Healthcare Summit Charade Will Prove To Be The President’s Last Stand

   After President Obama accepted the fact that his agenda was going nowhere, he used his State of the Union address to try and turn things around. He spoke of bipartisanship …….a practice he rejected for the first year of his term.

He used healthcare as a central focus for demonstrating his new found desire for bipartisanship. He even suggested that Democrats and Republicans work together on it. This was a novel idea, for up till that point, Republicans have been locked out of the closed door meetings that took place among Democrats in an attempt to muster enough votes among themselves to pass their combined 5,000 pages of healthcare reforms.

Meanwhile, contrary to Democrat denials, Republicans presented their own proposals for consideration. These proposals are on the record. But due to Democrat’s desire to only reach consensus among members of their own majority and through their own ideas, none of these Republican proposals were considered.

And still despite, having once had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and despite their overwhelming majority in the House, Democrats could not even successfully deliver on their very own ideas.

So now, after annoying the American people with both a bill that was too far reaching, too invasive and in some regards too punishing, and after having further annoyed the public with the way in which they tried to pass such unwanted legislation, President Obama pretended to seek bipartisanship cooperation.

Which brings us to this past Thursday’s Healthcare Summit…….the “bipartisan” Healthcare Summit.

The event could have been used to really start a “roll up our sleeves”, get down to work, serious process that involved both sides of the political spectrum……..both sides of the aisle that were elected to represent all segments of the American electorate.

It could have.

But all hope of such a dream coming to fruition was dashed when, just days before the bipartisanship summit, President Obama threw down, for the first time, his own proposed government healthcare takeover bill.

He is the President of the United States. As such, to present a proposal of his own is not inappropriate. In fact I am on record as admonishing President Obama from not having presented his own proposed starting point legislation from the very beginning. He needn’t have written the entire bill, as did Hillary Clinton in 1993. But as a leader, a proposed starting point that outlined his vision would have not only been acceptable, it would have appropriately been the right thing to do.

But such was never the case. Not until a few days prior to the so-called bipartisan healthcare summit.

Of the President’s proposed bill, it could have been said better late than never. It could have. But as it turned out it was not.

President Obama simply took the two strictly partisan bills that his Party assembled in the House and in the Senate and combined them into one bill. Not only was this a lack of leadership on the President’s part, it was genuine evidence of President Obama’s total lack of sincerity as it pertains to his claimed newfound appreciation of bipartisanship. That demonstrated lack of sincerity and his breaking of his promise to start over on the healthcare debate, immediately undermined any promise that may have once existed in Thursday’s healthcare summit.

President Obama could have been a leader and set the tone for bipartisanship by incorporating some of the Republican proposals into his own. He could have changed some of the most egregious proposals contained in the Senate and House versions of the strictly partisan Democrat bills.

But he did not.

Instead of setting an example and leading with a healthcare proposal that formulated some initiatives by incorporating ideas from both sides of the aisle, he simply said, here it is!. Here is the same partisan bill that we could not pass before but will now, because now I want bipartisanship.

From that point on, that act of total hypocrisy made the anticipated healthcare summit a failure before it started.

It became clear from that point on, that the President and his Democrat leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, were simply going through the motions, providing a creative talking point to turn into propaganda and try to claim that they tried to work with Republicans

Such was not the case, and in the end, the bipartisan healthcare summit was the failure that President Obama doomed it to be when he threw down the same partisan proposal that dragged us into the mud that we are mired in today.

The summit did produce a number of good sound bites. From New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter’s description of a woman wearing her dead sister’s dentures, to President Obama telling Senator John McCain “the campaign was over”, many memorable gems were mined out of the hours of discussion. But none of it mattered. No one walked away from the summit table invigorated by a new working environment or new platform to work from. Instead, the most that could be said to have come out of the summit was that both parties agreed to continue disagreeing over the same bill that most Americans have said they do not want.

In the end all the President achieved with his summit charade was to reinforce the image of a very staged, arrogant, leader whose attempts at community organizing from the White House are doing little to organize an effective agenda or a bipartisan atmosphere for the nation..

Bipartisanship to President Obama is voting not present. To him bipartisanship is both sides of the aisle assembling together to listen to him spew rhetorical prose and all walk away enamored by his words and convinced that his way  is the only way.

President Obama has done nothing to promote bipartisanship accept discuss it as though it were some kind of foreign concept that he brought to America. But his words do no service to the concept when his deeds are as a partisan as a Boston Red Sox fan cheering on his time as they play the Yankees at Fenway.

In stark contrast to this President’s commitment to bipartisanship, just a few days into his first term in office, President George W. Bush began trying to bridge the vast ideological and partisan political gap that is everpresent. One of his first guests to the White House residence for dinner and a movie was Senator Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate. Yet one of the only incumbent Republicans to be invited to break bed with President Obama was Congressman Joseph Cao of Louisiana. Nearly a full year into the Obama presidency, after being the only Republican in the House to vote for that chambers government healthcare scheme, President Obama invited Cao to be the only Republican office holder at his White House Super Bowl party.

Clearly President Obama’s version of bipartisanship is quite different than most other peoples version. Their version might make progress on healthcare reform. President Obama’s feigned attempts to reach across the aisle simply makes healthcare a victim of his version of bipartisanship.  And in the long run, for all the hype and  promotion that President Obama applied to this epic charade,  the end result will ultimately be an increasilgly more  negative public opinion towards a man who still believes that his words are a magic elixir that soothes all our objections away.   Meanwhile, in reality, this saga will ultimnately  backfire on the President and all the hype which proved to be for nothing, will deal  the President a loss of even more credibility than most of his entire first year in office has cost him..

Town Hall Meeting Shows That Americans Do Not Believe That Obama Is Sincere

    Today I listened to Senator John McCain’s town hall meeting on healthcare reform in Sun City, Arizona. He brought up many valid points and pretty much adhered to the widely held Republican ideas regarding what they believe should be the first steps for effective reforms. But aside from all the minutia and valid arguments presented at the event, one thing stood out to me.

As Senator McCain was wrapping up his remarks, he said, “I believe President Obama is being sincere on the issue“. He was about to continue by saying “but we don’t agree on the approach that we should take“, but the large crowd in attendance interrupted the Senator with jeers and boos before he could finish his statement.

The demonstrated disapproval from the audience was not directed at the Senator as much as it was a response to how sincere they believe the President is on the issue.

Senator McCain calmly encouraged the crowd not to think the President is insincere but it did not really change any minds in the audience. The incident shed light on an important part of President Obama’s problem not only on healthcare but in general. There is a significant segment of the population who do not trust the President. They do not necessarily believe in him or the much touted mantra of “change” that he asked us to believe in when he was running for election to the presidency.

Without actual accurate polling to refer to, I will not claim that the segment of society that feels this way is a clear majority of the population, but it is a significant enough number of Americans to make it hard for the President to ram through his entire legislative agenda in a mere eight months and there is nothing to make them think otherwise.

For example, as the nonpartisan C.B.O. (Congressional Budget Office) released a report indicating that the recession we are in is much deeper than opinions have estimated, they also pointed out that the President’s current spending spree will lead to a deficit of $9 trillion over 10 years. That is $2 trillion more than was forecasted earlier this year.

Other factors indicated that while there may be ever so slight recovery signals in the economy, an inordinate number of Americans will continue to be jobless for much longer than expected and well in to next year.

These nonpartisan assessments do not help make Americans believe in President Obama’s economic supervision or his proposed stimulus packages which White House talking point memo’s has urged Democrats to refer to not as a stimulus package but rather a recovery plan.

The move even led liberal loon Congressman Elmer Fudd , I mean Barney Frank, of Massachusetts to state “I’m not supposed to call it stimulus. The messaging experts in Washington have told us we’re supposed to call it the ‘recovery plan’ because that works out better with focus groups. I was puzzled by that because I have found that most people would rather be stimulated than recover.”

Smart remarks from asinine legislators aside, much of the American people are not confident in what President Obama is doing.

The best interpretation of the condition of the economy that the public has heard coming from economic officials in the White House was that things aren’t as bad as they could be. That is not a glowing assessment and does little to build confidence.

Now, as presented by the C.B.O., more dire news is released.

All of this is helping to cause Americans to distrust the President. After almost eight months in office, a sizeable portion of Americans have become more doubtful about the President than assured by him.

This lack of confidence, this lack of belief in him, makes it all the more difficult for him to gain support for another expensive, deficit exploding, questionably effective, spending plan that would create government run healthcare in America.

Couple this with an obvious lack of bipartisanship on the part of the President and as indicated by those in attendance at John McCain’s town hall, a lack of confidence in him has begun to fester and turn into a perceived lack of sincerity.

That is a dangerous sentiment for people to have of their leader and left unchecked things will only get worse. If this sense sets in, the Democrat ship will sink fast and not only will its captain, the President, go down with the ship, so will many of the Democrat hands on deck.

Right now, in the only two races for governor up this year, Republicans have wide leads over their Democrat opponents. In Nevada Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lags behind his likely Republican opponent by double digits. None of this is an indication of people believing in change that they were asked to believe in.

I believe that the time has come for President Obama to change gears. I think he must begin to work with his opponents instead of chastising them and calling them “mobs” or placing them on watch lists and asking Americans to report those who offer dissenting opinions to the government.

On healthcare, I have repeatedly pointed out that the only way to achieve any reforms will be through a sincere bipartisan effort. I have pointed out that the lack of bipartisan commitment was the downfall of other attempts at reform dating as far back as the 1930’s under FRDR and as recently as the early 90’s under Bill Clinton. Why President Obama, a supposedly brilliant and skilled leader, has chosen to take the same partisan approach that has consistently failed throughout history is beyond me. Yet just a week ago reports confirmed that the White House considered reconciliation, the nuclear, go-it-alone, option that would push health reforms through with only Democrat support.

Thinking like that helps to make people believe that President Obama is insincere. It makes the President look less a leader than a partisan hack.

None of this instills faith in him.

After seeing the Democrats try to ram through such measures as the crap-and-tax bill which would tax the air that we breathe and amount to the greatest transfer of wealth in history and after seeing the President try to demand that healthcare reforms got passed before the August recess Americans have become skeptical. They have been give reason to wonder if insincere motives are leading the ruling regime to get pass bills before people have the chance to read them.

If President Obama does not quickly change gears, I think it is safe to say that the wheels rolling the change he wants us to believe will come unhinged and none of what he hoped to achieve will be realized. Perhaps his all-or-nothing approach to government should be explored again. After all, it is that same approach which President Obama and others criticized former President Bush for. They chastised him for not trying to build consensus in foreign policy. They berated him when in regards to terrorism he told the world “you’re either with us or against us.”

Well that is the same path that President Obama and his liberal cohorts in Congress are taking. Will they continue to prove me right in pointing out that Democrats have become a hypocritical based party? Or will they begin to act responsibility and convince Americans of their sincerity on the issues?

FAREWELL PRESIDENT BUSH – THANK YOU FOR SERVING WELL

There remain only a few hours left in the presidency of  George W. Bush. For eight years he has given us his best. There were some low points but there were fewer than the media and liberals would have you believe.

Katrina was a low point but even that, President Bush really can’t take all the blame for himself . But for liberals, President Bush was there scapegoat.

Hurricane Katrina ravaged Mississippi every bit as much as it did Louisiana, yet Mississippi, under the leadership of Republican Governor Haley Barbour, did not encounter the same long duration of recovery or mishandled evacuations that  Louisiana  did.

Mississippi’s local leaders did not decide to park their buses on low lying surfaces as did New Orleans’ Democrat Mayor, Ray Nagin.

No, Mississippi’s first line of defense in natural disasters, their local governments, the governments closest to the people, came through and were every bit as prepared as they told the federal government that they were. Not so in New Orleans though.

But a liberal bias from the media helped to make Hurricane Katrina President Bush’s fault.

Shortly after the events of Hurricane Katrina many left leaning conspiracy theorists also claimed that Hurricane Katrina and a few of its devastating predecessors were the product of Japan where the Japanese government was inventing a new weapon that increased the intensity of tropical storms into category 5 hurricanes and directed them to land masses that they targeted.

Many of the same people who made this claim gave blame to George Bush. That should tell you something.

Although Katrina may not have been Bush’s fault, the recovery effort in Louisiana does get blamed on him and to a degree that is acceptable. But I guess, on the other side of the coin, the successfully rapid recovery in Mississippi warrants some credit for President Bush?

Putting aside the blame game of Hurricane Katrina, there are two things that when grading this presidency, bring his average down.

The first is his delay in approving the surge that his own Secretary of State urged for a year before he finally accepted it.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice  had been advocating for more troops in Iraq. It was a strategy called “clear, hold and build”. It was also the same strategy that Senator John McCain called for.

Clear, hold and build was successfully used by Col. H.R. McMaster in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar. The strategy called for door to door operations that cleared insurgents from the city along with an ongoing troop presence in each neighborhood that was cleared. Once this was achieved residents felt secure, and U.S. troops were able to begin rebuilding there. Wherever this strategy was conducted, it worked. The resurgents were gone and our continued presence there, prevented them from returning. As a result, citizens no longer lived in fear and life began to flow unimpeded by terror and violence. To carry out clear, hold and build, more troops were required. But increasing the number of troops was not something the administration wanted to advocate for. Although it was required in order to successfully carry out clear, hold, build the administration was afraid of the reaction to such a call.

The President flinched in this area. It was one of the few instances where he allowed public perception to make him second guess his policy judgment. After Viet Nam, we should have learned that if you are going to enter into a fight, throw everything you have into it from the onset. Otherwise don’t get into the fight.

In the case of Iraq, we held back. Had we went along with the surge from the beginning, we would have avoided the upsurge in violence that led to the waning of support for the war effort.

The other area of deep negative impact on this administration was the financial collapse that brought on the current economic crisis.

President Bush does not get blamed for causing the collapse, but it happened under his watch and it should not have.

The President, through his advisers, should have seen this coming and helped to avoid it.

He should have aggressively turned back some of the policies which led to the overextended loan practices which ultimately tied up loans and the markets.

Many of the policies that brought us to this point were from Bill Clinton’s administration.

Clinton‘s National Homeowners Strategy was a financial scheme that promoted insanely low down payments and coerced lenders into giving mortgage loans to first-time buyers with unstable financing and incomes.

It was a way to increase home ownership. That is an admirable motive but as usual, the liberal mentality, forced government to do that which it should not have done. Essentially, the Clinton era initiatives that forced government action on private sector interests led to the need for government to take over FannieMae and FreddieMac. This is not to say that private sector greed and bad business practices did not add to the wrong minded government policy, it did, but what happened here is that government solutions to one problem, created another . Now, ironically, the government which helped to create this problem is having to solve it
.
As for George Bush, this all came to a head under his watch. For that he must be blamed.

So we have the recovery effort in Louisiana, delaying the surge in Iraq and not avoiding the economic crises that we are in, all helping to lower the average of this administrations grade.

I have two more things to add though.

One is immigration.

On immigration President Bush was most inept. On this issue his positions were no where near appropriate for the leader of a sovereign nation.

The Presidents refusal to accept that illegal immigrants are participating in illegal conduct that needs to be prosecuted was a horribly blundered policy and it is one that has not helped to solve our border security problem or alleviate the continued problem of illegal immigration.

The other issue I hold against President Bush is his administrations inability to articulate their cause in a way that appealed to the people convincingly.

The administration had been doing quite well in it’s first two years when the voice of the President came from then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Once Ari Fleischer left and Scott McClellan entered the picture, the White House lost any sway with the press or the public.

This President was great with messages when we were in crisis and he had the people’s attention, but in between crisis his message was jumbled and unconvincing. That, for this administration, was half of the battle and after Fleischer left they lost it.

On the upside President Bush has many, much wrongly maligned, initiatives to help bring his grade up.

Their was his “Faith Based Initiative” which allowed government to accept the involvement of religious institutions in helping out. Faith based initiatives were no longer penalized or denied by the federal government because of religion. It was something long over due in America, especially in an America where religion is not to persecuted against.

There was “No Child Left Behind”.

This policy was one which had universal support except for some extremist fringe players and teachers union.. But not willing to give credit where credit was due, liberals charged that President Bush backed out of his No Child Left Behind policy by under funding it.

Truth be told, federal education spending is at record levels so that argument doesn’t swim.

There are many other policies such as the Medicare prescription drug benefit, enacted in 2003. It triggered competition between drug companies and wound up costing less than expected.

The Bush tax policy is also to his credit. He didn’t ask for lips to read on this issue, he simply created no new taxes and when he did not reduce them he held the line on them. I only wish he could have added drastic spending cuts to that.

Another high point in this administration was the appointment of two supreme court justices, one being the chief justice.

The appointments of  John Roberts  and  Sam Alito  were remarkably good choices. Neither had any judicial or personal blemishes and neither see the role of the judiciary to be one that makes law but rather interprets it. Add to that their relative youthful ages and the Roberts and Alito appointments to the bench will have a profound on our great nation for decades to come.

The next greatest achievement of the administration was twofold. It involves The War On Terror and Iraq.

Despite charges that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism, the two are entwined together as violent threats.

Pre-Saddam Hussein Iraq did not send to us the pilots that took nearly 3,000 Americans in one day but it had intentions just as dire.

Saddam did not have any tangible links to 9/11 but he did have links to terrorist, including several who dabbled with Al Quaeda and he did continuously break and defy the cease fire agreement that he signed after the first Gulf War. Combine that with the fact that everyone from  Bill Clinton  and  Al Gore  to  John Kerry  and  Ted Kennedy  swore that Saddam was a threat and you had every reason in the world to eliminate Saddam Hussein.

After 9/11 George W. Bush realized that we must eliminate threats before they eliminate us and so he took out the threat known as Saddam Hussein.  In doing so not is democracy being brought to the Middle East but the power and richness of freedom is being delivered to a people that have long since forgotten what independence offers.

Add to that that you can say what you want, but we no longer have to worry about any threat Saddam intended, and for that I thank the President.

I also Thank him for the second part of this  War On Terror  effort.   Under his watch not another single attack occurred on mainland territory since 9/11.

Now if you want to blame Katrina on Bush because it happened during his watch you must also credit him for there being no more attacks under his watch. And when you think about, more attacks occurred under Bill Clinton then George Bush, so I thank President Bush for that as well.

The final most valuable thing brought to life under President Bush goes back to exactly four years ago.

In his inaugural address , after being sworn in for the second time, President Bush stated:

“America has need of idealism and courage, because we have essential work at home – the unfinished work of American freedom. In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty.”

He went on to articulate a policy that directed the United States to end tyranny in the world as we know it.

Now some may have seen that as a declaration of war by him but most read it the right way.

He went on to say………“We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.”

“All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.:”

The speech has since been forgotten by most but it has not been forgotten by me and hopefully President Barack Obama will also remember it..

In its entirety, the address presented the essence of what it means to be an American and it captured the most important role that America must play in this world as its current, last remaining superpower.

For me it Bush’s second inaugural address was the foundation for our greatest doctrine ever, the doctrine to achieve and true freedom and peace.

When you have the time, click here and read the speech. You will be moved and you will understand our place in this world.

The bottom line…….

President Bush is a good man and was a good President. He will not go down in history ranked along side of Washington or Lincoln nor will he be lumped together with Franklin Pierce or Jimmy Carter.

Ultimately, I believe George W. Bush warrants a B-.

Many on the left will now assault me for giving that grade but I base George Bush’s presidency on the truth of reality not on the lies and distortions that they have spent the last eight years perpetuating and when you add that to the retrospect of history, I believe George W. Bush’s name  will slowly rise to its proper placement among American presidents.

That is something that will take time.

As President Bush recently put it, “they’re still debating and writing about how good or bad George Washington was, so I assume the same will happen to me”.

Once upon a time, in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers…

… that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.

He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. ‘Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.’

The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.

Submitted by Dick, Williamsport, Md.

 

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