Joel's Rant

Under the radar screen of most of us, the battle between the forces of good vs. evil continues unabated, and those with truly dark intentions seem always to be winning.  We are in a war for our country, and yet things are seemingly so quiet.

Take the news from Wisconsin.  Here’s the quintessential model of what tyranny looks like. 

A new Republican governor is elected with 52% of the popular vote in November 2010, taking control from the Democrats who had held that position for the 8 previous years.  In addition, both the Wisconsin House and Senate also flipped control to the Republicans.  Clearly, a majority of the electorate decided a change in state government was needed and put in place those who had promised to make those exact changes, which included a well debated and discussed effort to restrict the power of public employee unions.  Republicans won in a blue state; Democrats could not believe they had actually lost.  Hell hath no fury like a Democrat scorned!

Losing an honest election does not deter Democrats (e.g., see Al Franken election in Minnesota in 2008, Christine Gregoire in Washington in 2004, Robert Torricelli in New Jersey in 2002 to name just a few), and this is where the tyranny plot thickens.  As soon as the “budget repair bill” was introduced in the Wisconsin legislature, the Democrats left the state in order to prevent Republicans from having the quorum they needed to pass the bill.  Only Democrats could think of something as underhanded and un-American as that.

Public employee unions called upon their members to protest in Madison, to literally take control of the capitol building, and while doing so making sure they could do the most physical damage as possible.  Hateful banners, of the kind that just weeks before were castigated as encouraging assault in Tucson by these very people, appeared including shouts and chants tinged with violence.  And don’t forget the death threats aimed at Republican legislators.  All of this was done by public employees in an effort to intimidate and coerce Republican legislators from their mission.

Thousands of additional protestors, aka SEIU thugs, were bused in from other states, all with funding and support provided by the Democratic National Committee and Barack Obama’s own campaign organization, “Organizing for America”. 

Think about the enormity of that for just one moment.  The President of the United States, the presumptive leader of ALL the American people, has a bonafide organization that he can call upon to support one side, and against the other side, in a state political procedure.  That is completely anathema to the history and tradition of the office of the president.  But in Barack Obama’s mind, history and tradition begins with him.  Nothing, to him, ever happened before he became president.  He honestly believes that.

But we’re not done.  On two separate occasions, Republican legislators met with Democrats, hiding in Illinois, to negotiate a compromise to this stalemate.  Both times Democrats agreed to come back to Wisconsin, and both times reneged at the last moment, and both times the media accounts purposely make it seem the Republicans were the one’s not negotiating in good faith. 

By this time the collusion of public employee unions, Democrat political leaders including the President of the United States, and the state-run liberal media is having a detrimental influence.  Governor Scott Walker’s poll numbers begin to fall. 

In an effort to break the stalemate, the Legislative Council (LC) and the Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB), both legal agencies and employees of Wisconsin, determined that aspects of the budget repair bill could be separated out, allowing the Republicans to pass their bill without any Democrat involvement.  It’s important to understand that these agencies, the LC and the LRB, are the same people who just weeks before advised and counseled the Democrats when they were in charge.  These are not political appointees, nor are they affiliated with a political party.  They are, essentially, nonpartisan.

Armed with that information, the Governor and Republicans voted to pass the bill stripping the public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights (but not including bargaining for wages).  And there you have it; the duly elected authority of a sovereign state taking action to pass a law that affects only their own state.  It’s just what the Founders had in mind.  Case closed!

Actually, no, the case is not closed. 

Once the Democrats realized the bill had been passed they filed a lawsuit claiming the Republicans had not afforded them time to respond to the call for a vote.  The fact that the state parliamentarian, literally the state’s official expert on procedural expediencies like this and an employee of the state rather than a political party, indicated that the correct process had been followed had in no way tempered the wrath of the Democrats.  As usual, history, experience, tradition and facts mean nothing to Democrats.  Only power, and who’s wielding that power, means something to the Democrat mind. That’s a very dangerous way of thinking, but it is what it is.

In fact the Democrats, through their allies in the state run liberal media, went on a binge, accusing Republicans of “violating state law”, “making a mockery of democracy” and “operating like a banana republic” and in performing a “coup d’état”.  The irony of Democrats hiding out in another state, in a deceitful and shameful effort to prevent a newly inaugurated senate from holding a vote on vital state business, seems to have no impact or effect on this group of devious, deceitful and hostile Americans.

Instead, Democrats went the route of all good Marxists and found safety and comfort through the court, in the personage of Judge Maryann Sumi of Dane County, who issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the new law from going into effect.

This is where malicious collusion and contemptible behavior crosses over the line into soft tyranny.

Enter Maryann Sumi, the same judge who astoundingly refused to order the striking teachers back to work in February (http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/local_schools/article_1a2a34ce-3baf-11e0-983c-001cc4c03286.html ). 

This is the same Maryann Sumi whose son is a political operative, who also happens to be a former lead field manager with the AFL-CIO and data manager for the SEIU State Council.  In fact, Jacob Sinderbrand, Sumi’s son, runs a company called Left Field Strategies. 

It seems that both Judge Maryann Sumi and her son are hack political activists and her obvious conflict should cause her to recues herself.  Ah, but no, that’s not how Democrats work, not when tyranny is afoot.  Don’t forget, Democrats believe the ends justify the means, which means in this case, twist or spin or break any law or process necessary to get this budget repair law overturned. 

In fact, it seems Judge Maryann Sumi cavalierly chose to ignore the budget repair bill law and, since she knew there were no merits to the case, instead decided to argue procedure.  In effect, she completely disregarded the guidelines regarding TRO’s, overruling each of the four elements a plaintiff, in this case the Democrats, must prove:  (1) likelihood of success on the merits; (2) irreparable harm, absent the order; (3) that less harm will result to the defendant if the TRO issues than to the plaintiffs if the TRO does not issue; and (4) that the public interest, if any, weighs in favor of plaintiff. If the balance of hardships tips in favor of plaintiff, then the plaintiff must only raise “questions going to the merits so serious, substantial, difficult and doubtful, as to make them fair ground for litigation and thus for more deliberative investigation.”

All four of these elements must be proven, not just one or two.  All four.  And yet, none of them rises to level the law requires.  This means that Judge Maryann Sumi is a liar and a political hack.  She’s using her position to provide cover for the Democrats and their union overseers.  Maryann Sumi is like having the Manchurian Candidate on the bench; and the Democrats are worse.

So now the process moves forward to a court hearing which will now waste time and block the effectuation of a law properly passed by those Republicans empowered by the people of the state. http://www.620wtmj.com/shows/charliesykes/118298099.html?blog=y

Does this represent tyranny?  Here’s a case in which the court takes a political position to act on behalf of a Democrat group looking for a political favor.  It doesn’t get more tyrannical than that.  Would you want to be in front of this court battling, say, for your life or liberty?  What are the chances you would get a fair shake from Judge Maryann Sumi?  What are the chances this judge will look only to the merits of the case and not to some other agenda?  You can draw your own conclusions.

And now it seems, while this TRO is winding its way to some end, the miscreants and thugs who make up the public employee unions in Wisconsin have taken their war to the streets.  In fact, they are literally shaking down private businesses in Madison by “asking” owners to place signs in their windows saying they support the unions……or face a boycott.  http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/118963234.html

Can you believe this?  Can you believe these unions?  Can you believe these Democrats?

What happens in Wisconsin will affect every American because tyranny has no borders.

And that’s all there is to it.

Did you know that in February, the deficit for that one month topped $220 billion?  That’s more than the entire budget deficit for 2007, which was “only” $172 billion.

So the federal budget for 2012, the one Barack Obama just proposed comes in at $3.73 trillion, of which about $1.65 trillion is borrowed.  That means over 40 cents of every dollar is borrowed.  How long would your family survive if you had to borrow that much just to make your ends meet?  The answer is not very long.

Or how about this?  The total budget debt of the United States is about $14.5 trillion.  It just so happens that the GDP of the United States, the worth of all the goods and services produced in our country, is also about $14.5 trillion.  That means that our “credit card debt” is the same as our “earnings.”  How long would your family be able to survive if you owed on your credit card the same amount of money you earned every year?  Again, the answer is not very long.  It’s just simple economics.

So in November we elect a Republican House to begin the process of scaling all of that back, by making meaningful cuts to spending and entitlement programs because we’re on the edge, and we don’t have much further we can go.  So what the Republicans in the House propose is to cut from the 2012 budget a total of $61 billion. (The fact that the Democrats and the President will agree to cut only $4.5 billion is merely a measure of their insanity and shows the deep hatred and disdain they have for the American system of government and for the American people directly.  But that’s another story.)

My focus is here the Republicans.  They think cutting $61 billion is an answer.  See the February deficit I noted above.  $61 billion is only one week’s worth of borrowing from China.  That’s it.  Just one week’s worth.  $61 billion is literally a rounding error; it would turn the $1.65 trillion deficit into a $1.6 trillion deficit.  How meaningful is that?  The answer is it’s not meaningful at all. It means absolutely nothing.  This is all some sort of joke, some sort of annoying and grotesque “budget theater”  being played out by Republicans.

Why aren’t the Republicans looking to cut $610 billion?  Why not $1 trillion?  Just 10 years ago, federal spending was ½ of what it is today, and if I recall we survived as a society pretty well.  In fact, we were at our grandest economy in history, just before 9/11.   Only 4 years ago the deficit was 1/10^th what it is today, yet we now have near record unemployment, record number of people getting food stamps and living in poverty, on the Medicaid rolls, record number of foreclosures and on and on.

So where are the Republicans?  I don’t hear anything from them.  Well, I don’t hear anything from them except that they definitely and absolutely do not want to “shut down the government.”  That’s what I hear from John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy, the entire House leadership, all the time.  They don’t want to shut down the government.  They are in near mortal fear of shutting down the government, and that’s very bad because now they’re terrified of doing anything meaningful and substantive.  They are rapidly becoming legislative losers, not unlike Democrats.

But wait, it gets better.  Now it turns out that the Democrats and Barack Obama purposely placed a Trojan horse in the 2700 page ObamaCare legislation that passed the Congress, with the assistance of fraud, blackmail and deceit, in March 2010.  It takes a long time to fully analyze 2700 pages in one bill but that task has finally been accomplished and it turns out Obama, Pelosi and Reid, had placed in the bill over $105 billion in appropriations to finance the efforts to make ObamaCare the law of the land. 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/mar/10/will-house-gop-rescind-obamacare-funding-appropria/

The idea that the Republican House can “defund” the bill is a pipe dream.  It can’t be done.  The money to fund ObamaCare has already been passed in the last Congress.  It’s a nightmare!

The Democrats already provided for ObamaCare funding last year but it was literally kept a secret.  This is the tyranny we now find ourselves in.  The people who actually wrote the bill didn’t tell the Republicans the appropriations were in there.  They didn’t tell the people of the United States the appropriations were in there.  I’m certain most Democrats didn’t know it was in there, but it is.  It took until now for that Trojan horse to be discovered.  ObamaCare is already funded to the tune of $105 billion…..and it can’t be stopped.

The only way now to stop ObamaCare is for the Congress to repeal the entire law.  Oh, but Boehner and his Republicans will tell you the House did that already just a month or so ago and the repeal was stamped out by the Senate…..and they would be right.

Here’s where the threat to close the government comes into play in a big way.  Now we have a new Continuing Resolution (CR) coming up for a vote on this Wednesday and Boehner has proposed having the CR go forward, so the government can stay open of another 3 weeks, by demanding $6 billion in cuts. 

How about instead Boehner promises the CR would go forward only if ObamaCare is repealed?  Or, how about instead promising the debt ceiling, looming large in April, will be raised only if ObamaCare is repealed?  How about instead stating the government will be shut down unless ObamaCare is repealed?

Why haven’t I heard this from the House Republicans?  Not only have I not heard this from Boehner and his incompetent and elitist lieutenants, I haven’t heard any of this from the Tea Party Republicans.  Where are they on this $105 billion ObamaCare funding debacle?

The most unfathomable law in United States history was passed last year, a law that will change forever the relationship every citizen has with the government, where the government will be able to force you to do virtually anything it wants, and yet the Republicans will not take the guerilla tactics necessary to get ObamaCare repealed.  The $105 billion was surreptitiously appropriated.  ObamaCare has the money to go forward.  The Republicans can’t stop it without drastic action.  But they do have leverage.  They have the CR.  They have the looming debt ceiling.  They can force the government to shut down.   

Unless the Republicans take action, Obama won’t be the only one allowing this to go forward.  So will John Boehner.  So will the Republicans.  And the “Obama Boehner Health Care Act” will destroy America.

And that’s all there is to it.

What a week for Barack Obama and the Democrats?  I think they really revealed themselves in a most dastardly fashion.

Obama is revealed; by of all people the liberal pundit, author, and Sunday morning mainstream media favorite Bob Woodward, as demonstrably ambivalent about the Afghanistan War and in fact only cares about how the so-called “good war” will play out politically for him and his runaway agenda. 

Even though he campaigned furiously about the importance of winning in Afghanistan, Woodward, who was given free rein to wander the halls of the White House and to talk to anyone without restriction, portrays a president thinking only of himself and his place in history.  That campaign tough talk was all a ruse, a fake, a fraud.  It was all “so Obama.”  Why am I not surprised.

The ramifications of Obama’s dysfunctional coldness and narcissism does not much interest me here because the real issue that every American should feel and care about is how could he order over 100,000 American troops into harm’s way when all he cares about is spending more money on his failed domestic policies?  The American’s presently fighting this war are someone’s sons and daughters, or husbands and wives, or fathers and mothers, or loved ones and friends and represent real people who have their own lives to lose.  How could he possibly send them to a place where they can easily be killed when he doesn’t give a hoot for the mission to which he clearly falsely claimed was a war that must be won?  He lied, he lied, and in a very real and horrible way, people have literally died.  Literally.  What kind of person does that?  How did we let that happen?

But there’s more. 

Earlier this week, a former Voting Chief for the Civil Rights Division of the Barack Obama-Eric Holder Justice Department, testified under oath before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, that the DOJ is purposely ignoring civil rights cases that involve white victims.  What the fudge is that all about?  In fact, Christopher Coates, formerly a top attorney for the ACLU and once the lead attorney in the New Black Panthers Party case, for crying out loud, even called the dismissal of charges against the Black Panthers a “travesty of justice.”

Coates stated that Obama political appointees dismissed the case because they are opposed to enforcing civil rights laws in a racially neutral fashion.  Coates testified that he was reprimanded by Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King when he asked attorneys in job interviews if they could enforce the law equally.  He claimed King took offense because she does not support equal enforcement of the provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

To repeat, all of that was testified to by Coates under oath.

That testimony corroborated earlier testimony by J. Christian Adams, also formerly a high level attorney at the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, that Obama political appointee Julie Fernandes made it clear that the Voting Section at the Justice Department would not be bringing any more cases against “traditional national racial minorities”, like the members of the New Black Panthers Party.

So the Democrat Party, the party of inequality and blatantly racist preferential treatment, strikes again.  It’s clear the DOJ will not enforce the laws which it does not agree with.  If that’s not a definition of tyranny, what is?  What kinds of people do that?  How did we let that happen?

But there’s more.

There does not appear to be a single Democrat running for reelection this year who is embracing the “achievements” of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi legislation of the past 20 months.  If anyone knows of a Democrat running toward that agenda, please let me know.

So here are the Democrats, virtually every single one of them, who voted for $862 Billion in stimulus money even though the recession had ended in July 2009, before any stimulus money had even been spent, for Cap & Trade “Soviet-style” industrial central planning, for ObamaCare legislation that could only be passed by deception, coercion and malfeasance, and for takeovers and bailouts, for turning their backs and pretending they had absolutely nothing to do with it.  Somehow all of that economic destruction happened all on its own.  They don’t know about it, they weren’t anywhere near the Capitol Building when it was passed, it must have been someone else, the dog ate their homework and on and on.

The point is the Democrats in Congress are unprincipled leaches on our civil society.  I suppose there are some Republicans that are just as disgusting, but at least virtually none of them had anything to do with the stuff that has generated over $3 Trillion in new debt in just 20 months, forced a record number of Americans onto Medicaid and Food Stamps, generated the most housing foreclosures in history, grew unemployment from 7.5% on January 19, 2009 to 10% today with the unofficial unemployment rate actually at almost 18% and to over 20% in some states, and have taken over the health decisions of every American.  No, that’s just the Democrats, they did that, it’s all on them and none of them will take responsibility.   How did we let that happen?

And what about the voters?  I think there really is something to the old saying that you get the government you deserve.  Just look at what’s about to happen in New York State, for example.

They have Andrew Cuomo running for Governor and he is ahead in his race by about 8 points or so.  What makes that so difficult to believe is that it was Cuomo, while head of Bill Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, who instructed banks, under pain of law, to make loans to people who could never afford to pay the loans back.  It was Cuomo who decided that welfare payments and unemployment payments must be called income and included in the calculation for the purposes of determining mortgage approval.  It was Cuomo who went to Clinton’s Attorney General Janet Reno to demand actions against banks that did not accept Cuomo’s lending requirements.  But New Yorkers are still favoring Cuomo and will likely elect him to Governor of their bankrupt and mismanaged state.  Go figure!

And then there’s Kirsten Gillibrand running for Senator and leading her opponent by about 10 points.  It was Gillibrand to whom Cuomo turned while he was at HHS to find ways to make it easier for otherwise ineligible people to get mortgages.  It was Gillibrand who developed the infamous “no-income” mortgage and infamous “no-proof” mortgage.  She was one of the leaders of the policy that lead directly to the mortgage and financial crisis our nation is presently suffering through.  But New Yorkers will likely make her a Senator for another 6 years.  You can’t make this stuff up.

But wait, let’s not leave out Senator Chuck Schumer, also running for reelection and is leading his opponent by a whopping 23 points or more.  It was Schumer, along with Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, who objected to reigning in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and making sure only Democrats like Franklin Raines, Frank Johnson and Jamie Gorelick were allowed to lead these entities and take bonus and salary in the millions. Raines actually took over $90 million in salary and bonuses while Gorelick took over $20 million.  But Schumer has a complete lock on reelection bestowed upon him by admiring New Yorkers.  That’s bullcrap!

When that kind of constituent thinking permeates the Democrat party you know our country is in mortal danger.

And isn’t that what we’ve learned again this week?  That it doesn’t take much to turn our great nation into a near Third World backwater? 

These people have got to go.  Voters need to wise up. 

Regardless of your lifetime political persuasion, this time you need to do something positive for the future of our country.  This time you need to do something positive for your family’s future, for your children and grandchildren.  This time you need to vote like your very life depends on it. 

This year you need to vote Republican.

And that’s all there is to it.

This past week I helped staff the Republican Party booth at the annual county fair giving out literature, chatting with folks about the GOP’s chances this year and answering questions about candidates and all that.  I’ve been doing this for the past few years and have developed some canned responses to some of the usual questions democrats and liberals like to ask in an effort to sort of “throw me a curve”.  The one question I often get from them is “why are you a republican?”  That’s actually a pretty good question and one that most people, who have not thought about that for a while, probably can’t readily answer without stammering around for a few moments.  But I have an answer to that question and it goes like this,

I’m a republican because I believe in the Constitution of the United States.  I believe in liberty.  I believe in small government.  I believe in personal property and for people taking personal responsibility for their lives.  I believe the government should be working for the people, not the people working for the government.  That’s why I’m a republican.

Sadly our present leaders probably don’t see our country that way, and in fact, often do exactly the opposite.  There are so many examples of that opposite thinking that it’s hard to comprehend the meaning of it all.  Of course there’s the spending and the debt and the Depression-era joblessness.  There’s the redistribution of wealth and playing identity politics and treating groups differently across the spectrum of our society.  There’s the repudiation of state’s rights and the Obama inspired class warfare.  And the coercion implied in health care legislation and the finance bills and EPA mandates that sound friendly but are Trojan Horses assaulting the fabric of our culture and market driven civil social order.

But there are other ways our leaders act in blatantly unconstitutional fashion that does not necessarily capture the public’s interest.

Military voters know what I’m talking about.  Despite our armed forces sacrificing themselves on the battlefields of the Middle East and other places, it seems almost every effort is being made to keep their votes from being counted.  You don’t suppose that has anything to do with the fact that military voters are more likely to be republicans than democrats, do you?  It’s sort of the exact reverse of the border situation with illegal aliens in which Democrat efforts are being made to keep the border open because Hispanics are more likely to be democrats than republicans.  In both cases you can see Congressional and State Democrats doing everything in their power to frame the vote the way they want.

In this specific case the overwhelming evidence in 2008 showed that military voters needed at least 45 days to receive and return their absentee ballots and that more than 20 states failed to provide military voters with sufficient time to vote. This failure alone cost thousands of military members the right to vote and may have resulted in illegitimate pro-Democrat outcomes.  Now, 10 months after the passage of legislation forcing the correction of that problem, nearly one-third of the states have failed to implement one or more of the key provisions of the law. At least 11 states (Hawaii, New York, Delaware, Alaska, Washington, Maryland, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Colorado) and the District of Columbia have not implemented the 45-day deadline for mailing absentee ballots.  Note that 11 of those 12 entities are run by Democrats.  Why am I not surprised?

Then there’s the curious case of “birthright citizenship”, in which American citizenship is presently granted to anyone being born in the United States, regardless of the parent’s citizenship or immigration status.  It’s clear this issue is now starting to appear in the media because of Republican, Conservative and Tea Party opposition to rampant illegal immigration and the government’s absolute and complete refusal to do anything about it, unless of course it means suing Arizona to stop them from protecting their own border from foreign invasion.   Now that, the government is all too willing to do.

The 14^th Amendment to the Constitution says, in part, that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…….are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”  That sounds straight forward enough so what’s the problem?

First, you need to understand that the 14^th Amendment was ratified in 1868, after the Civil War, and was specifically meant to grant citizenship to the former slaves.  It was not meant, by any stretch of the imagination of the writers of that amendment, to open the doors to citizenship to anyone else on planet Earth.  That was never the intention.  To think otherwise is a purposeful misreading and fundamental misinterpretation of the Constitution for dishonest political purposes.

Second, and more importantly, a careful reading of the words generally left absent from that sentence quoted above proves the folly of the “birthright citizenship” assumption.   The full quote, not often read in its entirety, is as follows:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

So what do those pesky words “…and subject to the jurisdiction thereof…” really mean?  They mean that if, at the time this Amendment was ratified, you were living under the laws, or jurisdiction, of the United States, then you were a citizen.  Like the slaves that were born here.  They obviously were born under the laws of this country at the time of the ratification.  A pregnant former slave born in Brazil, and walking across the American border the day after the 14^th Amendment was ratified, would not be a citizen because she was born in Brazil.  But what of her child?

It was clearly the custom of the 19^th century and for that matter the custom of every other country in every other century, that a child lives under the jurisdiction of the country to which its parents are citizens.  There is absolutely nothing written or stated in any record, from that time, that gives any indication that the writers of the 14^th thought anything other than that.  In fact, to do otherwise, as we unfortunately do today, provides every mother on planet Earth the power to provide her child with American jurisdiction in spite of what the citizens of the United States want.  To do otherwise gives HER the power to decide, not the citizens of this country.  To do otherwise takes the decision of who should be an American citizen out of our hands and gives it to every other mother on Earth. 

Is that what the writers of the 14^th Amendment had in mind?  Do you believe the writers’ meant for every other person on Earth to have the power to decide the American citizenship of their child, but not including the Americans themselves, that American citizens have nothing to say about who becomes a citizen of their own country?  Unless you’re blind to an un-American ideology, you know that’s not what the writers of the 14^th intended.   To think otherwise is complete nonsense.  To think otherwise is to believe in a so-called “living and breathing” Constitution which means no Constitution at all.  What bullcrap.

The poor former slave Brazilian mother noted above was living under the jurisdiction of Brazil at the time of her child’s birth in the United States, which makes her child a citizen of Brazil.  Same for the Mexican mothers of today having their child in our country.  Period.

And speaking of bullcrap, what about the Medicare and Social Security Trustees who issued a report 2 weeks ago on the fiscal health of those funds that was so fantastically and stupidly optimistic, one wonders if they made their observations from the vantage point of an alternate universe.  In fact, the trustees, all of whom are Obama regime officials (and include Timothy Geithner, Kathleen Sebelius,  CMS recess appointment  Dr. Donald M. Berwick, and Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis among others), not only claim ObamaCare extends Medicare’s trust  fund by 12 years to 2029, but also noted that the cost projections factored in a 30% cut in fees paid to Medicare physicians, something the Obama regime not only intends to avert but must avert if the health care system in America is to remain intact.

This report is based on the idea that health care costs will rise slower than in the past, despite the fact this has never happened, it includes budget cuts no one intends to make, and requires the perfect implementation of the extraordinarily flawed and imprudent ObamaCare.

In fact, the report submitted was so unbelievable and ridiculous that the Medicare Chief Actuary, Richard Foster, in an unprecedented action, provided his own report calling the former report unreasonable and implausible. 

What Foster’s report says is that the 30% cuts, scheduled to take place over 3 years, for physician’s services will not happen, otherwise ObamaCare will drive doctors away from accepting Medicare completely.  The report indicates that if the cuts were made 15% of all Medicare providing doctors would become unprofitable as a result of ObamaCare’s payment reductions.  He further indicates that the Independent Payment Advisory Board has been given the impossible task of keeping medical costs below medical inflation, which could only happen if the difference is to limit what is covered through rationing.  Where have I heard that before?

Foster’s alternative report also says that the number of medical facilities that would become unprofitable will grow to 25% by 2030 and 40% by 2050 if the health reform law is implemented as written.

Having said that, there is a huge difference between optimism (the Obama regime forecast) and completely stupid bullcrap (the Medicare Chief Actuary’s forecast).   Obama is clearly a liar.  I’m going with the Actuary on this one.

So what’s going on here?  It seems to me you either believe in the Constitution or you don’t.  You can’t cherry pick the stuff you like and disregard the stuff in the Constitution you don’t.  You can’t believe in just 7 of the Amendments to the Bill of Rights.  You either accept them all or you accept none.  That’s it.

I can’t see how anyone can truly love this country if they don’t believe in entirety of the Constitution.  It’s like having bricks for brains.  I’m sure the people who don’t believe in the Constitution love some country, it’s just a country other than the United States.  It may be something that looks like the United States, but it’s different.  It’s not my United States.  It’s not the United States I grew up in.

And that’s what the Obama regime and his Democrat minions are offering.  They’re offering something that from the outside looks like the United States, but different.  It’s a place where the government lies, and tries to get over on you, and says they’ll do one thing but then purposely does another.  Obama’s country is a place where nothing the government does can be trusted and where the people work for the government, and defer all their rights to the government. 

That place is very different from the real United States.  And very unsavory.  And probably very dangerous.

And that’s all there is to it.

It’s now official.  The people and the individual states of the United States, on one side, are now locked in a death roll with the federal government, on the other side.  It’s us versus them.  It’s good versus evil.  It’s the Founders versus the Marxists and their anti-American accomplices.  Don’t believe me?  How do you explain what’s been happening to our country over the past 18 months?

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is forcing Arizona to keep its border with Mexico open to illegal aliens despite the wishes of the American citizens who live there.  This federal government affront to the Constitution is clearly transparent when you consider that the Obama regime would never be taking this “open border” action if it was understood that illegal alien Hispanics, given the opportunity, would almost certainly vote for Republicans instead of Democrats.  You get that, right?  Otherwise, Obama’s rouge government would have the border closed in 20 minutes.  Turning the sovereignty of our country into a mere political calculation is the height of pure evil and is in absolute opposition to his oath of office to “….preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  Clearly this government respects the “rights” and “needs” of non-citizens, who given the chance will help the current group of Obama’s minions retain power, over the rights and needs of the real American citizens.  Obama’s ends clearly justify his means, no?

How about the Obama regime closing off-shore drilling for some unspecified period of time?  While it seemed the gulf leak would be the most unprecedented eco-disaster of all time, the results so far appears not to be the case at all.  It’s essentially not even in the news anymore.  In fact, even the New York Times is reporting that while sightings of tar balls and emulsified oil can be seen here and there (those are their words), the immense patches of surface oil that covered thousands of square miles of the gulf after the April 20^th oil rig explosion are largely gone.  It seems the amount of oil dispersed, compared against the size and water volume of the gulf, is much like spilling a 12 ounce can of soda into the Superdome filled to the roof with water.  Even the marshes and wetlands are already recovering from the “disaster” and seafood has been declared safe to eat.

Robust off-shore drilling not only continues everywhere else in the world but the bidding for dormant gulf drill rigs is already underway.  It’s estimated that over 100,000 gulf state jobs will be lost, most forever, crippling local economies and spreading financial misery to more millions of Americans.  The Governor of Louisiana is now forced to fight the federal government moratorium in court again, much like what’s happening in Arizona, for the right to continue drilling.  Is it possible the Obama regime, and his rogue government, is actually attempting to starve the energy demands of the country and/or purposely creating victims of former oil industry workers and their families?  Do you still think this ban on continued drilling is a mere “safety issue?”  What do you suppose would have been the clean-up response of the Obama Interior Department had the oil leak been off the shores of blue states like Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland instead of red states like Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama?  What does common sense and your life experiences tell you?  And there’s more.

Why have the governors of 18 states demanded EPA rules favoring climate change legislation be rescinded?  Even more interesting is why the Troubled Asset Relief Program Special Inspector General (IG), Neal M. Barofsky, recently testified that decisions on which car dealerships to close as part of the auto industry bailout, closures the Obama administration forced on General Motors and Chrysler , were based in part on race and gender.  In effect, over 2000 dealerships were strong-armed into closing simply because they were not minority or woman owned.  Because of that, an estimated 100,000 people lost their jobs during a recession.  And the benefit to the car companies for this arbitrary Obama regime action was exactly zero, none.  In fact, the IG report shows the action to have been detrimental to the health of both car companies.  In response to the IG report, Obama’s “auto team czar” Ron Bloom admitted that the dealerships could have been kept open, saving those jobs, “but that doing so would have been inconsistent with the President’s mandate for “shared sacrifice.”  How completely loathsome is that?

Why did the DOJ let the New Black Panthers off the hook for obvious and malicious voter intimidation during the last presidential election with absolutely no apparent reason?

Why has the DOJ proffered rules and policies favoring the “rights” of terrorists while attacking CIA intelligence officers attempting to get information from them that would protect the nation from assault?

Why has the DOJ made it the policy of the federal government to see the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, tried for crimes in New York City, yards from ground zero, thereby allowing him the largest stage in the world from which to spin his tales of the need to destroy America? 

Why did the Obama regime agree to let the Lockerbie bomber go free?  Yes, they provided a copy of the letter they initially sent to Scottish officials making it appear, with a wink and a nod, that they opposed the release of the bomber, but Obama won’t provide copies of the two other missives they shared with Scottish officials before the bomber’s release on the grounds that any additional information about the matter being made public could make future relations with foreign governments more difficult.  How convenient.  So there’s more to the story but the Obama State Department won’t make public additional available information. Hmm……makes you wonder, no?  Whose side is Obama on, anyway?   

He and his rogue government certainly have a soft spot for killers, thugs, dictators and terrorists, and that’s no joke.  He really does. It seems he’d be much more comfortable having dinner with Hugo Chavez and the Castro brothers than with you and our family.

Why was Elena Kagan, of all people, put on the Supreme Court?  Is it possible, or is it more likely, that she’s just a political operative of Barack Obama, whom she called one of her personal heroes?  Here’s a person with no experience as a judge, and virtually no experience as a litigator in court, and no experience outside the cloistered halls of academia, stating quite frankly and clearly that the government of the United States is not limited in any way from doing virtually anything it wants to do to the people of this country, a concept totally anathema to the Constitution and the Framers and Founders of this country.  Yet she can be on the court for another 20, 30 or 40 years or more, plying that kind of anti-American logic and helping transform America into something quite alien, and quite Marxist, from the country required by our founding governing documents.  And she’s just the newest of three others on the court who think like that.  One more and America will be lost forever.  Think about what kind of country your children and grandchildren will live in if Obama’s ever able to replace one of the conservative judges.

And what about news last week that the Congress finally passed, with virtually no Republican support, the unfunded extension of unemployment benefits which will require borrowing from China over $36 billion.  But that’s not all.  Congress also passed this week, also with virtually no Republican support, an unfunded bill to provide another $26 billion so that teachers won’t be laid off.  That’s another $62 billion borrowed dollars to accomplish some friendly sounding priorities, but how friendly are they really?  It’s amazing how in just about 18 months $62 billion went from being considered real money to now it’s just chump change.  That’s a real problem.

How many weeks should someone expect to receive unemployment benefits?  At what point do unemployment benefits become welfare payments?  How about 99 weeks?  How about 126 weeks?  We’re there now.  Let’s be honest for a moment.  How many people look seriously for a job until just before unemployment benefits are scheduled to run out?  Many of us know people that could be working but are instead waiting for the “right” position to become available or are taking a “vacation” as long as the government is willing to pay for it.  Let’s get real.

How about those poor teachers that will be laid off without additional “emergency” funding?  And what will happen to the poor children without those poor teachers?  What about the fact that, according to the Cato Institute, public school employment nationwide has risen 10 times faster since 1970 than student enrollment?  That’s 1000%, for crying out loud!   Is it possible that teacher unions have held taxpayers hostage over the years, and that teacher salaries, which are only for 10 months of work,  are way out of proportion to what the market place should be paying, and that a huge number of administrative personnel should be removed, and that teachers are completely protected from the perils of recession when private sector jobs are not, and on and on?  But the Marxist government is beholden to teachers and other public employee unions in the way described in detail by the socialists of the past, including Karl Marx himself.  It’s part of his manifesto.  Instead of continuing to fund even higher the public education monstrosity of ineptness, there may not be another sector in the American economy more in need of reducing spending than public education.  But is anyone in our rogue government responsible enough to say that?

And then there’s the curious case of Dr. Donald Berwick.  Here’s a Marxist, apparently pretty good as a medical doctor, but who has stated convincingly that he supports a single payer plan for the country, marvels at the British health care model despite its failure, and supports emphatically the rationing of health care in America, yet gets to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) without a congressional hearing.  Barack Obama provided him with a “recess appointment”, an action permitted by the Constitution ostensibly for when, particularly in the old days when travel was difficult and time consuming, Congress is in a long term recess.  In this case Congress was in recess for only 2 weeks and in previous such appointments Congressional hearings had already taken place, like when Ambassador John Bolton was provided a recess appointment by George W. Bush.  The importance of hearings, of course, is so Congress can complete their constitutional responsibility to ask questions and make decisions about the people tasked with running important government business.  In this case no questions were asked of this guy, who is tasked with managing a federal agency with a budget over $600 billion, more than even the Department of Defense, and has responsibility for crafting the regulations required by ObamaCare.  You’d think people would want to know more about this guy, no?

Why then would the Obama regime want to keep Berwick from being grilled by Congress?  The answer, of course, is because he’s a rank political operative of Barack Obama, much like Elena Kagan and Sonya Sotomayor before her, and will do whatever is asked of him by Barack Obama.  Case closed.  The Constitution once again betrayed.

The theme of the Constitution is that the interest of the citizens must be paramount over the interests of the government.  The complete reversal of that theme, coupled by the fact that the Constitution is being willfully misinterpreted by the President, Congress and the Supreme Court, proves that there is no end to the destruction of our country from an enemy within.

And that’s all there is to it.