1. ObamaCare alternatives?
Oh, I dunno, maybe some of the things the Republicans of the so-called "Party of No" have been proposing but which the Democrats have been ignoring, like:
Interstate insurance competition, medical savings accounts, tax free insurance or credits, tort reform, fee for service, rewarding outcomes, medical malpractice reform, prohibiting coverage denials based on preexisting conditions, guaranteeing portability, electronic prescriptions and medical records, streamlining billing codes and practices, price and quality transparency, pay-for-performance measures, one-stop primary-care “medical homes,” chronic disease management initiatives, tax equity for health insurance purchases, increased incentives for health savings accounts, or creating the ability to purchase insurance or form risk pools across state lines.
Our health care system and health insurance do need reform. Everyone agrees on that, But it's already the best in the world and just needs some tuning up, not a whole new and untested model of car. Especially when the federal government tends not to turn out Ferraris but Edsels, thank you very much.

2. Cap and Trade, Cap and Tax, Crap and Tax - what's the difference?
Once again, class: Everyone wants to ensure our kids grow up in a clean environment. Some just want to bankrupt us while doing it, and some of us would prefer a more logical approach. For the second group, The Heritage Foundation has some figures and charts that provide a helpful look at the immense costs associated with the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax plan to forcibly cap carbon. According to the new report, “The Economic Consequences of Waxman-Markey: An Analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009," recently released:
a. Cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses are $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035;
b. Single-year GDP losses reach $400 billion by 2025 and will ultimately exceed $700 billion;
c. Net job losses approach 1.9 million in 2012 and could approach 2.5 million by 2035. Manufacturing loses would be 1.4 million jobs in 2035;
d. The annual cost of emissions permits to energy users will be at least $100 billion by 2012 and could exceed $390 billion by 2035;
e. A typical family of four will pay, on average, an additional $829 each year for energy-based utility costs; and
f. Gasoline prices will rise by 58 percent ($1.38 more per gallon) and average household electric rates will increase by 90 percent.
So, Waxman-Markey's Crap and Tax Plan does sound like a PLAN, but not a very GOOD plan.

Although I extend condolences to the remaining Kennedys for the loss of the "last brother," the "last knight," if you will, of the media-created sham that was Camelot, I will not miss Senator Ted Kennedy, who was by far much more liberal than either of his brothers, JFK or RFK, one of whom I voted for and both of whom I admired, and therefore far too liberal for me.

However, having said that, what amazes me most about the so-called liberal lion's passing is how quick, how crass, how manipulative and mendacious, how unseemly and unwittingly ungracious Teddy's so-called "friends and fellow liberals" have been in using his death and his name to call for passing Obama's universal health care reform "for Teddy." Oh, please! How transparently Machiavellian.

Literally, within HOURS of Kennedy's death, liberal Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement contending that everyone should now unite in passing ObamaCare "for the Gipper" in the name of Teddy Kennedy, who had for so long desired universal health care for all. What a crock! Hey, Miz Nancy, did some of that botox used on your face leak into your brain and paralyze part of it, too?

You can't "do it for Teddy." Teddy is dead. No one can do anything for him now, except show their respects and pray for his soul. You can try to do it in Teddy's name, but, to me, using his name and his reputation, instead of developing the measured and carefully crafted health care/insurance reform which the country needs and which will stand on its own, both cheapens his name, his reputation and his memory, as well as evidencing your own lack of sincere effort.

Yes, Teddy wanted health care for all, but, as liberal as he was, he would never have supported what you and Harry Reid and Obama are so far proposing. Teddy would have worked across the aisle to gain bipartisan support, even compromising to get it, and he would have at least given some consideration to how to pay for it all. That "doing of the hard work" and "making the hard trade-offs" was what made him such a successful negotiator and legislator over the almost 50 years he was in the Senate. You, Harry Reid and Obama, on the other hand, are "lazy legislators" who just want to "get it done and move on," often without even reading, much less taking time to carefully craft, what you're voting on.

I have little doubt that Obama, perhaps even in delivering his eulogy of Kennedy, will also shamelessly invoke Teddy's name and long-time goal to try to once again "sell" ObamaCare. It won't work, of course, because the American electorate is beyond sentimentality and false claims about this issue, Americans in growing numbers want real answers that make common sense to them, not just town hall talking points and vague reassurances.

And one of them is David Corn, columnist and Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine and previous Washington editor of The Nation magazine, who just wrote an "insightful" article, "Why the Right Hates Obama: He's a Liberal," focused on Obama's "ObamaCare" speech to Wednesday night's Joint Session of Congress and the nation -- well, to those of you in the nation who watched it, anyway. I didn't, because I didn't think I was going to hear anything new or that whatever I might hear that was new would probably also be untrue. And I just love it when I'm right!

Anyway, without taking too much of my time completely dissecting Corn's claims, here is my reply to some of them:

Hey, Corn, it's not only because he's a liberal; it's also because he's a LIAR!

You say Obama "...presented a strong case for his version of health care reform." The Heritage Foundation says he flat out lied about at least 10 things and presents his quotes and the applicable refuting facts to prove it.

You say his big finish came after presenting his health care reform plan in "pragmatic and reasonable-sounding terms." It's not "pragmatic" to claim you can spend more to save more or cover millions more people without increasing the number of doctors and nurses, and anyone who says it is a liar and anyone who believes it is an idiot. And regarding "reasonable-sounding," "sounding" is by far the operative word. But, of course, Obama has been "sounding" reasonable for a long time. In fact, he may be the most reasonable-SOUNDING liar I've ever heard.

You say he then embraced the No. 1 liberal crusader of recent decades, Ted Kennedy, and "wrapped his health care reform initiative in the Kennedy cloak." I say he shamefully wrapped his ObamaCare in Kennedy's burial shroud and tried to use the memory of one of the most liberal but at least really bipartisan Democrats in the Senate to sell his brand of ObamaCare snake oil.
 
I think you need to try selling your liberal Kool-Aid farther down the street and not on my corner, Corn, and you might want to consider stopping drinking so much of it, too.
 

First, let's be clear, there is as yet no one, single ObamaCare "plan" for us to consider or discuss. Instead, there is HR 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, the bill narrowly passed by the House of Representatives; there is another version, The Affordable Health Choices Act, reported out of the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee; and there are at least three other versions of some kind of health care and/or health insurance reform legislation, in various stages of development, discussion, debate and deliberation currently being circulated around the Congress.

So, what you have heard referred to as "ObamaCare" (or health care reform, subsequently changed by Team Obama to health insurance reform and maybe by now "Teddy KennedyCare") by the president who says we are in still another emergency and must once again hurry up and act, by most (but not all, by a long shot) Democrats who support it, by Republicans who almost unanimously object to it, and by angry town hallers who have heaped questions about it on their hapless, and sometimes hypocritical and hubristic, congressional representatives (at least the 1/3 who deigned to even meet with their constituents during the August congressional recess) is, at this point, some general themes and claims of what Obama and the Democrat Congress say should or should not be included.

(Maybe -- hopefully -- Obama will put a finer point on exactly what he thinks it should consist of (as he should have done when debate about it first started) when he addresses the specially convened for that purpose and TV prime-time (again) Joint Session of Congress on this Wednesday evening, September 9th.) 
 
But, while we await that, yet another "historic" address by the Silver Tongued One, let's look at some of those claims and themes.

1. Cutting $500 billion from Medicare will not hurt care or cut benefits for seniors.
This claim by Democrats, in addition to being another socialist redistributionist example of robbing Peter to pay Paul, just flies in the face of logic. How can you take that much money from a system which works pretty well but which almost everyone says is already going broke, which is already covering more and more seniors daily, and say that will not result in less money to provide benefits to more seniors, which of course must diminish the amount and quality of care provided to all who are in the program? That is, unless the Democrats have just figured out how to squeeze water from rocks and they're just not telling the rest of us.

2. Spending $1 to $1.6 trillion -- maybe even $2 trillion -- will save money.
How many of you, in gong over your own personal or family checkbooks or running your own small businesses, actually save money by spending money? The closest you can come to that, in running your business, for example, is to make a capital investment (spend) on new equipment, technologies, etc., which will increase your production capacity and therefore enhance your bottom line (saving you money by "paying for itself" over time). Otherwise, you're like my significant other, who will tell me with glee how much she "saved" by shopping a 60% sale at which she bought some stuff she didn't really need -- but it was such a good price! -- and who fails (more likely just flat refuses) to see my point when I tell her how she could have saved 100%.  

3. Spending $1 to $1.6 trillion -- maybe even $2 trillion -- will not increase the deficit.
I'm sorry, but at heart I'm just a simple Southern boy with a non-Ivy League education and, to me, debt is debt, whether you call it something fancier sounding, like a deficit, or not. To my somewhat unsophisticated view, deficit is just another way of saying longer term, and usually much larger -- and with Obama and this Congress, scary larger -- debt. And you don't reduce debt by spending still more, especially when the debt on the debt (the interest) is a pretty big debt all on its own. And if any of you Democrats know how to spend that much and not increase the deficit, I wish you would help me to pay down my credit card balance 'cause it seems to me that the more I charge on it, the more the credit card company tells me I'm in debt to them.

4. If you like your plan, you can keep it.
Except that within a few years of any Democrat version of ObamaCare being in effect, every insurance plan design for everyone will be dictated by the federal government design requirements, so you may not want to keep any of the plans which are available by then.

5. You can buy any insurance plan from any insurer you want.
Except that you can only buy the government designed, government approved plans. That's like saying you can buy any car you want, but the auto manufacturers all have the same designs and models and can only build and sell those models.

6. This is not a government takeover of the health care sector.
Uh-huh, like firing GM's CEO and giving more than half interest in the bankrupted company to the union which ran it into the ground in the first place was not a takeover, or refusing to let banks which were ready to repay their government loans get out from under government control by repaying them was not sustaining a takeover, i.e., exerting control. Sure. You betcha.

7. There will not be any rationing.
Let's see, our health care system is too expensive and is "broken," we need to take action for a massive overhaul immediately, we need to add 47 million uninsured and underinsured people to the system, no one has talked about how many more doctors and nurses will be needed because of that increase in people covered, much less how we're going to produce those additional doctors and nurses at all, or by when, much less in a timely manner, and there won't be any need to ration health care? Hello? Hmmm, more people added to the rolls and provided health care, plus not adding more doctors or nurses to provide that health care, equals providing more with either less or at least the same resources -- which means rationing. Or, let's put it this way, you and two other people are trekking across the desert and each of you has a half canteen of water. What do you do to ensure you have enough water to last until you get to the next oasis? Right, you ration the resources you have among all those who need it.

8. Campaign promises were explicitly made by the president that he would not cut any deals with “the drug companies.”
Yet he did exactly that in closed door, back room deals in return for Big Pharma spending millions in ads to prop up the sagging ObamaCare "plan" over the summer.

9. Abortion is not a covered benefit.
Democrats say this, despite the fact that the Democratic House pro-life leaders admit that it covers abortion, more than 20 Democrats have told their leadership in writing that they will not vote for any bill that covers abortion, and Republican amendments specifically prohibiting abortion being a covered benefit have been summarily dismissed and denied by Democrat congressional leadership. If, as claimed, it's not intended to be a covered benefit anyway, why not add an amendment specifically saying so?

10. Seniors will not be steered in the direction of dying to save money.
But most of the public knows that the most expense in health care is in the last six months of life, logically making seniors think Obama’s promises sound hollow because, as it turns out, and not surprisingly, they do not want the government making the decision about when that last six months starts, much less made by some cost-saving bureaucrat deciding who should start that last six months by deciding who does or does not get needed health care. So, no "death panels" per se, folks. Just a distant, federal government bureaucracy which will "cost-manage" to the same result.

11. The president is against a single payer system and ending employer provided health care.
So, all those videos of the president saying that he is for a single payer system and for ending employer provided health care, both as a candidate and as president are -- what? Just “misleading”?

12. Your employer may decide to put you in a government designed plan.
Because, that way, your employer will be taxed less than it costs to give you your insurance. Your employer will save money by putting you in the government-run Health Information Exchange -- but then you may be effectively "locked in" and can never leave!

13. The legislation's purpose is to insure the uninsured and accomplish “insurance reform.”
So what openly started out as the massively needed massive overhaul of our entire "broken" health CARE system later changed to only health INSURANCE reform and is just to ensure that the uninsured are insured and to only ensure "insurance reform" now? Uhhhhh-huh. What's that Will Shakespeare once said? Oh, yeah. "A federal government control power grab by any other name would smell as sweet." Or something like that. 
 
14. President Obama promised no mandates in his health plan.
But current versions have an individual mandate (which requires you to get health insurance whether you want it or not) and an employer mandate (which requires your employer to provide you coverage whether he or she wants to or not, or whether you would rather get more pay instead).

15. Families earning less than $250,000 will not see their taxes increase.
But if you don't buy health insurance and you earn more than $19,000 a year, you will be taxed 2.5 percent of your total income. And the no tax increase pledge for families earning $250,000 or less does not apply, of course, to ObamaCare.

16. There won't be any waiting lines.
First, there are waiting lines now. Go to almost any hospital ER, especially on a weekend, and see how quickly you are seen, unless you are bleeding all over the floor or have severe chest pains. But an additional 47 million will be added to the “free” health care system (which more people will use more "freely" because, you know, it's "free"), yet you won't find yourself waiting to see a doctor? Oh, please!

17. Obama says you can keep your own physician.
However, if a physician opts not to sign on to a government-run option and the government-run plan is what you're stuck with, you will lose your doctor. It's as simple as that. And recent polls show that a majority of doctors say they will not accept government plan patients.

18. There is no specific language in any of the current bills specifically prohibiting covering illegal immigrants.
Yet the president keeps talking about providing coverage for the 47 million uninsured, a figure which, although grossly inaccurate in and of itself, for one thing because it includes about 10 million LEGAL immigrants here on visas, etc., does also include millions of ILLEGAL immigrants. Again, similar to Republican amendments specifically prohibiting abortion coverage, amendments specifically excluding illegal immigrants and offered by Republicans have been steadfastly rebuffed by the Democrat congressional leadership. Some Democrats flatly deny that ObamaCare will cover illegal immigrants but, if that is really so, why not put expressly prohibitive language in the legislation saying so?  

19. Those who oppose Obama’s reform belong to the Republican "Party of No," are for the status quo, favor various special interest groups, and don't have anything else to offer.
However, Republicans have put forward at least FOUR major, much cheaper, less intrusive and less complicated proposals to lower the cost of health care, only to be actively ignored by the Democrat leadership, including President Obama, and by the so-called national “news” media.

20. Congressional Democrats will have the same option to use ObamaCare that their constituents will have.
This is just disingenuous, which is a nice word for not telling the whole truth. Some variation of this response is normally given by Democrat representatives when confronted at town hall meetings by angry constituents wanting to know that if what their Democrat representatives are proposing with ObamaCare is so good and necessary, will those same representatives commit to changing to ObamaCare from the cadillac, five-star health plan they now have, usually the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) [which is a system of "managed competition" through which employee health benefits are provided to full-time permanent civilian employees and qualified retirees of the US Government and under which the employer (that would be the US government, with the use of your tax dollars) pays an amount equal to 72 percent of the average plan premium for self-only or family coverage (not to exceed 75 percent of the premium for the selected plan), and the employee (that would be the member of Congress) pays the rest, i.e., 25 to 28 percent]. Not bad, huh? But that response purposefully begs the question anyway. Of course, a member of Congress could select ObamaCare, in whatever form, if any at all, that it finally takes. But that's far different from committing to doing that, instead of keeping the gold-plated, mostly government funded plan you already have and can even keep after you retire -- and which is not even available to most of your constituents (plus continuing to receive the highest annual salary you received, for life).

21. Tort reform and consumer-patients being able to "shop" for health care insurance across state lines would do more, and more quickly, than anything else to lower health care and health insurance costs. 
But, while being able to shop for health insurance like we can now do for other types of insurance may make it into even some Democrat versions of the health care/insurance reform legislation, it's highly doubtful tort reform to reduce frivolous or exorbitant doctor and/or hospital medical malpractice law suits will. As Democrat Howard Dean, former DNC Chairman, recently admitted at a town hall meeting: "When you're trying to change so much about something, you're going to make enemies and you have to be careful about how many enemies you make, or you won't get anything done, and the trial lawyers are a (special interest) group which Democrats just don't want to take on." Or words to that effect.

Well, Howie, you finally said something for a change that I think was not only completely honest but with which I totally agree -- trial lawyers are a mainstay constituency of the Democrat Party which no Democrats want to "take on" -- not even to help all those un- and under-insured folks suffering along with our "broken" health care system out there.

It's a shame, really. Democrats, maybe even with a little "bipartisan" help (and therefore political "cover") from Republicans, could do so much to help so many if they just really meant what they said, instead of actually trying to do something totally different. It's just that Democrats want to use healthscare for a huge government power grab more than they really want to do anything else.

The car that is our health care/insurance system is the best in the world but is too expensive to run now and does need some fine tuning. But the Democrats want to either completely overhaul it or throw it on the junk heap and replace it with a whole new model which may but probably won't work any better, or maybe not as well. That's like getting a small hole in your best-fittin' blue jeans and just throwing them away and getting a new pair, instead of neatly just patching that hole. Wasteful, rash and foolish.

But, let's see how the Silver Tongued One spins some of this, all of this, any of this later tonight, shall we?

On or about September 1st, President Obama’s continuing campaign organization, Organizing for America (OFA), published a notice on its Web site about blitzing US Senators with phone calls on 9/11, Patriot Day, in support of the ObamaCare (but maybe by now KennedyCare) government option. (By the way, isn't the campaign over now and didn't Obama win? Why then, does he need a continuing campaign organization? Shouldn't he stop campaigning now and start governing?)

The OFA site contained a notice to “grassroots” supporters about the planned 9/11 "health care organizing event,” saying:

"What day? Our US Senators return to DC the Tues after Labor Day. That next FRIDAY, Sep 11, is Patriot Day, designated in memory of the nearly three thousand who died in the 9/11 attacks.

"All 50 States are coordinating in this – as we fight back against our own Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process, whipped to a frenzy by their Fox Propaganda Network ceaselessly re-seizing power for their treacherous leaders."

Now, while Obama did not personally say any of this (at least, so far as I know), OFA, an organization representing him, did by allowing the post and/or by not having sufficient filters to prevent it. (And I thought, or so we've been told, that Obama supporters are so much more media and Internet savvy than "the rest of us," too.) Similarly, Obama did not personally participate in the August 11th White House-sponsored teleconference call made by Obama "associate" Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus, and Liv Havstad, the group's senior vice president of strategic partnerships and programs, about changing the focus of 9/11. Yearwood, who uses the honorific "Reverend" before his name, has been in the news in recent years, often for getting arrested.

On the August 11 White House-sponsored call, a source with insider knowledge said that Yearwood and other leaders (see more below) kept saying that they wanted 9/11 to be used for something "positive," "forward-leaning" and "productive." The plan is "remake" 9/11 from a "day of fear" into a so-called "day of activism" called the "National Day of Service." Now, there's a euphemistically and meaninglessly misnomered national day, if ever I heard of one. Besides, 9/11 already has a name, Patriot Day, and it doesn't need a new name nor any kind of radical activist revisionist "makeover."

And who were those other leaders on the conference call with Yearwood? Well, it was a coalition including the radically left-wing pressure group Color of Change and other far-left, environmentalist, labor and corporate shakedown groups, including: ACORN, AFL-CIO, Apollo Alliance, Community Action Partnership, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, 80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs, Friends of the Earth, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Mobilize.org, National Black Police Association, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Council of N-gro Women, National Wildlife Federation, RainbowPUSH Coalition, Urban League, and Young Democrats of America.

Although Obama hopes, as he often has in the past, to maintain "plausible deniability" by "six degrees of separation" from some of his associates and supporters, I resent the thuggish attempts of those associates and supporters to silence legitimate opposition and I therefore put ultimate responsibility for that where it belongs -- right in Obama's lap. He, as president, and even more particularly as commander-in-chief, bears no less overall responsibility than does a military commander who is responsible for all that his troops do or fail to do. And it appears pretty clear from all this that Team Obama wants to subvert and politicize the true meaning of 9/11, as well as to push back against protesters, referred to as “Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists.”

Well, Senator, I am one of those protesters -- and a conservative, and a Vietnam vet, and a disabled vet, and a retired Army colonel, and a TEA Party supporter, and I disagree with most of Obama's agenda and the profligate spending of your 111th Congress. But I strongly resent being labeled a "Right-Wing Domestic Terrorist" just because I disagree, adamantly defend my Second Amendment rights, own guns and/or am a Christian. I HAVE A RIGHT TO DISAGREE! AND I HAVE A RIGHT TO SAY SO -- OFTEN AND LOUD!

So, when you receive all those OFA-organized blitz "grassroots" phone calls on 9/11, remember what 9/11 is really supposed to be about -- a day of sorrow, a day of reflection, of respectful remembrance and rededication to the protection of our Republic -- not a politicized day of partisan politics, a day to "sell" anything, or a so-called "National Day of Service." It's 9/11. It's Patriot Day. Out of respect for all those who died that day, leave it alone and let it be just what it is -- an annual national day of mourning and, yes, perhaps even anger, and renewal and rededication.

...on pushing ObamaCare through Congress. Well, as Dirty Harry once said, "Go ahead, make my day." 

Falsely claiming, once again (or is that, still?), that the Republican "Party of No" won't be nice and "play bipartisan" by joining them in passing Obama's massive makeover/takeover of the American health care/insurance system, various Democrat "leaders" are now -- rather over-dramatically, I might add -- "threatening" to "go it alone" and use reconciliation, AKA "the nuclear option," to force ObamaCare through the Senate and down the throats of the American people -- say, "ahhhh" -- whether they want it or not. And polls increasingly show that they do not want it. (Hmmm, I'm getting confused now. Is that fascism yet or just more socialism by Obama and the Democrats?)

First, aside from President Obama publicly mouthing words of bipartisanship but privately reminding Republicans "Hey, we won," the Democrats in Congress, and especially in Princess Pelosi's House, have been the "Party of We're Not Listening."

It was Democrats who took it upon themselves to exclude Republican participation and "go it alone" in passing a $787 billion stimulus plan without reading it, a "plan" which hasn't stimulated much of anything, of which only about 10 to 15 percent has been spent even now going on seven months later and most of that not in the states most in need of job stimulation, while ignoring and shutting out Republicans who were offering an alternative plan which would have created twice as many jobs, in half the time, at less than half the cost.

It was Congressional Democrats who "went it alone" in passing a bloated budget, which also went unread, which was packed with over 8,000 pork projects and which was quickly signed behind closed doors by a Democrat president who had "promised" he would take his Sharpie and go line-by-line through any spending measure to eliminate earmarks and other waste.

It was Congressional House Democrats who "went it alone" in passing H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act, also called the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, otherwise also known as the clean energy cap-and-tax bill, otherwise known as global warming -- uh, sorry, climate change -- legislation, and otherwise also known as a manufacturing base destroyer, a small business crippler and a potentially huge individual American family energy tax.

At least this time they had an excuse for not reading the bill before voting on it, because they introduced 300 pages of amendments (which were not even integrated into the bill as required, much less read in toto by anybody) at 3AM of the same day on which they insisted on voting on and passing it.

(Is it just me, or does it seem that any time anybody is in that much of a hurry to do something, like this 111th Congress has been the whole time, it may be because they're afraid somebody is going to figure out they're doing something they shouldn't be doing and they just want to hurry up and get it done before anybody can stop them? Ah, no, that's just me, being my cynical old self again, right?)

The fact is, "bipartisanship" to the Democrats only means voting along with what they want to do, however and whenever they want to do it. And, truth be told, knowing they had the votes to approve almost anything they wanted to, they have only wanted so-called bipartisanship "for show" anyway, to give them the "political cover" of Republican participation in case something goes wrong.

Although White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel did recently say, in a stretch of logic meant to put lipstick on a pig (remember Obama saying that about something Palin said during the campaign?), that basically anytime Republicans didn't actively object to whatever the Democrats were doing, that was bipartisanship. No, it ain't, Rambo Rahm, and, just like with your boss Obama and much of what he says, just because you say it's so, doesn't make it so. You can't just "make up" new meanings for words as you go along and "redefine" things just to suit your own purposes of the moment. After all, it was your boss Obama who repeatedly said during the campaign that "words matter." And that means that their normally accepted meanings also matter. (Well, maybe, as we've found out since you all actually got into the White House, except for such words as "transparency," "open and accountable government," "no lobbyists in my government," and, oh yeah, "bipartisanship.")

As I said, the Democrats, knowing they have enough votes in both the House and Senate to pass almost anything they want to without Republican participation, much less support, have not only been excluding Republican participation while falsely claiming that Republicans are just being obstructionists but Obama and the Democrats have also been severely overreaching, some might say unconstitutionally so.

Now, at over seven months into the Obama presidency and with Obama and the Democrat controlled Congress responsible for (a) continuing TARP bailouts and government takeovers of private industry, (b) a massive stimulus plan which hasn't stimulated, (c) the largest and one of the most pork laden budgets in our history, (d) the House passage of Waxman-Markey as a huge energy tax in exchange for the least amount of real climate change benefit, and (e) a quadrupling of our deficit spending in mere months, no one -- I repeat, no one -- can any longer credibly blame Bush for the economy, or much of anything else, for that matter.

Obama and the Democrats own it now. The honeymoon and the hiding behind Bush are over. It's time for Obama and his Congress to lead and to govern on their own. Stop telling us all the time what your predecessors did wrong and show us what you've got.

And if Obama and the Democrats continue to overreach, as they already have so far, for example by using reconciliation, which is a Senate procedure for dealing solely with budget matters and not intended to be used for major pieces of legislation, to ram through ObamaCare, which is definitely a major piece of legislation affecting one-sixth of our total economy, and especially if they do it over Republican objections and against the will of the majority of the American people, they will own that, too. And they will have no one to blame but themselves, which means we will have no one to blame but them also. So, go ahead, Mr. President and the Democrat controlled 111th Congress, overreach again. In other words, again as Dirty Harry said, "Do ya feel lucky, Punk? Well, do ya?"

What's that old saying -- Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? And what's that other old saying about giving someone enough rope to hang themselves? Well, Obama and the Democrats have the power. So, like the kid at Mickey D's might ask you about fries with your order, would you like some more rope to go with that? We'll try our very best to have all your nooses ready by 2010.

No less than the liberal fish wrap rag New York Times has reported that seven months into his presidency and Obama has 43 percent of the top policy-making jobs requiring Senate approval still empty, including such positions as Secretary of the Army and Director of the Agency for International Development.

Meanwhile, he has, so far at least, appointed going on 40-something so-called "czars," (a) which are at best extra-constitutional, if not unconstitutional, positions; (b) many of which duplicate existing cabinet secretarial and other federal government positions; and (c) many of which are being filled with Obama loyalists who possess what may be charitably called  "questionable" credentials, either with backgrounds totally unrelated to the czar position they're given or, in at least one case so far, the outright criminal background of a self-avowed communist.

I guess it is easier, though, and perhaps more "distracting" to those of us in the great unwashed masses out here in the hinterland, to simply appoint approximately a czar a week (oh, it's Friday, so what new czar do we have this week?), to not only give the illusion that you are doing something to solve problems but to also accomplish political payback and establish a "shadow government of czars" (a) whose salaries are unknown, (b) whose staff sizes and salaries are unknown, (c) most of whom until you appointed them were also unknown, (d) some of whom even though you have appointed them are still unknown, (e) and who are loyal only to you and not even accountable to the Congress. That's all easier, as well as more showy, than contending with that pesky and contentious ole Senate and working to get 43 percent of the policy-making positions which are actually authorized in the federal government expeditiously vetted (remember vetting?) and filled.  

And while the czar issue is both growing and ongoing, that's not all the manipulative misdirection our presidential prestidigitator and his administration henchmen offer us. The most recent is the CIA thing -- again -- and it's not just to appease their left-wing nutjobs, either. They're also doing it now as another distraction, to "change the conversation."

It came out late Friday (of course, Friday -- that's the end of the regular weekly news cycle when the White House usually dumps bad news) that Team Obama had "underestimated" the debt they've stuck us and future generations with in just over six months and it's going to be NINE TRILLION instead of the "paltry" SEVEN TRILLION that was previously announced. Of course, with the way Obama and this Congress spend money we not only don't have but also may not have even printed yet, I guess a couple of TRILLION is more or less just a "rounding error" so far as they're concerned.

Also, ObamaCare is taking a beating not only in town halls across the country but also in the latest polls, and so are Obama's ratings, so they want to change the topic to something else, perhaps almost anything, for those reasons as well.

Any time Obama gets really pressed about something he doesn't want to talk about or gets caught in another, shall we say, exaggeration (AARP backs ObamaCare -- uh, next day, no they don't), he shifts the conversation rather than answer the question, and so do his henchmen by repeating talking points instead of answering what they're asked about. Good lawyers do that. Good debaters do that. And weasely politicians do that, and, in that regard, Obama represents a trifecta -- smooth-talking lawyer, skillful debater, and ....

Besides, raising the CIA investigation issue again now also lets Obama play good cop to Attorney General Eric "Americans are cowards about race" Holder's bad cop by repeating that he only wants to look forward but it's Holder who wants to drag up investigating the CIA again, and blah, blah, blah. In D.C., that's what's politely called being disingenuous. In other parts of the country, it's called what it is: lying.

Obama may be in over his head and be too inexperienced to really know what he's doing, as some of us worried he would be, but one thing you can count on: he is a skilled politician and whatever he does do is carefully calculated, if lately at least not that well calibrated, in terms of trying to shape public opinion.

We'll see what kind of a president he turns out to be, but, make no mistake, he already is a calculating and cunning Chicago-style politician who will throw anybody he has to under the bus and who will say just about anything he thinks people will swallow. And, sadly, the liberal lamestream media and many of the people who joined his cult of personality and voted for him are not only still swallowing but also still gladly gulping down his faux "facts" and empty rhetoric. However, I myself have by now developed a pretty strong gag reflex.