The ends must justify the means, or Obama is desperate.  A majority of Americans do not like his health care overhaul plans.  He has done everything imaginable (many times over) to persuade us that he knows best.  His plethora of town hall meetings devoted to the topic of health care reform haven’t swayed us.  His excessive speeches to the nation have fallen on deaf ears.  His address to the joint session of congress was unconvincing.

Nevertheless, he is undaunted.  And like the iconic Energizer Bunny, when it comes to his signature issue of health care reform, Obama just keeps going and going and going.

But there is one thing he has not done – yet.  He has not courted the audience of the nation’s largest news network – the network his administration has demonized and boycotted since last fall.  However, Today Obama’s stubborn resistance will end, at least temporarily, and he will sit down for an interview with Fox News anchor, Bret Baier.

Maybe he has come to realize that shunning a cable news network whose ratings are higher than all its competitors combined was a mistake.  Perhaps he thinks one more interview will be enough to push his precious plan over the edge. 

It will be interesting, if not entertaining, to see what sad stories and fanciful facts he asserts tonight.  The same stories and facts are not typically used twice.  Particularly because they are later “fact checked” to be categorically false. 

My favorite whopper, which I personally hope to hear again tonight, is Obama’s claim that his health care bill will lower our insurance premiums by 3,000 percent.  How could any reasonable person vote against that?  While he’s at, maybe he’ll promise to put root beer in all the drinking fountains.

Cross posted at The Daily Dose.

There’s a new strain of Potomac Fever spreading through Washington. Democrats seem to be most susceptible to the disease. Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) is the latest victim to succumb in a string of illnesses.

Potomac Fever is usually associated with the love of Washington; the love of power and politics. This new strain of the bug, however, has had quite the opposite effect. As Josh Kraushaar from Politico puts it, “even the politicians are sick of Washington.”

In his speech yesterday, Bayh said:

I love working for the people of Indiana, I love helping our citizens make the most of their lives, but I do not love Congress.”

Other retiring Democrats such as Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Rep. Bart Gordon (TN), Rep. Marion Berry (AR), and Rep. Dennis Moore (KA) have also complained about Washington partisanship in their retirement announcements.

Berry even blasted the President’s reaction to the possibility of a 1994 Republican revolution redux this fall. He told his local newspaper:

The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’ We’re going to see how much difference that makes now.

Bayh is the fifth Democratic Senator to announce that he will not seek reelection this year. His retirement is sending the Democrats scrambling to look for a replacement. The filing deadline for the Indiana state Democrat primary election was today.

As time passes it looks increasingly possible for Republicans to gain majority status in both the House and the Senate this fall.

My biggest concern is: are they ready?

Republicans blew it before because they were more concerned about hanging onto their power than they were about governing as Republicans should. In other words, they got the other strain of Potomac Fever and began acting like Democrats — growing the federal government and spending money like drunken, well, congressmen.

Let’s hope the Republicans have learned from their mistakes, and work hard to replace those who have not.

Today Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), son of the late Ted Kennedy, will join thirty-one of his House colleagues on the crowded retirement bandwagon. But that’s the little picture. The big picture is this: What will the United States do without a Kennedy in Congress?

Besides a two year vacancy from the time John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960 until his little brother, Teddy, was elected to fill his vacant Senate seat 1962, there has been a Kennedy in Congress since 1946. With the retirement of Patrick, the Kennedy Dynasty has officially gone the way of the Whigs, so to speak.

Since Ted Kennedy’s illustrious career began in 1962 we’ve seen many changes in the size and scope of the federal government. In a nutshell, it’s gotten ginormous.

A few fun facts:

• In 1962 government spending was around 18% of the GDP
• In 2009 government spending reached 25% of the GDP
• In 1962 the federal budget was $107 billion
• In 2009 the federal budget was $3.5 trillion
• In 1962 the national debt was $390 billion
• We are now more than $12 trillion in debt (and climbing rapidly)
• During the sixteen years Patrick Kennedy has served in Congress federal spending has nearly tripled and the national debt has more than doubled.

The federal programs both Kennedys championed were the essence of the nanny state. In the name of compassion they have worked to saddle us and future generations with debt that cannot be repaid.

They were also loud proponents programs like No Child Left Behind, SCHIP, Medicare prescription drugs and other bloated, inefficient government boondoggles that will not be easy to fix (not to mention that the younger Kennedy, as a member of the House Appropriations Committee, was well known for his ability to bring home lots and lots of pork to his tiny state).

And I’m not even going to mention the many scandals.

So I ask the question again: What will the United States do without a Kennedy in Congress? Answer: A heck of a lot better.

In an unprecedented act of bad manners the POTUS used the SOTU to blast the SCOTUS — while they sat only a few feet in front of him. It appears that Justice Alito mouthed the words “not true” after Obama pronounced that last week’s Supreme Court decision would “open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.”

In fact, the limits on foreign nationals and foreign corporations remain in place. Bradley A. Smith, law professor at Capitol University Law School says:

Foreign nationals, specifically defined to include foreign corporations, are prohibited from making “a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State or local election” under 2 U.S.C. Section 441e, which was not at issue in the case. Foreign corporations are also prohibited, under 2 U.S.C. 441e, from making any contribution or donation to any committee of any political party, and they prohibited from making any “expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication.”

He concludes by saying:

This is either blithering ignorance of the law, or demagoguery of the worst kind.

I concur.

This will be no small task for those poor strategerists who’ve banked on wringing a few more elections out of the Blame-Bush approach. After all, Democrats successfully ran against Herbert Hoover for 30 years.

Steve Hildebrand, who worked on Obama’s presidential campaign openly admits:

“Voters are pretty tired of the blame game…[w]hat a stupid strategy that was.”

It’s a bit amusing to hear these sputtering concessions. To them, one year of peddling unpopular healthcare reform, stimulus packages that didn’t stimulate, broken promises of transparency, and back room bribery are not the problem. It must be that the American people are just too stupid, ill-informed or amnesic to “get” the message that all problems in the world are the fault of George W. Bush and the eeevil Republicans

I can’t wait to see what new tactics they trot out this year. If they can no longer effectively run against Bush, they’ll likely try the old “party of no” routine. But considering the unpopularity of all recent Democrat policies, I don’t think that line will help them much.

Here we go again.  Last night the White House released another self-congratulatory report boasting new “jobs created or saved” numbers.  This quarter the number is “between 1.7 and 2 million” jobs.  In the Grand Experiment known as counting the “jobs created or saved” by the economic stimulus plan, the Grand Experiment Schemers have concocted yet another way to count the bogus jobs. 

This quarter’s numbers, unlike last quarter’s, are not based on phony reports of jobs created in fake congressional districts around the country — Americans didn’t buy that claptrap.  THIS time the numbers are conveniently based on “macroeconomic estimates.” 

But hold onto your shorts because NEXT quarter they’re going to try something even better.  The White House has announced a brand new way to tally jobs.  Now, if a company who has received stimulus money doesn’t quite know how to estimate a job saved, they are to simply report all their employees as having a saved job, whether they would have been laid off or not.  Brilliant.  That ought to boost those fraudulent numbers quite a bit. 

In the meantime, unemployment holds steady at a whopping 10 percent.

Instead of interrogating the Christmas day would-be bomber and trying him in a military tribunal, the Obama administration has decided to use a kinder, gentler approach.  They will try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (a.k.a. Captain Underpants) in civilian court. 

It is interesting to note that the Fox News Channel and Rush Limbaugh can get the Obama administration’s knickers in a knot merely by espousing conservative thought.  However, when it comes to the Panty Bomber, and other terrorists who seek to kill innocent Americans, Obama is as cool as a spring breeze.

Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian with ties to al-Qaeda, snuck bomb-making materials aboard an Amsterdam to Detroit flight by concealing them in the crotch of his girlie pants.  After his arrest he was talking freely to his captors — until, of course, the Obama administration informed him that he had the right to remain silent.  Now he is lawyered up, and not saying a word.

The best part is President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan admitted on “Meet the Press” that the administration would be pursuing a plea agreement with the terrorist.

“A lot of people…understand what they’re facing, and their lawyers recognize that there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements, [and] we’re going to pursue that.”

So there you have it.  No loud rap music, or standing for long periods of time.  No sleeping in a chilly cell, or attention slaps — and most certainly no waterboarding.  Instead, our good friend, the Panty Bomber, will be sent to bed without supper.  That ought to make him think twice about committing acts of terrorism against the United States when he is acquitted and sent back to Yemen — or Detroit.

Cross posted at The Daily Dose.

Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez received thunderous applause and standing ovations during his anti-capitalism speech at the climate change summit in Copenhagen yesterday. The Marxist dictator strayed from his notes and ranted for 45 minutes — far beyond his allotted five minute time.

Chavez charged that capitalism is what’s ruining the planet. He said:

“A ghost is stalking the streets of Copenhagen…it’s capitalism, capitalism is that ghost…The destructive model of capitalism is the eradication of life.”

Chavez’ speech was enthusiastically received by the audience. He claimed that socialism is the way to save the planet and nearly brought down the house after pronouncing “capitalism is the road to hell….let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.”

Obama heads to Copenhagen tomorrow to attend the anti-capitalist, anti-America, anti-freedom rally (otherwise known as the climate change summit).

Cross posted to The Daily Dose

Global warming peddlers in Copenhagen just proved that they not only don’t practice what they preach, but they don’t even believe what they preach. According to “Climate-Changeologists” the polar ice caps will be completely melted within FIVE years. And yet, the Super Duper Smart People in Copenhagen just decided to delay decisions on “preventing catastrophic climate change” for SIX years.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but if the debate on global warming is in fact over, and there is no doubt in the accuracy of the science, wouldn’t the “I-like-the-money-and-power-that-comes-from-selling-global-warming” people be in a panic to reach some sort of agreement before the polar ice caps melt and much of the world shares the fate of Atlantis?

Two years ago Al Gore predicted that the polar ice caps will be gone in five years. So according to the all-knowledgeable, Inconvenient Truth-Telling Scholar, the polar ice caps will be gone by the summer of 2012. In Copenhagen today Al Gore once again predicted that the polar ice caps will be gone in five years. Hang on, if he first made this very same prediction in 2007, and it is now 2009, shouldn’t he be saying that the ice caps will melt in only three years? I’m no math major, so if I can calculate that equation, one would think the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate shouldn’t have a problem with it either.

Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed its omnibus spending bill which combined six “regular” appropriations bills into one giant monstrosity. As is typical with such bills, members of congress lined up to discretely stuff goodies for their own districts into the bill’s 2,500 pages.

Let me point out some lowlights of this bill:

• It contains a 12 percent spending increase over 2009
• It contains a 24.4 percent increase in spending over 2008
• $446 billion in total spending
• 5,224 earmarks worth $3.8 billion
•  A whopping 1 hour debate

Of course no Republicans in the House voted for this bill today — we’ll see how the Senate does next week. But some Republicans, knowing the bill would ultimately pass, eagerly shoved into it their own earmarks.

Here are just a few examples:

• Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) U of Louisville: $8.56 million
• Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) Oyster Rehabilitation: $800K
• Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL) Conserving Fish/Wildlife: $1 million
• Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) Soybean Research: $690K

This conduct is exactly what’s wrong with Congress. Appropriations that wouldn’t withstand the smell test on their own get hidden within a regular appropriations bill that “must” pass in order to fund things like veterans programs.

The hypocritical Representatives and Senators who vote against this bill while ensuring it provides their district’s bacon must be held accountable. This sort of behavior is expected out of Democrats, but our Republican lawmakers should know better — and if not, they need to go.

Cross posted at The Daily Dose.