As an engineer, I only took 1 Economics Class while I was in College, so I don’t claim to be an expert.  However, I would expect our President to know more than I do before taking over or attempting drastic changes to huge portions of our economy.

Over the last few days I’ve been wondering how the President would do in an economics class, and I’ve written some questions to test his knowledge on some basic concepts.  Though they aren’t meant to be taken seriously, I am torn between curiosity and dread at how he would really answer them.  Here’s the first one I came up with.

Losses : Layoffs :: Profits: ________
A) Evil
B) Greed
C) Theft
D) Hiring

Does anyone else have some quiz questions for President Obama?

I called your office yesterday to note my objection to the health care legislation currently being considered by the House.  I am writing today to reiterate my opinion of this legislation.

This legislation will not do anything to reduce the actual costs of medical care, but will only change who is paying the bills.  The president and other supporters of the Senate Bill cite its CBO Score to present this legislation as a cost saving measure, but this score is a result of accounting gimmicks that defy common sense.  It uses 10 years of tax increases and medicare cuts to offset 6 years of spending.  Additionally, I am highly suspicious that the planned Medicare cuts will never happen, just like the cuts passed in the 90′s are being eliminated by the “doc fix”.  We cannot pay for our current entitlement programs, and along with its permanent enshrinement of Pell Grants, this legislation adds 2 new entitlement systems on top of them.  This will bankrupt the country.  Congress should start from scratch on a truly bipartisan bill.

Additionally, the methods being considered to pass this legislation are despicable.  The tactic being referred to as the “Slaughter Rule” or “deem and pass” should not be used to pass any legislation, especially not something of this scope.  Article 1, Section 7 of The Constitution specifically states “in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively.”  Using a rule to “deem” that a bill has passed based on the results of the vote on another bill does not meet this constitutional requirement.  You should vote against any bill or rule that attempts to use this maneuver on constitutional grounds, independent of its content.

Members of your caucus have cited examples of Republicans using this tactic in the past as their justification for using it in this case.  I wouldn’t accept this “They did it first” excuse from a child, and I certainly don’t accept it from a Congressman.  If the Republicans did it in the past they were wrong, too.  Maybe that’s why we voted them out of power.  This isn’t the Change America voted for.

If the Senate bill is too flawed to pass as is, it should be amended and sent back to the Senate for their reconsideration.  You should not pass a flawed bill with the hope to “fix” it later.  Obscuring a vote on the Senate Bill by hiding behind the “fix” doesn’t make sense, because if the Senate Bill is approved by the House, it will be sent to the President and become law, no matter what happens to the Reconciliation Bill.  Just because the House passes a “fix”, there is no guarantee that it will pass the Senate.  Therefore the Senate Bill MUST be judged on its own merits, independent from the fix.  If it doesn’t have the votes, it must die.

I’ll help you as soon as I’m done helping ram through legislation that will put them in charge of 15% of the economy.

I wrote to Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson (D, IL-11) last year, urging her to vote against ObamaCare.   After she voted in favor of it, I had thought my email was a waste of my time.  However, if I hadn’t written to her, I wouldn’t have been placed on her email list, and I would have missed the opportunity to read this little gem:

Constituent Corner

How Congresswoman Halvorson is working for her constituents

Recently, a retired Plainfield couple visited Congresswoman Halvorson’s office because they were having an issue with Medicare. Medicare had not listed the couple as having their primary insurance under Medicare, but rather had their insurance listed under what the couple had when they were still working.

This caused problems when their doctors would try to bill Medicare, which would not pay their bills. Halvorson reached out to the Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS), the organization that administers Medicare programs, to advocate on behalf of the couple. After contacting CMS, Halvorson was able to ensure that their payments were received, and the couple now has Medicare as their primary care service. This saved the couple money and allowed them to be fully covered by Medicare.

If you or a family member needs assistance with any federal government agency, please contact my office at 815.726.4998.

Sincerely,

Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson

Her email acknowledges that the federal government was not responding to the needs of her constituents, requiring her personal intervention, and THIS IS A GOOD THING!?!?

If residents need to arrange a meeting with their Congressman to correct a billing problem with the Democrat’s shining example of government-run healthcare, why does she want to expand federal involvement?  It would make her constituents even more dependent on her to navigate through government red tape.

She wouldn’t want that, now, would she?

Adam Kinsinger is Running against her.   You can donate here.

Even though I have been lurking (and occasionally posting / commenting) at Red State and a few other sites on the right side of the blogosphere since 2004, I had never attended a political event until today.

This evening, I met the future Congressman from Illinois’s 11th District, Adam Kinsinger, at an open house for the official grand opening of his campaign headquarters.  Everyone there was energized and looking forward to getting their chance to continue the trend started in Virginia and New Jersey, and reinforced on Tuesday in Massachusetts.

Adam is a young, charismatic leader who successfully ran against a 12 year incumbent for a seat on the County Board at age 20.  He joined the Air Force after 9/11, where he became an officer and pilot.   I had been following his campaign from a distance after seeing this post by Moe earlier this year.  It seems like every political commercial I hear on the radio is from a candidate claiming to be the only true conservative reformer in the race, so I was interested to meet him for myself to get a feel for what he stands for.

He said a few words to the supporters gathered there, and I was not disappointed.  He spoke very optimistically about our future, and how inspiring it is to see the personal, professional, physical, and emotional sacrifices young Americans make to defend our freedom.  He said that even though he enjoyed being in the Air Force, in order to defend the greatness of America for the future, he felt that running for Congress was the right thing to do.  A year ago, people’s spirits were much lower than they are now, and some people were ready to give up, but the founders of our country fought longer odds than we were facing back then, taking on what was the most powerful country in the world at the time.  Who are we to give up on such a great nation that they and all of the other great generations since theirs have fought to give us.  We don’t have the right.  We can do our part by taking back the House of Representatives.

(I’m not a stenographer, so my account is my best effort at conveying his message.)

It was a great event, and I look forward to volunteering and donating for the campaign.

He is running to unseat Debbie Halvorson who is currently serving Nancy Pelosi in her first congressional term.  I’m sure Congressman Halvorson would say that she serves the people of the 11th district, but her voting record says otherwise.  In a district with a Cook PVI of R+1, she has voted with Pelosi 96% of the time, including yes votes on Porkulus, Cap & Tax, and PelosiCare.

Halvorson refused to hold any live town halls with her constituents about healthcare, so Adam held his own at various towns in the district.  A couple that I met at the open house told me about a protest they attended outside Halvorson’s office.  She refused to meet with them and had counter-protesters bussed in.  The counter-protesters were allowed into her office before boarding the buses to go home, but I guess I can excuse that because it would have been really awkward to pay them out there on the street.

I know having me show up at a campaign office is just a drop in the bucket, but I’m not the only drop, and that office isn’t the only bucket.  Together, we can make a flood in November.

Oh, and speaking of floods…..  Here’s another link to his fund raising page.

Roe Conn, the afternoon host on 890 AM – WLS in Chicago pointed out the similarity between the voices of Roland Burris and Winnie the Pooh.  Someone put together this video to illustrate:

-Moe, thanks for encouraging me to post this myself.

Drudge had a link to this this morning.

It’s an open letter to the media by Orson Scott Card, a newspaper columnist and Democrat.

He starts out by summarizing the Democrat’s responsibility for the housing mess, then nails the media for pushing the lie to shill for Obama:

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that’s what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don’t like the probable consequences. That’s what honesty means . That’s how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards’s own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That’s where you are right now.

Read the whole thing here

From http://www.wktv.com/news/local/32477839.html

UTICA, N.Y. (WKTV) – Student volunteers from colleges around New York State braved freezing cold temperatures on their bikes Wednesday to send a message to state and federal political candidates: pay attention to climate change.

Heh.

From “New Ground”, published by the Democratic Socialists of America, covering Obama’s run for congress against Bobby Rush in 2000:

Barak Obama is serving only his second term in the Illinois State Senate so he might be fairly charged with ambition, but the same might have be said of Bobby Rush when he ran against Congressman Charles Hayes. Obama also has put in time at the grass roots, working for five years as a community organizer in Harlem and in Chicago. When Obama participated in a 1996 UofC YDS Townhall Meeting on Economic Insecurity, much of what he had to say was well within the mainstream of European social democracy. (emphasis mine)

See the original document at: http://tinyurl.com/4e7gws

YDS stands for Young Democratic Socialists.

So, a socialist organization says that he spoke at their Townhall Meeting on Economic Insecurity, and that what he said was well within the mainstream of European Social Democracy.

This isn’t a partisan attack.

It is a socialist organization claiming him as one of their own.

Either Obama was a proponent of socialism, or there is no limit to whom he will pander. I put my money on “Both”. Either way, this is an issue that deserves some attention. He is not the centrist he is portrayed to be.

I can hear his response already… I said those things 12 years ago, when I was 35.