Hello peeps, I’m a little surprised at what I read this morning. Apparently Osama Bin Laden has seen the light as well as Al Gore’s piece of crap movie/”documentary”. He is now calling on a “boycott of U.S. goods and the dollar” because of the dangers of “climate change” and the only way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt. You mean to tell me that this guy who has been hiding out in a cave for all these years is worried about the snow melting? Of course the audio couldn’t be confirmed it was him. You don’t think Al Gore doesn’t have a way to reach all of the radical Muslims yet, do you? What do you think most of his funding is used for? It sure isn’t really being used to help the scientists since they have to make up the numbers. Not a sermon, just a thought.

In other news, the economy grew 5.7% in Q4? Source Businesses cut inventories less than before and the trade deficit narrowed slightly. How much do you want to bet that President Obama will take the credit for this, touting the stimulus package? I’ll wager a bit more and say that he will still blame Bush for the bad stuff still. You know, stuff like wages rise at a weak 1.5%.

Maybe Greece should be a … warning? to the U.S. Stop spending what you don’t have. Oh, nope. They still haven’t. It seems that the Senate voted to raise the debt ceiling by 1.9 TRILLION dollars. Numerically that is $1,900,000,000,000. That is insane to borrow that much MORE. Maybe instead of just freezing some spending, the lawmakers and President should CUT some spending.

Speaking of other big numbers, NBC expects 200 Million viewers to watch the Vancouver Winter Olympics. I may watch as long as Kieth Olbermann isn’t on and spewing his never ending load of crap in that ridiculously annoying voice.

CNN, I think you get a “DUH” award today. Why in the world would you ask if people liked specifics but not the overall stimulus bill? Source Runner Up? MSNBC. The Gitmo closure is looking increasingly uncertain?

Ben Bernanke was confirmed by the Senate yesterday for a second term. Not surprisingly it was the closest confirmation vote of a Fred Chairman ever. Considering the crooks that are popping up like Geithner it’s no surprise.

It sure is early while I’m writing this, but hey it’s got to be noon somewhere I suppose.

Government debt figures are out and it isn’t pretty. 12.3 TRILLION dollars is the outstanding public debt? While the operating balance is 142.45 Billion dollars? And we are supposed to support new programs like health care for what reason?

Call Bush an idiot for looking dumb while he was reading a book to a bunch of grade school kids after he was told about the 9-11 attacks, maybe he would have done better with a teleprompter.

In other news, I really can’t wait to hear how eeeeeeeeevil Apple is for having a 50% rise in profits last quarter. What’s next, bailouts and subsidies for Microsoft? Ugh. Even worse, the eeeeeeeeevil pharmaceutical company Novartis AG recorded a 54% rise compared to the same time last year. I suppose the threshold is 50%.

Ever want to see how the Washington bureaucrats live it up on the taxpayers dime? Check it out. I would slap any employee that tried to expense out over $2k per day for food and lodging.

It seems that President Obama will ask that non-security spending be halted in his State of the Union address. Source. Really? I thought there would be no end to the bottomless pockets that was shown the first year. Funnier, he’s asking that it be halted for 3 years starting in 2011. So 2014 in the middle of a new presidency(count on it folks) domestic spending can increase again? I hate to see how much pressure that this will put on his pet programs like health care reform and climate change. Oh, never mind, that funding will come from new taxes.

That does it for now. Maybe we’ll get an update later today. In the meantime, discuss these opinions and more on the Phatooine.net message boards.

It seems that every time we hear an Obama Administration Official discuss the economy, we hear that either that the Obama Administration’s economic plans have saved or created so many jobs or that it is Former President Bush’s fault that the country is in a difficult recession. So which is it? Can a President and his administration take credit for one part of the economy, alleged growth, while not taking credit for the other part?

It doesn’t make sense to me, to be honest. George W. Bush can never be president again and it’s time to move on.

New news that isn’t old news. I love how people talk about Halliburton with their giant no-bid contracts and still think their candidate has clean hands. Here’s a little egg on your face. It looks like a $25M no-bid contract was awarded to a big Dem donor. At least we won’t hear the cries of cronyism from people about this open administration.

Discuss this article on the Phatooine.net message boards.

I’m back again, ticked off at the world and ready to shove my opinion in your face. If you don’t like it, I don’t care. Just stop complaining.

Offshore drilling in the U.S. has long been opposed by President Obama for some reason, but why is it that U.S. Export-Import Bank promised Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil company, $2 billion in loan guarantees to help finance lucrative drilling off the shores of Rio De Janeiro. Source. So let me try to understand this rationale thinking that the president has. It’s not ok for us to decrease our dependency on foreign oil by drilling off our own shores, but it’s ok to fund another country.

Now it seems we are a few years or so past the Valerie Plame case and many people still seem to think that Karl Rove and Bush leaked her name instead of Dick Armitage. While there was a lot of outrage over that, a picture of former CIA interrogators were shown to Gitmo detainees and one’s name was even released publicly by the New York Times. Seems like a lot of hypocrisy.

Talk of hypocrisy, it seems that Obama is asking clergy to promote his health care bill from the pulpit. Source. Where is the outcry from the people who want separation of church and state?

Ah, back to health care. Mr. President, if tax dollars will not be used to fund abortions, illegal immigrants will not be receiving free health care and this will not lead to a single payer system, show us that in writing in the bill. You CAN’T and therefore you just say what you want and say those opposed to your “reform” bill are lying. I’ve had enough lies, put your money where your mouth is.

Personally, anyone who can hold a newborn baby and not have tears in their eyes and not believe that they need protecting is a cold person.

That’s all for now folks. Discuss this and much more on the phatooine.net message boards.

Look, I don’t know why this has to be such a hard sell if it is such a good idea. Why is there such an outcry against people taking advantage of their constitutional right? You have Senator Dingle saying that he hasn’t seen this kind of demonstrations since the KKK, Speaker Pelosi saying that disagreeing is unpatriotic and many other asinine comments by others in the Obama administration and the Democratic congress.

One of the best arguments I have heard against the obamacare monstrosity though was on a popular talk radio show. A caller made the point of saying that if the health care or insurance system is so broken, why allow people to keep it if they like it?

A close second was by President Obama himself.

His argument is that private companies are doing just fine, which is true. The next part has to be something he regrets saying though. He said that the post office is the one with problems. Yeah, so we should trust the government to operate health care like the post office, which has lost approximately $7BILLION this past fiscal year? That should seal the fate of the bill as a dumb thing to do.

Even dumber was the decision to get the SEIU members involved. A few of these so called “patriots” allegedly exercised their constitutional right to protest by beating up Kenneth Gladney, 38, a conservative activist from St. Louis, who said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags with “Don’t tread on me” printed on them. He spoke to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from the emergency room at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, where he said he was awaiting treatment for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face. Gladney, who is black, said one of his attackers, also a black man, used a racial slur against him before the attack. “It just seems there’s no freedom of speech without being attacked,” he said.

I want to know where the ACLU, NAACP, Rainbow Coalition and Al Sharpton are since this fits the category of a hate crime. Somehow I don’t think we will get an answer, but even with loud voices, the protests were not violent until the Chicago-style politics were thrust into the picture with union thugs beating up those who dare disagree with the government. Then again, we should expect no less from SEIU members because the SEIU resident’s philosiphy can be summed up into one phrase: We prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn’t work, we use the persuasion of power.

Discuss this topic and many more on the Phatooine.net forums.

For those of you who don’t think that the people who are protesting is being staged and they should just shut up, what happened to the mantra of the left during the Bush 43 administration that dissent is the highest form of patriotism?

It’s really no wonder why when lawmakers are asked if they read a bill they answer “no”.  I’m attempting to read through the health care “reform” bill and can’t seem to get to the bill because the definitions portion is a mind boggling length.

Meanwhile, there seem to be near riots at town hall meetings where people are meeting their congressperson and either asking questions or stating their opinion. While SEIU counters the protests with violence(Source and the administration makes comments like “If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” (Source.) Is this administration upset that communities are organizing to protest against his health care plan? Seriously? How about the administration being upset that people are petitioning the government for a redress of grievances as provided by the constitution? Wasn’t the president a constitutional law professor?

Hey, here’s another protest that Code Pink should mount. It seems that “climate change” could warrant military action. Considering that there has been a big push for Darwinism to be taught in schools and “change” was the mantra of the 2008 election, I have to wonder why no one is embracing climate change or considering that we should be evolving to our ever changing world. I think that Hot Earthers(as opposed to the “flat earthers” who do not believe in this so called man made global warming madness) are discriminating against climate change. Shouldn’t we be concerned when change is embraced unless it is climate change?

Word for the day… Eugenics. Look it up, see where it comes from and how it relates to the progressive movement.

Got into the writing mood this morning and thought I should opine while I’m sitting down and reading the news.

Maybe I’m just dumb, but if you have a net job loss of 247,000 jobs in July, how does the unemployment rate fall from 9.5% to 9.4%? It DOES NOT MAKE SENSE! A net loss of 247k jobs can not mean that unemployment went down. Speaking of which, cnn money has a graph showing how the number of jobs lost is easing.

Employers can only cut so many people before it’s just the owners working there or they can no longer perform their business. Maybe that’s it. I’ll just say that if Bush was in office, they would be talking about how bad it is. Funny how we can look back at the good economy that we had while Bush was in office. *sigh* Back when the government didn’t own the banks, car companies and have an eye on the insurance or the medical system.

There’s talk about a second stimulus. JUST A DOG GONE SECOND!!!!!! If the first stimulus worked so well, why should there be a second stimulus? Once again, all of this spending can’t be good. WHO WILL PAY FOR IT?????

Judge Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate yesterday. Congrats on making history as the first Latina to sit on the SCOTUS. We now have a woman who talks about how wise she is and how she comes to better conclusions than a white man, ruled that it was ok to discriminate against white men but somehow isn’t racist. Debate was somehow not relevant because her nomination was historical. I’m sure glad Dr. Martin Luther King jr.’s dream came true. We don’t judge our fellow man by the color of his skin but by their merits. It’s a good thing that Judge Sotomayor isn’t a man.

Former Charlie Manson acolyte Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme is set to be released on parole in 11 days. Who says there’s no justice? All she did was point a gun at a Republican president.

Hey, more cash for clunkers. It’s great how we are now predominantly subsidizing cars made overseas. Dumb how there are no restrictions saying you have to buy an American made car to get a $4500 subsidy.

Baitullah Mehsud, suspect in Benazir Bhutto killing, dies in U.S. missile strike. Ok, I’ll give the government a passing grade in warfare.

Congrats to Swampscott, MA for declining an offer for a free statue that honors troops fighting overseas. Apparently it’s not consistent with what has been placed on Monument Avenue. The statue was inspired by the movie “Taking Chance”.

Congrats to the Obama administration, you have successfully taken “The War on Terror” and “Jihadist” out of the current government vocabulary. If there is no war on terror anymore, who won?

So we are 200 days in or so to this administration. CNN has a report card based on polling in every state. I find it funny that in all 50 states, Obama overwhelmingly gets failing grades on the economy. His lowest percentage of “F” was in Washington D.C. Of course it was, his whole administration lives there. On Healthcare, Obama gets 49% “F” overall. Better in foreign affairs with an overall C. Hillary Clinton got high marks for her job as Secretary of State, but what has she done? Obama has done all the traveling. Biden gets bad grades on par with Obama. No state likes Congress except DC. Funny, they have a congresswoman who has no vote and they are pleased? Congresspeople voting for themselves. No one likes the Republican leadership, but they didn’t ask about the dem leadership. The Media gets the same cold shoulder as Obama and Biden. Figures, you can’t tell them apart.

I’m glad you took the time to read this, now come join the discussion on the Phatooine.net political forums.

I have been searching for the right way to express how I feel about the current debate about the “reform” that Congress has on the table and I may have struck gold. Both sides of the issue are missing the point and not using any common sense. For starters, this bill that is proposed in the House of Representatives is not reform, it is remaking the health care system. The problems with the models that our system is proposed to be shaped in are not appealing. Hence why we have people who come to the U.S. from overseas to get elective procedures done. Elective, meaning not life threatening. Reform would make it better and if you think that this is going to be better, you need to think for yourself, do the research and use some common sense.

I am sure this article will be reported to the new White House thought police. Ya, there is an email address that the White House wants people to report any “disinformation”(disagreement) about health care to. (flag at whitehouse.gov) I encourage any of you who read this to research the facts for yourself. If I am wrong, report me. I expect to be reported anyways, even though there is evidence that policy may be illegal. Read more

So Democrats in general would want a “two payer system” of health care in order to have options, right? I’m thinking that we need to really pay attention to what they have said because inevitably, I believe we would end up with the single payer(government/state run) health care system. Want proof? Ok.

In this video, Obama says he supports the single payer health care system.

However, in this video, he supports the 2 payer system… kinda. This is what he is selling to everyone in America right now.

However, if you remember one of his attacks on John McCain in the 08 presidential race was that John McCain was going to tax health care benefits that you receive from your employer? You don’t remember? Here, let me refresh your memory.

But when asked if taxing health care was on the table, this sure seems to be worse than the “read my lips” speech by George H.W. Bush in 1988. It may be necessary to tax employer-sponsored health care to expand coverage? I thought this was what they rode John McCain’s ass about during the campaign.

So what happens if the average citizen has the option to be taxed more or to take the government health care? It’s almost a no brainer to those who think that medicare is a horrible health care system. Pay the taxes. However, employers may be taxed even more and withdraw. Less customers means higher risk, higher premiums in any insurance company. In that case the government simply has to undercut the private companies. If that happens, how long will the private insurance companies be in business?

Maybe we should just watch another video of another prominent Democrat talk about health care reform.

Just discuss this on the phatooine.net forums.