Democrats may face double digit losses in the house as Obama’s approval rating continues to fall
Some experts are now predicting that the Democrats could face double digit losses in the house in 2010. According to the experts freshman Democrats may face an uphill battle in their re-election campaigns. These Democrats were able to ride the Obama wave into office. The conditions were right for a huge Democrat election year win and they capitalized on it.
The problem is that many people do not pay attention to mid-term elections. Many people only vote during presidential elections. The Obama wave will not support these freshmen Democrats because people who went to the polls because they were inspired by Barack Obama probably will not go to the polls in 2010.
This coupled with Barack Obama’s steadily falling poll numbers make the outlook for Republicans in 2010 much brighter than anyone had dared to think not too long ago. The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters has Obama’s approval rating at 46%.
Barack Obama’s falling poll numbers seem to coincide with the healthcare reform debate. Without the actual data we can come to two conclusions about why Obama’s numbers have come down during the debate on healthcare reform. The first position is the position that I hold; the American people do not want healthcare reform, especially reform that includes a government option. As Obama continues to promote this plan his numbers continue to fall because people are not for this idea.
The second position is that people are upset at Obama for not already passing healthcare reform. There is probably a group of people who wish that healthcare reform was already passed and their growing impatience has accounted for Obama’s falling poll numbers.
As I stated above I believe that Obama’s healthcare agenda is at odds with the American people, so his numbers continue to fall as he touts this unpopular legislation.
While the Republicans need to win back 40 seats to win back the majority in the house and that is not going to happen winning more than 10 seats would send a clear message back towards the president. 2010 is still a distant goal but the goal is getting closer everyday. Anything can happen between now and next November but one thing is for sure– growing discontent with this administration has revived the GOP hopes in the mid-term elections.
Climate change bill delayed as senate debates healthcare reform
There is one bright side to the healthcare reform bill and the debate that follows in the senate– the debate over healthcare reform has made the climate change bill a casualty; at least for now.
With the senate about to become immersed in the healthcare debate, (the issue that Barack Obama has made the highest priority of his domestic agenda), the senate was forced to push back the introduction of the climate change bill. Every cloud has a silver lining is how the old saying goes and this is the one silver lining in the healthcare debate. One horrible piece of legislation has been stalled by the other horrible piece of legislation.
With any luck the healthcare debate will drag out over the Winter before ultimately being defeated thereby politically neutering the president who will then not have enough political capital to pass the climate change legislation. We must remember that if the president is successful in passing even one of these two bills that there is another agenda item to be debated next– amnesty for illegal aliens.
The healthcare debate has stalled the climate change bill and it has probably delayed the start of immigration reform and for that we should be grateful but if the president manages to pass healthcare reform we can count on the fact that these next two agenda items will be much more easily passable.
Bill would give Obama the power to seize the internet
In a new bill that is being written by Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe power will be given to the president that would allow him to shut down the internet for private citizen users during a “cyber emergency.”
The president will be able to seize privately run networks once he declares a “cyber emergency.” So what is a “cyber emergency?” I guess that would be whatever the hell Barack Obama claims is a cyber emergency. A new worm or trojan, or a new virus; is that enough of a threat for the president to declare an emergencyand then seize private networks? We already have Government Motors, now we have President Mcaffe?
Is that so outrageous when we have already seen that this president has no problem extending the government’s reach where is doesn’t belong and where it was never intended to go? He has already fabricated a healthcare crisis and used the economy as an excuse to meddle in Wall Street, banking and mortgage institutes, and the automakers industry.
This president is using what he calls crisis management to pass his whole agenda. His whole presidency revolves around one crisis or another and now we are going to give him the power to declare yet another type of crisis so that he can step in and take over yet another private entity?
This president will not be happy until he has his hands in every possible aspect of the people’s lives as he can.
More tax troubles for Charlie Rangel (08/29/09)
Tax Cheat
It looks as though Charlie Rangel may be in even more tax trouble. But before I get into that, in case you have either forgotten or did not know, here are some of his tax problems; Charlie Rangel forgot to pay taxes on a rental property that he owns in the Dominican Republic, he also “forgot” to pay taxes on the sale of a house he owned in Colorado.
Charlie Rangel has been under investigation by the House Ethics committee and he has suddenly been amending his financial disclosure forms, adding over $1 million to his income between 2002 and 2006. He claims that while he forgot to release this income on his financial disclosure forms that he has paid taxes on this newly found income. But buried in this article about his failing to report his true net worth to congress for years is the following little tidbit:
Rangel is in arrears on New Jersey property taxes — for property that for more than 15 years he failed to disclose to Congress and the public.
It seems as though income tax isn’t the only tax that Charlie Rangel is adverse to paying. He hasn’t been paying property taxes on properties that he owns in New Jersey, this seems to be a frequent occurrence with Rangel because according to this New York Post article there have been at least six liens on that property in the last sixteen years. Charlie Rangel is a habitual offender.
As chairman of the House Ways and Means committee this all comes from the man that is in charge of writing the tax codes. This man has one hell of a nerve still sitting on this board, it is time for him to resign his chairmanship at the very least. I think that he should resign from congress also but stepping down from the House Ways and Means committee would be a good start.
Howard Dean says Democrats didn’t debate TORT reform because they didn’t want to “take on” trial lawyers
Many Americans rightly wonder how you can have any attempt at real healthcare reform without TORT reform, that is where ANY healthcare bill should start yet it is lacking in the president’s bill.
Howard Dean was ased why the Democrats didn’t address TORT reform in the healthcare debate, this was his answer:
Here is why tort reform is not in the bill. When you go to pass a really enormous bill like that the more stuff you put in, the more enemies you make, right? And the reason why tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth. Now, that’s the truth
There you have it, the Democrats have already made enemies with the AMA, doctors, nurses, and drug companies so they are not willing to make enemies with yet another powerful lobbyist group. They are not willing to “take on” trial lawyers. So much for a total overhaul of the healthcare system.
Healthcare reform gave Democrats the perfect opportunity to end lawsuits that help to drive up the cost of healthcare but they chose to ignore this one aspect of the problem. The one aspect that should be the starting point of any healthcare reform.
Television networks are refusing to air commercials that are critical of healthcare reform
There is one thing that we have learned about this administration and Democrats in particular, they do not deal well with dissent. This has been abundantly clear with the healthcare reform debates. People who are going to the town hall meetings and questioning the president’s healthcare bill are being met with disdain. The left is trying to discredit those who oppose the president, this includes Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi. Instead of listening to our complaints they are trying to marginalize us.
This administration has no tolerance for opposition opinions. Needless to say, the media is in the bag for President Obama so is it any surprise that ABC and NBC are refusing to run a 30 second commercial that is critical to Obama’s healthcare reform plan? I didn’t think so.
Perhaps these television stations have been threatened by insiders of the Obama administration. This is entirely possible considering that during the Obama campaign sent out “truth squads” that threatened to revoke FCC licenses of those stations that aired ads critical of the OBama administration, they have also pressured television stations to stop running ads by the NRA that were critical of Obama’s gun policies, and while on the campaign trail they also banned two stations from interviewing Obama and Biden after the stations attempted to ask tough questions of Joe Biden. Imagine the nerve, people actually want to ask a candidate for president a tough question! It seems that the only truth that President Obama is interested in both hearing and having the public hear is the truth as he sees it. It is either Obama’s truth or it is nothing.
Couple this stifling of the freedom of speech and of the press with the Obama administration’s policies of government intervention with the automakers, in Wall Street, in the banking industry and other financial institutes, in CEO pay, and with the attempted intrusion on healthcare; I do not believe that it isn’t entirely possible that an Obama operative went to NBC and ABC and threatened them with sanctions if they dared to run a commercial that showed a point of view that was counter to the president’s view.
President Obama has continued virtually all of former President Bush’s war policies. While he campaigned on beginning the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq as president he has adopted the withdrawal time-line that President Bush sketched out with Iraqi leaders.
Although he did also campaign on the promise to accelerate the war in Afghanistan, a promise that he did keep, I don’t think the far left took him at his word on this issue. I think that they thought he was just trying to show that he had some toughness during the campaign and that in the end he would quickly end the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. His war positions have to have the far left incensed and I have been wondering where all of the war protesters were.
Surely if the war protesters were being honest about who they are they would be protesting the war no matter which party was in office so it seemed to me that they were not really protesting the wars but rather the party that was in power. These protesters should be protesting the current president for continuing and even escalating the war efforts, but they have remained quiet.
Until now.
The former “biggest name” in war protesters and former media darling, Cindy Sheehan, has now reemerged on the scene. She has shown up at Martha’s Vineyard to protest Barack Obama’s war policies.
The reason I am here is because … even though the facade has changed in Washington DC, the policies are still the same
We have to realize, it is not the president who is power, it is not the party that is in power it is the system that stays the same, no matter who is in charge
We are here to make the wars unpopular again
She does make one good point, if the protesters believed what they were protesting and were not simply trying to make a political statement than they should still be protesting. But they are not which leads me to believe that they were never trying to protest the war, and they were never trying to stop the war, they were trying to hurt the president so that their party would regain power. With that goal accomplished they suddenly don’t seem to care about the wars any more. Cindy Sheehan seems to be the exception, she seems to be the only one that was not protesting a political party but truly protesting the wars.
I support the wars, I did under President Bush and I will under President Obama, (this is the only issue that I supporthim on), I will never hope for bad news out of Afghanistan because it could help my party regain power. I think that Cindy Sheehan was wrong back then and I think that she is wrong now but at least she is fighting for what she believes in. That doesn’t seem to be the case with those who were so vocal in their opposition to the war back then but who are strangely silent now.
This applies to more than just the protesters however. This applies to all of the phony outrage from members of congress who were so vocal in their opposition to the war when a Republican was running the war effort. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Murtha, Dick Durbin, and others were all taking every opportunity to not only condemn the war but some of them even defamed our troops, their silence now tell us every thing that we need to know about their character.
It wasn’t the war that they were against, it was the commander-in-chief. I have remained consistent in my support for the war regardless of who the president is, all I ask is that those who opposed the war remain consistent in their beliefs also. To do otherwise exposes them for who they really are and what they really believe. They achieved the only goal that they really cared about and that was getting their party back in power, now that that has been accomplished they see nothing beneficial to protesting the war. In fact protesting the war now would be detrimental to them, so they ignore it.
Upon learning of the death of Senator Ted Kennedy Nancy Pelosi’s thoughts immediately turned into political spin.
Ted Kennedy’s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration
I find this to be in extremely bad taste. She went on to talk about Senator Kennedy and how he will be missed by family, friends, and Americans alike, which was the response that she should have given. But I just can’t get past the fact that on the day the senator died she felt it was necessary to use his death for political gain.
It came as no surprise to me that Democrats would use the death of Ted Kennedy to try to revamp their floundering healthcare reform bill but I never thought that anyone would be so callous, heartless, and insensitive as Nancy Pelosi and start spinning his death for political gain on the very day that his death was announced.
And she is not alone, since I began this post several other Democrats have come out calling for healthcare reform saying that America should do it for Teddy.
I was originally going to hold off on posting this until tomorrow because I didn’t feel it was appropriate to post it on the day that he died, but seeing how Democrats don’t have a problem using his death for their political gain I no longer have any apprehensions about posting my response today. (I have nothing good to say about Ted Kennedy the senator and more importantly; Ted Kennedy the man so I intended to remain quiet today but the politicization of his death by the people who call themselves his friends has made it impossible for me to wait.)
Since Nancy Pelosi has come out with a do it for Teddy attitude others have followed suit.
You’ve heard of ‘win one for the Gipper’? There is going to be an atmosphere of ‘win one for Teddy,'” Ralph G. Neas, the CEO of the liberal National Coalition on Health Care
Al Gore took time away from saving the planet to say the following:
Ted would want nothing more than for his colleagues to continue his life’s work and to make real his dream of quality health care for all Americans
Former grand wizard of the KKK and current absent United States Senator Robert Byrd had the following to say:
In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American
I find all of this to be in bad taste, these people could not even wait one day to begin using the senator’s death as a reason to pass healthcare reform. They are putting their agenda above the family and the friends of the fallen senator. I find it disgraceful. As I said earlier, it was only a matter of time before the Democrats rallied around Ted Kennedy’s death to try to revive the troubled healthcare reform bill but I never expected that they would not even have the common courtesy to at least wait one day. While they should be in mourning of the senator and the man they have chosen to turn this into a political debate.
This shows me that these people care more about Ted Kennedy’s agenda than they did about him. They can try to spin the healthcare debate into a do it for Teddy argument if they want to, (not that that is a legitimate reason to pass this bill, the bill should pass or fail based on its merits alone), but the fact that they couldn’t wait until after the services to start their political spin shows me just how self-centered and out of touch they are not only with the American people but also with what should have been a person’s natural reaction to the death of a man that they supposedly cared for. They put politics above people, there is no way that this can be defended as being in any way proper or warranted.
Since the August recess began and representatives started holding their town hall meetings on healthcare reform there has been growing apprehension of the president’s plan to have the government take over the healthcare industry. Representatives were met with hard questions and with protesters. The left has tried to claim that these were not real protesters. The left has been trying to marginalize the protesters by claiming that they were nothing more than paid GOP operatives and pain insurance company mouthpieces. Do I disagree with the notion that some of the people were paid to protest? No, but I think that it is a very small percentage of the people. There is real apprehension by the people about the government taking care of their healthcare needs for them.
Recently the CEO of Whole Foods wrote an editorial that was critical of the Obama administration’s plan to take over healthcare reform. Protesters (in very small numbers) decided that Whole Foods needed to be boycotted so one or two people ended up protesting outside of Whole Foods. Predictably the protester turnout was small but that is not the point. The point is that it now turns out that those who did protest were sponsored by the Obama administration. The group that sponsored this failure of a protest is run by the Democratic National Committee.
While this is not surprising, I find it hypocritical that many of the same people who are marginalizing the healthcare reform protesters by claiming that the protesters are just mouthpieces of the GOP are actually engaging in the same type of activity that they are railing against.
All I ask is a little consistency here, is that too much to ask for?
Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick had been trying to infringe on the businesses of New Hampshire, as well as New Hampshire’s state’s rights, by trying to force New Hampshire businesses to collect a Massachusetts sales tax on residents of Massachusetts.
Needless to say, that did not sit well with the governor of New Hampshire, or the rest of New Hampshire’s legislature for that matter. New Hampshire quickly passed a new law that would “prohibit New Hampshire businesses from acting as tax agents for Massachusetts” and for the first time ever I agreed with John Lynch as he signed the bill into law.
But just to add insult to injury the Massachusetts Supreme Court today ruled that Deval Patrick had no right to try to force New Hampshire businesses to collect his taxes for him.
The new New Hampshire law and the ruling from the Massachusetts Supreme Court do not absolve Massachusetts resident from paying taxes on goods bought in New Hampshire under the Massachusetts “use tax” law. Residents are still required to report all goods bought in New Hampshire on their state income tax returns but that law is not enforceable, and nobody is stupid enough to do that, which is why Deval Patrick tried to force New Hampshire businesses to collect a tax that he was incapable of collecting. But these two turn of events do show us that even in today’s over-federalized central government that the states do still have some of the rights that were originally guaranteed in the constitution.
