Obama again for Women's Rights while AG Holder whines

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Okay, so the American public is really stupid like the White House seems to think.  Like we don't remember the very first bill Obama signed into law when he was elected and the Democrats could do anything they wanted because they controlled the House and Senate.

On January 29, 2009 Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 to much fanfare, and the Obama White House declared:

"President Obama actively supported the bill.  President Obama has long championed this bill and Lilly Ledbetter's cause, and by signing it into law, he will insure that women like Ms. Ledbetter and other victims of pay discrimination can effectively challenge unequal pay."

That was only five years ago.  Today Obama has launched yet another partisan war against that most heinous of villains, those dastardly Republicans in Congress who stand in the way of the Democrats' Equal Pay Fairness Act of 2014.

Wait, isn't that the same problem he already solved with the much heralded Lilly Ledbetter Act back when he began?  Didn't he and his Democrat mouthpieces say THAT act of Congress would solve the fair pay problem?

Here we go again..

What Obama, the Democrats and the Main Street media failed to tell the public was his original solution was a joke in terms of helping women but a great payback by Obama for the millions of dollars of campaign contributions he got from the powerful Trial Lawyers Association and trial lawyers.

Every analysis done of his "signature" Lilly act by good guys (Democrats and Main Street media) and bad guys (Republicans and the business community) say his act was nothing more than a trial lawyer payout and did more to assist lawyers in collecting more fees than to promote equal pay for women in the workplace.

Women seem to be a tool of political expediency for this Administration to be used and confused by mixed signals, empty promises and demagoguery of the most sinuous nature.  Perhaps that is a reason Hillary Clinton seems to be putting more and more distance between herself and her former boss Obama.  And former President Bill Clinton is making more and more obvious references to the failures of the Obama Administration to accomplish anything.

So Obama has three public spokeswomen, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senator Barbara Mikulski, all part of the partisan Washington establishment with years of game playing experience and all part of the wonderful solution to women's pay equality they passed five years ago.

If they screwed it up last time and simply paid off the trial lawyers what in the world gives us confidence they will get it right this time?  Besides, they had their chance when they absolutely controlled Congress with Pelosi and Harry Reid in charge, do we really want to go back to that kind of leadership again.  Where is Hillary?

Attorney General Eric Holder

Now we come to the AG whining about the hidden agenda of racism that is causing him as the chief law enforcement officer in America and Obama as the first Black president to be victims to some nefarious secret plot.  In fact, the "attorney general", he said, talking in the third person as if he wasn't even in the room, is subject to the worst harassment by congress in history and it was even worse for Obama as our first minority president.

This came up because Holder was called to congress to deliver documents on the Obama Fast and Furious operations where guns confiscated by the government were sold to drug dealers from Mexico and used to kill American federal agents.  He again refused to turn over all the documents requested in the congressional investigation.

Then he gives a speech and attacks the way he was treated by congress.  When one of the top government officials has absolutely no sense of history and turns to race baiting to keep the media attention off his own failure to turn over documents to congress then something is very wrong with this Administration.

I could rattle off a list of former attorney generals who were persecuted by congress and it made no difference whether they were Black, Hispanic, White, Democrat or Republican.  The AG is the front man for the president and he better be capable of taking criticism for the boss and for the cover ups that take place.

As for the president being a target of racism, even the most beloved president in our history and the one who took the courageous action to fight a civil war in order to free the slaves, an act that made it possible for Obama to one day be president, Abraham Lincoln from Obama's own state of Illinois, was the victim of far more sinister and shameful racist attacks and eventually paid his life for his convictions.  Ironically Lincoln was accused of being part Negro by the rabid racists of that day.

Come on Eric, don't put yourself and the president above everyone who ever held the offices if you can't take the heat.  Just get out.

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Obama & Pope Francis - what happened?

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As I recall President Obama went to Rome to hobnob with the Pope in order to shore up the Catholic vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.  No sooner had the White House gotten the prized photo op of the Prez and Pope than the story disappeared.

The next thing we heard is that Obama came back and gave the gift he received from the Pope, a Rosary blessed by the Pope, to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a self-acclaimed Catholic who disagrees with about all the teachings of the Catholic church just like her Catholic side kick Vice President Joe Biden.

Now let me get this straight.  Obama receives a very rare gift from Pope Francis then turns around and gives it to a political crony who is in hot water with the Bishops of America for all but abandoning her faith by backing abortion and forcing the church facilities to give out contraceptives against the church teaching.

Where I come from such a gesture might be interpreted as an insult to the person who gave it to him.  Now I understand Obama, who has demonstrated his progressive agenda by drifting farther and farther from church attendance ever since his fire and brimstone preacher Jeremiah Wright said, well, let ABC News tell you.

ABC News, 2008

"Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism." 

Anyway in the interest of political expediency Obama promptly dumped his lifelong preacher and friend in order to get elected and pretty much quit going to church so it is not surprising he didn't know what to do with a Rosary and maybe one blessed by a Pope was a little out of place in the White House hip hop memorabilia.

That little story is hardly what I expected out of the Main Street media as the sum of the results of the Obama and Pope Francis meeting.  So I searched the Internet and finally came across a story from The Boston Globe that actually gave an in depth report of what transpired.  Fancy that, real journalism.

In the interest of informing my readers of the truth I am crediting and running the excellent story.  Funny that it took a paper from the home of our revolution and one much more aware of the Catholic power and policy to tell us what we deserved to know.  What happened to the guardians of freedom and defenders of the truth, The New York Times and Washington Post?

The Boston Globe

Obama, Pope Francis both win in summit meeting

Philadelphia lobbies for 2015 papal visit; Bishops lead border protest on immigration

By John L. Allen Jr.

MARCH 29, 2014

When Barack Obama met Pope Francis on Thursday, it was the 28th encounter between a US president and a pope since Benedict XV received Woodrow Wilson in 1919. By now, the post-game analysis in America has become almost as predictable as the protocol in the Vatican.

What American pundits inevitably want to know is, “Who won?” That is to say, who got the biggest political bump out of the meeting?

That sort of quick take can be fun and provocative, but, honestly, it is probably not the best way to look at it. For one thing, you’d like to believe that presidents, and certainly popes, are capable of a loftier perspective. For another, the full range of Catholic social teaching isn’t really a good fit for either major political party in America, so these encounters are always a mixed bag capable of being read in different ways by different constituencies.

That said, the scorecard on Thursday’s first meeting between Obama and Francis has to be that each man got something important out of it, which is often what happens when two shrewd political operators intersect.

Obama, of course, is struggling at the moment to maintain Democratic control of the Senate in the midterm elections, which looks like an uphill battle. Both his own political troubles and those of his party are related in part to antipathy among religious voters, including a fairly big chunk of the Catholic vote.

To take just one example, prominent American Catholic writer George Weigel opined this week that Obama’s policies, especially the controversial contraception mandates imposed as part of health care reform, have put the church “on a collision course with the government unparalleled in US Catholic history.”

In that context, smiling shots of Obama and Francis together may help reframe impressions. It’s harder to style the president as an enemy of the faith in light of pictures of him and the pontiff yucking it up, which could help among Catholic moderates. Perhaps even more importantly, the images complicate efforts by Obama’s Catholic foes to whip up opposition.

The meeting probably also delivered a boost to Catholic Democrats, who have come under increasing pressure to explain how they can stay loyal to a party perceived by some as hostile to the church. When L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, ran a picture of Obama and Francis on Friday under the headline “Shared Commitment,” it gave those Catholic Democrats something to work with in arguing that their party can, after all, “do God.”

Francis had less to gain on Thursday, largely because he entered the meeting in a much stronger position; he is, at the moment, just about the most popular public figure on earth. Yet he did have something to lose, both among the Catholic bishops of the United States and the church’s wide antiabortion constituency.

With regard to American bishops, they’ve made the defense of religious freedom their new signature issue, symbolized by the stand-off with the administration over the contraception mandates. If the take-away from the Obama summit had been that they didn’t have the support of the pope, it would weaken their position, and might have soured a few of them on the new boss.

As for abortion opponents, many were already wary about Francis because of his repeated calls to dial down the rhetoric in the wars of culture. If they got the sense that he had given Obama a free pass on the life issues, their wariness might begin to turn into overt estrangement.

Francis deftly avoided those outcomes, signaling the American bishops that he has their backs while reassuring abortion opponents that a softer tone doesn’t imply softer substance.

He did that in two ways, first by handing Obama a copy of his recent apostolic exhortation Evangelium Gaudium. The president said he’d read it in the Oval Office when he’s “deeply frustrated,” in the hope that “it will give me strength and calm me down.”

One wonders, however, how much calm he’ll draw from this sentence: “It is not ‘progressive’ to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life.” The pope bluntly says that on abortion, “the church cannot be expected to change her position.”

(As a footnote, using documents to make statements vis-à-vis Obama is becoming a fine Vatican art. When Obama called on Benedict XVI in 2009, the pontiff handed him a copy of Dignitas Personae, a document on bioethics. Then as now, the pope didn’t have to say anything more because the gift spoke for itself.)

The Vatican also flashed support for the American bishops in its statement after the meeting, citing “the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life, and conscientious objection” as matters of “particular relevance” in the conversation. To be sure, they were listed along with other matters where Obama and Francis are more in sync, such as immigration reform, but nobody could accuse the pope of going quiet on the life issues.

At the end of the day, Francis could hardly be said to have taken Obama to the woodshed, but abortion opponents couldn’t have asked for much more by way of raising the flag.

Summing up, Obama got a picture with a smiling pope splashed across the front page of every American paper, while Francis avoided some needless internal heartburn. The meeting may not have changed the world, but it was still fun to watch two savvy tacticians operate, both aware of the other’s agenda and both purposeful in pursuing their own.

Big push for Francis to visit Philadelphia in 2015

If Pope Francis doesn’t come to Philadelphia in September 2015 for a Vatican-sponsored World Meeting of Families, it won’t be for lack of trying on the part of either church or state in Pennsylvania.

This week a remarkable delegation visited the Vatican to meet with officials about the 2015 event, led by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, a Democrat, along with Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. (Both Corbett and Nutter are Catholic, and on Wednesday Nutter gave Francis a jersey from the Jesuit high school the mayor attended.)

The obvious agenda was to pitch Francis on coming to Philadelphia, and while the Vatican won’t ever confirm a trip this far away, the signals look encouraging.

God knows the church in Philly could use the shot in the arm.

Chaput, who arrived in Philadelphia from Denver in 2011, has been struggling to right the ship in the wake of two separate grand jury investigations related to clerical sexual abuse, the first-ever indictment of a senior church official for failure to protect children, and massive deficits that have forced the closure of parishes and schools and even the sell-off of the archbishop’s residence.

Locals are pulling out all the stops to persuade Francis to make the trip, including a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #PopeInPhilly. There’s much at stake, because the presence or absence of the pope is the difference between an insider Catholic event that might draw a few thousand folks, and a major national happening that might bring out 1 or 2 million.

At the moment, the leading theory is that if Francis comes to Philadelphia in September 2015, the trip would likely be bundled with a stop in New York to address the General Assembly of the United Nations. The pontiff probably couldn’t avoid also making a stop in Washington, especially after House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to him to address a joint session of Congress.

On the Vatican end, the top official responsible for the 2015 event is Italian Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family. He met with Corbett, Nutter, Chaput and the rest of the Philadelphia delegation this week, and afterwards he spoke to the Globe.

Q&A with Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia

Globe: How likely is it that Pope Francis will be in Philadelphia?

Paglia: If you look at how welcoming he was to the delegation today, it certainly makes one think he’d like to come. Both the governor and the mayor had a long time to talk with him. Given that human warmth, along with the importance of the theme of the family and how focused the Catholic church now is on it, I think it’s reasonable to imagine the presence of the pope in Philadelphia. That said, these trips are never confirmed more than four or five months in advance, and I don’t want to speak for the pope. We have to leave him the freedom to make the decision himself.

Globe: If he does come, it would be the first time in his life that Francis has visited the United States. Do you think that might be an extra reason he’d be inclined to do it?

Paglia: Certainly that’s an additional reason to do it, though I believe the fundamental point is how important the theme of the family is to Pope Francis and to the church. I think all these reasons contribute to an environment in which it’s okay to hope for a positive decision.

Globe: You also know that the pope has been invited to address a joint session of the American Congress. Does that also make the trip more likely?

Paglia: It adds to the weight of the moment. I can tell you the pope is well aware of the attention being given to the possibility of his coming, not just in the archdiocese but throughout American society.

Globe: When talk turns to the family in American politics, people often assume it’s all about the press for gay marriage. Are you at all concerned that this event could be misunderstood as a huge anti-gay-marriage rally?

Paglia: I want to do everything possible to avoid falling into that trap, because this isn’t an ideological exercise. I hope what we can do is to lift up the hopes and the anguish, the joys and the fears, of real concrete families. There are millions and millions of elderly persons, young adults, children, babies, immigrants, and so on, all around the world, who depend on their families. The family is not an abstract idea. It’s something that everyone experiences, and our greatest effort must be to lift up the world’s most beautiful and most important source of human solidarity.

This is not a political rally. The World Meeting of Families never has been, and it isn’t now, a demonstration against someone or something. It’s a meeting of thousands of men and women who want to testify to the beauty and the possibilities of the family. It’s also a chance to enter into dialogue with all Christian traditions and all religious traditions who share our interest. I hope we can have a frank dialogue with the American media so they see this clearly.

Globe: What do you hope will be the most important result from the event?

Paglia: Obviously, what we’re trying to promote is a sort of springtime for the family, a renewal of the family across the entire world. When families are strong, they give life in a very concrete way to the all of society. We’d also like to raise the cultural profile of the issues facing the family. Ideally, we can help promote the same centrality that Pope Francis has given to the family in the Catholic church in other institutions, such as politics, the economy, cultural institutions, and the legal system.

Globe: During his comments at the Vatican press conference on Tuesday, Archbishop Charles Chaput said the event is especially important for Philadelphia because of the way it’s been affected by the sexual abuse scandals. Are you aware of how much impact those scandals have had in Philadelphia and other parts of the United States?

Paglia: We’ve certainly spoken about it. The World Meeting of Families actually can be very sensitive to it, because in a way the scandals have caused a weakening of the sense of family within the Christian community. It’s important that we foster co-responsibility, mutual support, reciprocal respect, and honesty as part of a family spirit in the church, which I hope in some way can help heal the wounds of the past.

Globe: If Pope Francis does come to the United States next year, do you believe he understands that he’d have to address the sexual abuse scandals?

Paglia: I believe so, and I think the sensitivity of the pope on this issue is very clear. The recent creation of a new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is already a sign of that concern. If he comes to America, I’m sure the pope wouldn’t fail to take account of how important all this is.

Bishops on the Border to push immigration reform

American Catholic bishops often complain about media bias in styling them as “partisan”, which in their case usually means pro-Republican. The bishops insist that if one looks at all the issues they care about, from immigration reform and overseas development to abortion and gay marriage, it’s clear they’re not in anybody’s pocket.

Here’s the usual reply from media types: As soon as we see you guys putting the same energy into those other issues as you do the antiabortion agenda, we’ll reconsider.

This week a group of nine Catholic bishops are aiming to do just that, by staging a series of dramatic made-for-TV events on both sides of the US/Mexico border to show their support for immigration reform. It’s a matter of both humanitarian and practical concern for the bishops, given that fully one-third of the 70 million Catholics in America today are Hispanic, many of them recent immigrants.

The prelates say the purpose of the outing is “to bring attention to the human consequences of a broken immigration system and call upon the US Congress to act to fix the system.”

Led by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, whose own pastoral roots lie in work with Latino immigrants and refugees in Washington’s Centro Católico Hispano in the 1970s, the bishops are gathering in an area on the border between Arizona and Mexico where scores of migrants have died trying to make the crossing. (The US Border Patrol pegs the death count at 6,000 over the last 15 years, though many observers believe the real number is much higher.)

The trip will culminate on Tuesday morning with a Mass in the desert near Nogales, Arizona, and the laying of a wreath to commemorate the dead. The bishops have invited media organizations to tag along, and will hold a press conference after the Tuesday Mass.

The bishops are consciously imitating Pope Francis, who traveled on July 8 to the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa to show his solidarity with immigrants. The island is a major point of arrival for impoverished migrants from Africa and the Middle East seeking to reach Europe, and some 20,000 are believed to have died over the last two decades trying to make the crossing.

During that trip, his first outside Rome as pope, Francis laid a wreath in the sea for the dead and also delivered a speech blasting what he called the “globalization of indifference” to immigrants.

“The US-Mexico border is our Lampedusa,” said Auxiliary Bishop Eusebio L. Elizondo of Seattle, a Mexican-born prelate who serves as chair of the US bishops’ Committee on Migration. “Migrants in this hemisphere try to reach it, but often die in the attempt.”

In addition to O’Malley and Elizondo, the bishops taking part are:

►Bishop Gerald Kicanas, Tucson, Arizona

►Bishop John Wester, Salt Lake City, Utah

►Bishop Mark Seitz, El Paso, Texas

►Bishop Cirilo Flores, San Diego, Calfornia

►Bishop Oscar Cantú, Las Cruces, New Mexico

►Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, Las Cruces, New Mexico (retired)

►Auxiliary Bishop Luis Rafael Zarama Pasqualetto, Atlanta, Georgia

Francis is a pope of the social gospel, of special concern for the poor, and there’s been an undercurrent of speculation for a while now about how much enthusiasm American bishops might feel about those priorities. This week’s outing would suggest that these nine prelates, at any rate, have gotten the memo.

John L. Allen Jr. is a Globe associate editor, covering global Catholicism. He may be reached at john.allen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @JohnLAllenJr and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/JohnLAllenJr.

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Crime Pays in Congress as Rangel Uses Democrats in Cover Up

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Leave it to Charles Rangel to use his long relationship with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and his well rehearsed theatrics to make a mockery of the Pelosi ethics crackdown on her fellow Congressmen. Once Pelosi's chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means tax writing committee, Rangel virtually assured his continued place in the House at taxpayer expense after fleecing the American taxpayer of hundreds of thousands in tax liability, an euphemism for being a tax cheat, on 13 counts.

To help protect the tax cheater, the chief Democratic counsel prosecuting Rangel actually pre-empted the entire ethics proceeding by proclaiming that Rangel was not corrupt and did not personally benefit from ignoring IRS audits claiming he cheated on his taxes on low cost apartments in NYC and a vacation villa in the Caribbean. Since when do prosecutors pronounce the person they are prosecuting not guilty before the Judges have even heard the evidence?

Now how many Americans could do that and walk away with a $200,000 salary and a gold mine of a pension? If ever there was proof for the travesty our national government has become the Charles Rangel and Nancy Pelosi affair is it.

The theatrics were great as Rangel, poor Rangel, pleaded he was being denied the right to counsel and denied the right to raise a defense fund. He didn't mention he has known about the charges for years and was formally charged last summer. He claimed he already paid $2 million to lawyers and did not have another $1 million they demanded.

Of course his law firm, ex-law firm, denied they refused to help him. Rangel then walked out of the hearing and refused to be a part of the House rules he seems to have ignored during his 50 years of government service.

The joke ws already clear when they scheduled his trial just days after the election.  Why let a guilty man win a seat in Congress before trial?  It makes it that much harder to get rid of him.  If he did nothing wrong then why did it already cost him $2 million in legal fees? Why will it cost $1 million more. Surely Nancy Pelosi is not going to force her committee chairmen to spend millions to defend themselves if they are innocent.

This is the joke congress has become!

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Obamaville October 14 - Ask Pelosi not Republicans for Budget Cuts!

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Why do the liberal media and Democrats in the House and Senate keep complaining that Republicans will never give ideas on how to cut the budget? They make it sound as if there is some conspiracy of silence as a result.

If I were a Republican, which I am not, I would remind the liberal media and incumbents who are running scared that Nancy Pelosi, yes the Democratic Speaker of the House, is responsible for passing the federal budget, not the Republicans. I would also remind them that Nancy Pelosi has been in charge of the budget FOUR years running, not just two since Obama got elected.

They seem to forget the last two years of the Bush Administration it was Speaker Pelosi and a Democratic majority in the House in charge of the largest deficit increase in history before Obama took office and promptly shattered the record the last two years.

Okay, so the Democrats have been in charge all through the massive deficits of the last two Bush years and first two Obama years. What about the current budget for next year that was due last October 1, what cuts did the Democrats approve now that they control EVERYTHING in Washington?

My friends, the United States of America, under the leadership of Obama, Pelosi and Reid, has NO APPROVED BUDGET for the current fiscal year. No budget, no cuts, no guts to even pass a budget. Why doesn't the liberal media attack this truth? Why doesn't Obama demand itemized cuts from his fellow Democrats who are Constitutionally responsible for passing the budget and have ignored their duties?

Truth seems to be in awfully short supply in our nation's capitol. I trust at least the people know the truth.
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Obamaville - September 29 - Latest Poll Results

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Thank goodness the politicians in Washington, DC have set a fine example and we are no longer required to tell the truth about anything because otherwise the latest polls would make little sense. However, the die is cast and the truth is lost and we only have about 5 more weeks of nonsense before the elections so here are the latest poll results as I see them.

Obama has slipped so low in the polls 2/3 of all Americans now want him to be Prime Minister of England or Australia.

The leftist liberals are held in such low regard by most Americans that the only TV ratings now recorded for MSNBC and CNN, America's answers to socialist Europe, are the staff of the two networks watching each other.

Of course liberals aren't the only ones having problems as the same poll shows all Republicans and Democrats over 65 and Newt Gingrich no matter what his age need to be sent out to pasture.

At the same time the people also believe the voting age must be raised to 28 years of age since the dumb kids got us into this mess electing Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to lead us out of the darkness and into the night.

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi, 80% of all people refuse to believe she is the leader of the majority party as even Democrats can't be that stupid.

Voting for the person the public most wants to see on Dancing with the Stars next season was tied with over 90% wanting Barack Obama and Sarah Palin for the next two seasons, 2011 and 2012, so both will be too busy to run for president.

In terms of education issues, over 70% of the public says the Obama's could not have attended the exclusive Ivy League schools of Columbia and Harvard for Barack, and Princeton and Harvard for Michelle, and still claim to be plain old American middle class folks.

An astounding 100% of the people want to see only one debate in this fall's election, and a team debate at that. They want the team of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck for the right wing against Arianna Huffington and former VP Al Gore for the socialists with the winners decided by whichever team can figure out what the hell the other team is saying first.

The Supreme Court decision to not allow election ballots to offer the choice, "none of the above", which was rejected by the Supreme Court on grounds the public has no right to so directly influence an election, was opposed by 83% of the public.

67% of the public say VP Joe Biden was inconsistent when he admonished fellow Democrats to stop whining the same day Barack Obama was again whining about the endless curses George Bush left him over the past eight years even though George Bush left office nearly two years ago.

Oh yes, and 91% of the public believes we are much safer and the economy will recover only if congress and the Obama's stay on vacation all the time.
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Harry Reid Plays Politics and Gets Burned using American Soldiers as Pawns

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In one of the dumbest acts ever seen by a leader of the Senate, Democrat leader Harry Reid put his own re-election above the interests of America's fighting forces in Afghanistan and Iraq by loading a Defense Appropriation bill with social issues including the Don't Ask Don't Tell gay policy change for the military and illegal immigration amnesty, both extremely controversial to most Americans. To add insult to injury he denied Republicans the right to attempt to amend the massive bill or eliminate the unrelated social changes.

Now Harry is locked in a tough election campaign and the amnesty would directly help him but most of America is firmly opposed to it. This type of politics as usual and backroom deal making is why the Democrats are sinking into oblivion and why the Tea Party has become a dominant force in politics.

By the way, in spite of liberal media attempts to paint the vote as Republican obstructionism two Democratic Arkansas Senators voted against it meaning Democrats and Republicans blocked this travesty.  One need look no further than today's headlines to see why Americans are demanding change again, this time change that works.
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Obamaville September 17 - Bush Tax Cuts - Democrats Abandon Obama & Pelosi

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It is starting to look like the Obama Pelosi plan to smear the GOP over tax cuts for the wealthy is being undermined by Democratic candidates who are jumping ship to join the GOP block in support of NO TAX INCREASE.

Today, the same day those nasty Republicans helped Obama get the Small Business assistance bill passed in the Senate, thus proving once again Obama was wrong in attacking the GOP for fighting against small business, the GOP seems to be winning the public opinion battle again.

Right now the best Pelosi can do is to delay any vote until after the November election but that means one must trust that Obama and Pelosi will be honest if they promise to bring up the bill after the election and before they expire at year end.  To date campaign promises from the president and Speaker of the House have often been forgotten.

As for fact checking the Lame Street media on this bill, the liberals say the Obama bill will only increase taxes on the millionaires and billionaires, yet admit that just 2% of small businesses may also get a tax increase.  Of course they fail to mention that since small business is the backbone of America "just 2%" equals 894,000 small businesses that face a tax increase.

They also conveniently forget to mention that the Bush Tax Cuts are not just income taxes like Obama and Pelosi would like us to believe.  Here are the real taxes included in the Bush Tax Cuts:

What is scheduled to expire at the end of this year, unless Congress acts?

•The 10, 25, 28, 33, and 35 percent rates would all rise. The new tax rates would be 15, 28, 31, 36, and 39.6 percent. This would cost taxpayers about $157 billion per year.

•The indexing of the alternative minimum tax for inflation would end. The AMT, which provides $66 billion in annual relief for taxpayers, attempts to ensure that individuals who benefit from itemized deductions or credits pay a separately calculated minimum tax.

•Taxes on capital gains and dividends would rise, meaning that investors could potentially pay about $35 billion more.

•Married couples would go back to paying higher rates than today, at a cost to them of $32 billion per year.

•Expanded tax credits – such as the child tax credit, which went from $500 to $1,000 – would end. This would cost families $26 billion per year. Some taxpayers would also pay an additional cumulative $1.5 billion in education costs.

•The estate tax, which has already expired, would go back to its 2009 level, costing heirs at least $26 billion.

•Higher-income households would see the dollar value of their personal exemptions phased out and would have a lower value for certain itemized deductions. This would cost those people – most of whom make well over $170,000 a year – about $21 billion.

As you can see, millions more Americans will be hurt by Obama Pelosi TAX INCREASES other than just the personal income rates.  This is something that the president and liberal media do not want you to know.

Stay tuned...
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Welcome to Obama Health Care Reform - Is this what we were Promised?

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The following three article headlines tell us all we need to know about the Obama health care reform and the impact it has had on the cost of health care since it's passage. If ever there was a clearer signal of what is to come under Obamacare this is it.

The full text and source of the articles follow the headlines. Is there any doubt why the American voters are fed up?

Workers pay more for health costs, study finds

Malpractice liability costs U.S. $55.6 billion: study

Price of Brand-Name Drugs Soars

Full articles...

Workers pay more for health costs, study finds

Employees paying out additional $482 on average for family plans

Tony Pugh • MCT News Service • September 7, 2010 • From Lansing State Journal

WASHINGTON - A recently released annual survey says workers are paying about $482 more, on average, for job-based family health insurance this year.

That comes as companies force employees to shoulder more of the burden of health care costs.

The increase in premiums, up 14 percent from last year, means that workers are paying nearly all of a $495 increase in the average cost of family coverage this year.

Employers' contributions to family coverage showed no increase at all in 2010, according to the Employer Health Benefits Survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.

Drew Altman, the president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said it was the first time he could remember employers - who provide coverage for about 157 million Americans - moving so boldly to shift health costs to workers.

"Added health costs for workers means added economic insecurity for working people in tough times," Altman said.

Over the past five years, workers' share of premiums has increased by $1,300, or 47 percent, Altman said, while overall coverage costs are up 27 percent. Over the same period, wages climbed 18 percent and general inflation rose 12 percent.

"If premiums and costs continue to be shifted to consumers, households will face difficult choices, like forgoing needed care or re-examining how they can best care for their families," said Maulik Joshi, president of Health Research and Educational Trust.

Family coverage now costs an average of $13,770 a year, up 3 percent from 2009, the survey found. Employers still absorb the bulk of the costs, paying an average of $9,773 toward the full premium amount. Workers typically pay about 27 percent of the cost for family coverage, but this year they're paying about 30 percent, or an average of $3,997. That's up from an average of $3,515 last year.

Workers with individual coverage are in the same boat. Their average annual premiums spiked more than 15 percent - from $779 to $899 - even though the average overall cost for single coverage rose only 5 percent, from $4,824 in 2009 to $5,049 this year.

Malpractice liability costs U.S. $55.6 billion: study

Tue Sep 7, 12:22 am ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Medical malpractice liability costs the U.S. healthcare system more than $55 billion a year, most of it in "defensive" medical practices such as extra tests and scans, according to a report released on Tuesday.

These costs, which also include administrative costs, payments to plaintiffs and lawyer fees, account for 2.4 percent of annual U.S. healthcare spending, Michelle Mello of the Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues reported.

So-called defensive medicine costs alone totaled an estimated $45.6 billion, Mello's team reported in the journal Health Affairs.

The issue of malpractice has repeatedly come up in discussions and debates over healthcare reform. Doctors often must carry hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in malpractice insurance.

The administration of President Barack Obama has made saving money a centerpiece of healthcare reform, Obama's signature domestic policy.

"We cannot debate the potential for medical liability reform to bring down health care costs in any meaningful way without realistic cost estimates," Mello said in a statement.

"Physician and insurer groups like to collapse all conversations about cost growth in health care to malpractice reform, while their opponents trivialize the role of defensive medicine," added Amitabh Chandra, a professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who worked on the study.

"Our study demonstrates that both these simplifications are wrong -- the amount of defensive medicine is not trivial, but it's unlikely to be a source of significant savings."

Many groups have suggested tort reform as a solution, including caps on damages to be paid in successful malpractice suits, but Mello's team said such reforms would be unlikely to cut overall healthcare spending much.

Total malpractice indemnity payments were $5.72 billion a year in 2008 dollars, Mello's team found -- about $5 billion in actual damages and less than $2 million in punitive damages.

But they noted there is no comprehensive system for tracking such damages, either. "The source that comes closest is the National Practitioner Data Bank of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)," they wrote.

They used that databank, with estimates from other sources, for their report. They used published studies for other numbers in the report.

"Notably missing from this list are malpractice insurance premiums," Mello's team noted.

"Premiums represent insurers' best estimates of their indemnity costs and defense costs, plus additional amounts to cover other operating expenses, reinsurance costs, and profits or surplus building. It would be double counting to include both malpractice premium costs and indemnity and administrative costs."

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Eric Beech)

Price of Brand-Name Drugs Soars

Over the Past Five Years, Prices Rose 41.5 Percent, Hurting Americans on Medicare

By RON CLAIBORNE and JESSICA HOPPER



Aug. 25, 2010

The cost of the most popular brand-name drugs used by older Americans soared 8.3 percent in 2009, according to a new report by the AARP.

Researchers examined 217 brand-name drugs, including popular drugs like Nexium, which is used to treat acid reflux.

They found that even though consumer prices overall declined by 0.4 percent last year, the cost of brand-name drugs went up. The price of those same medications rose 7 percent in 2008.

The AARP report said the retail price of brand-name drugs rose 41.5 percent from 2004 to 2009, far outpacing the increase in the consumer price index which increased by 13.3 percent during that same period.

That means someone who takes three brand-name drugs pays an average of $1,900 dollars more each year for medicine.

"Something is out of whack here about no increases in the rest of the economy and very substantial [increases] with pharmaceuticals," AARP's John Rother said.



The pharmaceutical industry group, Pharma, declined ABC News' request for an on-camera interview and did not answer questions we submitted in writing. However, in a written statement, Pharma called the AARP report "distorted and misleading" for not including cheaper generic equivalents which account for 75 percent of prescriptions filled.

Reserchers from the AARP said that for most of the 217 medications they looked at, there was no generic version because the brand-name drug is still under patent.

Soaring Drug Prices Hurt Elderly

Higher prescription drug prices are especially hard on elderly Americans living on fixed incomes, many of whom are on the Medicare prescription drug plan, which leaves them uncovered after they spend $2,830 on medications in one year. The coverage kicks back in only after they have spent $4,550.

"They bear the full cost out of pocket when they reach that coverage limit, and that's why this is particularly sensitive to older persons," Rother said.

Generic Drugs Are Cheaper Alternative

The report did contain some good news. More and more Americans are turning to generic equivalents.

Yet, many Americans still choose the more expensive brand name medicines even when the exact same drug is available as a generic.

Dr. Keshav Chander, a cardiologist in St. George, Utah said many of his patients mistakenly assume the generic drug cannot be as good as the brand name because it is so much less expensive.

"When we buy drugs, we cannot believe that something that is 10 times more expensive than the other product is not going to be better," said Dr. Keshav Chander, a cardiologist.

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