There is an increasingly nasty battle brewing in the Republican race for the nomination to run against Democrat incumbent Tim Bishop in the First Congressional District in New York.  With jobs and the economy the number one issue across the nation, the petty personal attacks may result in potential Republican voters staying home in disgust.

In an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “New York’s GOP Never Learns,” Kim Strassel concludes her article by saying, “The effect has been to enrage and divide a New York party that should have bigger things on its mind. Say, winning this fall.” 

Chris Cox is trying to play catch-up to the front runner Randy Altschuler who has been actively campaigning for more than a year.  The difficulty for Mr. Cox is that his positions are not that different than those of Mr. Altschuler.  So, while Mr. Altschuler has been taking on the Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop and Bishop’s lockstep voting with Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Cox has resorted to attacking Mr. Altschuler.  Not to leave his flank unprotected, Mr. Altschuler has been forced to respond and now the race, with two weeks to go before the primary on September 14^th, has degenerated into a mudslinging contest.  There is a third candidate, George Demos, who is lobbing attacks from the rear with little effect.

Each candidate is calling themselves the “true conservative,” and Mr. Cox has garnered the support of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project the self-proclaimed “Largest Tea Party organization in Suffolk County.”  Mr. Cox’s father, Ed Cox, is the head of the New York State GOP.  Ms. Strassel reports that the senior Mr. Cox, backed Steve Levy over Rick Lazio for governor to curry favor with the Suffolk County GOP chairman to back his son.  It is all the kind of backroom political dealing that have attracted a rush of newcomer candidates and put incumbents of both parties on the endangered species list.

The Tea Party Endorsement

What caught my eye was the endorsement of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project and the announcement by Bob Meyer, co-founder.  He gave as one of his primary reasons that, Randy Altschuler was one of those people, “getting rich off the backs of hardworking Americans by outsourcing their jobs.”  That sounds more like Jimmy Hoffa, Andy Stern, or Barack Obama’s class warfare than any Tea Partier I know.  A commenter on the 9-12 Project’s site, Judyann Joyner added, “Randy is credited with the creation of ‘white collar sweatshops in India.’”  Pretty strong stuff.  I don’t know if Ms. Joyner or Mr. Meyer visited the company that Mr. Altschuler co-founded in India, but Business Week magazine did.

“The lights burn day and night in the gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street in the southern Indian city of Madras. Here at OfficeTiger, 1,500 young men and women peer into computers 24 hours a day, analyzing and processing U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission reports and other documents drawn up by lawyers and bankers on Wall Street. Walking the floor, sometimes even at 3 a.m., is 34-year-old co-founder and co-Chief Executive Joseph Sigelman.”

Just because the office operates 24 hours per day, don’t been conned into thinking the same people are at their desks 24 hours a day.  “Gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street,” yup, sounds like a hellhole to me.  Business Week added, “Indeed, OfficeTiger is the only successful startup in India’s $5 billion outsourcing industry that is owned and managed by a U.S. entrepreneur.”  So we have an American company making money in India, in what seems to be a rather large and competitive field, and this is a bad thing?  Since when did conservatives turn into protectionists?  But what about the jobs they replaced?  Okay, let’s examine that. 

You have some Wall Street firms that are in a competitive business.  A young entrepreneur comes up with an idea to reduce operating expenses by having an external company handle routine clerical tasks that are not one of the firm’s key competencies, that is, people don’t buy that firm’s services because of their typing skills.  The company outsources and reduces costs.  By reducing costs, they prosper and grow; by growing they create more high skill jobs like lawyers, accountants, financial analysts, IT people, etc.  Perhaps even some of the former typists, because of their computer skills can move of the ladder to spreadsheets, and databases.  Do some people lose their jobs, yes, just as buggy whip makers lost their jobs when the automobile came on the scene.  Okay, let’s shift to India.

In India white collar jobs are created; their standard of living improves; they buy consumer goods like iPods and iPhones and their offices need sophisticated IT equipment from companies like Cisco Systems which grow companies like Apple and Cisco creating jobs in the U.S. We live in a global economy and if we want prosperity and peace, the best way to get there is through free markets.  Even Mr. Cox in the policy section of his website blames government policies for companies outsourcing jobs overseas.  If it is the government’s policies that make these jobs uncompetitive here and Mr. Cox knows it, why is Mr. Altschuler wrong for reacting to it and helping American companies that use these services remain competitive?

After selling Office Tiger to RR Donnelly, Mr. Altschuler started another company in the U.S., CloudBlue, that recycles old IT equipment.  So we have an entrepreneur that has started a couple of companies that have created jobs around the world and that makes him a villain?  Perhaps Mr. Meyer should go back and read some of the quotes on his own website:

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.” – Dr. Adrian Rogers

“I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” – Thomas Jefferson

Mr. Meyer’s key criticism of Mr. Altschuler smacks of the government picking winners and losers.  This business is okay, but not that one.  If your business creates jobs overseas that is bad, but if it creates jobs here it is okay.  Well, Mr. Altschuler has done both and he has firsthand experience doing so, which is what we sorely lack in Washington.  If the strategy of Mr. Cox continues, including creating another party, the TaxPayer party, to run on and split the vote further, Mr. Cox might as well mail his strategy over to the Bishop campaign as I am sure they will find it very useful in the general election.  Not my cup of tea.

The focus should be on defeating the out of control spenders in Congress who got us into this mess, not fighting each other to the death and let the incumbent waltz back into office.  The time is now.  Mr. Cox should focus on what he would do as a Congressman that is better than Tim Bishop and Mr. Altschuler.  If he can’t articulate that, he should drop out.  He is not going to win a lot of support by throwing mud at his fellow Republicans.

Note: In the spirit of full disclosure I have done some volunteer work for the Altschuler campaign

We have come to expect a fight whenever a seat opens up on the Supreme Court as there are distinct battle lines between conservatives who believe the Constitution should be interpreted how it was written and liberal/progressives view it in light of what they feel it should be today.  In other words, conservatives approach the Constitution with a magnifying glass while liberal/progressives approach it with an eraser and pencil.

I happen to believe that elections have consequences and that for the most part the president should be allowed to nominate who he chooses to fill a Supreme Court vacancy and have them approved.  However, as Democrats like to point out when a Republican sits in the White House, the Senate has a Constitutional role to give advice and consent on such nominees, not just rubber stamp them, which is true enough.  Unfortunately, today the advice and consent process is almost a sham, because the nominees have learned how to keep their mouths shut and defer from answering all but the blandest questions under the cover that it may come up before them in a case on the court.  We can thank Ted Kennedy for this as he turned the advice and consent role into an opportunity to smear a nominee, Judge Robert Bork, in the most vile and mendacious way to pander to the base of the Democratic Party.  Since then, it’s been lights out on any serious probing of the thought process of nominees to our highest court.

But what about Elena Kagan?  After the Senate Judiciary panel approved her nomination along nearly party lines (Lindsey Graham – R voted in favor) most Americans (87%) believe she will be confirmed, according to Rasmussen.  However, in the same poll Americans oppose her nomination 42% to 36%.  Is she qualified to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court?

One of the arguments against her is that she has never been a judge before.  That is true, but it is also true for about one-third of past Supreme Court justices.  However, among those past Supreme Court justices who were not judges, they had on average 20 years experience in the private practice of law.  Ms. Kagan has two years experience in private practice, two years.  The rest of her experience in academia or government service. 

Before her current position of Solicitor General, she had never argued a case at a trial.  She has no judicial experience, next to no private practice experience, and thanks to Ted Kennedy, she revealed as little as possible about her judicial philosophy to get confirmed.  Her key strength, according to Barack Obama, is her ability to build consensus.  I’ll give you a translation of what that really means.  Her job will be to vote with the liberal bloc of the Supreme Court and use her persuasive powers on Anthony Kennedy to peel him off and generate as many 5-4 wins as possible.  President Obama does little without a purpose and his purpose is to pull the Supreme Court in the same direction as the laws he has jammed through against the will of the American people.

Despite the approval of the Judiciary committee, an effort must be mounted to reject or filibuster her approval.  How can we accept someone with so little in the way of qualifications to a lifetime appointment?  We know next to nothing about her judicial philosophy.  There are no cases on which she has written opinions that can be examined.  With regard to what she has written in the government service she simply says I was acting as an advocate for my client, and those are not necessarily my views.  Who could argue with that?  So what are her views?  We don’t know and like Nancy Pelosi claimed with the health care monstrosity, “we’ll just have to pass it to find out what’s in it.”  With a lifetime appointment, you can’t take it back later if you disagree with her eventual positions.  The track record of the “Trust me” presidency is downright frightening.

With all due respect to Elena Kagan, I don’t see how we can idly sit by and silently accept another Obama abomination of ramming through his agenda without regard for the people who elected him.  He is essentially asking us to grant a lifetime appointment that could profoundly affect our liberties, to someone who is a blank slate that we know little about. He should withdraw the nominee and submit another candidate.

This week we saw President Obama come out swinging to that old class warfare tune.  Lashing out at Republicans in Congress for not adding to the deficit by extending unemployment benefits, he implied they were heartless and cruel.  The president used the same tired prop of the straw man, that is, accusing “the same people” without naming any of those people.  He uses this tactic because if he actually named the people he was accusing he would have to produce facts to back up the charges and Obama, as usual, doesn’t have any.

But here’s what he does have.  He has a record of focusing his energy on passing ObamaCare instead of focusing on growing the economy.  He is layering on more uncertainty of huge government programs and impending taxes that are scaring most small businesses from any hiring until the dust settles and they can tally up the bill.  He has Republicans who are ready to go along with the extension in benefits, if and only if, they are paid for.  With only about half of the $787 billion stimulus bill money spent, which is working fabulously by the way, taking the needed $30 billion from that kitty should be obvious. 

President Obama also has a chief economic advisor named Larry Summers.  Mr. Summers wrote an article on unemployment for the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics while at Harvard and in it he raised the following points:

• Government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment is by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work.
• Unemployment insurance also extends the time a person stays off the job. [Colleague Kim] Clark and I estimated that the existence of unemployment insurance almost doubles the number of unemployment spells lasting more than three months.
• If unemployment insurance were eliminated, the unemployment rate would drop by more than half a percentage point, which means that the number of unemployed people would fall by about 750,000.
• Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization. High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy. Also, those who lose high-wage union jobs are often reluctant to accept alternative low-wage employment.

It seems as if President Obama has painted himself into a corner.  The stubbornly high unemployment numbers are poised to ravage the Democrats in the mid-term elections.  But if his advisor, Mr. Summers, is to be believed, the unemployment benefits he is trying to use as a campaign issue against the Republicans is probably propping up the unemployment numbers.

The American people have reached their limit on deficit spending and want it reined in.  The Democrats put in place something called Paygo, which means pay as you go.  If you want something, you have to pay for it.  However, the Democrats are bypassing their own rule at every turn.  You can’t have it both ways, ceremoniously pass a Paygo rule for the purpose of the photo op and to look responsible, and then spend recklessly once the klieg lights go dark.

What prompted this president to conduct his Rose Garden show with three unemployed Americans used as props?  Could it be that Nancy Pelosi is hopping mad that this president has not been helping Democrats to get reelected in the fall?  If so, perhaps that was the point of the Rose Garden performance, nothing but election year politics.  And you wonder why the American people are becoming increasingly cynical about their government?

President Obama’s new tack on the campaign trail is to get people to forget the last year and a half and try to scare the voters by saying, “Remember who got us into this mess and who is getting us out of it.”  Is that supposed to rally the voters to the Democrats jamming budget busting program after budget busting program down their throats?  Let me make two points to any voter to whom that strategy may give pause.

1. George W. Bush isn’t running for office
2. According to the Bureau of Economic Statistics, the recession started in December of 2007.  Who was in control of Congress for a full year by December of 2007?  That’s right, the Democrats.

So if you want to punish those who were in charge when the recession hit, with Bush gone, that leaves the Democrats.  Fire away.

The NAACP was once a proud organization with a noble cause, to advance the lot of people of color.  Today it has abandoned those principles to become just another attack arm of the Democratic Party.  This week they released a resolution condemning racism within the Tea Party movement.

I have been to a number of Tea Party events with hundreds of thousands of peaceful orderly participants and racism was not evident, surprisingly so.  I say surprisingly because with any gathering of that magnitude to have a few fringe elements at either end of the spectrum would almost be expected.  So is it possible there are racist elements at any given event? Sure.  It is routine in the Tea Party?  It is so rare, you have to aggressively search to find it and when you do, what proof is there that they are really Tea Party members or supporters or just some wacko who walked into the crowd with a sign?

Let’s look at the Strategy

The left has tried vainly to paint the Tea Party as racist because that is the most toxic label that they have.  The racist label brings out the black electorate, polarizes  the progressives, mortifies the moderates, and makes conservatives cringe.  If they can make it stick it is very effective.  It is also overused and as such, it is losing its sting.  So how do you make it stick? 

One way is to follow what the NAACP is doing.  Pass a resolution condemning racism and demand the Tea Party repudiate racism in their ranks, which by the way is virtually non-existent.  If you can cow the Tea Party members to take the pledge, then the liberal/progressives  can plant racists at each rally with nasty signs, videotape them and then blame the Tea Party for failing to honor their pledge and thus “proving” racism is in the ranks of the Tea Party and it cannot be eradicated.  This is straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

Let’s Look at the Facts

This is from the NAACP web site:

“Today, NAACP delegates passed a resolution to condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party, calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.”

I was a marshal at the Tea Party rally in New York on April 15^th this year.  We were concerned about reports on the street that infiltrators with racist signs might show up to garner media attention, which to that point had been rather thin.  What were we to do?  We couldn’t take their signs away, we couldn’t touch them as they had as much of a right to be there as we did.  We came up with the idea that we would carry signs repudiating the person that our signs pointed to.  We would approach the person, politely, tell them that their sign did not comport with the values of the Tea Party and ask them to put the sign away or leave.  If they did not comply, we would surround them with our signs that said those views of that individual were not consistent with the Tea Party so that any media picking up their sign would see ours as well.  If things got aggressive we would call in the police that were on hand.  To my knowledge we never had to use our tactic as there were no racially offensive signs at the rally.  We did not need a resolution by the NAACP to develop our counter strategy.  It was part of our core beliefs, which puts the big lie to the NAACP’s resolution.

More from the NAACP web site:

“The resolution came after a year of high-profile media coverage of attendees of Tea Party marches using vial, antagonistic racial slurs & images. In March, respected members of the Congressional Black Caucus reported that racial epithets were hurled at them as they passed by a Washington, DC health care protest. Civil rights legend John Lewis was called the “n-word” in the incident while others in the crowd used ugly anti-gay slurs to describe Congressman Barney Frank, a long-time NAACP supporter and the nation’s first openly gay member of Congress.”

The first part of this passage was almost laughable.  High profile media coverage?  The lame stream media has been trying to bury the Tea Party by not covering them.  What main stream media coverage was there in Washington in September of 2009 where several hundred thousand Tea Partiers rallied?  It was dismissed as a couple of thousand.

Nancy Pelosi’s stunt to march through a crowd of Tea Party members to pass the Obamacare bill, did draw a lot of media attention and controversy.  Show us the money!  Andrew Breitbart put up $100,000 to anyone who could produce any video evidence that the things claimed in the above quote from the NAACP actually happened.  There were media cameras and microphones all over the place, hundreds if not thousands of people with cell phone cameras and miraculously not one of them captured what the NAACP claims happened as fact.  John Lewis was invited on several news programs to give his side of the story and he declined.  Mr. Breitbart is still waiting to write that check.  As Groucho Marx famously said, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes?”

NAACP President Ben Jealous had this comment.  “I give a 42-page speech. Half a page is focused on the tea party,” Jealous said. “We need the media to pay attention to the issues that are most important to this country” such as jobs, education, and crime.  Uh, what did you expect sir?  If you wanted the media to pay attention to the other 41 ½ pages of your speech, perhaps you should have dropped to bogus charge against the Tea Party.

I scoured the NAACP web site for any mention of the New Black Panther party and the case against them that was dropped by the Obama Justice Department.  The site lacks a search feature so it made it more of a challenge but I looked through the site’s blog and found nothing.  Now here is a case that is plainly caught on video tape and other video tape is found of King Samir Shabazz, spewing racial epithets and advocating murder of whites or “crackers” and their babies, but we hear nothing about this from the NAACP.

So, we have the NAACP issuing a resolution about alleged racism in the Tea Party for which they have no proof (there are some still pictures on their websites of people holding signs, but no reference to where the pictures were taken or who the sign holders were.  They could have just as easily been a plant to smear the Tea Party).  They ask the Tea Party to pledge to oppose racism, which I have demonstrated that opposing racist messages is standard operating procedure among the Tea Party, but they make no mention of the overt racism among their followers, where that racism is clearly on full display in living color with sound and includes not only racist sentiments but a call to actually murder whites.  This apparently is considered worthy discourse to the NAACP leadership.

I call upon all members of the NAACP who really believe there is no place for racism in America to cancel your membership in the NAACP and join the Tea Party.  We do not tolerate racist messages among our members.  We have many African Americans in prominent positions in the Tea Party and we would have more if you join us.  Our positions to end wasteful government spending and free up our economy will probably do more to advance you and your fellow NAACP members than fighting for the next government program.  The NAACP has run aground on the shoals of petty squabbles to help the Democratic Party.  It’s time to abandon ship and swim for shore.

The above opinions are my own.  I do not speak in an official capacity for the Tea Party.

Back on the campaign trail where he feels comfortable that he knows what he is doing, Barack Obama traveled to Las Vegas to stump for Harry Reid.  Harry Reid used to be a boxer and when he told Barack Obama this he said, “Barack, I wasn’t the fastest.  I wasn’t the hardest-hitting, but I knew how to take a punch.”  Based on all the legislation that has been passed since 2008 that an  overwhelming majority of the American people have opposed, makes one wonder if Harry Reid took a few punches too many.

Shortly after taking office and settling into his “bash business” mode Obama blasted businesses for their extravagant meetings held in places like Las Vegas.  Someone then whispered in the president’s ear that extravagant business meetings in Las Vegas were good for Las Vegas and Harry Reid. Oops.  And there you have the crux of the problem.

What, exactly, is government’s role to tell private companies how to spend their money?  What is the role of governments to say to a BP, “Give us the $20 billion, or we’ll take it from you,” as was attributed to Joe Biden, without first going to court?  What is the role of government to say to its citizens, you must buy this health care product or pay a fine?  Well in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, it is probably all fine and dandy, but in America?

Barack, the standup comic, used the analogy that he and Harry Reid had mud on their shoes, were pushing hard to get the car back on the road, and were making progress little-by-little and when they finally got one wheel on the pavement the Republicans want to throw the car into reverse.  Really?  I would compare it more to conservatives telling everyone to get out of the car and help push, instead of waiting for Nancy Pelosi to come back from Dunkin Donuts with free food for all the overweight union bosses jammed in the car squawking that they didn’t do manual labor.  Their contract didn’t call for pushing cars out of ditches. 

So, while this car should have been out of this ditch and well down the road by now, Harry and Barry will try to convince us that what they’re doing is absolutely brilliant; it’s just that we are too stupid to see it.  After all, it took the greatest president in history, FDR, over eight years and a World War to get us out of the Great Depression, so relax we have another 6 ½ years to go.

Imagine what would have happened if the ever resilient American economy was allowed to work on its own without all the government intervention in the 1930s.  Perhaps the Depression would have been shorter like the recession of 1920-1921, and perhaps we would not have had World War II, and Fannie Mae, and a bankrupt Social Security, and a couple of generations later all of us swimming in debt.  It’s time the tow truck of the most powerful economy on the face of the earth to come along and be allowed to do its job.  Tell Harry and Barry to go sit down on that stump over there, and watch how it is really done.  “You’re making a mess of yourselves and embarrassing the rest us.”

The clock is running out on the Democrats.  This week’s dismal jobs report, hailed by this Pollyanna administration as more good news because somebody somewhere hired someone, means the number of job reports before Election Day to is down to three.  So the Democrats are calling for the Hail Mary pass.  Propose extending unemployment benefits and when the Republicans balk unleash a fusillade of class warfare:  cruel, heartless, racist, homophobic, sexist… did I leave anything out?

To extend jobless benefits requires government money.  The government is out of money and is borrowing like mad.  But extending jobless benefits only makes the slightest bit of sense if there are prospects for jobs in the immediate future.  But this government’s policies, despite their delusional happy talk, is the reason we are stuck in a jobless recovery.  This government is intent on adding program after program that someone will have to pay for.  Until the smoke clears and small businesses can tally up the cost, they are not going to hire anyone unless they absolutely have to hire to fulfill whatever book of business they currently have.  But even Democrats who have a prayer of staying in office do not want to spend more money lest that turn into the tipping point to send them packing.

So look for the shrill pitches by Nancy “Unemployment Checks are the Fastest Way to Create Jobs” Pelosi to try to tar fiscally responsible Republicans as heartless.  The way to solve the problem is by allowing the economy to grow and by growing create jobs.  Otherwise we are just kicking the can down the road.  Extend unemployment benefits today while continuing job killing policies, will only mean the same scenario repeating a few months down the road.  People are tired of drawing unemployment checks, they want to draw a salary and that means jobs.  Let’s hope the next three months will be swift and the government house cleaning equally so.  They don’t get it and there is little hope,  given Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre understanding of economics, that they will.  Throw the bums out and let’s get back on the road to recovery.

This is from today’s New York Times:

“Fearing that health insurance premiums may shoot up in the next few years, Senate Democrats laid a foundation on Tuesday for federal regulation of rates, four weeks after President Obama signed a law intended to rein in soaring health costs.”

With the ink barely dry on ObamaCare, Democrats in Congress are scrambling to keep their masterpiece from unraveling.  As I have pointed out repeatedly, there is nothing in the ObamaCare plan that helps reduce the cost of delivering health care.  It is all about controlling what doctors, medical service providers, and insurance companies are paid.  All the underlying pressures on health costs (tort reform, 3rd party payer, etc.) are still in place.

“We Have to Pass the Bill to Know What’s In It”

Nancy Pelosi’s stunning but famous words are coming into play.  Let’s see what has the senators panicked.

• To hoodwink the American people that this abomination is cost effective, ObamaCare warms up by hitting us with four years of taxes before the expensive benefits come into play.
• Every American will be required to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty.  That penalty will initially be $95 per adult in 2014, rising to $695 per adult in 2016 and $2,085 for a family.  This money will be collected by the IRS, not by insurance companies
• Americans cannot be denied coverage for an existing condition

So here’s the scenario.  If you compare the cost of the penalty of $2,085 for a family vs. the cost of insurance for a family of $10,000, coupled with the inability of insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, healthy people will start dropping insurance coverage left and right.  Why not?  On the way to the hospital, you can call an insurance company and say you want to be covered for the pains in your chest and you cannot be denied.  So insurance companies will only have sick people as clients.  With only sick people that they constantly have to pay claims on, their only course of action if they want to stay in business is to raise premiums on all those sick people.  If they start doing it now, they may be able to raise them less than if they wait until 2016.

So the insurance companies are acting rationally to this mess the Democrats dragged across the finish line and now they are shocked, SHOCKED, that they should do this. 

Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a research center that advocates free-market health policies, said the Democrats’ proposal was unlikely to succeed in lowering insurance costs.

“Capping premiums without recognizing the forces that are driving up costs would be like tightening the lid on a pressure cooker while the heat is being turned up,” Mrs. Turner said.

The Democratic fix is to have a new bureaucracy that will provide a check on unjustified premiums.  I think you can look at this in one of two ways, both plausible.  The Democrats were stupid enough to believe, as they typically do, that Americans don’t act rationally to their government policies.  It’s also why they don’t understand that when they raise taxes they never collect as much money as they thought, and when taxes are cut they can’t believe how much money flows into the Treasury due to economic growth.  The second scenario is this new commission will cap premiums to the point of driving private insurance companies out of business and then the Democrats will say, “Geez, we didn’t want to do this, but I guess we have to put in place a public option that, by the way, will be the only option.”

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said: “Health insurance companies’ profits for one year equal about two days of health care spending in the United States. So even if we were to take away all the profits of the so-called greedy insurance companies, that would still leave 363 days a year when health care costs are expanding at a rate our country cannot afford.”

Now that I think about it, it is probably the second scenario that is more likely, that is, force the public option.  Your government is about to swallow up another big chunk of the economy if  we don’t turn them out in November.

Right after the Nancy Pelosi “in your face” parade to the capital to cram ObamaCare into law, the lame stream media filled the airwaves with “news” of those Tea Party Extremists.  They were spitting on a black Congressmen, shouting the “N” word and other ugly things.  In listening to those news stories I pondered the possibility that it was all a page right out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”.  Make false accusations and let the slobbering media do the heavy lifting.  Well perhaps it’s time to re-visit the scene of the crime.

The Unsubstantiated Claims

• Spitting on a black Congressman  — video footage shows a man cupping his hands around his mouth to channel the sound energy as he bellowed his opposition to Pelosi and crew.  A black Congressman walking near by learned the true meaning of “say it, don’t spray it.”  Upon being struck with the vocal protesters spittle, the Congressman said something to him, but the man continued to shout his protests.  There was no clear evidence of someone spitting, in the true sense of the word, on the Congressman.  Perhaps you can call it collateral damage.
• Shouting the “N” word — another individual claimed that the “N” word was shouted at him “at least fifteen times.”  Hundreds of protestors, dozens of cameras, cell phones, police, news media, and no one can produce any evidence to back up this man’s claim.  Esteemed civil rights hero John Lewis was asked to come on several news programs to talk about this but he declined.
• Threats against Congressmen — reports of voice mail threats, faxes of nooses, bricks through windows, all no doubt happened, but no perpetrator has been caught.  Without out a suspect, this could just as easily been done by a left wing supporter to discredit the right as someone on the right.  Until such time as an individual is questioned there is no way to tie this to any Tea Party affiliation.

The Stubborn Facts

Here are some developing news items that you won’t hear reported in the lame stream media.

• There was one arrest regarding a death threat of a Congressman.  That was for a threat against Republican Congressman Eric Cantor.
• The ugly business about protesters at the funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder who died in Iraq.  Members of the Westboro Baptist Church gleefully cheered the death of the brave Marine, saying it was God’s will.  The leader of this movement, Fred Phelps, calls America a “sodomite nation of flag worshiping idolaters.”  He believes all homosexuals should be persecuted.  He has also run for public office five times…as a Democrat.
• When the Hutaree Militia were arrested while plotting to assassinate a police officer and then kill those who attended his funeral, the lame stream media immediately referred to them as a “Christian” militia and ominously tried to link them to those on the right.  The political affiliation of one of the militia members, Jacob J. Ward has recently been uncovered.  He is a registered Democrat.

Let History Be Your Guide

Having attended several Tea Party gatherings, I can report that they were orderly, law abiding, polite and enthusiastic.  Did some expressions of frustration and outrage go a little too far?  Perhaps, but it was rare and limited to what was written on signs. 

However on the left we have real unrepentant bomb throwers (Obama pal Bill Ayers), we have smashing windows in Seattle, and at WTO meetings, we have tables being overturned and thrown at an Ann Coulter speaking engagement in Ottawa.  When the police show up for a left wing demonstration they typically arrive in riot gear.  At a Tea Party people come up to the mounted police and ask if they can pet the horse.  So when things get ugly, who do you think is really behind the nasty business?

In their pledge of openness and transparency in government the House of Representatives takes some pride in putting the health care bill online for 72 hours before voting on it.  Sounds like a good step, no?  Well… that is until you to the math.  If the bill they are voting on is 2,500 pages long you would only have 1.7 minutes to read each page provided you did not eat, sleep, rest your eyes, use the restroom for three straight days!

We have Nancy Pelosi’s famous cry for support, “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”.  Turn one-sixth of the economy over to the government, first, then find out what’s behind door number 1, door number 2, or door number 3.  If you remember from that game show, what was behind one of the doors was a real stinker.  The problem here is we got all three doors.

AT&T reports that they are writing off $1 billion to pay for compliance with the new health care bill.  Guess where they are going to get that $1 billion?  That’s right watch your phone bill.  You are going to be paying for this health care monster in places you never imagined.  Caterpillar announced they were writing off $100 million, John Deere $150 million, and AK Steel $31 million.  So look for more expensive roads, farm equipment (food), and more expensive cars.  This is from companies that have figured this out in less than a week.  It will take time for thousands of other companies to tally up the cost.

Henry Waxman to the Rescue

But don’t worry folks, Congressman Henry Waxman is riding to the rescue:

Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, said he would hold a hearing next month to investigate the effects of the law on big companies. He asked the chief executives of Caterpillar, Deere & Company and Verizon for financial data to document the projected impact of the law on their companies, and he asked them to explain their accounting methods.

“The new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs,” Mr. Waxman said, adding that he would be concerned if it drove up costs.

I’m sorry to have to say this, but he has to be the dumbest man in the House of Representatives.  Members of the House are supposed to REPRESENT  the people.  The people have been screaming their opposition to this for months.  Obama dared his opposition to campaign on repealing his prized piece of…er, work.  Here’s news for you Mr. President, according to a Rasmussen poll 55% of Americans favor repealing this monstrosity.

But let me get back to Mr. Waxman, who is surprised that health care costs could actually increase.  Listen to the American people:

Most voters still believe cost is the biggest problem with health care in America today, but most also think passage of the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats will drive costs even higher.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 54% rate cost as the biggest problem, a finding that has been consistent for months.

If Mr. Waxman got his head out of the sand or wherever else he conveniently parks it, and out into the fresh air, he might have realized that he is among the very few who actually believe this was going to lower costs, because there is nothing in this bill that addresses costs.  It’s all about tweaking reimbursements to health care providers, which will accomplish nothing but drive doctors and other providers out of business, ration health, and expand government control.  Oh, but wait, that is the Democrats plan.

The Silver Lining

But there is a silver lining.  Communist dictator Fidel Castro loves it! 

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on Thursday declared passage of American health care reform “a miracle” and a major victory for Obama’s presidency

Bill O’Reilly, do you still think President Obama is not  a socialist?