem with that statement. If the statement been that the candidate had to be white, the college administration would have come unglued and cried racism, with some justification. Why would it be racism if the candidate had to be white and not racism if the candidate had to be a minority? In my mind, both would have been an example of racism.

In the issue of Professor Gates, the facts are these: The police department received a call that Professor Gates house was being broken into. The police responded and found Professor Gates inside the home dressed rather shabbily. They asked for identification and received verbal abuse in response. They asked to talk to Professor Gates outside and Professor Gates responded that he would talk to their mother outside. After some time, the officers involved (one black and one white) arrested Professor Gates. After bringing him in for booking, it was discovered who he was. Professor Gates was cited for disorderly conduct and released.

Some other information that the President lacked when he made his comment was that the Sergeant involved teaches a course at the police academy on how not to racially profile. He was one of the least likely candidates for a racial incident in the entire department.

After putting his foot in his mouth, Barack Obama decided to make lemonade. He invited both men to the White House for a friendly get-together. At this get-together the White House served food and beer. By all accounts, this event will be a friendly affair.

Barack Obama did not expect the backlash on a racial incident. He thought that his pronouncement would either be accepted or just blow over. The comment did neither. The comment riled up a firestorm of controversy. Obama was wrong to have said anything. He should be concentrating on things with national importance. He should not involve himself in a local issue. That will make a minor local problem and make it a major national problem. Obama seems to think that words do not mean things or have consequences. He has to learn that when a President speaks, the world listens. He cannot go around shooting his mouth off on local issues like a novice back bench legislator. He has to act the part of the leader of the free world. Right now, I would have to say that the job is bigger and tougher than he is. That is not a good sign for the US over the next 7 ½ years.

First, a little background before I get to my point, it is a bit long but will help to understand how I got to that point and why.

For a while I had been playing games on iwon.com. Then, about a year ago they decided to let people form challenge teams to raise funds for different charities. I looked around for a cause that fit me and what I believed in. I settled on the Wounded Warriors Project Challenge group. For the first few months, we were first place every month. Then, we started taking second place. We were the largest group in our category, so I could not understand what was going on. About this time, I was contacted by Ron Kohn who was forming an iwonwoundedwarriors.com group. This group was for the most dedicated players and was to help us increase our scores to the maximum.

I joined the group and after a short time, my score reached the maximum level. That is not important, except that it shows I am committed to supporting the cause I selected. Then last Monday, Ron contacted me and invited me to join an online game over Facebook, called Mafia Wars. I joined his team thinking I would be helping him and would be spending an hour or so a day. Boy was I wrong.

At first, I did my usual thing. I played the game and generally did not involve others. I found that others attacked me and I always lost. So, I decided to do something about it. I decided to grow my team to the 500 member level that you need to be really successful. You can have larger teams, but only 500 members count when you fight other teams. I have team mates from all over the world. It really is impressive to me how international this game really is. It was during this rapid expansion phase that I came across a person that had his priorities straight. He had his political leanings listed as: 1. American, 2. Conservative, 3. Republican. I sent him a message that I echoed his opinions. This is my point.

As a conservative, I too have the priority listing of American, conservative, and then Republican. It is that way because there are way too many liberals in powerful positions within the Republican Party. That means that the Republicans frequently do not take the conservative position or even support the conservative candidate in a race. Liberal Republicans gave us this new drug benefit for Medicare during George W. Bush’s term in office. Any conservative could see that it was a bad idea, but Republicans could not see it because it was proposed by a liberal Republican and there was a moderate Republican in the White House. Liberal Republicans love to hear the cheer from the liberal establishment in Washington. Conservatives know they will not receive love from the liberals in Washington, so they do not care to encourage the entanglement with them.

As an American and a conservative, I am appalled by the path that the country is headed. Where we should be going and how to get there is clear. The muddle-headedness of the Republicans is more evidence that the Republican leadership is not conservative. The Republican leadership is basically a liberal group or they would have figured out how to get out of the messes that Obama has put us in. That they have not figured out how to get out of the mess is all the evidence you need that they are really liberals.

The liberal Republicans still hold the policies of the past as sacred. What we need to do is plow a new path. Any conservative could get us out of this mess pretty quick. Liberals cannot do it because they secretly like the way things are going. That is why I am an American and a conservative, who happens to be a Republican. That is probably the best way to put it.

Last night, Barack Obama held a press conference about his health care initiative. He appeared articulate and in command of the issues when he was presenting his information. When you check his facts, on the other hand, you find that they were made up or completely false. The news media did its usual job of rolling over so Obama could rub its tummy. Just when a couple of them start to ask tough questions, you think they might ask one in the press conference. If they asked a mild question, Barack Obama danced around the issue without answering it for about 5 minutes. As a result, this press conference had to be one with the fewest questions asked since the invention of the radio.

I did not get to hear the press conference. I work nights and so was at work during the conference. I did get to hear Hugh Hewitt make a comment about the opening statement. Hugh said that the opening statement was completely false. On the way home from work, I did get to hear part of the Mark Levin show where he went over the press conference as it was happening. When I was listening the show was delayed by at least 3 hours. The little I heard told me that Obama sounded like he knew what he was talking about, but the facts I knew were completely different than the facts he was giving at the press conference.

The first point that stuck out to me was when Obama was talking about the deficit. I may get the numbers wrong as I was driving in the dark when I heard them. He mentioned that he inherited a deficit. That is a true statement. The projected deficit when he took office was around $200-250 billion. He projected Bush deficits over the next 10 years and came up with a figure of about $9.3 trillion. He then said that he had done wonders with the economy and that the deficit over those same ten years was only going to be $7 trillion. That was a savings of $2.3 trillion. As I remember, the deficit for the first six months of office is about $1 trillion +. The only way his figures can be correct is if he did not expect Bush to collect taxes and that all those taxes went to paying down his debts. Then, I might believe his numbers. Obama is going to rack up deficits in one year that will dwarf all the deficits of all the Presidents from Washington to George W. Bush, combined.

Obama also went on and on that his health care plan was going to save money. He must be the only person on the planet that believes that. The Congressional Budget Office, ran by Democrats, says that the plan will increase costs by $1.3 trillion. And, those costs will not keep down the regular costs of medicine. We all know how accurate the Congressional Budget Office estimates are. When they estimated the cost of Medicare, they said it would cost $9 billion by 1990. By 1990, Medicare costs were over $66 Billion. Other estimates have been even worse than that one. Using that as the baseline, would peg the actual costs of this health care bill at about $9.1 trillion. That sounds a lot more like what the actual costs will be. The $1 trillion figure just seemed way too low.

There is a way to almost instantly reduce the cost of health insurance and then the resulting cost of health care in this country. Right now, health insurance is a highly regulated business. Policies have to contain certain things in order to be sold in a particular state. That means I have to purchase maternity insurance even though my wife and I are both over 60 years of age. We should be able to drop that coverage and then reduce our insurance cost by that much. Other provisions in health insurance are also required by the states and federal government. If we eliminated those requirements, health insurance costs would drop dramatically.

The other related item that would greatly reduce the cost of health insurance is to make health insurance completely portable. Right now, my policy in Arizona covers me if I go to other states. If I move to Georgia, I have to buy a different policy based on Georgia’s requirements. I should be able to find a policy that I want at a price I want to pay and buy it. Say I live in New York where insurance costs are about the highest, I should be able to buy my policy from a company anywhere in the country. Then, I could pay the same low cost for insurance that they pay in Wisconsin.

If those are the only things done to reduce costs, it would greatly reduce the cost to the consumer. There are a lot of other ideas that would get more people insured and reduce the cost of medical practices. Those will have to be the topic for another post. I have lots of ideas on the topic. Strangely, none of them involve the government, except to remove it from the scene.

One thing that the Obama administration does that really bothers me is to declare everything an emergency. Then, after declaring it an emergency the solution is to ram a bill through Congress that no member of Congress has read.

Congress does not take orders from the White House. Members of the House and Senate are expected to be knowledgeable about the bills they vote on. A great example of how this system is broken is the health care bill currently being rammed down the throats of Congress. Even the White House has no idea what is in the bill. I have not heard or read one member of Congress or the Executive Branch who has said they know what is contained in the health care bill. This includes the President. Who said yesterday that he had no idea what was contained in the bill. Since nobody knows what is in the bill, shouldn’t we take a step back and let everyone read it first? That would seem to be the prudent thing to do. If a member of Congress did not want to read the actual bill, they could assign a member of their staff to read the bill and prepare a summary for them to read. This second method would get them over the hump, but is clearly not the best option.

We all saw what happened when nobody reads a bill. The stimulus bill was passed because it was so important for the country that it passes immediately. Come to find out that most of the bill will not even take effect for years. When you do not read a bill, you can expect to be surprised at what is contained in the bill. You cannot rely on the White House, regardless of which party holds the White House, to tell you the truth. You have to do your own research to find out if there is anything in there that you object to. If you oppose funding abortions, you better know if the bill proposes to fund abortions or your credibility is shot with your constituents. The people that vote for you expect you to read each and every bill before you vote on that bill. If you want government funding of abortions and the bill prohibits government funding of abortions, you had better know about it before the vote.

Is it me, or have members of Congress gotten lazy about reading each bill. It used to be that you could guarantee that each member of the House and Senate had read and was familiar with all aspects of a bill before it was debated before each chamber. Now, you can tell that some have not read the bills from the comments they make in the debates. One of the problems is the voters. We keep electing these politicians that do not take the time to do their job. The reason we keep electing them is that we do not do our job. If a politician messes up big time in year one of his term, by the end of his term people have forgotten about it altogether. We need to make sure that we keep after these politicians to keep them honest. If we do our job better, you can guarantee that the politicians will do their jobs better so they can keep their jobs.

Politicians understand votes very well. If they perceive that if they vote a certain way that they will lose their next race, they will not vote that way. This is true, even if the politician believes strongly in the idea. That is because most politicians are not “true believers”. Politicians will jump from issue to issue and flip-flop on both sides of an issue. What keeps them in check is a block of voters that believe strongly in an idea and threatening the politician’s job. The threat does not have to be in the open. Just having a group together that will support an idea is enough to get political support from the politician. You also have to make sure that the politician knows that you support a particular issue and that you have votes behind you. That will change a politician’s mind faster than anything else.

Opposition to the Democrat takeover of the health care industry in the United States is growing. There are groups that are even willing to stand up and be counted as opposing the Democrats plan. That takes a lot of courage in Obama’s America. He is very vindictive and is willing to use the power of the federal government to crush all opposition. That some are willing to stand up and be counted says that there is a lot of opposition, more than Obama would be able to crush with a few well placed blows. The “big boys” are still supposedly in favor of the bill, but as the opposition grows they may yet stand up and be counted.

This morning on the Mike Gallagher snow, I heard an employer explain what would happen if he were required to provide health insurance for all his employees. He owns a service business, fast-food. He employs about 100 people both full and part-time. His current profit is just under $150,000. If he were required to provide health insurance under the Democrat plan, he would pay out more than his total profit to supply his employees. If the Democrat plan gets passed, he would have to go out of business. There are plenty of other small businesses that are in a similar boat with this owner. If required to provide health insurance, it would take more than their current profit to pay for the health insurance. He would be unable and unwilling to run the business at a loss.

Democrats would counter that he could raise his prices to pay for the health insurance. If the economy were humming along on all cylinders, that would be a possibility. Since we are in a recession with no end in sight, which is a limited possibility at best. People who frequent fast food restaurants generally would not be able to pay much if any increase in food cost. Raising prices would be to price him out of the market. That means the Democrat bill would increase the unemployed in the country and decrease the number of people that would pay the increased taxes.

Even run of the mill Democrats are starting to feel the heat. They were elected in districts that elected Republicans for a long time. They want to keep their positions. They know that another big tax increase would cause them to be defeated in 2010. As a result, the Obama administration and Nancy Pelosi are waffling on who is going to pay for this boondoggle. The original idea had everyone making more than $280,000 pay a surcharge. Now, they rolled it back to those making over $1 million. That means the bill is not “paid” for, like it was going to be paid for with the original tax increase anyway. At least, they can tell their districts that they focused the tax only on the “evil filthy” rich, those making over $1 million per year.

The mandate to pass this health care bill by the first of August is also starting to unravel. It looks like they are pushing the deadline back to the first of September for now. It does not matter when the bill gets passed. The problem comes if the bill gets passed. We need to keep the pressure on the Obama administration and the members of the House and Senate. The pressure needs to stay there until the bill is dead and buried for all time. Then, and only then, can we relax and worry about stopping the rest of the Obama agenda.

There is the cap and tax bill that is sitting in the back pocket of the Senate. They could bring this up at a moment’s notice and destroy our economy. We cannot let down our guard for even one second as long as Democrats lead the House and Senate and there is a Democrat in the White House. I hope those that voted for Obama and the Democrats have learned their lesson. If they have, things will go much better in the future. If not, things could be just as bad in the future. We can never really let our guard down for any length of time as long as there are Democrats in the House and Senate. They will always be there, so we have to watch them all the time.

There are a lot of things coming out of the Obama administration as a smoke screen for the real goal of taking over the healthcare system in the country. The goal of taking over the health care system is not to improve the delivery of health care or even to provide health insurance to those that are uninsured. No, the goal is to give the federal government more control over the lives of every day Americans as possible.

If you read between the lines on what is said by the Obama administration, you can figure out what they are talking about. They are talking about reducing the cost of delivering Medicare. There is only one way to reduce the cost of delivering health care to the elderly is to reduce the health care to the elderly. That means that the elderly will not get the same level of medical care as they get today. Instead of treating them as long as they live, they will stop receiving medical care over a certain age for the high cost services. For routine services, there would be no change. The only change would come if the person needed a hip replacement or something like that. Today, that person would get the hip replacement. Under Obamacare, that person would be denied care because they were too old for the country to receive a benefit for their hip replacement. That would mean a shorter live span for those getting up there in years. You know it is a bad deal when the Congress votes to include everyone except for Congress under this government option.

Once Obamacare becomes entrenched, they will start making lifestyle changes for people receiving government health care. They will deny care for lung cancer if the person had been smoking or some other lifestyle choice that is out of favor with the Congress. This is the scary part. They could mandate changes in lifestyle that people would not agree with. The people could fight back, but would have no chance at winning because they have no power. I do not care to have the government tell me what I should do or not do with my life. I want to be the boss of me as Walter E. Williams likes to say.

The cost of Obamacare is another objection. The Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of Obamacare (House version) at over $1.3 trillion. Max Baucus in the Senate has kept that plan under wraps, so nobody knows what is included in that plan. We all know how the Congressional Budget Office consistently underestimates the cost of programs. They will estimate that something will cost $1 billion over at 5 year period and at the end of 5 years it is costing at least $10 billion for just one year. That means that within the 10 year lifespan of the Congressional Budget Office estimate, we can expect that the cost will be a minimum of twice $1.3 trillion and more like 10 times that cost. That is just the cost that will be added to what we would already spend on health care. The other dirty little secret is that only about ½ to 2/3 of the estimated 40 million uninsured people would receive insurance. The other 1/3 to ½ would still be uninsured at the end of the 10 years. All that cost and you do not even do what the supposed goal of the program is. That program would have to be considered a failure and we haven’t even taken it out on the road for a test drive.

There is only one reason the Democrats and Obama want this health care bill passed and that can be summed up in one word, POWER. It has nothing to do with insuring the uninsured as their plan states. It has everything to do with giving the government power over individuals, so they can tell those individuals what to do. It also is designed to guarantee that people will vote Democrat. The Democrats would go into every election telling people that the “evil” Republicans want to take your health care away. That system of envy works very well in keeping the voters from voting for the other party. After a while the other party adopts your socialist agenda and you have won the war.

The time to defeat this “evil” plan is now. Right now, before the Democrats implement it. If it gets implemented, it will be too late to go back to what we have now. We would be stuck with the socialist plan until some country shows us the way out. England and Canada are both starting to move away from their socialist plan that we are trying to adopt. How ironic, we are trying to emulate England and Canada and England and Canada are trying to emulate us.

Sign this petition to help put a stop to Obama care. Just click on this link, http://www.freeourhealthcarenow.com/.

Since I work during the Sotomayor hearings, I do not get to hear them live. So, I have to rely on news reports and talk shows to highlight important things that happen during the hearings for each day.

Today, I was listening to the Mike Gallagher show and he played a clip from yesterday’s hearing that would have caused an accident had I actually been driving at that time. I was stopped at a red light when I heard the clip of the question by Senator John Cornyn from Oklahoma asking if there is a right to self defense. As anyone who has read the Constitution knows, the second amendment gives people the right to bear arms. The 14^th amendment says that a citizen of the United States shall not be deprived of Life, Liberty or Property without due process of law. Put those two amendments together and you have a right to self defense. To my knowledge, every state gives their citizens the right to defend themselves against someone who would try to take it. That would make Senator Cornyn’s question as a no-brainer type of a question for someone who knows anything about the Constitution and believes what it says. A citizen of the United States has the right to self defense.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the other hand gave an answer that shall forever be classified as one of the poorest answers ever given by a Supreme Court nominee. She said that she did not know of any cases that the Supreme Court had taken up that addressed that question. That was not what Senator Cornyn had asked, so he asked again. She again tried to evade the answer. Again, Senator Cornyn asked the question in a different more direct way in asking her opinion on the matter, not whether there was case law. She still tried to evade the answer. During this exchange some telling things were at play. Either Judge Sotomayor has no clue as to what the Constitution says or she knows and wants to end it. It was obvious from her non-answers that she believes that citizens of the United States do not have a right to self-defense. If she felt they did have a right, she would have said so. If she did not believe that they had a right, she would try to avoid the answer. Since that is what she did, the obvious answer is that she does not believe in a citizen’s right to self defense. The logical conclusion from that answer is that she does not believe that Americans have a right to keep and bear arms as well.

One of the important requirements for a Supreme Court Justice is a command of the English language. Sonia Sotomayor displayed a rather poor command of English by confusing imminent and eminent. She used eminent when she meant imminent. That may seem like a small misstep, but in someone who will end up analyzing every word in a case brought before her a mistake like that would be costly. The other Justices on the Court all displayed a fantastic command of the English language, even those that I disagree with know the language well. Judge Sotomayor would be at a huge disadvantage in the court if she cannot use words properly.

Yesterday was not a good day for Sonia Sotomayor. The Republicans asked her questions that she was not prepared to answer. As a result, they had her floundering for answers. When she has a prepared script, she comes across as average. When she gets off script, she is obviously over matched by even some of the light weight Senators that were asking questions. Now, to give credit where credit is due, Senator Cornyn is a medical doctor and extremely intelligent. To be outmatched by him is not a disgrace for 99% of the population. Sonia Sotomayor is attempting to be a Supreme Court Justice. She is not part of the 99% of the population. She is supposed to be part of the top 1% of all Americans just to be nominated. She is showing by her answers that she is not in the top 1% at all. She is more likely in the top half at best.

For his first Supreme Court selection, Barack Obama did not pick one of the best qualified. He picked an affirmative action nominee. That lowers the quality of the court dramatically. Stephen Breyer is not one of the top Justices on the Supreme Court, but he is no slouch either. He can hold his own with almost anyone on the bench, with the exception of Justices Scalia, Thomas and Roberts. Sonia Sotomayor will not be able to match wits with any of the other justices. She will be the brunt of jokes and will not even understand what is going on.

If Sonia Sotomayor had any personal integrity, she would realize that if she cannot match wits with Senators, she will not be able to match wits with the other Supreme Court Justices. Since she would obviously be the bottom of the barrel, she would either have to spend 10 times more time than anyone else or be the laughing stock of the bench. The bad part is her unintelligent vote would have the same weight as that of Justice Scalia. Talk about injustice. That would be the height of injustice on every case she sat and decided. She should remove her name from consideration and allow Barack Obama to get his first selection right. Since she has always been an affirmative action pick, I doubt that she will see anything wrong with being the affirmative action pick for the Supreme Court. That would just confirm my judgment of her intelligence.

The Democrats unveiled their healthcare plan to the world yesterday. It has a price tag of $1.3 trillion. Everyone knows that the price tag is about 5-10 times below the real cost of the plan, but it is the official cost that everyone will use in the debate to come. The plan takes every bad idea that has been floated over the past 6 months and makes it worse. About the only good thing I can say about the plan is that they printed it on American paper and the printing is clear and correct.

Officially the plan only taxes the “rich” to pay for the huge cost. The problem is that if you took all of the income of the so-called “rich” you would not pay for the plan at all. So, the plan has escalators built into the plan to make sure it does get paid for, and that it includes everyone, not just the “rich”. But, the Democrats will claim that the plan only taxes the rich, which is partially true if you buy their rich argument.

Barack Obama has made a big point of saying that nobody will be forced out of their health insurance plan into the government health insurance. This plan of the Democrats puts 119 million Americans into the government health insurance plan and out of their insurance. Either they will have to change their plan or Barack Obama has been feeding us a pack of lies during this initial debate on health insurance. Of course, Barack Obama feeding us a pack of lies is nothing new, but still it is not something the Democrats should want to highlight like this.

The premise built into the plan is that people are “evil”. Why I say this is that there are multiple penalties throughout the plan for people who will not follow the plan. If this plan is so great, everyone should want to participate and these penalties will not be needed. These penalties are built in as part of the way to pay for the government health insurance. Whatever happened to the American principle of freedom? This forced compliance with a law that is supposed to be for our own good is just not the type of thing that is in line with traditional American values. This is more the kind of thing you saw in communist countries, not in freedom loving countries like America.

There are boards set up to control every aspect of health care. These boards are responsible for their portion of the health care system. They are not responsible to the people. Their job is to control costs as their first priority. Their second priority is to see that people get the best care available. In the case of a conflict, cost wins over quality every time. At least that is how it works in every other country that has this type of system. That is why the health care in countries with single-payer systems and multiple boards have health care that is second class at best. People wait for months or even years for treatment. The hope is that the person will die or get better before treatment is provided. That way the government can reduce the cost by not providing the service. It is much cheaper to bury someone than it is to keep them alive in the last stages of life. The government position in ALL single-payer system countries is to let the person die, thereby saving a lot of money that can then be used elsewhere. My experience with the health care system in England in the early 1970’s was eye opening to say the least. The clinics looked like the kind of clinic that I saw in movies about doctors in the 1930’s and 40’s. At that time, the health care was not to the point where people had to wait a long time for treatment, but the quality was definitely below what I was used to in the United States.

Why anyone in the United States would want to follow England or Canada into the morass that is the single-payer system is beyond my understanding. There is no medical reason for it to occur. The only reason to go to a single-payer system is so the government will have more control over our lives. We have too much government control over our lives at this time; we do not need more control. We need to get rid of some government control and get back to the freedoms that our Founding Fathers fought for.

I listened to a You-Tube video of a Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand. In the interview, she predicted the time we are living in right now. That was really scary to hear her basically tell Mike Wallace what a future America would be like if we did not correct the error of our ways. Her solution was to have a separation of commerce and state, just like there is a separation of church and state. If we followed that principle, we would be the strongest country in the world and nobody would ever want to mess with us in any way. Terrorists would pick other targets. Dictators would make peace with us and try to live with the regulations we put on them. The world would be much better off if we just separated commerce and state. That was a great idea when she said it. It is an even better idea right now, especially with Barack Obama dropping the ball every time he gets the chance.

Barack Obama has a vision of America that includes socialism. To implement that vision, he absolutely has to have socialized medicine. He desperately wants socialized medicine to happen within this year. The reason is that he can feel the window of opportunity closing and he wants to get it passed while he still can.

Nancy Pelosi thinks that socialized medicine would be a good thing, so she wants to please the President. She is even more ambitious than the President in that she wants the bill passed out of the House of Representatives by the end of July. It is now July 14. There is half a month left for Nancy Pelosi to accomplish her goal of destroying the American medical system. The big trick for Mrs. Pelosi is whether she can trick enough people to pass the bill out of the House.

Harry Reid is waiting over in the Senate to pass the socialized medicine bill as soon as it passes the House. Fortunately for him, the House has to act first. This keeps him out of the firing line for the time being. He can go on making stupid statements and nobody really takes him seriously. People are more concerned with what Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats are saying.

As things stand right now, the Democrats are trying to fool people with the “public option” or government health insurance. The lie being told to the public is that the government health insurance is there to keep the private health insurance companies honest. The secondary lie is that the government health insurance will help to keep down the cost of the private health insurance. The real story is that the government health insurance is there to replace the private health insurance.

Barack Obama is going around telling people that people are not going to have to change health insurance carriers. That is true if you only look at the very short term. If you look even one year down the road, that statement begins to become a lie. After a few years, private health insurance is non-existent for almost all Americans, so the statement is a complete lie. At that point, the only place you can get health insurance is from the government and you have socialized medicine, also known as a one-payer system. That is the absolute worst kind of medical system to have. It is fine if you never get sick and have to see a doctor. If you ever see a doctor and need medical attention, you are in trouble because the medical care is not there.

There is a Rasmussen poll out today that is bad news for the Democrats. More people do not want government health insurance by 49-46. The people against government health insurance feel stronger against government health insurance than those that support government health insurance. People are moving away from the Democrat position. By the end of July, the numbers will be even stronger against government health insurance. That will cause the so-called Blue-Dog Democrats (the soft left) to pull out of the agreement with the hard left and vote against the bill. That would be enough to defeat it in the House. That would be a great day for America. Unfortunately for America, Nancy Pelosi and the hard left will come back with another incarnation of this disaster at another time. They will keep it up as long as they are in the majority. They need to be voted back into minority status as soon as possible to rid ourselves from this menace.

We have the best health care in the world. To be sure, it is not perfect. Anything designed and run by humans is not perfect. But, it is better than any other health care system out there in the world today. There are ways to reform our medical system that would improve it to allow more access and not take away the parts that give us greatness. Tweaking our great system would be better than throwing out our great system and starting over with third class parts. I have seen England’s up close. I know second class health care when I see it. We do not need to copy a second class system in an attempt at reform.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor started her confirmation hearings this morning. Senator Leahy started things off with a disjointed discourse designed to blunt any Republican opposition to her nomination. What his ramblings did was open more questions as to how he could justify his comments. There had been no evidence put forward, to date, that would back up anything that he said. Senator Orrin Hatch referenced Judge Sotomayor’s rise from relative poverty to the cusp of the Supreme Court of the land. There are so many of those rise from poverty stories, it is a wonder that anyone would think it unusual in America. In a socialist country, the rise would be unusual, but in America things like that happen every day.

Since I started taking notice of Supreme Court nominations, Judge Sotomayor has to be the least qualified to sit on the bench that reached the hearing stage. There were some that were nominated that washed out prior to getting hearings and they do not count. Judge Sotomayor disqualified herself from the bench when she made the racist or sexist comment (or both) that a Latina woman would be a better judge than a white male. Nobody that was racist or a sexist with comments like that has made it to the hearing stage since probably the early 1900’s. Back then, there were Supreme Court Justices that belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. Today, finding someone with views like that is unusual. You would have to hunt pretty hard to find someone with racist or sexist views like that. Unfortunately, they do not seem to be uncommon in the Obama administration.

Judge Sotomayor will almost surely be confirmed by the Senate. The Republicans have said that they will not filibuster the nomination. For the Republicans to filibuster a Supreme Court nomination is wrong, even with one as bad as this is. The trick will be to get Judge Sotomayor to disqualify herself in the confirmation hearings. That will be nearly impossible as she has undoubtedly been told what to say by Democrats. The Democrats hold 60 votes in the Senate, so stopping her nomination is almost impossible. The best the Republicans can hope to do with this nomination is to prepare the public for the next bad nominee by Obama.

The Democrats have let the cat out of the bag on their plan of attack for the nomination process. The Republicans plan to bring in Frank Ricci, the winning firefighter in the suit that she thought was unimportant. The Democrats plan to destroy Frank Ricci instead of hearing what he has to say. That is typical for the Democrats. They never listen to facts; they just plan to attack the truth instead of listening. That way they make people not want to confront them. It is a shame that they have to stoop to this kind of tactic whenever they know they are on the losing side of an argument. They should be willing to accept that they cannot win all arguments.

The Democrats are trying to portray Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a strict constructionist on Constitutional issues. For them to make that claim is laughable. Just take the Ricci case as an example. It is an easy case to decide and she got it wrong. She has had 60% of her cases overturned that were brought to the Supreme Court. That is a higher rate than almost any other appellate judge in the country. It at least puts her in the lower half of the appellate judges. If her rate were 40% overturned, it would be a much better case that she tries to follow the law as written. The best case would be if her rate were close to 0%. Then the claim would be supported by facts. Right now, their claim is extremely weak.

We will be bombarded with Senators trying to impress the TV cameras this week. We will get little information about Sonia Sotomayor, except for what the Democrats what us to hear. That is backwards from what should be happening. We should learn a lot about the nominee and hear little about the Senators. It is a shame that we have actors in these positions, instead of real Senators. Whatever happened to the true statesmen like Daniel Webster and Thomas Jefferson? We are stuck with Barbara Boxer. That is a poor trade. I guess you get what you deserve. We have been working towards the Barbara Boxers of the world for many years. We have tried to marginalize the Daniel Webster’s and Thomas Jefferson’s.

This month, Congress is debating the Health Care bill also known as Obamacare. The Democrats are trying as hard as they can to get the total cost below $1 trillion, but are finding that task extremely difficult. No matter what they do, the total cost remains firmly above $1 trillion. We all know that the true cost will be several times more than the estimated cost, but they have to get the estimated cost below the $1 trillion mark to sell it to the public. So far, that has been impossible. As a result, the public polling indicates that support for Obamacare is now about 50-50. That is hardly enough support to destroy our medical system.

On the way to work, I heard Stuart Varney from Fox News interviewed by Mike Gallagher. He said that there was little reason to tax our health insurance and other benefits to insure the uninsured. The approximately 30 million uninsured include about 10 million illegal aliens, 10 million people earning over $75,000 who want to self insure and 10 million people between 18 and 24 who are invincible and don’t want health insurance. At no point in that equation are there people that truly need our help. There are people included in the uninsured group that are between jobs, but they generally get another job within a very short period of time. Again, that is not a reason to change our health insurance system to include these. There is just not a good reason to justify changing our health insurance system to include people who do not want, do not need or should not receive health insurance. As a whole, Americans are happy with the health insurance they currently have. Any health insurance system designed by the Democrats will force everyone out of the health insurance they currently have into government insurance, which will not be as good.

Making everyone have insurance is one thing. It creates a problem in that if everyone has insurance, they will be tempted to use it more often. If they use it more often, it will tax the ability of our medical community to give us the level of care that we have traditionally received. Government insurance will mean that the waiting rooms will be packed. That will ultimately lead to rationing of care by the government. The government would have to decide who gets priority to the doctor and who does not. The older and sicker you are the less ability to use the medical system will be available. We will be starting a form of medicine like the movie, “Logan’s Run”. In that movie, you received medical care until you reached a certain age. Once you reached that age, you were killed. I am not saying this will be that bad, but I am sure that there will be restrictions on what health care will be available to those over a certain age.

I cannot think of a single advantage, except for the hospital administrator. They will know that the person being treated has health insurance and what coverage is included. Other than to hospital and doctor billing offices, there are really no benefits to the public at large. There is the liberal benefit of being able to say that you were able to get everyone covered with medical insurance. I suppose that is a noble goal, but at least two-thirds of those that are uninsured do not want to be insured. You are forcing them to do something they do not want to do. That is taking freedom away from them. We cannot go around taking freedom away from people. Sooner or later we run out of freedoms and nobody is free. That time is fast approaching. People are too willing to give up freedom for security. As Winston Churchill is supposed to have said, “Those who would give up freedom for security soon find themselves neither free nor secure.” There is a lot of truth to that statement, whether Churchill said it or not.

This month will determine whether there will be an America in 2010. If the Democrats succeed in passing Obamacare, America will cease to exist as an idea. It will still exist as a country, but no longer as the free country it had been for 233 years. It would forever be a socialist country from now on and never again hold the truths of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as true. For those reasons, if for no other reason we have to stop Obamacare. We cannot put forth Obamacare lite. That would just do the same thing only with a Republican twist. We need to stop the Obamacare as proposed and any other government option for healthcare. That is the true AMERICAN way.

Since I wrote last, Michael Jackson died and all the media hype happened. Michael Jackson was big in the music world, though I do not understand why. I never thought his music was that good. His best music, as far as I am concerned, was when he was just starting and he was part of the Jackson 5. From then on, he got a big head and his music just got difficult to understand.

The Michael Jackson I remember is the one who grabbed his crotch on national television during the Super Bowl. That was a disgusting action. I also remember the accusations of child molestation and the protests that every father should sleep with their children. He may have been innocent in the eyes of the law, but in my eyes he was guilty. My standard of guilt does not have to reach the level that the government has to reach for a conviction. I just use a preponderance of evidence to make my decisions. I always figure if it looks like a duck to me and it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, it is a duck. I do not have to prove it, beyond any shadow of a doubt.

What particularly disgusted me at the funeral was Sheila Jackson-Lee trying to clear Michael Jackson of molesting kids. She took the government standard and tried to apply it to everyone. That way, she could make Michael Jackson seem innocent, when he was really guilty of child molestation. She was waving a Congressional Resolution around that basically absolves Michael Jackson of the crimes he committed. It also honors Michael Jackson for his contributions to the music industry. I have no objections to the part about honoring him for his musical ability. I may not agree with his music, but I am musician enough to recognize that he does have talent. I do take objection to the part where the resolution absolves Michael Jackson of any crimes he committed. That is wrong. He committed those crimes. He should be remembered for the crimes he committed.

Al Sharpton was going on and on about race. To Al Sharpton, everything is about race. You could say it was a great morning and he would try to find some racial undertones to your statement. Al Sharpton was going on and on about how people did not like Michael Jackson because of his race. After Al Sharpton talks for about 2 seconds, I have a tendency to turn him off. You know what he is going to say, so why listen to it. Day dreaming about what to have for lunch sounds better than listening to the Reverend Al speak. People might accuse me of racism because of that statement. There is no racism. Some people are like a broken record. They will repeat themselves over and over again. Reverend Al is one of those people. There are also a number of white’s that do the same thing. It is not racism that gets me to say the statement. It is just boredom with stupid people that cannot think of new things to say.

On the Mike Gallagher show today, I heard a black caller accuse Mike of racism because he was saying bad things about black people. The caller said that Mike Gallagher only said bad things about blacks, not good things. Mike countered with the names of a number of black people that he admired, especially Justice Clarence Thomas. The caller said that Clarence Thomas was not considered black by the black community. That is the problem. The blacks that I admire and build up are not considered black enough by the black community. The reason they are not considered black enough is that they are not flaming liberals. The problem lies with the black community, not with whites. The black community only accepts blacks if they are liberal Democrats. If they are conservatives, the black community considers them “Uncle Tom’s”. An “Uncle Tom” is a black that has sold his soul to the white community. The problem is that the blacks that have sold their soul to the white community are the liberal blacks, not the conservative blacks. The conservative blacks have to be willing to stand there and take arrows. Liberal blacks do not have to do that, so they get a pass all the way to the liberal white establishment. The liberal blacks only get power when whites give it to them. Conservative blacks get power whenever they want to get it. That is the difference.

Yesterday, Barack Obama took his dog and pony show on the road to highlight his push for nationalized health care. The Townhall event was a sham as all the attendees were hand picked and all the questions were pre-screened. The highlight of the Townhall event was a person by the name of Susan Smith from Virginia. She told a sob story of being ill for years and not being able to work. She told of the high cost of going to a doctor and her inability to pay for that cost. She then received a hug from Mr. Obama.

Susan told a great story. She did it with great emotion. Everyone in the audience at the Townhall meeting was moved, but they were supposed to be moved. The television cameras took it in and I am sure many people nationwide believed her story. When I heard it on the radio I believed it, until I heard the rest of the story. Susan Smith worked for Senator Tom Daschle during his hearings on health care. She chaired the meeting in Northwest Virginia. At that time, she exhibited no signs of any illness. She was the epitome of health and fitness. Those meetings with Tom Daschle were less than one year ago. Either a lot happened in one year or she is telling a whopper of a story right now. Since her story was supposed to cover many years, I tend to believe the whopper story. That makes that portion of the Townhall meeting completely false.

On Tuesday, the press was talking to the Press Secretary about how tightly controlled the audience was for this Townhall meeting. The Press Secretary tried to gloss over the fact, but Helen Thomas spoke up and said it was the most controlled audience she had experienced in her 50 years in Washington. That was quite damning evidence if you ask me. Helen Thomas is usually in the back pocket of the liberals, but I think that this controlled environment is getting to her. The other reporters were starting to chafe at the restrictions put on them by the Obama administration. The bloom may be off the rose for the Obama administration. At least, I hope the bloom is off the rose. We need honest reporting coming from the news media. What we have had is Democrat talking points coming from the news media. That is not reporting that is propaganda of the worst kind. The press was freer in the former Soviet Union than the press is behaving today.

The health care initiative of Barack Obama is as false as the Townhall meeting that tried to sell it to the American people. Obama constantly says that the public option is there to increase competition. When Medicare was started, there were a lot of insurance companies that served the older population. After Medicare came on the scene, these insurance companies quickly went into other lines of insurance. The same thing would happen if the public option ever became law. But, the public option would not have to become law for the government to control health care. They would just set very restrictive rules for the insurance companies and doctors to follow and it would amount to the same thing. The only difference would be that you would pay a company instead of the government. The final outcome would be the same.

What got us into the current mess in healthcare is government involvement. To get us out of this mess, we need to remove government from the healthcare industry as much as possible. That would allow competition to take place. In medicine where there is no government interference, prices for services have gotten cheaper or the quality has greatly improved. For example: Years ago, it cost about $1000 per eye to get your eyes fixed by a process called radial keratotomy. Now, it costs between $300 and $1000 per eye to get various laser surgeries. The radial keratotomy cut the cornea of your eye. These laser surgeries do no such thing. They are safer and more reliable. The cost is the same or less than the old procedure. What got us this reduced cost is competition.

In other medicine, government red tape costs doctors and hospitals millions of dollars to fill out forms. This drives up costs and lowers the quality of care. Under socialized medicine, this problem will get worse. Paperwork always gets worse when the government gets involved. When you take the government out of things, paperwork goes down and costs go down.

That is why we have to stop Obamacare from becoming law. If it takes hold the United States as a country of individualism is finished. We would become another European socialist state that will not defend itself. We have to keep America free. Our ancestors fought to give us this freedom. Let’s not give up the freedom our Founding Fathers fought for because of some lies from the White House. We are better than that. We deserve better than that. We need to stand up to this attempt at tyranny and say, “NO!” If we say we do not want socialized medicine at this time, it is defeated for at least a generation or more. That will save our children and our grandchildren the disasters that come with socialized medicine.

There were two items that happened yesterday that need to be mentioned today. The first is the fact that Barack Obama is taking a position on the Honduras Presidential situation that is exactly the same as three known communist dictators and against the rule of law. The second is that Al Franken officially was declared the winner in the Minnesota Senate race. That means that he stole the Senate seat from Minnesota. We are in big trouble if both of these are allowed to go unchallenged.

The most disturbing is the fact that the United States is being put in a position supporting a communist dictator against the people of Honduras. The President of Honduras wanted a second term of office. In fact, he wanted to be President as long as he wanted to be President. The Constitution in Honduras said that he could only hold one four year term of office. So, the President decided to change the Constitution. The only problem with that was that the Legislature had to initiate the process to change the Constitution and they refused to do it. He then decided to have a referendum on his own, without the legislature’s approval. The legislature had to approve the funding to print the ballots and they refused. So, he had the ballots printed in Venezuela with Venezuelan money. When the ballots were delivered to Honduras, the country’s Supreme Court had the ballots seized. The President then organized a mob to get the ballots and hold the election. The Supreme Court ordered the Army to arrest the President and have him removed from the country. That was completed.

Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega, all of our hemisphere’s communists, went on record denouncing the effort in Honduras as a coup. It was not a coup, but a Constitutional effort under the direction of the Supreme Court and the Legislature. Barack Obama sided with the communists and against the free people of Honduras. Today, the leaders in Canada also called on Honduras to allow the return of the dictator to power.

Our country should be on the side of freedom, wherever and whenever we find it. In our current President, we find him not supporting freedom when given the chance and supporting dictators whenever given the chance. This is backwards from what should be happening. Is it just me or is there something wrong with this picture? I am getting the feeling that we are being prepared for something in the future. I am not sure of what that something is, but I have a feeling that I will not like it when it happens. The early indicators are that freedom will not have a part of the Obama legacy.

The second disturbing thing is the elevation of Al Franken to the Senate. He lost the race in November. He lost the first recount. He lost the second recount. Then, his lawyers started finding votes where none existed and he managed to take a 700+ vote deficit into a 300+ vote victory. In the process, every canvassing board decision went against Norm Coleman. The Supreme Court decided that there was no pattern of deceit in the actions of the Franken team or the Minnesota canvassing board. That they could not see the obvious is ridiculous. Anyone with an eye and a brain can put one and one together to add up to two. This is the second election that the Democrats have stolen from the Republicans. The first was the Washington Governor’s race a few years back. In both cases, the Republican won the race and the first couple of recounts. It wasn’t until the Democrat vote producing machine took hold that the vote actually changed from Republican to Democrat. In both cases, miraculous votes appeared from unlikely places to give the Democrat the edge. In every case, the votes came from Democrat held counties. There were never any additional votes found in counties that were held by Republican officials. That makes one smell a rat. If this were a fair recount, there would be votes found in every county or at least most counties. No, all the votes found were in the heaviest Democrat counties. Either the Democrat held counties are the worst places to get votes counted properly or there was voting fraud after the election. I tend to believe the latter.

These two things do not bode well for the future. Al Franken makes it impossible for Republicans to stop anything without Democrat help. That means that any bill the Democrats can muster every Democrat to vote for will pass. It means Sonia Sotomayor will be on the Supreme Court, even though she is not qualified. Al Franken in the Senate is a disaster for America.

Barack Obama is signaling solidarity with his communist brethren. He has done this by coddling Kim Jong Il. He is standing firm against freedom everywhere he finds it. He is even standing firm against freedom at home. We are in big trouble as long as King Barack I is in office. Or is it Comrade Barack? I do not have good feelings about what will happen between now and November 2010. I just hope that there is still an America there that will be able to vote in November 2010. If we get to vote, the Democrats will all be lame ducks between November 2010 and January 2011. That is when they could inflict real damage, but that damage might be just temporary.