American Thinker-Right on Point

We Are Being Played: Socialist Mind Game

We are being played; it’s time we learned the game.

Conservatives have their Constitution. Progressives have their Narrative. The current battle for America is between these two concepts, and each side uses different rules to fight it.

One set of rules is consistent with an unchanging objective: limited government and individual freedoms. The other side’s rules are as fickle as their goals, which are never fully disclosed beyond the equivocal references to fairness and hyphenated forms of justice. They will have to remain vague and deny their true allegiances until a time when American voters will no longer squirm at the word “socialism.”

And yet spotting them isn’t that hard. As a bird is known by his feathers, socialists are known by their Game.

First tried and mastered in the USSR, the Game has since been popularized around the world, assuming various forms, names, and colors — from red to brown to green. It is now taking hold in the United States under the blue web banners of Obama’s campaign infomercials.

The laws of society and human nature are such that socialism can only be achieved through a certain sequence of steps and manipulations. For instance, the only way to attain material equality is to confiscate someone’s property and give it to others. That necessitates a centralized mechanism of coercion, redistribution, and control. Such a system gives extraordinary corrupting powers to a small centralized elite, while turning the rest of the citizenry into a compliant, obsequious herd.

Read more at   http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/the_socialist_mind_game_a_br...

He Paid More Than Me

The current anti-Romney commercial from the opposition claims Romney paid less in taxes than you did. Thats patently false, and they count on you just hearing the words: "He only paid 14% in taxes, probably less than you." That is the only part of this piece of video garbage they got correct; the rest is pure Bravo Sierra and we're going to call them on it.

According to the video garbage released by Obama's campaign, Mitt Romney paid 14% on 20 million dollars. Thats a 2.8 million dollar tax obligation. How many of you paid 2.8 million dollars in taxes? Did Queen Nancy or Prince Harry pay that much in taxes? How about Tim Giethner or Hizzoner Rahmbo of Chitown?

I bet Dear Leader hasn't paid that much in taxes. You know why? He's never created wealth the way Romney has. Thats the part that the marxists/socialists/dhimmis hate the most. They are incapable of creating that level of wealth by their own devices, which is primarily hyperbole, so they beat us over the head with a bunch of twisted half-truths about the ones who did create wealth on their own.

As a percentage of taxable income, Romney paid a lower rate than we pay on earned income. But that's a topic for another discussion once we have taken back control of our country from the claws of the unions and socialists and marxists hell-bent on destroying the means for anyone to create wealth anywhere.

The norm will be equal misery under the boot of an oppressive governemnt. Everyone will be equally poor. Everyone will be the same. Except for the ones who started it. They'll be living the life of luxury, cause they deserve it cause they are so much better and smarter than all of us.

taxes, wealth, false ads, dhimmi propaganda, marxist tactics, socialist engineering

The Imperial President: Obama Wages War on SCOTUS, Congress

The Imperial President: Obama Wages War on SCOTUS, Congress

President Obama’s latest attack on the Supreme Court is just the latest evidence of his deep-rooted disdain not just for the Constitution, but for the system of checks and balances it represents. Prior to his election, Obama told Americans that we were just days away from “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” He didn’t mean that simply in terms of policy, although he certainly wanted redistributionist policy to take center stage. He meant it in terms of governmental structure.

Obama doesn’t like that “big, messy, tough democracy.” He wants what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once called The Imperial Presidency. He wants the Supreme Court to do his bidding, or shut up. He wants Congress to get out of the way. He wants power, in its purest, most unbridled form. Should he win re-election, he will undoubtedly pursue that vital goal. After all, how are you going to get “fundamental change” without fundamentally undermining the Constitutional structure?

Kid Pan Alley Confesses and Apologizes

Remember the third grade class in Charlottesville who sang the Occupy Song? Weeeellll
seems Kid Pan Alley has finally fessed up.

H/T to my bud Pat Dollard for this one.

Occupy Movement Comes to Elementary Schools

Occupy Movement Comes to Elementary Schools

in Virginia. Lisa Molinaro--Remember that name.
Instead of allowing our children to become independent critical thinkers, they teach them to hate the wealth makers. Instead of teaching them how to be good responsible citizens, they bring in a bunch of marxists to instill class hatred.

Keeping politics out of government run schools requires constant vigilance. In recent years, political ideology has been brazenly imposed on students across the country. Woodbrook Elementary School in Charlottesville, Virginia, provides the latest example of a government school imposing left wing ideology, this time with the Marxist rhetoric of the Occupy movement.
Woodbrook Elementary, (principal Lisa Molinaro), allowed leftist activists into the school to train third graders in writing songs which were performed at an assembly organized by an outside group – Kid Pan Alley – in October of this year. The tune the 3rd graders “wrote” and performed could have come from the soundtrack at Zuccotti park, minus the drug overdoses and rapes.

Some people have it all,
but they don’t think that they have enough
They want more money
A faster ride
They’re not content
Never satisfied
Yes- they are the 1 percent
I used to be one of the 1 percent
I worked all the time
Never saw my family
Couldn’t make life rhyme
Then the bubble burst
It really, really hurt
I lost my money
Lost my pride
Lost my home
Now I’m part of the 99
I used to be sad now I’m satisfied
Cause I really have enough
Though I lost my yacht and plane
Didn’t need that extra stuff
Could have been much worse
You don’t need to be first
Cause I’ve got my friends
Here by my side
Don’t need it all
I’m happy to be part of the 99.

Keith Ellison Lied, People Cried

Keith Ellison Lied, People Cried

Now, via NRO, we discover that Ellison’s account of events around Hamdani’s death does not even comport with reality. If anything, Ellison has disgraced a heroic victim of Islamic terrorism on 9/11 by spitting on his grave by invoking his name coupled with politically motivated lies and manipulations. What a disgrace.

Just another lying Democrat and in this case a Muslim U.S. Congressman.

Its OK for Muslims to lie to infidels.
See "taqiyya"
The practice of lying to achieve an end is institutionalized in Islam and Marxism.

Islam and Marxism - What a cute couple those two make.

Bussing In Protestors

Rumor has it that Uncle Jimbo was on the ground in his home-town of Madison. He files this and one other report over at Blackfive.

Big Journalism has this piece up:
Progressives In Front of WH Protest Effort Mad at Koch Brothers

The President took a public stand against the hard-working private sector families of Wisconsin who are struggling to make ends meet in an post-stimulus era of 9% unemployment.

OFA, the President’s campaign arm, has organized and bussed in hundreds of out-of-state protesters to continue the agitation in Wisconsin.

The DNC has been working to help organize protest against states’ rights and the Wisconsin governor.

Yet progressive columnists who, for whatever reason, are allowed to post poorly-written Kos fantasies in a publication like Forbes and are freaking out over, who else? The Koch Brothers. Rick Ungar ironically and generously quotes the Soros-funded Think Progress in his diatribe about the Wisconsin protests.

Even if, for the sake of this ridiculous argument, the Koch brothers were involved in funding a portion of the rally, who cares? Ungar misses the irony of quoting a Soros publication while complaining about the Koch brothers. He misses the irony of standing for government-organized protests. He props up one bajillionaire while whining about another. It’s good enough for progressives to allow the White House to abuse its power and stir up tension in state capitols, yet somehow Ungar finds it within himself to draw a boundary when it comes to conservatives doing the same.

More--->

Wolves With Sheepskins

Looks as if the website for Defend Education is suffering from an overload. It was suggested that we should pay attention to this particular website in relation to the Arizona immigration issue.

After you've managed to get to the site, take note of the organizations involved in this project, and then jump over to Discover the Networks and do a search for those orgs.

Here's just a small sample:
Social Anarchists for Liberty & Justice, South California (this one really gets me.)
Social Justice Alliance, SUNY Stony Brook
Social Justice Alliance, UC Riverside, California
Socialism Now!, Chicago
Socialist Alternative
Socialist Organizer
Socialist Party of Connecticut
Socialist Party USA

There are 21 chapters of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) listed from schools across the country. These are the schoolchildren who like to vandalize recruiting centers and throw glass bottles of red paint on LEOs.

It is expected that Defend Education will find its way to Arizona and mayhem will insue.

The Deliberate and Planned Destruction of Our Economy

The numbers prove it: Democrats have destroyed our economy since taking control of Congress

A new report from Americans for Limited Government (ALG) clearly shows that the Democrats have destroyed our economy since they took control of our lives in January of 2007.

The most eye catching of ALG’s data items is the sad comparison of the rate of 4.6% unemployment at the start of 2007 and today’s alarming 9.7%. In real terms this means while there were about 7 million unemployed workers when the Democrats took over, today that number has more than doubled to 14.8 million out of work Americans.

At the rate they are going these swollen and devastating numbers will be with us as far as the eye can see, even by the Democrats’ own admission. The Democrats attempt to tell us to shut up because “this is the new state of the national economy” makes it even more important that we roll up our sleeves to fight for our freedoms.

The length of time Americans are unemployed has spiraled upward with a dizzying speed. In the month of January 2007 the average unemployment recipient had been on the rolls for 16.2 weeks. Today that too has all but doubled to 30.2 weeks with no end in sight.

In January 2007, when the Democrats took the reigns of government, America actually had a monthly surplus of $38.2 billion, as per data available from the Treasury Department. At the start of January this year, just three years later we sagged under the weight of a $46.6 billion monthly deficit.

More than this, when the Bush Administration combined with a Republican controlled Congress turned in a monthly surplus in January 2007 it was an increase of $21 billion over January 2006. During the final year of the last GOP controlled Congress, Treasury receipts increased “13% year-over-year to a record $260.6 billion.”

Deliberate and calculated destruction of a system that has produced more millionaires than any other in recorded history.

Happy Now?

It May Be Time To Drop Off the Grid

Unions Want to Take Over Your 401(k)

One of the nation's largest labor unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is promoting a plan that will centralize all retirement plans for American workers, including private 401(k) plans, under one new "retirement system" for the United States.

In effect, government pensions for everyone, not unlike the European system and regardless of personal choice.

The SEIU, which was integral to the election of Barack Obama as president, is working with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, on SEIU's plan, called "the Retirement USA Initiative."

Claiming that the retirement system in place now has "failed most Americans," EPI vice president Ross Eisenbrey, told a labor union publication that "account balances have fallen by a third since late 2007, leaving many older workers unable to retire just as our economy is shedding millions of jobs.”

More after the jump

Wonder why we've lost all those jobs and our 401's have tanked? The useful idiots elected a socialist. So the solution now is to take over the rest of it so it can be "managed" by the government.

Anyone else see a pattern here?

Morning Bell - Undermining the Rule of Law

Congress vs. The American People

Another day, two new polls showing the American people are strongly against the health care plan President Barack Obama will sign into law today. According to CNN, 59% of Americans oppose President Obama's plan. And according to CBS News, 48% of Americans oppose the plan (with 33% in strong opposition) compared to only 37% who support it (with only 13% in strong support). Digging deeper into the CBS poll, we find that 76% of Americans disapprove of how Congress is handling its job on health care, 46% think Congress has spent too much time on health care, and 49% believe the rules and procedures used in Congress to get the current health care bill passed have been mostly unfair.

But the leftist majorities in Congress just do not care what the American people think. Today, the Senate will press forward with work on the proposed "fix-it" bill through the reconciliation process. You may have thought it was impossible to make the policy and process of Obamacare even worse, but that is exactly what this reconciliation bill does:

Abuse of Process:
According to the Congressional Research Service, 19 reconciliation measures have been enacted into law since the procedure’s first use in the Carter administration. The record shows that reconciliation has been used for virtually all imaginable scenarios — save one: There is no precedent for using it to enact a once-in-a-generation rewrite of the relationship between Americans and their government that appeals exclusively to one side of the aisle. But that is exactly what Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is attempting to do. According to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, a plurality of the American people strongly oppose this procedural tactic for this highly unpopular policy.

Even Higher Deficits:
According to the Congressional Budget Office, new entitlement spending in the reconciliation bill would cost $216 billion in 2019 alone and will increase by 8% every year after that. Now, the Democrats will tell you that the CBO has also said their plan raises enough taxes and cuts enough Medicare to pay for this gigantic new entitlement. But the CBO is obligated by law to believe whatever Congress tells them. The American people are not. According to the latest NBC/WSJ poll, 76% of the American people do not trust Congress. That is why, according to the latest CNN poll, 70% of the American people believe Obamacare will cause the federal budget deficit to go up.

Even Higher Taxes on Business:
As bad as the employer mandates in the Senate health bill were, the taxes on businesses in the reconciliation bill are even worse. Companies that hire certain low-income Americans will have to pay $3,000 per employee, per year, even if the company offers insurance. And companies that employ 50 or more workers will face higher tax penalties to the tune of $2,000 per full-time employee.

New Taxes on Investments:
Investment is what creates job growth. One would think at a time of 9.7% unemployment, the government would not want to increase taxes on investment. Not this leftist government. The reconciliation bill slaps a 3.8% tax on investment income.

Cornhusker Kickbacks for All:
You may have heard that the reconciliation bill "got rid of" the Cornhusker Kickback. That is not quite true. What it really did is extend the additional Medicaid funding Nebraska got to every state. But to keep the new entitlement spending deficit neutral, the new Medicaid funding creates a fiscal time bomb for states by vastly cutting Medicaid reimbursements in 2015. This reconciliation will only further strain already bankrupt state governments.

A Government Takeover Preview:
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) has already announced he will vote against the reconciliation bill because of the government takeover of the student loan industry that Democrats tacked onto the health care bill in order to help pay for the new entitlement. The student loan debacle is unfortunately just a preview of the direction the left wants to see health care go. The government first justified subsidizing student loans in the Clinton administration by saying it would make college more affordable. The opposite happened. College costs have only skyrocketed, just like health care costs will only sky rocket under this bill. So now this reconciliation bill is completely nationalizing the student loan industry. Unless the direction of health care policy changes, our health care sector will not be far behind.

Taking Over By Ignoring the Law of the Land

and the will of the people.

More of Obama's Socialist Programs to Come

Obama and his congressional cronies are systematically subverting the Constitution to advance their agenda. They have tried every trick in the book to pass Obamacare, such as lying about many substantive provisions in the bill and their inevitable effects on quality, price and choice.

During the height of the Cold War, some feared the communists would take over the United States without firing a shot. Could it be that nearly a half-century later, we're on the verge of that becoming a reality?

President Barack Obama and Democratic congressmen won their respective elections — no shots were fired — and they are feverishly attempting to dismantle this nation's institutions, brick by brick.

The American people are getting a bird's-eye view of what the left, which completely dominates the Democratic Party, thinks of the Constitution, freedom and the right of the people to self-governance.

The people now attempting to govern us with an iron fist are Marxist-leaning in terms of not only the policies they support but also the ruthless tactics they employ to enact those policies into law.

As long as it served Obama's Machiavellian purposes to maintain a semblance of unity for his ambitious agenda, he donned his bipartisan cap. But as soon as he encountered intractable opposition from Republicans, God bless them, he began to show his true political colors.

Barack Obama's congenial, compromising facade has disappeared. What remains, in plain view, is a narcissistic, arrogant and inflexibly ideological man who is determined to cram his socialist agenda down our throats by whatever means necessary — irrespective of the legality of the procedures he utilizes, the truth of the words he speaks and the will of the people.

Obama doesn't care what we think — and I'm not just talking about the majority of Americans who oppose Obamacare. Everyone who gets in his way is expendable, including principled Democrats who dare to oppose him.

Slaughter on North Capitol Street

There Is No Bill But the Senate Bill

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell

Another day, another poll showing President Barack Obama's health care plan is wildly unpopular with the American people. Yesterday NBC News/The Wall Street Journal released their latest poll showing that the percentage of Americans who believe President Obama's health care plan is a bad idea (48%) is at the highest level since they started asking the question last year. Only 36% of Americans are willing to call the plan a "good idea" which is up a whole four points from the time when House Rules Committee Chair Louise Slaughter (D-NY) wrote this about the Senate health plan:

[U]nder the Senate plan, millions of Americans will be forced into private insurance company plans, which will be subsidized by taxpayers. That alternative will do almost nothing to reform health care but will be a windfall for insurance companies. ... Supporters of the weak Senate bill say "just pass it -- any bill is better than no bill."

I strongly disagree -- a conference report is unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills. It's time that we draw the line on this weak bill and ask the Senate to go back to the drawing board. The American people deserve at least that.

The Senate health bill is so unpopular, even among House Democrats, that the leftist House leadership is desperately trying to trick the American people into believing that the House can pass the Senate bill without voting on it. Hence the Slaughter Rule which would deem the Senate bill passed at the same time the House would approve a new reconciliation bill.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was crystal clear on her motives this week telling a group of leftist bloggers: "It's more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know. But I like it because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill."There is one increasingly glaring problem with Pelosi's pass-the-bill-without-voting plan: it is proving impossible to draft that reconciliation bill. The Democrats first promised to unveil their new bill last Wednesday. Then Thursday. Then Friday. Then Monday. Then last night. As of this morning, still nothing. Democrats say they are waiting for a score from the Congressional Budget Office before they release their bill, but there is nothing stopping them from releasing whatever text they have now and then publicizing the CBO score when it comes back. But they are not choosing that open and transparent path.

As we reported last week, getting a CBO score consistent with reconciliation is going to be very difficult. According to House rules, a reconciliation measure must reduce the deficit by at least $2 billion over five years compared to existing law. In this case, however, "existing law" would be the yet-to-be-passed Senate bill. And all of the changes Democrats want to make to the Senate bill (scaling back the tax on high-end health insurance policies; closing the Medicare D loophole; boosting insurance subsidies; increasing Medicaid payments; and expanding the Cornhusker Kickback to all) either increase spending or decrease revenue. Which means the Democrats have to identify new revenues to make the CBO score work. And as Congressional Quarterly reported yesterday, Democrats have not yet identified the right pay-fors to game the CBO right. That is why House Leadership has not unveiled their new bill yet: they can't figure out how to pay for it.

Not that it really matters if they ever do. The reconciliation bill is never going to become law. The Senate will never pass it. They have no reason to. The Senate likes the existing Senate bill. That's why it's called "the Senate bill" ... they are the ones who passed it. The White House also likes the Senate bill. As soon as the House passes it, President Obama will sign it and then leave for Asia. That's it. Obamacare will be, as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs promised last Sunday, "the law of the land." After the Senate bill is law, what could possibly motivate the White House, let alone the Senate, to ever pick up the yet-to-be-written House reconciliation bill?

This is why the White House political machine is pulling out all the stops to get the House to pass the toxic Senate bill. Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Donna Brazile is actively encouraging primary challenges to Democrats who vote against the Senate bill. One House Democrat aide tells Politico: “We’re having donors, even donors outside of our district, that are being called and asked to urge support." For her part Speaker Pelosi is relishing the bare knuckle fight telling reporters yesterday: "I never stop whipping. There’s no beginning, there’s no middle, and there’s no end." Let's just hope her members remember which bill she's really whipping them on.

They're Coming For Your Healthcare

ALERT: Did you think that, because Barack Hussein Obama has called for a "bipartisan healthcare reform summit" on Feb. 25th that the Democrats were serious about starting over and including the Republicans' ideas in their plans?

WRONG! According to the liberal bastion New York Times, "President Obama will put forward comprehensive health care legislation intended to bridge differences between Senate and House Democrats ahead of a summit meeting with Republicans next week, senior administration officials and Congressional aides said Thursday."

But that's not all they're reporting: Democratic officials said Obama's proposal was being written so that it could be attached to a budget bill as a way of averting a Republican filibuster in the Senate. The procedure, known as budget reconciliation, would let Democrats advance the bill with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote supermajority.

Tax Rates Going Up

Work hard, Citizens. The wealth re-distribution is just getting started.

Backdoor taxes to hit middle class

NEW YORK (Reuters.com) --The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year -- effectively a tax hike by stealth.

While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.

The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001.

Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.

If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.

More here

Ya THINK!?!?!?

Dems brace for voter backlash on health

First up (or down) wil be ex-Marine Jim (I Don't Know Where My Gun Is) Webb.

Democratic leaders are girding for a political war over the health care overhaul heading in to this year's midterm elections, preparing strategies and raising funds to fend off attacks by Republicans eager to capitalize on voter discontent.

Analysts from both parties predict the sweeping impact of the proposed health care changes, which will affect every American, to be the overriding issue, with the strongest and most personal impact in 2010.

Democratic leaders acknowledged this week in last-minute party fundraising appeals that they expect Republicans to come out with both guns blazing in pursuit of major gains in the House and Senate.

"They will spend the next 11 months spinning our health care victory into a weapon and hitting us with it. We might have the momentum now, but we must show the GOP and the pundits that we can sustain it until the 2010 elections," said Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Healthcare Poll--Update

As of 0633 this morning these are the results:

Yes 5% 628 votes
No 95% 17415 votes
Undecided 0% 88 votes
Other 0% 15 votes
18146 total votes

The Washington Times is running a poll on the healthcare legislation.

Lets make sure they know how we feel about socialist engineering.

H/T FreeRepublic

Heritage Morning Bell - Healthcare

The Six Key Issues the House Must Cave On Before Obamacare Becomes Law

President Barack Obama attempted to downplay differences between the House and Senate bills telling American Urban Radio Networks yesterday: “The Senate and the House bills are 95 percent identical. There’s five percent differences, and one of those differences is the public option. This is an area that has just become symbolic of a lot of ideological fights. As a practical matter, this is not the most important aspect to this bill.” We’ll let President Obama fight with his base abut how important a strong public option is to health reform, but a government run plan is just one of six key differences between the House and Senate bills:

Soak the Rich or Tax Everybody:
The Senate bill relies heavily on a new excise tax on high cost health plans: a 40 percent tax on plan exceeding $8,500 for an individual and $23,000 for a family. The AFL-CIO and SEIU both call this a tax on working families. The Senate bill also includes a new premium tax on all insurers and the CBO confirms that the cost of this tax will be passed on to all Americans with private insurance. The House bill depends on a heavy new income tax targeted at top-earning taxpayers and small businesses. The 5.4 percent tax on individuals with incomes above $500,000, and on families with incomes above $1 million, is structured in a way that over time more and more Americans will be hit by this tax and small business owners would be particularly affected.

Employer Mandate Penalties:
The Senate bill imposes a $750 penalty per worker on employers of 50 or more who are not covered by the federally approved package of health benefits. The Senate mandate has other strange consequences. If an employer offers coverage, but an employee is eligible by virtue of income to qualify for taxpayer subsidies and entry into the state-based health insurance exchange, the employer is also penalized. In other words, employers are penalized for hiring people at the poverty level, even if they offer health insurance. The House bill imposes a direct requirement on employers to offer federally-qualified health care coverage to their employees or pay a payroll tax on a sliding scale up to 8 percent. Both the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses have come out against the bills.

Individual Mandate Penalties:
The Senate bill requires individuals to purchase a government approved plan or pay a $750 penalty, beginning in 2014. The tax penalty, indexed for inflation, would increase over time. The House bill requires individuals to pay a penalty of 2.5 percent of their income, depending on the size of their income, for not obtaining federally-approved health care coverage.

Weak or Strong Public Plan:
The Senate bill establishes a new set of “multi-state” private health plans sponsored by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) — the agency that administers the federal civil service — that would compete against private health plans in the state based exchanges that are mandated by the provision of the Senate bill. In contrast, the House bill includes an explicit public plan.

Medicaid Expansion:
The left may complain that there is no government-run option in either bill, but both the House and Senate bill accomplish over half their additional health insurance coverage through Medicaid expansion. The Senate bill would require states to expand their Medicaid programs to cover all Americans up to 133 percent Federal Poverty Level. The House bill would require states to expand their Medicaid programs to 150 percent FPL, the same level suggested in earlier versions of the Senate HELP Committee bill. Both Democrat and Republican Governors are against this state budget-busting welfare expansion.

Taxpayer Funded Abortion:
The President promised that there would be no federal funding for abortion. In the House bill, by virtue of the Stupak-Pitts amendment, there is a genuine firewall between federal funding and abortion coverage. In the Senate bill, by virtue of the agreement between Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), there is no such firewall. For the “pro-life” forces on both sides of the aisle, the Nelson language appears to fall short of the House language.

These are all major policy differences that go to the core of the Obama health care plan. For each option, choosing one version over the other will have huge consequences for the American people. But since Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) have threatened to veto the bill if any significant changes are made by the House in conference, it is most likely the Senate will prevail on every issue. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) might even just save herself and the leftist majority in the House the embarrassment and pass the Senate bill as is.

After all, the Obama administration wants a bill, any bill, and doesn’t really care what is actually in it.

A Failed Presidency? A Failed Marxist Is More Like It

I think people have begun to realize that Zero is more of a Marxist than Karl or Joe ever thought about being and are rejecting the socialist engineering and marxist tactics being employed.

From The American Thinker:
Another Failed Presidency

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson. In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out.

Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding ashove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.

But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and mostimportantly, in forging connections with the American people.

The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them.

Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed.

Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.

But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?

No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us.

All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, and Reagan.

But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, and is historically illiterate and woefully small minded for the size of the task--all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.

In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: "For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."

Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms forboth houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.

Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.

Margaret Thatcher: "The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people's money."

"When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both." -James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus

"A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own." - Unknown