It’s been sixteen years since Hillary’s assault on healthcare. That assault led in part to the Republican takeover in 1994 but one has to look at the differences between today and sixteen years ago.
In 1993 Bill Clinton ran on the economy and succeeded in beating George HW Bush on that issue in spite of the fact that Bush had in fact led the country out of the recession by the election. Clinton felt he was invincible so he let his wife take on the issue of healthcare. The thing that Clinton underestimated was that the economy was already rebounding and people were positive on the economic situation. As such people didn’t see healthcare as that big a problem that required a government takeover and as such it went down to defeat.
So we move forward to the last eight years where we have had a drumbeat of Democrats, in congress and the media, telling people just how bad everything was. This in spite of the fact that for much of the George W Bush years the economy has been booming. The media succeeded in talking the economy into recession in late 2008 along with a democrat controlled congress that created the mortgage mess.
We now have the perfect storm for Democrats. They have created circumstances where we have unemployment near 10%, we have healthcare costs through the roof mostly because trial lawyers have driven the cost of malpractice insurance through the roof. We have government takeovers of the auto industry, and the banking industry. We haven’t seen misery like this since the days of Jimmy Carter.
So now there is a narrow window of opportunity for Obama and Democrats to pass socialized medicine. i call it a narrow window because the have to be careful, they have to orchestrate this takeover and spin it so it appears that they are helping everyone. If people perceive this for what it is, another power grab by liberals and Obama then they could see a backlash. People are already weary of the takeovers they’ve seen in the automotive and banking sectors.
The Democrats running congress are talking of big tax increases, the global warming bill isn’t widely supported by voters but congress is beholden to the environuts that elected them. The more they force this stuff down the throats of the American people the greater the consequences in 2010 and 2012.
So in the end it appears that Democrats have created the circumstances under which socialized medicine may be possible. Maybe they learned from 1994 but will the country be better off from the lessons learned? I doubt it.
Joe O’Biden not wanting to be outdone by the likes of amateurs like Al Franken illustrated his own stupidity today with the following statement:
People look at me and say, "What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we’ve got to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?" The answer is "Yes,"I’m tellin’ ya.
Yes folks the Vice President says you can spend money to keep from going bankrupt. Where is this in the State Run Media? No where. These are the same people that railed that Bush was an idiot, Dan Quayle was an idiot, Sarah Palin is an idiot, etc…. Every time O’Biden opens his mouth Obama must be holding his breath thinking “what is this mental midget going to say next?”
If these people weren’t so dangerous when they have power it would almost be tolerable for the entertainment value, but these people are running the Banks, the auto industry, and they’re not done yet… They have they’re eyes on healthcare next…
We knew it wouldn’t take long for Al Franken to embarrass himself and the half of Minnesotan’s that voted for him and we haven’t been disappointed…
From Breitbart.com
Franken told Sotomayor that she was "the most experienced Supreme Court nominee in 100 years." He said her story is inspirational and one in which "all Americans should take great pride in."
The stupidity of such a statement is beyond the bounds of rational thought. Granted she has a very inspirational story but last time I checked that wasn’t a qualification for Supreme Court Justice or course neither is race or gender and both of those seem to be qualifications in the Obama administration. As for qualifications for the actual job, no. She isn’t even as qualified as the last 10 nominees to have the nomination pulled or rejected. Given the way the current court smacked down her latest decision one could make the case that she isn’t qualified for the job she has now.
Unfortunately she will probably be confirmed and that is a shame. It is clear from her record that she allows race to enter into her decision making. It’s clear that she allows her liberal ideology to enter the decision making more than she does the law, more than she does the constitution.
Maybe it’s something about July 4th that causes us to reflect on heroes of our past but do we not see the heroes of today? A hero is a person who fights for those they do not know, a hero fights for their family, a hero fights for their country regardless of how ungrateful a large portion of them may be. Our men and women in uniform both at home and abroad are there to protect our rights, our beliefs, our constitution. Regardless of your political beliefs they deserve our respect, our admiration, and our support.
Heroes are also those that we rely on at home, firefighters and law enforcement. Many of the nations firefighters are volunteer living and working in small towns across America. Rarely do we look at firefighters as volunteers but many of them give up off time from their regular jobs for training and other exercises never mind that they answer the call to a burning structure at 2am. In many cases they are first on scene to auto accidents and have to deal with some pretty horrific scenes on our nations highways.
Contrast that with political leaders (of both parties) who look at themselves as heroes. Some have fought for our country as members of the military and deserve our respect for that. However few have distinguished themselves in the political arena in a way even remotely classifying themselves as heroes.
I was on a flight this weekend in the Pacific Northwest, leaving Seattle, on this flight was a young man on his way home for two weeks from Iraq. Now being the Pacific Northwest, an area not known for respecting members of our military, I had not expected anyone to notice or say much to this man but was pleasantly surprised. As we were making our decent the flight attendant leaned over and told the man “thank you for your service and all you do” as I got off the plane I patted his shoulder and said thank you to a man I don’t know, who is home for two weeks with his family before he returns to a battle in a far away place.
As we take our vacations, long weekends, days with family, etc this summer please remember that somewhere in a far away place there are real heroes who wake up every day helping to secure not only our freedom but the freedom of people in other countries who aspire to have it but are not strong enough on there own to achieve it. For they are today’s heroes….
With President Obama’s selection of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice has shown what we can expect over the next four years in terms of Judicial appointments. It’s all about race, it’s all about style over substance. I had no idea that being overturned by the Supreme Court was a glowing example of the qualifications needed to sit on the highest court in the land.
Reading some of the media’s reaction though you would think she was a great jurist rather than someone who has been on the wrong side of constitution most of her career. I love the headline by the Wall Street Journal “Record Shows Rulings Within Liberal Mainstream” excuse me? Liberal and Mainstream are two words that very rarely should be used in the same story let alone in the same sentence. Liberalism by it’s defined ideals is outside the mainstream. The media is running around stating that she has had a pro business ruling, one, big deal. If you dig deep into Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s record you can probably find one instance when she made a ruling that was pro business. Doesn’t make her mainstream.
Republicans predictably don’t know what to do yet other than say that they will be fair but are going to ask tough questions. Yeah right, forgive me if I am not a believer, Senate Republican’s likely do what they do best, roll over and play dead. It will be up to the grass roots to get this nomination killed and it won’t be done with republicans only because let’s be real. In the end we know that Obama can depend on McCain, Lindsay Graham, Susan Collins, etc to give in. No if America has any hope of killing this it will be Democrats in largely conservative states that have a reelection coming in 2010. Harry Reid being at the top of the list.
This being the inaugural post of the Blog Conservative Matters I feel to need to ask the question above. Now for those of you who are inherently liberal you will no doubt find several examples of when government was the solution to a problem. However being conservative I will first likely debate who created the problem in the first place and with that most of the time if you remove the liberals in government who created the problem then you have solved the problem.
In fact I can only think of war against our aggressors as a problem government can solve and most of the time even that is necessary because we listened to liberals and allowed history to repeat itself thus forcing us to take some military action against some aggressor that has done or means to do us harm.
Take for example the current recession. This recession was brought about by mismanagement of the mortgage markets particularly Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Now for some strange reason most of the people in this country think that those two entities are private banks or privately owned institutions. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Freddie and Fannie are creations of government charged with making loans to those with a questionable ability to repay.
In 2003 the Bush Administration seeing a crisis on the horizon asked for an overhaul of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by creating an oversight agency within the Treasury Department that would have oversee Freddie and Fannie. Would that have fixed the problem, probably not but Senator Chris Dodd, and Congressman Barney Frank insisted there was nothing wrong and wouldn’t allow even discussion of further oversight.
Now we have Obama acting as chairman and ceo of General Motors, Chrysler, Bank of America, and several other banks and insurance companies. Where is the constitutional authority to take over private business, where does it stop, what businesses are deemed ok to fail? Why do taxpayers have to fund this boondoggle? We already know it doesn’t work, when President Bush initiated this bailout last fall we were told that GM and Chrysler couldn’t be allowed to go through bankruptcy that it would put too many people out of work yet where are we today? Chrysler has already entered bankruptcy, GM will within days, they have closed down plants, suppliers are going under at an alarming rate, dealerships are going under. And where have the billions of dollars gone?
Obama has yet to fully take on HealthCare, his other attempts being a guide I don’t think Obama can handle 3 1/2 more years of him “fixing” things. It’s clear that he has dropped the ball on North Korea and Iran. We are a weaker nation today than we were four months ago, unfortunately thanks largely to his socialist policies we are also a poorer nation as well.
