Our #1 story tells of the real Obama legacy which is a mountain of debt for our children and grandchildren. #2 tells you that Obama is not a Muslim, but he is a Marxist. #3 relates that in last night’s debate, Newt Gingrich claimed the MSM did not ask Obama about his position on infanticide if an child is alive after an abortion. #4 is a story about how the British government raised its tax rates only to see the amount collected decline. It’s a common story, but the left doesn’t seem to get it. #5 gives Obama an interesting claim he can make. It seems the mortality rate declines when more people are unemployed. #6 is interesting because it describes a dilemma for both the left and the right. The left needs to hope that Obamacare is struck down, while the right needs to hope it is upheld or only partially struck down. Read the article to see why.
1. Obama’s legacy
Mountains Of Debt
Maybe you have to be Greece before most people get seriously concerned about sovereign debt. Of all the good reasons to evict Barack Obama from the presidency in November, the most fundamental is that he is spending our country into financial ruin. I don’t think most Americans understand how much federal spending and debt have risen during the Obama administration (and even before it, when Democrats took control of Congress in 2007) and are projected to rise in the future under Obama’s budget proposal. These two charts, from the Senate Budget Committee, tell the story in a very simple way. This one shows the federal debt per household from 2000 through 2022; the numbers are actual to the present and thereafter represent the projections in Obama’s FY 2013 budget. Those projections are taken at face value, rosy assumptions and all. Still, the picture is staggering:
Just another reason Obama will be going down in November. Right now the media is studiously avoiding mentions of the debt, the price of gasoline, and any other subject that makes Obama look bad and tries to claim the Republicans want to ban birth control. It is pathetic.
2. Obama the Marxist
…Clearly, Obama is not the son of Islam, or of Christianity, but he is very much the son of Marx. When Rick Santorum referred to the president's radical environmentalism as a "false theology," he was perfectly correct. Obama's "religion" is not Islam or Christianity, but the leftist ideology that Obama learned as a child. If anything, this radical ideology is the opposite of both Islam and Christianity since it would supplant individual conscience, and the conscience of the church, with centralized state control of all of life's functions. No devout Muslim or Christian wishes to inhabit a Marxist state that would run roughshod over the religious beliefs of the faithful. But this is very much Obama's goal.
Within the Marxist state that Obama envisages, all sectors of the economy -- all aspects of everyday life, in fact -- would fall under the control of a centralized bureaucracy. This destruction of liberty is already coming to pass with the implementation of ObamaCare. At the direction of a small panel of "experts," standardized protocols are being constructed that will constrain the health care choices for every American. When it comes time to decide upon end-of-life care, it will not be you, your doctor, and your family who make the decisions -- it will be a computer program implementing the cost-benefit analysis arrived at by a secretive panel appointed by the president….
This is the left’s dream, that is, to have experts take the choices out of our lives. The biggest obstacle they have to this is the Constitution, which is why you see Obama running roughshod over it so often.
3. Alexander Burns Claims Media did ask Obama about Infanticide vote
The Politico headline was "Newt: Media never asked Obama about 'infanticide' -- except it did." If Burns wanted to prove Gingrich wrong, he'd find an actual question about that. Click on the Burns link, and it's quite clear Chris Wallace was asking a more generic question to Obama, about whether he was truly a bridge-builder:
WALLACE: But, Senator, if I may, I think one of the concerns that some people have is that you talk a good game about, "Let's be post-partisan, let's all come together," just a couple of quick things, and I don't really want you to defend each one. I just want to speak to the larger issue.
OBAMA: Right.
WALLACE: The gang of 14, which was a group, a bipartisan coalition, to try to resolve the issue of judicial nominations. Fourteen senators came together. You weren't part of it. On some issues where Democrats have moved to the center — partial birth abortion, defense of marriage act — you stay on the left and you are against both.
And so people say, "Do you really want a partnership with Republicans, or do you really want unconditional surrender from them?"
OBAMA: Right.
WALLACE: The gang of 14, which was a group, a bipartisan coalition, to try to resolve the issue of judicial nominations. Fourteen senators came together. You weren't part of it. On some issues where Democrats have moved to the center — partial birth abortion, defense of marriage act — you stay on the left and you are against both.
And so people say, "Do you really want a partnership with Republicans, or do you really want unconditional surrender from them?"
Overnight, Burns reported "conservative readers" pointed out to him what should have been obvious to him. His link didn't prove his case.
I don’t see anything about his vote on infanticide in this example. The left seems to deny actual facts and then claim things that they want to be to be facts.
4. Britain raises tax rat: Revenues fall
The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period.
Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been "manoeuvring" by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.
The self-assessment returns from January, when most income tax is paid by the better-off, have been eagerly awaited by the Treasury and government ministers as they provide the first evidence of the success, or failure, of the 50p rate. It is the first year following the introduction of the 50p rate which had been expected to boost tax revenues from self-assessment by more than £1billion…
Well they didn’t get as much revenue as before, but at least it was FAIR.
5. Mortality Rate declines with increase in Unemployment
…The age-adjusted death rate in the U.S. declined by 2 percent from 2007 to 2010, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a result, projected life expectancy at birth rose to 78.7 years in 2010 from 77.9 years in 2007, an increase of 0.8 year.
In contrast, from 2004 to 2007, when the economy was much stronger, life expectancy rose by only 0.4 year.
Life expectancy appears to have risen more in the states with relatively large increases in unemployment. In Michigan and Illinois, for example, where joblessness rose much more than in North Dakota or Iowa, age-adjusted death rates have had a steeper decline since 2007. (In the states with the smallest increase in unemployment, the death rates have perversely risen.)
These cross-state data are consistent with historical patterns that economists Douglas Miller, Marianne Page, Ann Stevens and Mateusz Filipski have found. Their research shows that a one-percentage-point increase in a state's unemployment rate is associated with a 0.5 percent reduction in the state's mortality rate….
Perhaps when leftist claim the EU’s socialized health care is better because they live longer what they are missing is that perhaps they live longer because their unemployment is higher.
6. Obamacare, the Courts and the Election
Though the legalities are a bit more complicated, there are three basic outcomes possible: The law is upheld; the law is fully overturned; or the law is partially overturned.
If the law is upheld as constitutional, it would be an utter disaster for advocates of small government. If Congress can force Americans to purchase a product they do not want, it would mean that there are effectively no limits on congressional power.
But as much as it would be an affront to individual liberty, it would probably be a big boost to Republicans in both the presidential and congressional elections.
Though, on the one hand, Obama would get to claim vindication if the Supreme Court upheld the law, the backlash against the verdict would be fierce, not only among conservatives, but among independents who overwhelmingly oppose the law’s requirement that individuals purchase health insurance.
Last month, 67 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of the mandate, compared with just 30 percent who had a favorable view, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The same poll found that by a more than three-to-one margin (54 percent to 17 percent), Americans believe the Supreme Court should strike down the mandate.
A Supreme Court verdict upholding Obamacare would be the one thing that could galvanize conservative grass-roots activists who have been underwhelmed by the weak GOP presidential field.
It would mean that the only remaining chance of repealing the health care law would be to elect a Republican president and as many Republicans to the House and Senate as possible.
If the Supreme Court strikes down the entire law, it would be a joyous occasion for conservatives. And it would be a powerful indictment of Obama — that he spent more than a year of his presidency pushing through a law that turned out to be unconstitutional.
But at the same time, it could have the opposite effect on voter enthusiasm. If Obamacare is struck down it would be one less thing to motivate conservatives who are turned off by the Republican nominee, or disillusioned with Republicans in general. And no doubt, it could energize liberals, who will spin a decision striking down the law as coming from a “conservative activist court.”
It’s a long shot that the Supreme Court would strike down the entire law, however. More likely is that the justices strike down the individual mandate, but leave it up to Congress to rework the rest of the law. This means that several of the scenarios outlined above are possibilities.
Conservatives can still hammer Obama’s law as unconstitutional — and if Mitt Romney is the nominee, he’d no doubt use that to distinguish his Massachusetts legislation from Obama’s national law. But there would still be plenty of work to be done legislatively, meaning conservatives would still be motivated in November.
On the flip side, the individual mandate is the most unpopular aspect of the health care law, so removing it could decrease public support for full repeal among the broader public
It appears the left needs to hope that SCOTUS strikes down the entire law while the right should hope for the opposite. Politics is a strange game.
No comments:
Post a Comment