Remember the Death Panels?

Obama, realising that he has destroyed the economy, and his health care program is despised by most people planning to vote this November, has belatedly come to the conclusion that he better attack something.

So, as the supreme divider he is, Obama set out to attack the heart of America, those people who are tired of the government invading our lives, spending our money, and corrupting our society.

But in his rant at the Tea Party, he seems to have revealed his "plan" for seniors.

From Obama's CNBC Town Hall:

The problem long term are the problems that I talked about earlier. We’ve got -- we had two tax cuts that weren’t paid for, two wars that weren’t paid for. We’ve got a population that's getting older.

Well, we know that Obama opposed the two tax cuts, and is certainly railing against unpaid-for-tax cuts (while he has no problem with unpaid-for spending). And we know he opposed the wars, and he certainly seems opposed to fighting a war without paying for them.

So it seems this list is a list of things he wants to end. No more unpaid-for tax cuts, no unpaid-for wars.

And what is the 3rd thing he is opposed to? A population that is getting older.

:-)

Seriously though, Obama's town hall meeting was full of the same platitudes Obama always provides, along with his fantasy-land vision of america where his stimulus actually stimulated, were Obamacare is already providing free health care for everybody, where all the middle class is working, and we can fix our debt problem if we just take $34 billion in new taxes from the rich.

His problem of course, beyond being delusional, is that nobody is buying the hope anymore, and come november, we will be changing.

How the Grinch Stole Healthcare

This is not mine, I found it at NetRightNation:




Just something to remember as you keep reading story after story of doctors, medical supply and technology companies, hospitals, and insurance companies abandoning the health care field or greatly raising their costs.

We had a pretty good system that needed to be tweaked. Obama took that system, and destroyed it, and gave us a system that won't work, and will cost people lives.

The only upside is the rest of the world will learn that they've been leaching off of us for their health care, and maybe figure out that they too have the wrong prescription for the world's survival.

Obama says things are as bad as ever.

Almost two years after Obama said he was saving us from the Great Depression, he now admits that our economy is in as much risk as it has ever been, meaning it is as bad or worse than it was when he started "fixing" it.

In a speech attacking Linda McMahon for actually having held a job, and being a successful career woman, Obama spoke of how important it was to elect someone who could save us from the Obama Economy:

At this moment, we are facing challenges we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. And facing serious challenges requires serious leaders -– leaders who are willing to take on the status quo; leaders who are willing to take on special interests; leaders who are willing to fight for our people and our future

Well, last year Obama kept claiming we were heading for a great depression, but few people agreed with him. But he said that if we just spent all our money on democratic special interest groups, our unemployment rate would tumble and everything would be A-OK.

Well, the democrats did everything he asked, with a filibuster-proof majority in the senate and a large majority in the house. And instead of making things better, unemployment soared, the economy sputtered, and now even Obama has to admit that we have only made things worse.

So, why would we want to elect MORE democrats? Why would we vote a guy who has lived on the public payroll like Blumenthal, who only pretended to be a Vietnam Veteran, when we can elect a person who has actually EARNED a living and knows how to run a business and create jobs, and understands what Obama never will -- the troubles that real americans face.

Why some people think Obama is a Muslim

Compare his messages for Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah, to see where his heart lies.

Statement by the President on the Occasion of Ramadan

On behalf of the American people, Michelle and I want to extend our best wishes to Muslims in America and around the world. Ramadan Kareem.

Ramadan is a time when Muslims around the world reflect upon the wisdom and guidance that comes with faith, and the responsibility that human beings have to one another, and to God. This is a time when families gather, friends host iftars, and meals are shared. But Ramadan is also a time of intense devotion and reflection – a time when Muslims fast during the day and pray during the night; when Muslims provide support to others to advance opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere. For all of us must remember that the world we want to build – and the changes that we want to make – must begin in our own hearts, and our own communities.

These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings. Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country. And today, I want to extend my best wishes to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world – and your families and friends – as you welcome the beginning of Ramadan.

I look forward to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan here at the White House later this week, and wish you a blessed month.

May God’s peace be upon you.

Nothing but praise for the Muslim people. He mentions Muslim and Islam 8 times.

Now, read the message to the Jewish people:
Remarks by the President on the Occasion of Rosh Hashanah

As Jews in America and around the world celebrate the first of the High Holy Days I want to extend my warmest wishes for the New Year. L’shana Tova Tikatevu – may you be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life.

Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the spiritual calendar and the birth of the world. It serves as a reminder of the special relationship between God and his children, now and always. And it calls us to look within ourselves – to repent for our sins; recommit ourselves to prayer; and remember the blessings that come from helping those in need.

Today, those lessons ring as true as they did thousands of years ago. And as we begin this New Year, it is more important than ever to believe in the power of humility and compassion to deepen our faith and repair our world.

At a time when too many of our friends and neighbors are struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, it is up to us to do what we can to help those less fortunate.

At a time when prejudice and oppression still exist in the shadows of our society, it is up to us to stand as a beacon of freedom and tolerance and embrace the diversity that has always made us stronger as a people.

And at a time when Israelis and Palestinians have returned to direct dialogue, it is up to us to encourage and support those who are willing to move beyond their differences and work towards security and peace in the Holy Land. Progress will not come easy, it will not come quick. But today we had an opportunity to move forward, toward the goal we share—two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.

The scripture teaches us that there is “a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” In this season of repentance and renewal, let us commit ourselves to a more hopeful future.

Michelle and I wish all who celebrate Rosh Hashanah a sweet year full of health and prosperity.

No praise for the Jewish people here -- in fact, he only mentions the religion one time, in the 1st sentence of greeting. Instead, most of the message is a political one, not about the Jewish religion and celebration, but Obama's wish that Israel (a country) should accept the two-state solution he wants, and how they should be more tolerant (while the muslims were praised for THEIR "tolerance" even though no muslim state allows Christians to share their faith, and we had to burn bibles in Afghanistan because of their intolerance).

He doesn't even ask that God's peace be upon the Jewish people -- only the Muslims. No mention of how Jews have contributed to our country (like he bizarrely thinks Muslims have), just about how Jews must become more compassionate, give to the poor, and put away their prejudice and oppression.


NOTE: The idea that we would gauge people's achievements based on their religious beliefs is a typical liberal one -- the left loves to segregate us, treat us all based on groups they assign to us. Unless the achievement is of a religious nature, or a socio-political one, who cares what faith was held by Einstein, or Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubbs, Eli Whitney, or Jonas Salk (Although none of those people are Muslim).

Thus, we have the administration spending OUR tax dollars for NASA to make Muslim countries feel better about their acheivements. But in any case, here is the President, praising Muslims for their contributions to America, while castigating Jews for not doing enough for the poor and downtrodden;

Here we have the President praising Islam for its tolerance (on a week when they threatened to riot, murder, rape, pillage, and attack our troops because some nut in Florida was simply going to burn a book), while telling Jews they need to be MORE tolerant.

Here we have the President not making a single mention of ANY muslim country while he praises Muslims for being a positive force in the world, while he attacks the Jewish Faith for the existance of Israel while chiding them for not working harder to co-exist with Palestine, a political construct with the express aim of DESTROYING ISRAEL and WIPING OUT THE JEWISH FAITH ON THIS PLANET (and guess what, Palistine is run by MUSLIMS, the TOLERANT RELIGION).

Obama says he's not a Muslim, and he certainly doesn't practive the faith. But he sure goes out of his way to make up lies about how great Muslims are, while taking even ceremonial opportunities to castigate a TRUE RELIGION OF PEACE, Judaism, without even having the decency to MENTION the religion in his proclamation on one of their religious holidays.

Think about that -- an entire message to Jews on their religious holidays, and not ONE use of the word "Judaism".

What Went Wrong : Fineman discovers Obama's Incompetence

Howard Fineman does a little reflecting in his Newsweek column, asking What Went Wrong. It's nothing we didn't already know.

First, Obama was full of himself:

One day in the winter of 2005, I was in a Senate hallway when the new guy from Illinois arrived for a vote. Sen. Barack Obama—pop-star charisma, limitless possibility—knew his own allure.

Second, Obama had never lead anything, and had no idea how to run anything:

“Shovel ready” projects identified in the spring of 2009 are often still “unshoveled” because officials aren’t in place to approve them, says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. “The fact is,” he says, “Obama never really ran anything, even legislatively.” Neither has his closest adviser, message guru David Axelrod.

But being full of himself, Obama couldn't see his own flaws, and unlike past Presidents didn't surround himself with people who could be the leaders he wasn't. Instead, he thought he could do it all, because he thought he always had (and apparently, Fineman still thinks Obama actually was an over-acheiver):

Obama—an overachiever, the guy who fills up a second blue book on the extra-credit question—tried to do it all. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, eager to please the new boss, declared before Inauguration Day: “Never allow a crisis to go to waste. There are opportunities to do big things.” But in doing big things, they failed to fully attend to (and be seen attending to) the immediate economic needs of the middle class. “There hasn’t been the laserlike focus on the economy there could have, and should have, been,” says a top Democratic strategist who declined to be named criticizing the White House.

Now, that's something I would like to see from a reporter like Howard -- the actual blue book that Fineman thinks he filled with an extra-credit question. Howard is a true believer, who without a single shred of evidence (college transcripts, scholarly papers, professors who remember how smart Obama was or even that Obama was in their classrooms) believes the hype that Obama sold, and even makes up his own aprocryphal statements like his "blue-book" assertion.

Fineman has also belatedly come to understand that Obama has no focus, and shows little interest in actually doing the job, leading him into petulant and ignorant decisions:

The president is an agreeable guy, but aloof, and not one who likes to come face to
face with the enemy.
...
In the spring of 2009, the White House strong-armed House Democrats into voting for a cap-and-trade environmental bill, even though it was clear the Senate wouldn’t go along.
...
It’s the task of the presidency to cajole people, including your enemies, into doing what they don’t want to do if it is good for the country. Did Obama think he could eschew the rituals of politics—that all he had to do was invoke His Hopeness to bring
people aboard?

Fact is, Obama has never really had to work hard at anything, because the people who raised him felt sorry for him and gave him too much. He assumed that someone would do the job for him, like someone has been doing for him most of his life. His mother, his grandparents, his mentors — everybody seems to have wanted to help out the poor orphan boy who lost his dad, and they taught him nothing about hard work and sacrifice.

It still cracks me up to hear how Obama turned down high-paying jobs in law to do community service — because first, he seems to have been fine, with a multi-million-dollar house and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year coming through his wife and all; but second, because if he HAD gotten a high-paying legal position, he would have had to actually have WANTED TO WORK. He took the easy way out, “community organizer”, and accomplished nothing.

Fineman also puts to bed many of the lies Obama has been telling. For example, the "change the tone in Washington" by "reaching out to the opposition":

The president hasn’t invited the House minority leader over to talk, and Obama had his first private Oval Office chat with Mc Connell only last month. Better late than never, but too late to do any good this cycle.

Imagine that -- almost two years into his term, and he had NEVER had a one-on-one with the head Republicans in either legislative body, and has only just recently sat down with McConnell, who was one of his Senate colleagues.

Remember in contrast that Bush, who was roundly panned by the "media" as partisan, had the entire Kennedy clan over to the White House early in his administration, and regularly reached out to the Democrats both individually and in groups.

But Obama, having a large Democrat majority in the house, and at one point a filibuster-proof 60-vote Democrat majority in the Senate, saw no reason to actually work with Republicans, deciding the "new tone" should be to attack republicans and pass laws paying back his constituents for their support and campaign contributions.

Most importantly, Fineman admits to what we already knew, and what the Media worked many long weeks to acheive: Obama is a personal (fictional) creation of the media, and his election was manufactured without regard for the disastrous policies Obama was KNOWN to want to pursue, but which the media worked with Obama to hide from the voters:

“Obama’s 2008 victory was a personal one,” says Bill Galston, an adviser to President Clinton. “It wasn’t a vote for a more expansive view of the role and reach of government.”
...
Take health-care reform. Ten years hence, perhaps, it will be seen as the signal achievement of the Obama years. But for now, it’s an unpopular law that took a divisive year to enact, that liberals and conservatives loathe, that is full of bureaucratic and fiscal IEDs, and that drained attention from dealing with the economy. If you disagree, look at Obama’s speech last week in Cleveland. In 47 minutes, he mentioned health care for about 25 seconds.

Ten years hence, if our country is lucky, Obamacare will be a long-gone bad dream. But it is telling that, with Obama claiming he saved the economy from a depression, even one of his biggest chearleaders in the meedia acknowledges that nothing Obama did on the economy will be seen as useful a decade from now. And Fineman realises that Obama doesn't even believe in his own health care program anymore, even if Fineman still has a psychotic hope for it.

I guess we should thank Howard for finally recognising the truth, even if he'll never acknowledge his own part in electing a clueless, aloof, incompetent non-leader with a overblown sense of his own importance to the most powerful job in the world at a time we needed a real leader.

Surrender -- 9/11/2010

9/11/2010. This is the day that we surrendered to the radical Muslim hoardes.

Those radical muslims threatened our armed forces, if we are to believe the generals.

In response, the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the FBI (3 times), and General Petraeus all responded to the threat against our troops -- by actively and publicly intervening to stop the exercise of free speech (as defined by the Supreme Court) that was objected to by those who threatened us with war.

In response to the overwhelming force of government threats and intimidation, the citizen of our country backed down, and agreed to relinquish his freedom to make his statement.

This is the very definition of surrender -- the Commander in Chief (as Obama referred to himself when harassing a citizen for threatening to commit free speech), rather than standing up for the rights of our citizens guaranteed in the constitution, surrendered to those threatening war. Without a shot being fired, the muslim extremists who threatened our troops won the war.

The only question that remains is, are there any rights that our President, and his leadership team, are willing to defend against threats of violence? Well, we know that Obama refuses to stand up to the threat of violence from Mexico that would result from enforcing our immigration laws and stopping the illegal invasion of our country from the south.

So, what is next? Suppose the muslim extremists threaten violence if we don't make some muslim holy day a national holiday? What if they insist we allow muslim communities to practice sharia law? If they object to women wearing provocative garments when walking near mosques or during holy days?

What if they insist we don't prosecute the increasing acts of violence muslims are inflicting on their own families in the name of "honor killings"? Is there some point at which the Obama administration will draw the line and say "enough is enough -- we don't mind surrendering SOME of our rights to extremists, but not the rights that WE care about!!!!".

There are many forms of free speech that are highly controversial. Thus, the provocative statement "I may object to what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" -- a cornerstone of our freedom in this country. Obama's administration has replaced this with "If I object to what you have to say, I won't lift a finger to defend your right to say it".

Here, on the 9th aniversaray of 9/11, we have time to reflect on the war that the extremists launched on our way of life long ago, and the most bruttle battle in that war, the downing of the two towers and the smashing of the Pentagon. We rebuilt the Pentagon, but in our first show of weakness have failed to rebuild the towers, which is a constant source of delight to the extremists -- no matter how much we weaken them on the battlefield, they can look to Ground Zero and know they have mortally wounded us; this is why so many Americans dislike the idea of building a victory mosque so close to that site.

So it is sad that, on this aniversary, we are dealt such a blow, the surrender of our freedoms to these extremists. You don't negotiate with terrorists. You don't surrender your freedoms for the vain hope of security. If General Petraeus can't defend our troops against the mongrel extremist hordes, if the placement of our troops in Afghanistan results in the surrender of our free-speech rights at home, it is time for new leadership, a leadership that understands that the military exists to defend our freedoms, not so we have to surrender our freedoms to protect the military.

My Warning to All: Don't copy news articles.

I'm not a lawyer. But my warning to all those who use the internet is simple -- RESPECT COPYRIGHT LAWS.

Don't copy entire articles from newspapers, without permission. There are papers going under who will sue you. One paper in particular, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, has come up with a business model which involvese suing their readers for small amounts.

They created a firm called RightHaven, whose sole purpose appears to be to file small suits against bloggers and others without enough money to defend themselves. This firm scours the internet for any references to articles from the LVRJ. If they find one, they will BUY the copyright from the LRVJ, and then sue the person who posted the article, or the host which allowed it to be posted.

Note that the newspaper is "no longer involved". So don't count on public opnion or a reasonable appeal to save you. This company is a lawyer-driven company with ONE PURPOSE IN MIND -- to get you to pay them money for violating copyright.

And to be clear -- it is unlikely that you would be able to justify a cut-and-paste of an entire article, even if you provide a link and a citation. (I wonder if the standard snark attack of quoting an article in little pieces with long responses to each part would be considered fair use?). Worse, even if you COULD win, are you ready to spend $50,000 defending yourself against a suit that apparently you can settle for $5000 or so?

The lawsuits all appear to be about the same: $75,000, plus surrender of your domain name. That appears to be a ploy, as the settlements seem much less, and the largest that has been reported publicly is $5000.

If you are a political candidate, don't think you are immune. RightHaven has gone after campaign web sites, which sometimes think they can simply cut-and-paste articles if those articles are about the candidate. They have gone after both democrats and republicans.

And for you blogger-user sites, they have gone after both left and right-wing aggregation sites like DU and FR. They've gone after indifivual bloggers. They sued a doctor for copying an article of interest to his patients. They sued a PR FIRM that does PR for the paper, for publishing an article about an event that they provided publicity for.

So, DON'T cut-and-paste articles. Purge your sites of any you have. THink hard about fair use, excerpt judiciously, include links and citations. I AM NOT A LAWYER, so don't think that I'm saying that if you do this, you will be OK. I can't say, but it is clear that you will be targeted if you just copy an article to your web site.

The days where a blogger can steal news stories, and get money from blog pimping advertisements, is over.