Correction: The video below is not what it appears to be. There was no diplomatic smackdown. I refer you to Snopes.
So do I delete the post altogether, or leave it as it is now to show that the video is a production of some dishonest folks out there (imagine that)?
The Lunch Counter is big enough to recognize when a mistake has been made and the truth should always be given the utmost respect. Therefore, the post will remain in its current form to shed the light on what is true.
Ross
Here’s an interesting 13 second clip of President Obama’s attempt at hitting the RESET button in Russian foreign relations. It amounts to nothing less than a political smackdown for the United States. Despite what The White House website has to say about it.
Looks like the Russians were not impressed with candidate Obama’s world tour during his campaign last year or with his apology tour following his election.
It is also the first time in my memory that our President was ever treated with such disrespect. The problem is, it wasn’t just a setback for him as President, it is a setback for us as a nation. He has his work cut out for him where Russia is concerned.
Unless you were watching it live, did you see this in the news?
The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation’s plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab.
The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion.
Other figures in an Associated Press analysis underscore the recession’s impact: Individual income tax receipts are down 22 percent from a year ago. Corporate income taxes are down 57 percent. Social Security tax receipts could drop for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes are on pace to drop for only the third time ever.
The last time the government’s revenues were this bleak, the year was 1932 in the midst of the Depression. Is raising taxes the answer to the problem? Of course not.
Which brings me to this FairTax teaching moment. The tax base shrinks every time a job is lost. 6.7 million jobs have been lost since December 2007. Over 5 million of those have been lost since January 2009. And everyone is saying that its going to get worse before it gets better.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how taxing income and investment leads to federal revenue losses in a big way during a recession. Revenue flow under the FairTax plan is not near as volatile during a recession. Under the FairTax, the tax base remains the same, which is about 30% larger (and growing) than under the current income tax plan. More importantly, a consumption based taxing system is more stable, more predictable, and less reactive to political actions.
In fact, if Washington could get their spending under control, and barring another ‘man made disaster,’ under the FairTax recessions would become a thing of the past.
Rush on Obamacare
Mobfather Rush Limbaugh comments on Obamacare and the organizations behind and in front of it.
Smallest microwave oven?
Did you know you’re carrying a microwave oven in your pocket.
Getting beyond the generic polling questions that appeal to the emotional aspect of the health care bill and who should be responsible for your health care, here are some polling questions that you probably won’t see anywhere else and which would, if asked, evoke a different result.
Keep in mind that anyone that questions the President’s plan is now labeled as un-American and part of organized angry mobs.
For a community organizer, President Obama isn’t acting very presidential by discounting over half the population he is supposed to represent. To put it another way, as President, he is acting more like a community organizer than President of the United States.
The sad thing surrounding H.R. 3200 is that its opponents know more about what is in the bill than the President himself, most members of congress, and the mainstream media. Quoting the President himself, it’s what happens when bills get rushed through congress.
Would you be strongly in favor of or strongly opposed to the provision on Page 59 in the health care bill that allows the government computer access to your bank records to transfer money from your account to their account to pay for whatever they think you owe?
Are you strongly in favor or strongly opposed to the provision on Page 16 of the bill that would force you out of your private insurance plan?
Are you strongly in favor of or strongly opposed to the provision on Page 30, Sec. 123 that sets up a Government committee, instead of you and your family and your doctor, to decide what treatments and benefits a person may receive?
Are you strongly in favor of or strongly opposed to the provision on Page 50, Sec 152 that says that U.S. citizenship may not be used as a qualification for participation?
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Learn more about what is in the bill by looking at the bill.
Polls show most Americans want lower health care costs. Polls also show most Americans are satisfied with the health care plan they currently have. That’s why the Obama administration has shifted the focus to health insurance instead.
This administration is hopping from one bogus justification for socializing nearly 20% or our private sector to the next, hoping that something will stick.
He started by saying that the economy can not recover unless his health care plan, H.R. 3200, is passed first. That the health care industry is the cause for our economic woes. A ridiculous assumption that the media never questioned. How serious could Obama be about reducing the cost of health care when tort reform remains conspicuously missing?
Then, the economy is in such dire straits that this bill has to be passed right away. Right away, as in before anyone finds out what’s in it.
And to a different audience he says Americas factories are ‘coming back to life.’ “We have stopped the freefall . . . [t]he market is up and the financial system is no longer on the verge of collapse. . . We’re losing jobs at half the rate we were when I took office six months ago. . . We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the recession.”
Playing both sides of the issue has been perfected in the Democratic party. While the Obama media sits by and marvels at it.
From what the President is saying, it sounds to me that the best thing he could do for the economy now is to stop the deficit spending. Aside from seeking private sector solutions to reducing health care costs and increasing availability, saving 90% of the ‘stimulus’ spending (only 10% of it has been spent so far) would be the best thing he could do to help the economy.
Considering the state of the Republican party these days, Mel Martinez did the right thing to resign. The Lunch Counter is fully supportive of his decision to get out of Dodge, although not for the reason that he articulates.
Martinez, 62, had already announced he wouldn’t seek re-election. He said Friday that the next phase of his life will be in the private sector, but he didn’t have any specific plans.
Martinez’s term in the U.S. Senate was a waste of a Republican senate seat. It is ironic too that he is leaving to go into the private sector. Then again, by the time he is ready to retire, there won’t be a private sector left (if the current trend in Washington continues), so what would it matter, to him?
In the previous post, I document the tactics that the Obama administration is using, basically lying to the American people, to advance their disastrous health care reform bill, which has deftly shifted to health insurance reform.
That shift is not by accident. That shift is focus group tested. Why? Basically the reason is that most Americans are satisfied with the health care plans they have, and don’t want Obama or the government to mess it up, hence the angry citizens at town hall meetings trying to defend and protect what they have and to voice their objection to the whole socialist v private sector war that the administration is waging.
So, they need a better boogeyman to demonize, the insurance companies. Ahhh yes, that’s it, BIG INSURANCE. Who hasn’t had a bad experience of some sort with an insurance carrier at some time in their life? By shifting to this second ‘front’ in their ‘campaign,’ they hope to, and probably will, fool more people into thinking that Obama feels their pain and he is going to make it better. Fact is, the dumb masses out there won’t even notice this shift in strategy. You can depend on the media ignoring it as well.
Dutifully carrying the water for the administration’s bogus claim that that these protesters are astroturf and organized by BIG INSURANCE, and at the same time ignoring the truly organized effort to quell dissent, another paragraph on page 2 of their playbook is, don’t respond to the objections specifically, instead, paint them as evil agents of BIG INSURANCE.
The media won’t mention this union backed and union organized effort. To wit . . .
Our response is shaped by 3 things:
Our targets are Members of Congress who must vote “yes” for this bill. Our targets are not the rightwing extremists. The targets of these attacks are Members of Congress. Those Members are also our targets.
We need to use these attacks as opportunities to work with the Members in ways that build our relationship in the field and bring us together as allies in health care reform. Members may be more receptive to partnering
with us if they know we will help them combat the opposition.
Our core message is effective, and we should always come back to it. Our campaign plan has always anticipated opposition. No matter what the right-wingers bring up to distract the debate, we should always circle back to our key message. We are on the side of quality, affordable health care for everyone, and we are against turning over health care reform to the insurance companies and lobbyists who got us into this mess to begin with. We need to educate the press and the public that the protesters are aligned with the corporate lobbyists and insurance companies who are trying to stop reform.
Our ability to put the extremists into perspective helps us frame our narrative. We should be prepared to respond to the other side, but we don’t need to be reactive or feel pressure to answer their accusations point by point. Instead, we should treat them as agents of the insurance lobbyists who want to maintain the status quo. We can dismiss their radical rhetoric by circling back to the basic things that we know most people care about— affordability, access, and quality.
In many cases, protestors will show up at events or meetings you don’t organize but are participating in as an attendee or sponsor. You can still influence the outcome of these events or meetings, and it’s important for HCAN organizers and leaders to be ready to encounter these protesters in order to make sure that our volunteers and activists respond appropriately as well as capitalize on opportunities to also move our message, work with Members, and educate the public.
Maybe not a conspiracy, just more of the same lies that the political Left has been engaged in for years, aided and abetted by the media.
The nexus of the left-leaning media and the most liberal senator in the Senate was instrumental in getting him elected. Their ignoring his radical past and relationships with anarchists like William Ayers and Saul Alinsky, and the media’s discounting anyone who would bring that up as right-wing tinfoil hatters is all that it took. Now the most liberal senator is America’s most liberal president. And his agenda is antithetical to the founding of this country. 2008 was the year that the media watchdog died.
An observer of politics who is old enough to remember sees that, just like his Democrat predecessor Bill Clinton, the campaign did not stop after the election. Governance in Democrat administrations includes attacking anyone, regular citizens (half the country) and elected officials, that disagree with them. The difference is that the Clinton administration didn’t lie to advance their agenda. They just lied to protect their butt from prosecution.
Today, despite audio/video of President Obama clearly articulating his intentions to labor union audiences regarding single-payer health care, and the end of private sector health care, the administration is claiming right-wing conspiracy again, that he was taken out of context. It was not out of context. It was the context.
Now, on The White House’s website, the President is asking for names of citizens who are voicing their objections to his policies. Paramount of those objections is his race to socialism via a single-payer health care system, with Cash for Clunkers a close second. If you don’t think that this is exactly his purpose of having ‘citizen soldiers,’ with as much or greater funding than our military, then you need to remove your blinders.
And it doesn’t stop there. Try this from the Democratic National Committee.
Home is where we’re strongest. We didn’t win last year’s election together at a committee hearing in D.C. We won it on the doorsteps and the phone lines, at the softball games and the town meetings, and in every part of this great country where people gather to talk about what matters most. And if you’re willing to step up once again, that’s exactly where we’re going to win this historic campaign for the guaranteed, affordable health insurance that every American deserves.
Oh sorry. That was President Obama’s words. The following is from the DNC. Those dang Swiftboaters again. . . {who btw were never challenged, only attacked}
These disruptions are being funded and organized by out-of-district special-interest groups and insurance companies . . .
People are scared because they are being fed frightening lies.
Their actions are getting more extreme.
Their goal is to disrupt and shut down legitimate conversation.
Republican leadership is irresponsibly cheering on the thuggish crowds.
Five lies the left can believe in.
If you’ve been following this administration closely, and I don’t mean just from what the mainstream media is saying, then you can see that being active in voicing your opinions and objections and exercising your First Amendment rights seem to only be patriotic when done by those on the Left. When done on the right, they are unruly mobs, with imagined, phony, made-up (astroturf?) anger. Does this look like phony and made-up anger to you? VIDEO LINK
My personal experience is far different than what CNN and pMSNBC will describe. I’ve been to Tea Parties in Pensacola and just yesterday in Fort Walton Beach. If there ever was a grass roots movement, not motivated by special interests, but motivated by citizens that love their country and don’t want it going down the socialist path that this administration has laid out, this is it.
As the failure and short-sightedness of the Cash For Clunkers program was already detailed here and here, Democrats in Washington are in panic mode to beg, borrow, and/or steal another $2 billion to continue this UAW payoff.
The first billion lasted 4 days. So the robber barrons in control of Washington are looking to extend this for another week and a half. Don’t let them do it. Not without voicing your objection.
Write your Senators TODAY, in your own words. Here’s a link to get you started, Congress.org.
I don’t believe in sending form letters. Please write your own thoughtful letter. Mine is below which you may get some ideas from, or not. Your mileage may vary.
There seems to be another issue that is above President Obama’s pay grade. Citizenship.
At what turned out to be the best of all the presidential debates hosted by Pastor Rick Warren last fall, then Senator Obama was unable (read unwilling) to articulate his opinion on when life begins. Seems he is having some sort of dilemma about when citizenship (his own) begins as well.
The president said that he was going to bring us together as a country. What has developed since the president took office has been anything but coming together. Except in one respect. He has succeeded in bringing together two distinct groups that seem to be at odds with each other. The Birthers and the Aborters.
If you have no history or no experience on the capability of the federal government, and especially the Obama administration, to run things, all you need to do is look at what is happening with the Cash for Clunkers program.
Keep in mind that these are the same people who are trying to usurp 20% of the private sector of the US economy and control your and your family’s health care before your next haircut. Or to put it another way, before you even know what hit you.
Consumers are happy to take government rebates to buy new cars. Other than that, confusion reigned Friday. The fate of the $1 billion trade-in program was up in the air over concerns that it may have already burned through its funds less than a week after it was officially launched.
On Friday, the Obama administration said it was working with Congress to try to get more money and that Clunkers deal certificates would be honored through the weekend. {emphasis added}
Brian Benstock, president of Paragon Honda in Woodside, N.Y., said he had already purchased advertising in Friday’s newspapers and he had sent out 176,000 direct mail cards to owners of qualifying Clunkers in his area. “Can you imagine the position we were in last night? We had 176,000 missiles in the air and we’re hearing it’s cancelled.”
So the $1 billion dollar program that was supposed to go until November 1 has run out of money in the first week in July. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said that the Michigan, Ohio and Indiana congressional delegations are working on a $2 billion extension of Clunkers program. Right off of the money tree I suppose.
Are you beginning to feel like the American people are unwitting, if not unwilling, characters in a Laurel and Hardy cartoon?
