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From Right Wing News:

This one sentence tells you all you need to know about Obama.

Speaking to Katie Couric on Feb. 7, Obama said:

“I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant, academically approved approach to health care, and didn’t have any kinds of legislative fingerprints on it, and just go ahead and have that passed. But that’s not how it works in our democracy. Unfortunately, what we end up having to do is to do a lot of negotiations with a lot of different people.”

Unfortunately???? Damn Democracy! Obama sees it as “unfortunate” that in a Democracy we have to do “a lot of negotiation with a lot of different people”, ie: Congress.

How much EASIER would it be if we didn’t have those pesky branches of government. If only King, oh excuse me, I mean Pres. Obama could just give (force on us) us an “elegant (whatever that means), academically approved” health care legislation.

Good grief.

via George Will

I just saw this short message which has been going around the internet:

President Obama has proposed a 1.4% pay increase for active duty military in 2011. This is THE LOWEST SINCE 1973! It is usually around 3.4% or so. Nice to know that during a time of rampant inflation, while war is fought in 2 theatres, our men and women in uniform get A LOWER PAY INCREASE THAN WELFARE RECIPIENTS! Spending on welfare is being increased by nearly 1/3! Please repost if you support our troops.

I had yet to hear about this, but sure enough:

President Obama will seek a 1.4 percent military pay raise for 2011 as part of his defense budget request that will be unveiled Feb. 1, according to a point paper issued Tuesday by the White House.

If approved by Congress, it would be the smallest annual military pay raise since the birth of the all-volunteer force in 1973…

In contrast, the pay raise for this year, which took effect Jan. 1, was a robust 3.4 percent…

And indeed, spending on welfare is being increased by nearly one-third and will be more than Bush spent on the entire Iraq war:

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama decried the financial toll that the Iraq war was taking on the economy, but Obama’s proposed spending on welfare through 2010 will eclipse Bush’s war spending by more than $260 billion.

“Because of the Bush-McCain policies, our debt has ballooned,” then-Sen. Barack Obama told a Charleston, W.V., crowd in March 2008. “This is creating problems in our fragile economy. And that kind of debt also places an unfair burden on our children and grandchildren, who will have to repay it.”

During the entire administration of George W. Bush, the Iraq war cost a total of $622 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.

President Obama’s welfare spending will reach $888 billion in a single fiscal year–2010–more than the Bush administration spent on war in Iraq from the first “shock and awe” attack in 2003 until Bush left office in January.

Obama’s spending proposals call for the largest increases in welfare benefits in U.S. history, according to a report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. This will lead to a spending total of $10.3 trillion over the next decade on various welfare programs. These include cash payments, food, housing, Medicaid and various social services for low-income Americans and those at 200 percent of the poverty level, or $44,000 for a family of four. Among that total, $7.5 trillion will be federal money and $2.8 trillion will be federally mandated state expenditures.

In that same West Virginia speech last year, Obama said, “When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war.”

The Heritage study says, “Applying that same standard to means-tested welfare spending reveals that welfare will cost each household $560 per month in 2009 and $638 per month in 2010.”

The welfare reform package of 1996 only targeted one program, which was Aid for Families with Dependent Children, pushing work requirements for recipients to encourage them to get off the rolls. There are still 70 different welfare programs spread across 14 different federal agencies, said Robert Rector, senior research fellow in domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, who co-wrote the study.

“The average person says I thought we ended welfare. Well, it’s a good thing we ended it, otherwise we’d be spending some real money,” Rector joked while speaking about the report on Tuesday. “Reform was grossly oversold by Clinton and the Republicans. It reformed one program out of 70. Medicaid, public housing, the Earned Income Tax Credit were not reformed.”

According to his White House budget proposal, President Barack Obama will increase annual federal welfare spending by one-third, from $522.4 billion to $697 billion in his first fiscal year. Adjusted for inflation, the combined two-year increase of $263 billion is greater than any increase in welfare spending in history.

By 2014, annual spending on welfare programs will reach $1 trillion for the fiscal year.

“One in seven in total federal and state dollars now goes to welfare. But this is a completely unknown story,” Rector said. “This is not being reported. No one knows Obama is spending $10 trillion on welfare.”

Welfare spending has taken its toll on the federal debt. Since the beginning of the “war on poverty,” $15.9 trillion has been spent on welfare programs. The total cost of every war in American history, starting with the American Revolution, is $6.4 trillion when adjusted for inflation.

Welfare has been the fastest growing part of the federal government’s spending, increasing by 292 percent from 1989 to 2008. That’s compared to Social Security and Medicare, which grew 213 percent, the study says.

Adjusted for inflation, welfare is 5 percent of the gross domestic product today. It was only 1.2 percent of GDP in 1965, the report says. Also, over the next decade, $1.5 trillion in welfare benefits will be paid to low-skilled immigrants.

Still, high levels of poverty are reflected by the U.S. Census Bureau because the bureau counts only 4 percent of the total welfare spending as income when it calculates poverty. Thus, most discussions on poverty begin on the virtual premise that welfare does not exist, the study says.

“None of the $800 billion being spent is counted as income, so the Census comes back and they say, ‘Oh my goodness, we have 40 million poor people. We need to spend more money,’” Rector explained. “That is a game the taxpayer can never win.”

Changing how the money is spent could go a long way in achieving better results, the study says.

“Annual means tested welfare spending is more than sufficient to eliminate poverty in the United States,” the study reports. “If welfare spending were converted into case benefits, the sum would be nearly four times the amount needed to raise the income of all poor families above the official poverty line.”

From The Weekly Standard:

The same thread runs through Governor Rick Perry’s smashing defeat of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary in Texas, the elections of Republican Governors Bob McDonnell of Virginia and Chris Christie of New Jersey last fall, and the Senate victory of Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts in January. It’s an anti-Washington thread, for sure. But the core of it is an anti-Obama trend.

Consider this: What if President Obama had changed the way Washington does business, taken steps that actually improved the economy, offered a scaled-back, moderate agenda, and recruited a few Republican allies in Congress? Had he done those things, would there be a powerful, anti-Washington tide today? Of course not.

But Obama didn’t do any of them, and within weeks of his inauguration in January 2009, anger against Washington began to build. First, it was the tea parties, then Republicans turned sharply against Obama and his agenda, and by mid-summer independents joined in.

This handed Perry a winning issue in Texas. He showed up at tea parties and became the champion of states against the encroachments of Washington and the surge in spending. “It’s Texas versus Washington,” a Perry aide said. And Hutchison, pretty conservative in her own right, became the candidate from Washington.

I’m not a defender of Obama, but it’s true he was put in what would have been a tough spot for any president when he arrived at the White House. He had to deal with a deep recession. It’s also the case the liberal base of his party (to which he belongs) was obsessed with cashing in on the economic downturn to enact a sweeping liberal agenda. And with their large majorities in the Senate and House, Democrats felt they didn’t need many, if any, votes of Republicans.

So it would have taken a large dose of moxie for Obama to opt for more civility and bipartisanship in Washington and propose centrist policies. But if he’d done so it would have made a huge difference.

Take his promise to improve the political climate in Washington. Obama campaigned on the notion that he, alone among the presidential candidates, knew how to cure the Washington illness: the polarization and partisan fighting and gridlock and infestation of lobbyists. This is a promise he hasn’t come close to redeeming. He’s barely even tried.

On the economy, Obama let congressional Democrats draft the stimulus package with no input from Republicans (and no across-the-board tax cuts). It has been largely ineffective, nudging the economy a bit upward but leaving the country with 4 million fewer jobs than when Obama took office.

His agenda? Obama has indeed taken up issues on which the public wants solutions. But his proposals on health care, cap and trade, and other issues have actually alienated a majority of America. They’re too liberal, too costly, and too Washington-centered.

It’s an agenda that congressional Republicans were bound to oppose unless offered serious concessions. Obama has offered none, at least until his vague letter this week in which he said he might accept a few lesser Republican ideas on health care. Oh, yes, he lured three Senate Republicans to vote for his stimulus by slightly trimming its price tag. That’s it.

Obama’s relationship with Republicans has chiefly consisted of a few meetings in which he’s reminded them he’s president and they’re not. He’s offered them the opportunity to endorse Democratic legislation as written. Not much room for compromise there.

The victories of McDonnell and Christie were an unmistakable clue that the country was turning against Obama and Obama’s Washington. McDonnell attacked the president and his policies and won in a landslide. With his appearances in New Jersey, Obama may not have aided Christie but he certainly didn’t help Democratic Governor Jon Corzine.

Anti-Washington feeling is a constant in American politics. But what’s different today is the breadth and intensity of ill will toward Washington. It’s an anti-Washington mood of a much higher magnitude now. And Obama could have kept it from being that way.

From World Net Daily:

Former “Saturday Night Live” star Victoria Jackson has released a YouTube video that is on the verge of going viral that warns the American public, “There’s a communist living in the White House.”

The video, which already has collected tens of thousands of views:

Her song begins:

It seems these days I’m in a haze
And I can’t concentrate on things.
Can’t eat or sleep, feel incomplete
Feel kind of scared and creepy.
I look over my shoulder lots
And shudder when I watch TV.
I bite my nails and cuticles
And watch my words very carefully.
I bite my lip a lot and fidget with the buttons on my blouse
Why? Because there’s a communist living in the White House

She explains no one but Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and “Huckabee” as well as “those sweet people who drink tea” understand.

“Evidence?” she wonders. “Where do you want me to start?”

She cites the socialist leanings of President Obama’s grandparents, communist leanings of his mother, the Marxist professors he had in college and  his own links to the teachings of Saul Alinsky while related news clips – some from WND – flash on the screen.

“He told Joe the Plumber, ‘Spread the wealth,’ which is a direct quote from the Communist Manifesto,” she continues. Then in office, Obama appointed Van Jones and took over the banking and car industries.

“How much more proof do you want?”

Jackson, a native of Miami, Fla., has been an outspoken opponent of Obama, and has participated in tea parties, including one in Pasadena, Calif., last July where she flayed the president’s policies:

On the YouTube page, the opinions about Obama included, “He sure as heck is NOT a moderate nor believes in our Constitution” to “When you rattle things off as you have it’s a wonder that some people can remain in denial … oh wait, I watched the Obama supporter videos on YouTube … nevermind, some will never get a clue.”

Said others:

• Sing it, sister!
• Are enough of us paying attention?
• Kudos to Victoria Jackson!
• absolutely brilliant, victoria! in your endearingly sweet, goofy, entertaining way you are spreading the word that we are in deep trouble. after years of fighting and dying to defeat communism, we’ve voted the fox into the chicken coop!
• There’s more to this lady than just the ‘cute.’ Preach it, Victoria!

Jackson was on “Saturday Night Live” from 1986 until about 1992 after she got a break in an appearance on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson – reciting poetry while doing a handstand.

From The Heritage Foundation:

So President Obama wants to slap a tax on banks, but should you really care? Absolutely. Those taxes are going to wind up costing YOU money, whether you’re a customer, a bank employee or an investor, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

As ABC News reports, the CBO wrote a letter yesterday to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in which it highlighted that the American people will bear the true brunt of the President’s proposal. From the CBO’s letter:

[T]he ultimate cost of a tax or fee is not necessarily borne by the entity that writes the check to the government.

The cost of the proposed fee would ultimately be borne to varying degrees by an institution’s customers, employees, and investors.

Customers would probably absorb some of the cost in the form of higher borrowing rates and other charges, although competition from financial institutions not subject to the fee would limit the extent to which the cost could be passed to borrowers. Employees might bear some of the cost by accepting some reduction in their compensation, including income from bonuses, if they did not have better employment opportunities available to them. Investors could bear some of the cost in the form of lower prices of their stock if the fee reduced the institution’s future profits.

President Obama announced his bank tax during his State of the Union Address in January and claimed it would be a way to recoup money dished out to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout. The truth, though, is that those banks already paid-back the bailouts, with interest; the real deadbeat offenders are Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Chrysler and General Motors, who have yet to repay their debt. (Take a look at the above chart to see who has repaid – and who hasn’t.)

The President’s proposal was a not-so-thinly-veiled populist proposal, intended to play to an America disgruntled with government bailouts and those institutions that won government handouts.

He better brace himself for an America that finds itself even more disgruntled when they realize they’re getting hit with the very tax that was meant to appease them.

From The Heritage Foundation:

President Obama announced a renewed focus on jobs in his State of the Union address.  His budget stated (PDF) “it is critical that we take steps to jump-start job creation”. He’s right, of course. He is also explicitly admitted the failure of last year’s $862 billion “jump-start” stimulus program.  On March 4, the House passed yet another admission of failure as it moved a $17.6 billion mini jobs bill built around an ineffective hiring tax credit and highway spending.  Why another bill?  Because even politicians cannot duck the data forever, such as today’s jobs report released by the Labor Department which means the Obama jobs deficit stands at 8.3 million workers.

According to the latest report (PDF), the U.S. economy shed another 36,000 jobs in February.  The unemployment rate stands at 9.7 percent, almost double the rate thought consistent with full employment.  Further, the only reason the unemployment rate isn’t higher still is that millions of Americans have left the workforce altogether as shown by a drop in the labor force participation rate to 64.8 percent from a peak in 2007 of 66.4 percent.

The economy’s continued poor performance means President Obama is falling further and further behind on his promise to create millions of new jobs.  Obama promised that if elected he would create 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 through new economic policies, beginning with the enactment of a massive economic stimulus package. Accompanying his jobs promise, the President also emphasized accountability and measuring his presidency by results. The result of the President’s jobs promise means total employment which in February stood at 129.5 million should be at least 137.8 million by the end of 2010, leaving the Obama jobs deficit at almost 8.3 million jobs.

Fortunately, the economy’s natural resilience spurred by powerful monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve means the economy is growing again, albeit at a slow trend pace.  Consequently, job losses may persist for months to come.  Even the Administration’s rosy forecast for economic growth for the next two years leaves the unemployment rate around 10 percent through all of 2010 well into 2011.  By his own official forecast and by his own standard, the Obama jobs deficit attests that his policies have failed and will continue to fail.

The federal government can stimulate the economy in the short term not by increased spending and borrowing but rather by improving incentives and the general economic environment.  Businesses invest not when they are manipulated by Washington, but when they are confident enough to take risks in pursuit of opportunity.  Individuals and businesses across the nation see tremendous opportunities for starting new businesses, investment, hiring new workers, expanding into new markets. Understandably, many are holding back due to concerns about the economy.  However, many others are holding back due to concerns about the threatening policies from Washington while others are holding back because existing tax and regulatory burdens are already excessive.  For private sector job creation to “jumpstart” in the President’s words, the first step is to fire Washington’s job destruction machine.   The President and his allies need not repudiate their ideology, as helpful as that would be, but they do need to hit the pause button on their anti-growth policies.

From The Heritage Foundation:

There are a lot of ways to measure job growth in America, some more accurate than others. Organizing for America (the political arm of the Democratic National Committee) created a chart to “celebrate” the first anniversary of President Barack Obama’s Failed Stimulus. Their chart attempted to cover up the fact that President Obama’s stimulus was a giant failure and came up 9 million jobs short of the number of jobs he promised to create by 2010.

Well, Matthias Shapiro of 10000Pennies video fame created his own jobs graph showing just how great Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) economic stewardship has been for the American people. It shows how jobs have plummetted under her leadership:

There are a couple of things we at Heritage would have done differently if we had created the above graphic (for example, Matthias uses the Labor Department’s Table A-1 seasonally adjusted total employed number for his benchmark, while Heritage uses the Table B-1 seasonally adjusted total nonfarm payroll number for our benchmark), but it still does a great job countering the Organizing for America graph below:

When holding the Obama administration accountable for their $862 billion stimulus, the key is to remember what the White House promised to deliver when they were selling the plan to the American people, and then compare that to what the objective results have been.When the Obama administration first unveiled their stimulus plan in November 2008, they claimed it would create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. At the time, BLS reported that the U.S. economy had about 136.1 million jobs. But by January 2009, that number fell to 134.6 million jobs. Not so coincidentally, the Obama administration upped the job-creating magic of the stimulus to 4 million jobs by the end of 2010. Putting these numbers together, we can create an objective standard to judge both the President and his stimulus by: 136.1 million plus 2.5 million equals 138.6 million, and 134.6 million plus 4 million equals 138.6 million. So the objective, Obama-administration-created, BLS-data-verifiable, jobs-accountability number is 138.6 million.

According to the most recent BLS jobs report, the U.S. economy currently employs 129.5 million people, thus leaving President Obama’s failed stimulus 9 million jobs short of what was promised to the American people. This is the true picture of his stimulus:

From National Review Online:

On the morning of November 5, 2008, the world rocked to news that the United States had elected Barack Obama to the presidency. That same morning, Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, joined the list of those most often mentioned as potentially defeating President Obama in 2012.

In what may be a sign of unusual mental health and emotional balance, Daniels persistently declined to be considered a candidate. Among his many reasons, he told C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb, was reluctance to subject his family to the “savagery” of presidential politics. It is great news for the country, if not for him, that he has at last relented and agreed to keep the door open — if only a crack.

He earned his spot on the short list of possibilities the hard way: In a quicksand year for Republicans, he managed to win reelection as governor by 18 points (in a state Obama carried). His supporters included 24 percent of Democrats, 20 percent of African-Americans, 51 percent of the youth vote, 67 percent of the elderly, and 57 percent of independents.

When Daniels took office in 2005, Indiana, which had been enduring Democratic governors for 16 years, was running an $800-million deficit. Four years later, it had a $1.3-billion surplus. Daniels accomplished this without raising taxes (as 66 percent of states have done); in fact, he passed the largest tax cut in state history. Nor did he cut essential services like education, as 40 states have done. As Mark Hemingway reported in National Review, “In the last three years, the state has repaid $760 million to schools and local governments that had been appropriated to finance the state’s deficit spending.” Additionally, Indiana has hired 800 new child-welfare caseworkers and 250 state troopers, all while cutting the rate of increase in state spending from 5.9 to 2.8 percent annually.

Daniels has successfully courted business investment and has welcomed “two Toyota plants, a Honda factory, a $500-million Nestlé facility, and a British Petroleum project that will bring $3.8 billion to the state.”

This is a laboratory of successful conservative governance. As Daniels put it to NR, “Our health-care plan is health savings accounts for poor people. Our telecommunications policy is deregulation. Our infrastructure policy was the biggest privatization in state history.” And his spending policy was less is more.

A former chief of the Office of Management and Budget (under George W. Bush), Daniels is known for his incisive mind and mastery of detail. In addition to government service — he also worked as an aide to Sen. Richard Lugar and as Ronald Reagan’s political director — Daniels has headed a conservative think tank, the Hudson Institute, and served as president of Eli Lilly’s North American operations.

This is not a slick, packaged politician. Daniels writes his own speeches — and they are thoughtful, substantive exercises — and even pens the content of his political ads. His demeanor is friendly, and his posture is forward-looking. He has never run a negative ad. He is a conservative, but not of the grievance variety.

In style, Daniels is low-key and witty without being arrogant. In his first run for governor he traveled the state on his motorcycle or in his motor home, spending the night as the guest of ordinary Hoosiers. His self-deprecating humor made his travels into a popular show — MitchTV — still available on YouTube. He treats every voter, supporter or not, with respect. And he’s not above enjoying himself at a state fair — his wife won a watermelon-seed-spitting contest at one.

He’s been called the “anti-Obama,” but the contrast is not in style. Both men are poised, intelligent, and well-spoken. The most glaring contrast aside from philosophy is Daniels’s wealth of experience and record of governing success.

Daniels has offered the view that a Republican candidate in 2012 must present a credible plan for solving the spending, deficit, and debt crisis the country is in and campaign to “govern, not just to win.”

He’d rather see someone else do it, which is understandable. He promised Hoosiers he would serve out his term and feels duty-bound to abide by his promise. But Daniels has a combination of traits — broad experience, wisdom, skill, and likeability — that are rarer than rare. Surely Hoosiers would release him from his promise if he asked — if we all asked.

From The Heritage Foundation:

Yesterday’s health care summit may well come to be seen as an important turning point in the health care debate. While the future of health care reform remains in doubt, the debate yesterday helped demonstrate to the American people the sharp differences in ideology and substance that form the gap between liberal and conservative solutions to our current healthcare problems.

For those who did not watch all seven hours, we have compiled the day’s highlights into one video.

More from The Heritage Foundation:

A Post-Health Summit Warning: Is Incremental Control Next for Obamacare?

In the wake of the White House’s health care summit, reconciliation is still seen as the likely route that congressional leaders and their liberal allies will take to jam Obamacare through Congress. Congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama already are using the summit as a public relations vehicle to help fast-track the Senate health care bill through a parliamentary process used primarily for budgetary issues.

But beware Plan B — the more “modest” plan. There’s a surer, well-worn path that the Clinton Administration took after the collapse of Hillarycare in 1994: A careful, well-coordinated, step-by-step march to the Left on federal health care policy.

The Republican congressional victory in 1994, even though it reflected public revulsion at the Clinton Administration’s proposed takeover of the private health care system, did not change the fundamental direction of federal health policy. It only changed the degree and velocity of liberal policy success. The Clinton team started taking baby steps to expand federal control over health care financing and delivery, lulling often clueless congressional Republicans into cooperation with long-term consequences for doctors and patients. In some cases, the GOP majority enacted provisions of the Clinton health bill word for word.

In fact, much of today’s health care landscape reflects the enormous policy success the Clinton Administration achieved during the 1990s in the wake of the legislative failure of Hillarycare:

• Unprecedented statutory interference with the doctor-patient relationship — restricting private contracting — in Medicare in 1997
• The frustrating regulatory burden imposed on doctors through the  Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996
• The creation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which has now become a roaring entitlement, costing billions more in taxes and crowding out private health coverage as Congress pushes eligibility up the income scale

Through all of this, Republicans in Congress dismissed or ignored the warnings of conservative health policy analysts and economists, and instead cooperated with President Clinton or played an ineffective defense.

Congressional conservatives should ponder liberals’ past incremental health care successes. It may help them prepare for what may lay ahead. Rest assured that Team Obama is keeping options open.

According to the Wall Street Journal, while no final decisions have been made, “the smaller plan’s outlines are in place in case the larger plan fails.” Those smaller bills could include:

• Mandating that insurance companies allow “children” up to 26 years old to be on their parents’ health plans.
• Expanding Medicaid and SCHIP beyond the massive expansions that were enacted in 2009. Medicaid expansion has been a favored coverage form by liberal Democrats.

As Heritage’s Stuart Butler recently noted in the New England Journal of Medicine, small changes to the nation’s $2.5 trillion health-care system can have dramatic results:

History shows that changing even seemingly minor features of legislation or administrative decision making with regard to health care can have major — and sometimes unintended — consequences for the system’s evolution.

Conservatives in Congress have ample policy proposals to expand patient choice and improve market competition. There is no reason why they should carefully develop and implement a grand legislative strategy of incremental conservative reform.

Not only does he mispronounce “corpsman” (read ‘core-man’ for any liberals reading) as “corpse-man” twice, but also gets the corpsman’s name wrong, first saying “Christian” and then “Christopher.”