Hypocrisy Alert

On my way home this afternoon I heard President Obama speaking during his campaign to push for "common sense" gun laws to "keep children safe". One thing he said really grated on me....

"No law or set of laws can keep our children completely safe, but if there's even one thing we can do, if there's just one life we can save, we've got an obligation to try," he said.

Well that sounds delightful and all. I am all for keeping children safe. I just have to ask. Since President Obama opposes any "common sense" restrictions on abortion and since President Obama seems to have no problem using drone strikes even when children might (and have) be injured or killed, does he really care about keeping children safe?

Here is the uncomfortable truth. It certainly seems that the only children President Obama is really concerned about "keeping safe" are the politically expedient ones that he can use to push his own agenda. An unborn child, a child in a village in Afghanistan? Well those children are of little value from a political standpoint so they are simply ignored.

It is not about keeping kids safe and it never has been so quit lying about it.

Selective justice

From today's memorial service for the victims of the Ft. Hood shootings:

"It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know -- no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts, no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice -- in this world, and the next," Obama said.

What about justice for those killed in the womb? What sort of justice does he thinks awaits those who perpetuate and support abortion? Is the jihadist who shot and killed 13 people in Texas worse than the "doctor" who snuffs out the lives of unborn children on a daily basis? 13 innocent people killed at Ft. Hood. Tens of millions killed by abortion. One is called a tragedy, one is called a choice. I am afraid you won't see such signs of sorrow or brave words of confidence in judgment when the issue becomes politically inexpedient. The victims of abortion die in silence and not many people seem to care.

Yet another reason to not send your kids to public schools

These are the sorts of people who make policy at the highest levels for public "education"

President Obama's "safe schools czar" is a former schoolteacher who has advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, written about his past drug abuse, expressed his contempt for religion and detailed an incident in which he did not report an underage student who told him he was having sex with older men.

Conservatives are up in arms about the appointment of Kevin Jennings, Obama's director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, saying he is too radical for the job.

Jennings was appointed to the position largely because of his longtime record of working to end bullying and discrimination in schools. In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, he founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide. He has also published six books on gay rights and education, including one that describes his own experiences as a closeted gay student.

Do you want men like that creating education policy for your kids? Read the whole article to see who the education establishment thinks knows what is best for your kids.

Pay attention today

Major announcement coming out today under the radar that will find taxpayers paying for benefits for the homosexual partners of Federal employees. Benefits paid for by your tax dollars. Stay tuned...

A solution for Guantanamo Bay detainees...

Just legally declare them fetuses!

Check out this tongue-in-cheek satire from Scott Orr and then think about how tragically true it is.

In an effort to shut down the U.S. Naval Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, thereby restoring America's moral standing in the world, President Barack Obama today declared some 240 enemy combatants held at Gitmo to be 'human fetuses'.

In an executive order, the president said, "Since I ordered Gitmo shut down, and people don't want us to bring the inmates here, the only way to extract them from the facility is to change their legal status to one that offers us more choices."

While accused terrorists have access to attorneys, and nearly-limitless legal appeals, a fetus has no legal standing, cannot speak for itself, and is subject to the death penalty without regard to guilt or innocence.

Civil rights advocates have pressured Obama to follow through on campaign promises to shutter Gitmo, but even Democrats in Congress have resisted bringing the inmates to U.S. soil for trials and incarceration.

"We can debate whether enemy combatants have access to protections under the U.S. Constitution," said Obama. "However, no serious person would grant such protection to an embryo or fetus. The loss of 240 fetuses wouldn't raise an eyebrow in a nation where more than 3,000 of them hit the Dumpster daily."

We live in a nation where many people are far more worried about the rights of terrorists than they are about the rights of innocent unborn children. Ponder that.

Opening our minds to supporters of murder

President Obama spoke today at the commencement ceremony at Notre Dame, a shameful moment for that institution, and called for both sides on the abortion debate to be "open-minded"...

"When we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe -- that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground," Obama said.

Mr. President, I have no room for being open-minded when it comes to the murder of unborn children. No sane person should. We can argue about taxes, we can debate about immigration, we can be respectful when it comes to gun ownership but when it comes to infanticide, there is no room for open-mindedness, for compromise, for common ground, for respect. I cannot and I will not respect a position that reduces human life to a "choice" and sacrifices children for the sake of convenience.

Reaping what was sown

Last fall, many self-described evangelical Christians and around half of all Roman Catholics voted for Barack Obama. With the announcement of Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s retirement we are left with the specter of what could have been and what will be.

Had John McCain won, I can be sure that he would have nominated a less conservative person to fill this vacancy than I would have but certainly whoever Senator McCain nominated would have been more conservative than the arch-liberal President Obama is going to nominate. Justice Souter has been a consistent liberal vote on the court and his nomination is one of the many disappointments of the first Bush presidency. With his retirement and a hypothetical GOP administration, the final vote needed would be within reach to overturn Roe v Wade. Instead we have the most far left President we have seen in my lifetime who is a devoted follower in the blood soaked legacy of Margaret Sanger and a defender of America as an enabler of state sanctioned mass murder.

Instead of seeing Roe v Wade rightly fall, we now will see what the fruit of the Obama election really is. I am discussing the slide into socialism we are seeing on The Arsenal of Liberty, but from a sanctity of life point of view this is a major blow. Expect President Obama, emboldened by his rock star popularity, the cover provided by his adoring fans in the “press” and a virtually filibuster proof Senate to nominate a leftist ideologue, someone who will be a rabid supporter of the make-believe “right to choose” decision Roe v. Wade. Expect Obama to name a young, far left female candidate who will be able to serve on the court for perhaps the next 30 years. There are other issues that will be impacted by this move for decades, from homosexual “marriage” to property rights, but all of the rest take a backseat to the genocidal, profit-driven sacrifice of innocent children on the altar of “choice”.

Make no mistake. The votes cast by people who name the name of Christ last fall for Barack Obama will enable more abortions to be performed in this country and the conscience of those who made that choice should be heavy with the ramifications of what they wrought in a vain attempt to protect their own pocketbooks.

Congrats!

As an American taxpayer you are about to become the proud owner of General Motors!

Sprechen Sie Austrian?

Check out our illustrous leader making a faux pas. Nary a peep from the media though.

If this doesn’t scare you

There are a couple of planks in the Obama administration’s effort to “not waste a good crisis” and radically expand the scope and power of the Federal government. Part of that is increased spending and taxation, bringing more and more of the economic production of the country under the direct control of the central government. Another major part, and one that is less onerous to the average citizen, is a dramatic increase in the regulatory powers of the Federal government over the private sector. Set aside the idea that the Feds in an oversight function over the private sector is like a blind and deaf lifeguard who can’t swim. Set aside also the fact that the big collapses we have seen have included some already heavily regulated industries and a couple of companies that are creations of and were protected by the same government that wants MORE control (i.e. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). Just read the following synopsis of former tax cheat and current Secretary of the Treasury Geithner’s plan for “fixing” the private sector.

The Treasury has been rolling out its proposals piecemeal. It announced Wednesday a central plank of the U.S. effort: a call to give powers to the Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to seize any company whose collapse could put the broader economy at risk.

Read that again:

The Treasury has been rolling out its proposals piecemeal. It announced Wednesday a central plank of the U.S. effort: a call to give powers to the Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to seize any company whose collapse could put the broader economy at risk.

So if you are too successful and get really big, the government can seize you. Of course, the details are a bit sketchy…

It isn't clear which companies would be brought under this umbrella. Administration officials believe they could include banks' parent companies, insurance conglomerates and certain hedge funds, among others. They said it would depend on a company's size, leverage, reliance on short-term funding and role in the financial system.

So the plan is pretty vague in terms of what this all looks like. I can tell you what it looks like, it looks like another step toward socialism. Given this vague plan, what is to stop the gubmint from seizing companies on whatever pretense they like?

"Because we have learned from the current crisis that destabilizing dangers can come from financial institutions besides banks, our plan will give the government the tools to limit the risk-taking at firms that could set off cascading damage," Mr. Geithner told the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday, the same day the Treasury laid out how such a process might work.

Government officials believe the new authority might give policy makers a powerful club to demand strategic or management changes at companies.

We already have limits on risk. It is called the market. If you take a bad risk, you fail and someone else wins. That is capitalism. Business is predicated on taking calculated risks, and there has always been a trade-off for risk and return. Nothing good comes from this intervention, where the government can decide that company A is too big for its britches, steps in and seizes it. Never mind that the biggest skewing of the risk-reward system is the Federal government stepping in to prop up failed companies, thus rewarding and subsidizing failure. Let’s give them more power (and more of our money) to tinker around with the financial system and the private sector!

The proposal would allow the FDIC to sell the company's assets and renegotiate or reject existing contracts. This could give the government leverage to ban bonuses at struggling firms, but it could also raise questions among counterparties as to whether existing contracts might survive government seizure.

The FDIC would also be able to replace directors and senior executives and "none of these actions would be subject to the approval of the institution's creditors or other stakeholders," the Treasury said.

That throws a monkey wrench into the whole system. Businesses operate by being able to raise capital. They raise capital by borrowing from banks and by issuing debt (which is basically what a bond is). They also raise capital by issuing stock to shareholders who become the owners of the company. They do business by entering into contracts with suppliers, customers and employees. When you add into the equation that the government can arbitrarily grab a business and toss all of the contracts out of the window, that means that doing business with bigger businesses becomes extremely risky. If you are an executive, you will shy away from working at a company where your employment contract and bonus structure can be negated by an act of the government. If you are a supplier, you will negotiate higher prices to offset the risk that the government will come in and redo your contracts. If you are a customer and contract for goods or services with a business, you have to build in the uncertainty that your business arrangements can be done away with at the stroke of a pen, leaving you with no legal recourse. In essence, this makes private companies wards of the state because the relationship between debt holders (people who hold corporate bonds) and stakeholders (people who own the company through stock, the shareholders) is radically changed. No longer will they have the final say on the way companies are run, now that power lies in the hands of bureaucrats

I actually think that President Obama and Secretary Geithner are fully aware of this. For all of his flowery talk of how he believes in the private sector, I don’t believe it for a second because his policies don’t match his rhetoric. His walk doesn’t match his teleprompter talk. As it becomes harder and harder for the bigger companies to do business, eventually the case can be made to nationalize them. One of the hallmarks of communism is the state holding the means of production. In a post-industrial society, it is less important to hold factories and farms, and far more important to control information and capital. That is the path we are on, as finances, the auto industry, socialized health care, control of our children virtually from the moment of birth with the “Zero to Five” plan, universal preschool and universal college, all adds up to the Federal government holding all of the strings of the economy. Think about the real means of production today and then look at the moves proposed by the administration. It becomes really easy to see that the dreams of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao and Castro are seeing their fruition. Not in Cuba or China or Venezuela, but right here in America. As America goes, so the world goes. The Marxist radicals have always known this and they have their greatest opening in 100 years right now, right here.

Oops!

For most of his brief administration, President Obama and his henchmen have spared no effort in demonizing Wall Street, bankers, captains of industry, pretty much any business that makes a profit. The rationale for flogging Wall Street? According to the Wall Street Journal, a lot of it has to do with opinion polls.

Mr. Obama and his aides regularly and publicly criticized financial firms for buying private planes and redecorating offices and hosting lavish parties. The talk was fueled in part by the results of surveys by New York pollster Joel Benensen, commissioned by the Democratic Party, which Mr. Axelrod regularly reviews. The polls consistently showed that the public blames big financial firms for the current mess, and is hesitant to offer aid.

As outrage directed at Wall Street starts to spill over to the politicians who loaned them hundreds of billions in tax dollars, and as they start to realize that a lot of what they plan to push through is going to require private sector cooperation, now the administration is “reaching out” to Wall Street. The problem is the same as with a dog you constantly kick, eventually it starts to flinch. In other words, the private sector is even more leery of the government than before. The administration is planning on enticing private investors (who want to make a profit of course) into buying devalued loan assets, with the expectation that they will increase in value and then the investor can sell them. The investor makes a profit, the government hopefully has limited exposure and banks can start to shed a ton of loans that are dragging them down. Sounds great, but if I am an investor with money to spend, do I really want to make a Faustian deal with the Federal Government as my partner? These same people who are trying to retroactively tax legal bonuses for AIG are sure to look at big profits from Secretary Geithner’s plan (accompanied by big risks) and say that these investors made a profit using tax dollars. Who wants to risk their profits on the forbearance of Congress? There are far less risky investment options out there. As the Journal pointed out, who wants to risk being the next person being deposed in front of Barney Frank and friends, eager to score political points for excoriating evil capitalists, investors who *GASP* dared to make a profit.

Much of this stems from the people that the President is surrounding himself with. Instead of filling up the ranks of the administration with business people, Obama has been picking academics and bureaucrats. Say what you will about the malfeasance of some on Wall Street, the worst run business is unarguably worlds more efficient than the Federal government and most of these academics are in academia instead of the business world because they don’t have what it takes to run a business and their economic theories prove disastrous in the real world (more on that in an upcoming post). These are not exactly the people you want to have making all of our nation’s economic policies. So we find ourselves in a time of crisis with a bunch of politicians, economists with theories that are laughable anywhere other than conferences and universities and opinion pollsters running the “recovery”.

Our problem is not that we have invested too little power in government, it is that we have invested too much. This was evident in the Bush administration where “compassionate conservatism” meant talk like a conservative but spend like a liberal. Now we have Obama, who talks like a liberal and spends like a socialist. Things are not getting better folks.

A billion dollars an hour!

Here is another sobering way to look at the new Administration has been spending our money from Elaine Chao:

The Obama administration's zeal to not "waste a good crisis," as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it, has been stunning even for Washington insiders to behold. In the first 50 days of Barack Obama's presidency, Congress approved $1.2 trillion dollars in new spending, or $24 billion a day. That's $1 billion every hour. The national debt now is $11 trillion and climbing.

A billion dollars in new spending per hour.

Wow.

Yet people say that Obama is not a socialist. That is what he has done in less than two months and we still have 46 months more to go. Maybe we should encourgae him to spend more time on Leno and working on his NCAA brackets, he can cause less mischief that way.

Never let a crisis go to waste!

That is something of a mantra for the Obama administration. In an incredibly bold admission, Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both stated publicly that a good crisis shouldn’t be wasted. In other words, use the economic crisis and ensuing panic to push through your agenda that perhaps would be unpalatable during normal times. Rest assured that in these early days, President Obama and his puppet-masters in the Congress and liberal special interest groups will waste no time cramming as much socialism into place as possible. His poll numbers are waning fast, in spite of the rosy reports from the complicit media. Time is not on his side, so we find ourselves watching the spectacle of a two month overhaul of the relationship between the public and private sector that we have not seen in generations, perhaps ever.

The first two waves have been passed, the pork and social engineering filled “stimulus package” and the massive deficit expanding Federal budget. Next up for Obama is socialized medicine, accomplished through a vastly expanded Federal health insurance mandate along with the whispering of “The Return of Porkulus”. Already, before a nickel of the first “stimulus” bill has been spent, some loyal Democrats in safe seats (i.e. David Obey of Wisconsin) are hinting around at the need for a second stimulus package, likely as large if not larger, than the first one. This is a clever bit of old school politics as usual (weren’t we promised “change”?). Rather than the President coming right out and saying he wants another stimulus bill, he has his loyalist troops raise the issue, sort of easing you into it. Once the initial outrage starts to settle down, Obama can roll out his panic mode speeches, assuring us of calamities unimaginable if we don’t pass yet another stimulus bill. The threat of calamity worked well once, why not a second time?

One major piece of legislation that is a crown jewel in the Obama crown is the so-called card check legislation. It also is getting very little attention because the details would strike most Americans as being, for lack of a better word, un-American. In a nutshell, this legislation will change the way unions organize by allowing a workplace to be collectively bargained if they get more than 50% of employees to sign a card. This is not a secret ballot. It is Joe the local union organizer walking up to you and asking you to sign a card. If you don’t, that amounts to a vote against the union and you can be assured that your public vote of “no” will be remembered. Certainly there has never been even a whiff of intimidation tactics being employed by labor unions toward recalcitrant workers who didn’t sign on to the union agenda! Ask anyone trying to cross a picket line. The reason we have a secret ballot in this country for virtually ever election, including voting for class president and dog catcher, is to allow people to vote their conscience without fear of intimidation or reprisal. Now in a bold effort to take that basic American protection away from American workers, we see what amounts to a green light for intimidation of workers by union organizers. Funny, I thought the Democrats were supposed to be the party watching out for the working man? I guess that only applies if you are a union working man.

Ominously, the economy is showing early signs of recovery as the credit markets start to stabilize. That has nothing to do with anything done by the Obama administration (which has done nothing to address the credit crisis even though virtually every expert agrees that the credit market collapse was the impetus of the general economic malaise), but be sure that as the economy naturally rebounds as it always does and does so in spite of Obama’s policies, Obama and his media cronies will spin the recovery as a vindication of his big government policies, and give him the cover he needs to further march us down the road of European style socialism and economic ruin.

Redundancy Alert!

Chavez Urges Obama to Turn to Socialism

In a plea evoking Darth Vader's attempt to turn Luke Skywalker to the dark side, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday urged President Obama to join the socialist movement.

"I recommend to Obama -- they're criticizing him because they say he's moving towards socialism -- come Obama, ally with us on the path to socialism, it's the only road," he said on Venezuelan state television, according to a Bloomberg report.

"Imagine a socialist revolution in the U.S. Nothing is impossible," he added

Um, like he isn't aleady charging headlong that way as it is? Encouraging Obama to embrace socialism is like encouraging me to eat jelly donuts. Neither of us needs any encouragement.

It is bad and our “leader” is making it worse

We are in the midst of an economic collapse that is rapidly changing the financial landscape of America. Every day it seems we get more bad news. Today, we get the grim news that unemployment is at 8.1%, the economy lost 651,000 jobs last month and the total for the recession tips the scale at 4 million jobs lost. With the looming prospect of General Motors seeking bankruptcy protection and a number of banks in real danger of collapsing, the economy is really on the precipice of a serious turn for the worse (believe it or not). Americans, especially older Americans, are faced with a retirement date that is moving further away each day. These are scary times for a lot of people. America needs clear, positive leadership. That is not what we are getting.

As Peggy Noonan pointed out in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, President Obama sees this crisis as an opportunity to push through sweeping changes to our nation. Changes in how we do business, health care, taxes, banking, defense. Seismic changes to the relationship between the government and the people, with the government taking on a much larger and vastly more expensive role in American life. All under the guise of fixing what ails our nation. The recession is providing political camouflage for new policies of tax increases, socialized medicine, massive income redistributionist policies and an exploding national debt.

This is a time for leadership, a time for stabilization. Americans need to turn on the TV and see our President being frank and honest about the challenges we face, but also providing the leadership and vision we need to get out of the economic morass we are in. What we are getting instead is a man who is trying to build a legacy, making a name for himself at the expense of the economy and the long term future of America. Most Presidents, especially two term presidents late in their second term, start to worry about what their “legacy” will be. How will history and future generations of Americans view their Presidency? President Obama seems to be preoccupied with trying to forge his legacy RIGHT NOW, in March of 2009, a scant two months into his administration. Instead of being a leader, taking charge and leading this country forward, when Obama acts or speaks he seems to make things worse. The stock market should have stabilized by now, but it continues to drop because the policies being put forth by this administration are hurting America’s hopes for long term growth and economic vitality. We need solutions that will stabilize the economy and address the fundamental problems, painful though that will be. Instead we get massive pork spending under the guise of “stimulus”. The same institution that brings you the DMV is about to seize an enormous parcel of the economic system of this country and turn it into an inefficient, wealth destroying shell of itself that looks more like the weak economies of once great nations in Europe and a lot less like the economy that had been the envy of the rest of the world throughout my lifetime.

Millions of older Americans have seen their invested wealth evaporate. That is not a big deal for me. At 37, I am entering my peak earning years and this is a great time to sock money away. But for those who are approaching retirement age or are already retired, the stock market downturn has turned into a free for all. Where is the leadership? We cannot count on future generations making up the shortfall because the ranks of the elderly continue to grow and the replacement rate of new workers continues to fall, thanks to the new American worldview that children are a burden, an economic line item and a threat to the environment.

I am pretty sure that the Obama team, like most of America, has little idea what has gotten us into this situation and even less idea of how to get us out. I also don’t think that they care. This is an opportunity the likes of which the American Left has not had since before Nixon to radically reshape this nation and they are not wasting a minute in enacting it. One hopes that the enduring legacy of the Obama administration is not that they used the current recession as cover for a Leftward lurch because in normal times the American people would reject neo-socialism. This is a time for us to be getting the truth from our leaders, but unfortunately the truth is a scarce commodity that is becoming increasingly rare.

The two pronged attack by liberalism

First, we had a panic induced piece of legislation pushed through that dramatically increased the size of the government. Labeled a “stimulus” bill, the reality is that what the bill contained was mostly pork, social welfare spending and income redistribution policies. Very little in the bill will create jobs and even less of it will lead to long term economic growth. That is the first wave.

Now we are seeing the other hand, a panic about the size of the deficit that is being created in large part by the giant spending bill that Obama just signed! That is the insidious genius of Obama, that he gets people in a panic to fix the mess he just made worse! What is the solution of the Obama White House to reduce the deficit? Cutting spending? Of course not!

Mr. Geithner said that the proposed budget will reduce deficits in part by "restoring fairness to the tax code." That will be accomplished by taxing the gains of Wall Street fund managers at ordinary income rates, instead of lower capital gains rates.

In Washington speak, “restoring fairness to the tax code” means big tax increases, but as pointed out before even taxing every taxable penny of “the rich” who already pay the lion’s share of taxes will not do the trick. It goes without saying that between the giant deficit spending bills Obama has pushed through in the first two months of his administration and the looming unfunded mandates of Medicare and Social Security, the only way to pull it off is going to be deeper and wide tax increases, some directly on your income and others indirectly or more subtly in gas taxes and the carbon emission “cap and trade” scheme that will pass enormous costs on to business and eventually consumers. Nothing like crippling a seriously damaged economy by punishing success, investment, innovation and risk taking,

Rest assured that we will keep hearing the refrain of this mess being Bush’s fault, but it is instructive to note that since Obama has taken office and especially since he announced this ludicrous $4,000,000,000,000 budget, the stock markets have plummeted to lows we haven’t seen since 1997. At some point, even an apathetic public is going to have to see beyond the media spin and realize that Obama is bent on driving this country into economic ruin and a mirror image of the failed Western European social welfare state.

So just how big is the “stimulus” package?

Here is an interesting analogy I heard at church yesterday. I went back and did the numbers because I couldn’t believe it was accurate, but it was.

If you spent a million dollars a day, that is $1,000,000 every day, from the Resurrection to today (approximately 1,976 years assuming a Resurrection date of around 33 A.D.), you would have spent $721,734,000,000. That is 65 billion less, $65,000,000,000 LESS, than the government is going to spend in one bill to “stimulate” the economy.

That would have bought a lot of sandals back in the day.

Now an unborn child is not merely a "punishment"

It can be analogous to slavery.

In a famous clip, which I have linked to here, Barack Obama as a candidate said he would not want his daughters, if they "made a mistake" to be "punished with a baby". Now we have an official in the Justice Department who made an even more shocking claim, as detailed by National Review. This is from a amicus brief filed by Dawn Johnson for the Webster v. Reproductive Health Services case.

Statutes that curtail [a woman’s] abortion choice are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest.

So a high ranking official in the Justice Department claimed in 1989 that anti-abortion legislation runs afoul of the 13th amendment to the United States Constitution and restrictions on abortion are similar to slavery because a pregnant mother is in forced servitude to another person, i.e. the child that she is carrying.

Despite the fact that National Review can provide documentation to back up this quote, a written quote, Ms. Johnson denies that she made a linkage between the 13th amendment and abortion laws. In response to questioning by pro-abortion "Republican" Senator Arlen Specter in her confirmation hearing (presumably under oath), she made the following statement:

Johnson: I did write the part that you quoted, absolutely. Um, I have never argued that there’s a Thirteenth Amendment violation um, when, um, the government restricts abortion. Uh, that — I was shocked when I saw that. It took me a while to search and find what they were referring to. They made other claims that were clearly false. Uh — Here they — I did write a brief 20 years ago. Uh — In footnote 23, I found, makes um, um, a suggestion that there may be an analogy, um, between, not what the article said, pregnancy, which I’ve been blessed with twice and have two wonderful sons, but forced childbirth. This is a brief that I filed arguing that the right to privacy protects, um, the right of women and their families to make these choices and that Roe v. Wade should be upheld, which is in 1989. I made no Thirteenth Amendment argument. I can state categorically: I do not believe the Thirteenth Amendment is relevant at all. It was a straight Fourteenth Amendment argument.

Now whole thing is a flat out lie. I made no Thirteenth Amendment argument? She specifically references the Thirteenth Amendment and contextually is referring to slavery!

So we have someone in the Justice Department who has a view of the Constitution that is so distorted that she equates a woman being restricted from getting an abortion with slavery to the state and servitude by being "forced" as a woman to care for a child in her womb that got there by almost any means with her willing participation. Plus she is lying and misrepresenting something she wrote in a Congressional hearing. At a minimum she should be disqualified from serving in the Justice Department and she really by rights ought to be on trial for perjury. But this is par for the course in the Obamanation. I guess my wife is due reparations from the kids for the servitude she was forced to endure.

This is the most anti-life administration in history. That is dismissed by some as merely empty rhetoric, but it is true. The new Secretary of Health & Human Services (a grimly ironic title) has been asked to refrain from taking communion by the Catholic archbishop of northeastern Kansas because she hosted an event for an abortionist, in the Governor's residence, who has been indicted on 19 charges of breaking the law in performing late term abortions. Adds a whole new spin on the title "Health and Human Services".

Welcome to "life" in the Obamanation.

More on the budgetary smoke and mirrors

It is pretty easy to put forth a budget and explain how you are going to pay for it when reality has no bearing on those numbers. In a masterful job of talking out of both sides of your mouth and getting away with it, President Obama is signing hundreds of billions in new pork barrel spending one day, calling for fiscal restraint and a reduction of the deficit on the next day and then proposing a massive budget with hundreds of billions in new spending on health insurance above and beyond what is already in place in an era of declining revenue. He claims that he can find savings in wasteful spending and by letting tax cuts expire on “the rich” and only impact the top 2% of taxpayers.

One word for you: Baloney!

In a piece titled “The 2% Illusion”, the Wall Street Journal lays to rest the notion that we can have an enormous increase in spending and only those rich fat cats are going to have to pay for it.

One of the most grotesque aspects of the modern Democrat Party is their faux populism. When you see filthy rich white liberals proclaiming the need for the rich to pay their fair share while riding in limos and flying first class, alarm bells should be going off. Although the Left doesn’t like facts, they are troublesome to set aside and these are the facts when it comes to the rich paying “their fair share”:

Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

Even taking the neo-socialist agenda of Obama and company to its logical extreme and taking every taxable dime of the “rich” is not going to get it done…

But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

Ah those facts, so troubling and inconvenient!

A 2010 Federal budget of almost four trillion dollars (that is $4,000,000,000,000) means that given the approximately 300 million people in America, the Federal government is spending (and taxing and borrowing) on your behalf around $13,000+ for every man, woman and child. With a median household income in 2007 of $50,233 nationally, and presuming an average household size of four people (two adults and two kids) that means that we have approximately 75 million households in America. Thus the Federal government in 2010 is spending the equivalent of $52,000 per household, which is more than the media household income nationally. These statistics may be a little off, I am not using a scientific metholodgy here but the point remains that the Federal government in 2010 is proposing to spend more per household than the median household makes in a year. Does anyone else see a problem with that?

So what do you get for $787,000,000,000?

Not much. The Wall Street Journal put together a nice chart of the spending allocations for the Porkulus Bill. The Journal is about the only national paper that you can get news from that doesn’t have reporters screaming and fainting like teen girls at a Jonas Brothers concert over Obama. This chart does not drill down to the 9000 earmarked pet projects, this is just the “big picture”. The picture it paints is hardly what a rational person would expect to find in a bill that was foisted on us as being our only hope to stave off catastrophe. Here is a sample…

Salaries for staff to modernize IT system at Farm Service Agency: $50,000,000

Adult and child day care meals and snacks: $100,000,000

Extra money for Census: $1,000,000,000

National Cemetery renovations and repairs: $50,000,000

The internet is a big winner in the Porkulus Bill (which is only right since Al Gore invented it and he should have been President anyway because he should have won Florida even though none of the counts showed him getting more actual votes than George Bush) . In a time of economic crisis, nothing is more important than people being able to get high speed internet. How can we have a functioning economy without YouTube clips and illegally downloaded music!

Salaries and expenses for program to create broadband inventory map of the country: $350,000,000 (that is an expensive map!)

Grants to provide wireless and broadband infrastructure to communities, including public computer centers and sustainable adoption of broadband service: $4,350,000,000

Broadband grants to rural communities (farmers need YouTube too!): $2,500,000,000

Absolutely vital , each and ever line item. Think how catastrophic it would be if the Farm Service Agency didn’t get updated computers. Oh the humanity! Snacks for elderly daycare, yummy! Renovations to the National Cemetery. On and on and on. No wonder they crammed this thing through before people got a good look at it. How can we live without $85,000,000 for “Indian Health Services IT development and deployment” or $50,000,000 for “Grants to fund arts projects in non-profit sector”?

The best part is the money going back to states. So on our behalf, the Federal government is going to take almost $800,000,000,000 from us in taxes and debt. Then they are going to filter that through Washington, D.C. Then they are going to send a huge chunk of it to Governor Jennifer Granholm, paragon of fiscal responsibility and sound government (who else can brag that even though the whole nation is in a recession, Michigan has been in a deeper and worse recession than any other state. We’re number 1!). Once Jenny gets done tinkering around with our money, she and the state legislature are then going to dole it out to pet projects all around the state. Meanwhile, the average Michigander still won’t be able to sell their house, find a new job or send their kids to a decent school.

Remember that when this was passed, it was designed to head of economic collapse and food riots in the streets. Some of this spending is useful, some of it may be vital. But don’t sell us a bill that is designed to head of imminent collapse and then hide a bunch of random spending in it and still tell us it is a “stimulus” bill. It is nothing but a massive expansion of the Federal government and did nothing to fix the major issues that are crippling the economy, i.e. a train wreck in the consumer and business credit markets.

This is pork barrel spending on an unprecedented level, and it was sold to America by scare-mongering in D.C. with the willing participation and encouragement of the mainstream media. All that is left now is for the American people to pay back the $800,000,000,000 bill.