Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats are poised to pass a landmark health care bill that could define President Barack Obama's legacy and usher in near-universal medical coverage for the first time in U.S. history. Ahead lie complex talks with the House to reach final legislation in the new year. "We stand on the doorstep of history," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. "We recognize that, but much more importantly, we stand so close to making so many individual lives better." The vote Thursday on the bill extending health care coverage to some 31 million uninsured Americans brings Obama...

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 "Democrats Ensure America Will No Longer Be the Last Best Hope of Earth" by Dennis Prager SNIPPET: "As the passage of the bill that will start the process of nationalizing health care in America becomes almost inevitable, so, too, the process of undoing America's standing as The Last Best Hope of Earth will have begun." SNIPPET: "Just as the left has waged war on America's Judeo-Christian roots, it has waged war on individual liberty and responsibility." SNIPPET: "Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are right about one thing -- they are indeed making history. But...

We will see.Growing up of Mexican descent in the Southwest, I noticed that politicking often involves the cause of alleviating the suffering of the poor. The Democratic Party has successfully convinced the minority masses in the Hispanic community of their deep desire to lift them out of poverty. Liberal policies of forced equality and equal outcome, hurting the rich and sympathizing with the plight of the poor, have given Democrats the political influence that has turned the Hispanic community into an accessory that they often wear around their political neck during election time -- sparkling for everyone to see their...

Link to video.Note to mods: not promoting what DCCC has to say. Merely providing link in the spirit of "know your enemy".It is has a well-deserved "Barf Alert" and hoping the thread would stay as a motivator for many to stay tuned into to and engaged in the (Doug) Hoffman vs. "The Establishment" hot race in New York state, voting scheduled for next Tuesday.

Democrats in the House know that they can't tax Cadillac insurance plans because the unions have those Cadillac insurance plans. Just what do you think you have been paying for every time you buy an American-made automobile! That means the unions don't particularly like this Democrat idea ... and if the unions don't like it, the idea is all but dead. Democrats would throw kittens into chipper-shredders before they would ever do anything to really upset their precious unions. So now, Princess Nancy and her minions are scrounging to find other ideas to generate revenue. The latest one in the...

Prince William County decided not to join Arlington County in its lawsuit against high-occupancy toll lanes on Interstates 95 and 395, citing what it characterizes as race-baiting and class warfare in the suit. The county considered joining the suit because it shared concerns about the HOT lanes’ proceeding without a proper environmental study and their effect on traffic, but Board Chairman Corey Stewart, R-At large, said the board unanimously agreed Arlington’s suit raised too many concerns. “The board had a closer look at the suit and there are allegations in there about Pierce Homer, the secretary of transportation, and about...

The bitter jealously of those wealthier than ourselves is so prevalent, and it all stems from the Democrats. Whether it’s Congress bashing Wall Street for their “greed,” President Hope&Change hinting about regulating private sector executive pay, or the lib media granting endless appearances to the capitalism-hating (but ultra-wealthy) Michael Moore, class warfare seems to be here to stay. And it doesn’t seem to be only nameless, faceless people Americans have been trained like Pavlov’s dog to envy for the sin of having a higher income; just the other day a relative told me, completely casually, how another relative of his...

As Virginia’s odd-year election approaches, Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds has unleashed a frenzy of promises to spend money on everyone he can think of. On Saturday Deeds campaigned in Southwest Virginia at a rally sponsored by the United Mine Workers union, whose leaders say the time has come to “take from the upper one per cent that portion of the wealth they’ve been stealing for the past 35 years and return it to the workers.” Dumb, but — if possible — getting dumber.

Not since the 1930's and FDR have the politics of class envy, class warfare, resentment, and covetousness been used with such effectiveness than during the current health care debate. Barack Obama, the czar of many czars, is the self-appointed Class Envy Czar. It's the same Democrat party which preaches that, "you can't legislate morality," that is now describing passing health care reform as even being a "moral obligation." The same party that sermonizes the principle of "separation of church and state," now desperately invokes the Bible to try to hustle their socialized medicine message.

There's a certain irony in the promotions of today's prominent bloggers over at Arianna Huffington's "progressive" media hub Huffington Post. The first four "Don't Miss HuffPost Bloggers": leftist comedian Bill Maher (whose Friday episode of "Real Time" I'll blog about over the next few days,) pornographer-turned-free-speech-advocate-turned-polemicist Larry Flynt, leftist congressman and perennial "reparations for slavery" promoter John Conyers, and feminist activist/playwright Eve Ensler. Isn't that ironic? A pornographer right up there with a feminist?

The rich have been getting richer for so long that the trend has come to seem almost permanent. They began to pull away from everyone else in the 1970s. By 2006, income was more concentrated at the top than it had been since the late 1920s. The recent news about resurgent Wall Street pay has seemed to suggest that not even the Great Recession could reverse the rise in income inequality. But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer...

The House passed the most sweeping regulatory bill on limitations of executive pay today. The House approved a measure Friday that would put new constraints on executive pay, capitalizing on outrage over multimillion-dollar bonuses to Wall Street executives whose firms were bailed out by taxpayers. The measure, which applies to any firm with more than $1 billion in assets, passed 237 to 185, with most lawmakers voting along party lines. The Senate will not take up a similar measure until after it returns from its August recess in September.

In explaining why it was OK to sock a new 5.4 percent tax on the highest earners in this country — to pay for health care reform — President Obama's press secretary. Robert Gibbs, said this: "The President believes that the richest 1 percent of this country has had a pretty good run of it for many, many, many years." Ah. So that's it. The old "You've had it good enough for long enough" policy. That's why a family earning a million dollars a year should now cough up $54,000 of that — in addition to all the other taxes...

President Barack Obama used a prime-time news conference Wednesday to urge Americans to get behind his flagging health care reform efforts in Congress, seeking to reassure an increasingly jittery public that the government can overhaul the system without jeopardizing the care most citizens currently receive. Obama endorsed a House committee’s plan to fund part of the new program by imposing a surtax on families making over $1 million a year – but insisted he would not support any bill that helped fund the $1 trillion plan with a tax on middle-class families. “To me, that meets my principles,” Obama said...

Support nationalized health care! Ain't gonna cost you nuthin. We'll stick rich guys like Dick Cheney with the bill! That was Ed Schultz's brazen appeal to something-for-nothing class warfare, made on his MSNBC show this evening. Schultz's make-Cheney-pay plea was the subject of his "Op Ed." View video here.

In “Fiddler on the Roof,” the hero Tevye sang of how he wished he were wealthy. “If I Were a Rich Man” became a Broadway and movie favorite as a catchy tune and even catchier sentiment. As the struggling Russian peasant explained, “It’s no shame to be poor, but it’s no great honor either.” No, today, the shame is being rich, and President Obama seems determined to bestow the “honor” of poverty on as many as possible. Forget the horrendous tax-and-spend policies that gradually impoverish us all. Obama’s new target is a direct one – the evil, greedy CEO. To...

A look at some of the most luxurious executive perks Economic downturn might make some of these doozies obsolete Sunday, May 24, 2009 3:42 AM By Alistair Barr Running big public companies is hard work, so many executives get a little help to keep their noses to the grindstone. Use of company jets, cars and drivers, free home security, free financial-planning advice and country-club memberships are some of the common rewards. Some of these perks keep coming after retirement. Even in death, the money keeps flowing in the form of so-called golden coffins. In the midst of the worst global...

Wealthy Wall Street financiers and other business figures provided crucial support for Mr Obama during the election, backing him over the Republican candidate John McCain as the right leader to rescue the collapsing US economy. But it is now dawning on many among them that Mr Obama was serious about his campaign trail promises to bring root and branch reform to corporate America - and that they were more than just election rhetoric.

Barack Obama's rich supporters fear his tax plans show he's a class warrior Some of Barack Obama's richest supporters fear they have elected a "class warrior" to the White House, who will turn America's freewheeling capitalism into a more regulated European system. By Leonard Doyle in Washington 09 May 2009 Barack Obama: some of his rich supporters fear he is becoming a class warrior Wealthy Wall Street financiers and other business figures provided crucial support for Mr Obama during the election, backing him over the Republican candidate John McCain as the right leader to rescue the collapsing US economy. But...

Do you have a spare tire? Some bulges? Do your thighs rub together? Do you have a big gut? Well, be prepared to be ostracized. They already did a number on smokers. It used to be you could smoke almost anywhere, from the supermarket to your workplace. And then they started passing laws until you now have to go to smoke areas which are usually outside and away from everywhere else. Even though OSHA had to admit that second-hand smoke in the workplace cannot affect people except under extreme conditions. “Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal...

The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here

Where is Waldo, I mean, Joe Biden? There has not been a peep about him that I have heard for some time now. He needs to be let out, he must be getting hungry, no shoes to eat for some time now LOL. Anybody seen/heard of our MIA/VP? Any sightings? Do tell.........

She might not be setting Europe on fire like Michelle Obama did, but there’s another Michelle out there who sets my free-market heart ablaze: Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. This afternoon, the CNBCer displayed the kind of moxie that has endeared her to me, ripping the class-warfare rap that Pres. Obama offered up today. Power Lunch opened with live video of PBO’s Tax Day spiel that included these populist nuggets: [snip] It was PBO’s notion of who constitutes “working people” that set MC-C off . . . View video here.

Most Americans that complain about too many taxes likely pays very little taxes themselves. Our roads, bridges, and other infra-structure are crumbling. Our healthcare system is a disaster. Do you think this can be fixed with less money into the government coffers?

I've cobbled together some excerpts about Huey Long that may demonstrate where America is heading as a result of Obama's populist politics...read more Expect nothing less than these great results under Obama's populism. Simply put, the ends are inevitable. History proves that. Liberals love to point to Long's policies and tell you how great they were. What they won't do, however, is point you to the long-term results of those policies. They simply won't. It is far better for them to maintain their demented view of a failed utopia than to acknowledge reality.

Last night, for the first time, I watched the movie, The Fugitive, from start to finish. The film is about a surgeon, falsely accused and convicted of murdering his wife, who escapes during a prison transfer, and is pursued by a US marshall. For Chicagoans, the film is one of the great movie portrayals of the city. But I now believe the classic moment in the movie comes in the 82nd minute. Harrison Ford, playing the falsely accused doctor, Richard Kimble, tries to lose himself from his pursuers by joining in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. This parade always draws...

Want a little populist outrage? There's nothing like hearing it from a multi-millionaire advertising mogul with a spot on CNBC. Donny Deutsch, the host of "The Big Idea," a show the network has shelved, explained to viewers on the March 25 broadcast of "CNBC Reports" he wants measures put in place to keep prevent people he regards as "idiots" from making $10 million a year. "The issue is even now, with the new asset program, basically if it works, the taxpayer's taking up all the risk," Deutsch said. "God forbid it doesn't work, taxpayers are really going to take it...

This past election confirmed my growing fear that Americans' ignorance, particularly on economic issues, has now become a mortal danger to our nation's future. Today's Rasmussen poll reinforces that belief. Try to square the following responses with one another: Two-thirds of U.S. voters (66%) think President Obama is likely to raise taxes on people who less than $250,000 per year. That figure includes 47% who say he is Very Likely to do so. Fair enough. 34% are apparently still expecting Obama to pay their mortgage for them, and still wait patiently for the magical unicorns to show up. Fifty-one percent...

Witnessing the spectacle surrounding the bonuses at AIG, I have come to a rather frightening realization. This country is on the brink of conducting several very bloody class wars all at once. The AIG flap is one battle in a larger class war that pits Wall Street vs. Main Street. In a similar vein, you can look at this class war as management vs. worker or even upper class vs. middle class. Of course, that is not the only class war going on at all. The Treasury Department's loan modification plan went a long way toward creating mortgage class war...

Remember the word "covet", as in "shall not"? Envy is a deadly sin. It is a deliberate decision to ignore our shared humanity and favor, instead, things we can't take with us. Inducing someone else to commit a deadly sin is an even worse act. Class envy, albeit one of the two foundations of the modern Democratic Party's soul (identity politics being the other), is very divisive and fuels mob rule. It is a tool that exploits happy people who were previously neither aware of their forced group membership nor of their antipathy toward other groups. It is a tool...

"We must teach our children to hate," Vladimir Lenin instructed his education commissars. The Bolshevik godfather declared that hatred was not only "the basis of communism" but "the basis of every socialist and Communist movement." Class envy has been a defining staple of the left for centuries, from the frenzied mobs leaping around the French guillotines to the Soviets to, well, the new masses circling AIG executives today. The difference is merely the degree of response -- a question of socially acceptable force or violence. Historically, this behavior is both foreign and antithetical to the American experience. Unfortunately, modern Americans...

Taking advantage of the populist revolt against Wall Street and the American International Group Inc. bailouts, House Democrats have passed a vengeance tax on TARPed financial firms that amounts to a 90 percent marginal tax rate on bonuses. This is being done in the name of AIG outrage, and nobody wants to defend the insurance company - including me. The financial-products division helped blow up the global credit system, and it shouldn't be rewarded. Yet one wonders about this 90 percent tax rate. If it passes the Senate, will it ever be repealed? This could be the ultimate class-warfare spread-the-wealth...

Everybody makes mistakes, and I made a beaut the other day. I was wrong to call members of Congress blow-hards and buffoons and declare them worse than useless. I was too kind. I should have said our representatives are gangsters in pinstripes and pearls. They are petty tyrants and the more power they grab, the more at risk we are. Homeland Security should flash Code Red any time this Congress is in session. It is twilight in America now. The House vote to use the tax code to retroactively punish bonus babies was an act of sheer madness. What started...

The Working Families Party that is organizing a bus tour protest this Saturday at the homes of AIG employees has deep ties to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, billionaire leftist financier George Soros and the radical group ACORN.A 2005 article by Richard Poe published at Discover the Networks details the connections:The Working Families Party (WFP) is a front group for the radical cult ACORN. It functions as a political party in New York State and Connecticut, promoting ACORN-friendly candidates. Unlike conventional political parties, WFP charges its members dues – about $60 per year – a policy characteristic of ACORN and...

Class Warfare: ‘Working Families’ Offer Field Trip to AIG Executives’ Mansions Friday, March 20, 2009 By Susan Jones, Senior Editor (CNSNews.com) - "We're all mad at AIG," says the pro-union Connecticut Working Families Party. Tapping into some of that rage, the liberal group is sponsoring a "field trip" on Saturday to show working people from Hartford and Bridgeport how and where the AIG executives live. Some of the executives who received bonuses work in the company's Wilton, Conn., office. Those executives "bear a large share of the responsibility for bringing the economy to its knees, and now the same folks...

"We're all mad at AIG," says the pro-union Connecticut Working Families Party. Tapping into some of that rage, the liberal group is sponsoring a "field trip" on Saturday to show working people from Hartford and Bridgeport how and where the AIG executives live. Some of the executives who received bonuses work in the company's Wilton, Conn., office. Those executives "bear a large share of the responsibility for bringing the economy to its knees, and now the same folks are getting hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses -- at our expense," Connecticut Working Families says on its Web site. "Join...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Acting swiftly, the Democratic-led House approved a bill Thursday to slap punishing taxes on big employee bonuses at firms bailed out by taxpayers. In some cases the bonuses might be taxed 100 percent leaving the recipients with nothing. [snip] The bill passed as controversy swirled around the disclosure that, while Democrats and Republicans were both railing about the AIG bonuses, Democrats were also responsible for removing a provision, originally contained in stimulus legislation, to ban such bonuses.

I'm sick of hearing that America is no longer a land of opportunity. Even before the current recession, politicians and pundits were constantly wringing their hands about the "demise of the middle class." "Middle class families are struggling," President Barack Obama kept saying on the campaign trail. Lou Dobbs hammers away at this night after night: "What's left of our middle class may be on the verge of collapse." And author Barbara Ehrenreich won fame by claiming that it's almost impossible for an entry-level worker to make it in America. She wrote "Nickel and Dimed," a book that describes her...

Confused about the way things are going in Washington? Here's a quick guide to help figure things out. Barack Obama is half-way through his first 100 days in office, and the country is a mess. The stock market continues to tank, and the best advice our illustrious leader has for the nation is to just suck it up, because things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Campaign promises for complete transparency have become completely opaque as life-altering bills are negotiated in Congressional back rooms, and signed into law without even the formality of a public...

We taxpaying Americans have been lectured a lot lately about how selfish and greedy we are. Democrats—and it’s always Democrats—accuse us of this because we dread the possibility of paying even higher income taxes. You got President Barack “Spread the wealth” Obama and VP Joe “Time to be patriotic, time to be part of the deal” Biden. And five years ago we heard it from candidates John “The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer” Kerry and John “Two Americas: the haves and have-nots” Edwards. Standard Democrat fare: All rhetoric, no truth. Because the top 10% income...

Barack Obama has written two famous, widely read books of autobiography -- "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope." Let me introduce his third, a book that will touch everyone's life: "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise. The President's Budget and Fiscal Preview" (Government Printing Office, 141 pages, $26; free on the Web). This is the U.S. budget for laymen, and it's a must read. Turn immediately to page 11. There sits a chart called Figure 9. This is the Rosetta Stone to the presidential mind of Barack Obama. Memorize Figure 9, and you will never...

On the campaign trail last year, then-Senator Obama promised to end the war in Iraq which he contended should never had been fought and had dragged on too long. If only he’d aimed that thought process at our oldest war: Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty,” which is now in its forty-sixth year. It has cost too much and victory is nowhere in sight. But President Obama has a comparable war of his own: he has begun a new war in which he, his cabinet, and his party work feverishly against free market capitalism in the United States. This is a...

He hasn't called anyone an "evildoer" or denounced an "axis of evil." But make no mistake: President Obama is putting together an enemies list. Strangely, though, those on it are not terrorists or foreign dictators. They are mostly Americans lucky enough to have succeeded through capitalism and democracy. In the President's words, they are guilty of being "special interests" and "lobbyists." The Bush-era tax cuts were merely "an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy" and he will bring fairness by raising taxes on "the wealthiest 2% of Americans." His barbs flow almost daily, faulting corporate leaders for "greed" and...

NEW YORK (CBS) ― A massive protest was held outside City Hall in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, where it seems people have just about had it with the recession. Organizers estimate that 50,000 people have lined Broadway with a message to Gov. David Paterson that cuts are not the answer to fixing New York's budget problems. The protesters are made up of a widespread coalition of labor unions, community groups, and even families uniting to have their voices heard. Dubbing it a "Rally for New York," they are rallying against proposed state and city budget cuts to public services, education,...

Last Friday, Vice President Joe Biden and seven White House cabinet members traveled to Philadelphia to kick off the inaugural gathering of President Obama's Middle Class Task Force. The task force will convene monthly in cities across the country to confront the problems faced by average Americans. It's an admirable goal; with rising costs, stagnant wages and job cuts, a Pew Research study found that 78% of self-described middle class Americans have trouble maintaining their current standard of living. Still, the middle class may have a better shot at making ends meet than at influencing the Middle Class Task Force....

President Obama has claimed that his budget goes after the rich who supposedly will pay the cost of his spending extravaganza. But it is already apparent that the rest of us will pay plenty. Obama is continuing the crusade against offshore tax havens he began as an Illinois senator. He's targeting places like the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Isle of Man, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands Antilles and Switzerland, which have low taxes. There are about 50 such tax havens globally. It's wrong to think that a U.S. crackdown on offshore tax havens would primarily hit disgraced Wall Street high rollers...

This is the Democratic Party's moment, its power now greater than any time since the mid-1960s. But do not expect smooth sailing. The party is a fractious group divided by competing interests, factions and constituencies that could explode into a civil war, especially when it comes to energy and the environment. Broadly speaking, there is a long-standing conflict inside the Democratic Party between gentry liberals and populists. This division is not the same as in the 1960s, when the major conflicts revolved around culture and race as well as on foreign policy. Today the emerging fault-lines follow mostly regional, geographical...

EMPE, Ariz. — Mark Cooper started his work day on a recent morning cleaning the door handles of an office building with a rag, vigorously shaking out a rug at a back entrance and pushing a dust mop down a long hallway. Nine months ago he lost his job as the security manager for the western United States for a Fortune 500 company, overseeing a budget of $1.2 million and earning about $70,000 a year. Now he is grateful for the $12 an hour he makes in what is known in unemployment circles as a “survival job” at a friend’s...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/02/28/Keeping-Promises/ THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 5:43 am Keeping Promises In the Weekly Address this morning, President Obama explains how the budget he sent to Congress will fulfill the promises he made as a candidate. On fiscal responsibility, a fair tax code, a clean energy economy, real health care reform, and education, this budget sets out a new vision for our country. But having put his priorities on paper and having stood behind them, the President recognizes that there are those who will fight against change every...

We're starting to see a disturbing trend here; Obama will use fear as a tool to pass his agenda as was painfully evident during the stimulus debate. Now he's playing on the basest of human emotions: envy. In a time when many are hurting financially--a new paradigm for many--Obama and his allies are verbally crucifying those who worked hard to establish themselves, got themselves educated and used their wits to become successful. Many people have a loathing of anyone who makes more than them or is in a higher position in life and Obama is shamefully playing on that.