Don’t buy Pravda’s figure that Obamacare will “only” cost $900 BILLION… Harry Reid in a moment of weakness (he actually didn’t lie) says the cost will be $2 TRILLION! Watch here:

Seeing that Congress is usually off on their cost estimates by a factor of 10, the real cost could be upwards of $20 Trillion…

I’m sorry, but the contrast can not be more clear.

The brave troops pictured to the left are now all dead. Killed in a Taliban attack on their Afghanistan outpost, while Obama weights the political implications of General McChrystal’s request for at least another 40,000 troops… a request that has been sitting on Obama’s desk since late summer!

Clearly Comrade Obama has more important things to do…

Here we have our bravest dying in Afghanistan, waiting for more reinforcements, and Obama’s out there partying it up! It’s about damn time Obama  takes his job as Commander in Chief seriously, and approves the request of the very General Obama, himself, put in place to execute his Afghanistan strategy!

 Personal Note: As I mentioned in earlier posts, what started as a normal end of August summer vacation at the Outer Banks of NC quickly turned into an event that has turned our lives upside down for a bit. While it is all good, we are about 3/4 through the relocation process. While the sale side of the ledger went extremely well, the buy side was a different story (one that I won’t bore you with here). We have moved to the area where we will call home for the rest of our lives, but we are currently in temporary housing waiting for the close of our new home. Why tell you all this? As you have seen, I have been away from the site quite a bit lately, so I want to make sure you understood why.  I am not pulling away from the fight by any means, but I am going to make sure my first obligations (food and shelter for my family) are met… all while trying to make the impact on the kid’s life as innocuous as possible.  So posting will be sporadic for the next month or so… as my temporary location is one where I do not receive cell phone, blackberry, or Internet service! 

Now, back to the fray. As you all know by now, Comrade Obama suffered a serious blow, mainly to his out-sized ego, last week when the obviously racist Olympic Selection Committee bypassed Chicago in favor of Rio.

As we all know, if you oppose Obama’s initiatives in any way, shape, or form you are racist, racist, racist!

In fact, if any harm ever befalls Comrade Obama, then we will obviously have to hold the Olympic Selection Committee responsible for stirring up so much anti-Obama sentiment.

I just want to be on record that I, for one, am completely disgusted with the blatant racism shown by Olympic Selection Committee by opposing our President’s bid for the Summer Olympics…

Whether it’s the washed up, has-been, could-be man in drag, Maureen Dowd who attacked my new hero Rep Joe Wilson, as a racists for pointing out that Obama lied all through his propaganda speech the other day…

Or a washed up sports writer (there’s an important profession) Mike Lupica who attacked a true hero, The Great One, Mark Levin as a racist in an tortured and intellectually sloppy piece in Newsday…

Or, perhaps the most incompetent president in our nation’s history, Jimmy Carter, calling.. well… the majority of Americans… racist for opposing Comrade Obama’s socialist agenda watch the clip below:

You know that you’ve won the argument when the libs start screaming “racist”!

No matter which moronic lib we are talking about, they have all received their talking points from Comrade Obama. The obvious intent of the new line of attack is to try to bully their opponent into shutting up. To squash dissent, and restrict the American people’s ability to voice their concern with their government’s policies.

Yet at the same time, the trot out their spokes idiot, Robert Gibbs, to deny that Obama agrees with the “racist” crticism… don’t buy that line folks. The Obama’s entire life’s history has been trading off the race card… why would they stop now?

Baucus Proposes $856 Billion Health Care Reform Plan

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday released his much-anticipated version of a health care reform plan, forging ahead without Republican support in an attempt to follow the president’s rigorous timetable for passage. 

The package was pegged at $856 billion over 10 years, which is less than the $880 billion price tag Baucus previously advertised. It also largely follows the outline given by President Obama a week ago. 

The proposal requires all individuals to buy health insurance or pay a fine. It prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions or from imposing caps on payouts. It provides tax credits to help low- and middle-income families purchase insurance. And it creates a Web-based insurance exchange aimed at making purchasing insurance, and comparing plans, easier. 

“This is a unique moment in history where we can finally reach an objective so many of us have sought for so long,” Baucus said in a statement. “The Finance Committee has carefully worked through the details of health care reform to ensure this package works for patients, for health care providers and for our economy. We worked to build a balanced, common-sense package that ensures quality, affordable coverage and doesn’t add a dime to the deficit. 

“Now we can finally pass legislation that will rein in health care costs and deliver quality, affordable care to the American people,” he said.

“Requires all individuals to buy health insurance or pay a fine”… think about that for a minute. There goes another piece of your liberty… stolen in an instant! What if, as a free human being, you don’t want to spend the fruits of your labor on insurance? What if you are young and healthy, and only want to pay very little for a catastrophic plan? The Central Planners, a handful of politicians holed-up behind closed doors, say that’s too damn bad! You don’t buy, you get fined! You don’t pay the fine, eventually the Sheriff comes knockin’… healthcare at the point of a gun.

You see, they are so much smarter than us peasants, they can sketch out their socialist utopia on paper and be confident that they have thought of every single unintended consequence of their actions. They know exactly how millions of human beings will act and react to this mandate. They know exactly how the market will react,how the hundreds of thousands of doctors will react, how the thousands of medical related companies will react, how the and on and on… they’ve planned it all out… there just so damn smart… don’t worry Mon’… every little thing will be alright…

Folks all this is, is more regulationheaped on top of an already highly regulated industry. The healthcare problems we have now in the system, are all tied back to government regulation of one sort or another. The law that blocks companies and americans from buying insurance across state lines. The favorable malpractice laws that allow ambulance chasing laywers like two-world, two family, John Edwards to sue doctors for bazillions, forcing doctors to order far more tests than they would otherwise. i could go on, and on, but you get the point.

The Baucus plan, Obamacare under a new name, will cost all of us more, not less… a lot more. It will kill healthcare innovation. It will slow access to care, and it will deteriorate the quality as well. It will cost all of us a lot more than $856 billion… alot more! How do I know all this? Because it’s already been tried in Massachusetts, and California and it has failed there! Wait times have increased, doctore shortages have materialized, and costs have exploded.

The so-called “Baucus” reform plan should really be called “Butkuz” plan, because American get butkuz in terms of real reform, and a huge dose of socialism.

Even though I am in moving hell (see previous post) , I could not let this day go by without a quick rememberence of the vicious attack of 9/11/2001. 

With the Obama administration retreating from the war on terror on almost all fronts, we Americans need to remain vigilant and pressure our members of congress, and this horribly naive and misguided Administration to keep up the relentless war against the Islamic extremists.

So none of us forget, or lose our focus…

Thank you to all the first responders, their families, all those who have fought, and are continuing to fight this war on behalf of our great country. We wish you nothing but the best, and God Speed.

Since I rarely use this forum to discuss my personal life, most of you don’t now that my wife and I have been trying to sell our home, for almost 3 years now,  in the toughest real estate market since the Great Depression. We have 2 young kids, and we wanted to move them to the best school system in the state, as there really isn’t a great private option where we currently reside in the Pocono Mountains.

To make a really long and boring story short, my wife and I had agreed to take the home off the market when the listing ran out in Sept. We were tired of putting our lives on hold, and knew we could make up for any lost quality in the school system ourselves, at home. So as I mentioned in my last post, two weeks ago, we were really looking forward to a relaxing vactaion on the Outer Banks of NC for a week… nothing but sand, surf, boggie boarding, and playing with the kids.

Well, that was the plan at least.. after two days of vacation, we get a call from the realtor that there is an offer on the house. Well, needless to say, that was the end of the rest and relaxation! Days were spent playing with the kids, in between negotiations, and nights were spent scouring the Internet for homes in the new town, 2 hours south, that we’ve been planning on moving to for three years.

On a political note, I have to say that not being subjected to the sickening lionization of, and history revision about, Teddy Keddy was nice… the few headlines I was able to peek at in between beach and Kayaking, made me gag. 

Then on Saturday, tragedy struck the beach, as a 12 year old boy went missing in the surf just a few hundred yards from where we were swimming. We spent a good portion of the day looking for the boy in the surf, but to no avail. It was a freak accident, which made it all the more scary, as all of us on the beach that week were swimming in those same waves. Our hearts and prayers go out to the boy’s family, as they finally found his body on Sept 1st.  The last few days weren’t quite the same…

Last Sunday, we made the trip back home, signed final sale papers, and then all week long, it’s been an all out search process. I’m not sure if we have the worst luck in real estate, but is looks as if I sold from a very depressed area of the state of PA (where asking price is summarily discounted by 30%… after a few guffaws), and now find myself buying in a market where asking price is the price the home owner expects to get (those bastards)!

Needless to say, between selling, searching, and packing, getting to the site has been tough. My apologies gang. I will be here shortly… it seems as if the Obama administration can’t seem to put one foot in front of the other anyway, so I’m not exactly sure what to fire at anyway, outside of the government take over of well, everything!

Be well, and I’ll be back soon.

I’ll be outta’ the pocket next week as the family heads to the OBX for some much needed R&R. While posting will be sporadic, most likely when the rest of the family are enjoying sun & surf induced naps, we’ll be getting ready to fight the mother of all healthcare battles in September.

Before I head out though, I wanted to pass along this extremely well thought out post. It is the other side of the story on the faux obamagasm economic optimism  that permeates Pravda these days.

Why the Austrian, Keynesian, Marxist, Monetarist, and Neo-Liberal Economists Are All Wrong

US Personal Income has taken its worst annual decline since 1950.

This is why it is an improbable fantasy to think that the consumer will be able to pull this economy out of recession using the normal ‘print and trickle down’ approach. In the 1950’s the solution was huge public works projects like the Interstate Highway System and of course the Korean War.

Until the median wage improves relative to the cost of living, there will be no recovery. And by cost of living we do not mean the chimerical US Consumer Price Index.

The classic Austrian prescription is to allow prices to decline until the median wage becomes adequate. Given the risk of a deflationary wage-price spiral, which is desired by no one except for the cash rich, the political risks of such an approach are enormous.

On paper it is obvious that a market can ‘clear’ at a variety of levels, if wages and prices are allowed to move freely. After all, if profits are diminished, income can obviously be diminished by a proportional amount, and nothing has really changed in terms of viable consumption.

The Supply side idealists (cash rich bosses, Austrians, neo-liberal, monetarist, and deflationist theorists) would like to see this happen at a lower level through a deflationary spiral. The Keynesians and neo-classicals wish to see it driven through the Demand side, with higher wages rising to meet the demands of profit in an inflationary expansion. Both believe that market forces alone can achieve this equilibrium. Across both groups runs a sub-category of statism vs. individualism.

Unfortunately both groups are wrong.

Both approaches require an ideal, almost frictionless, objectively rational, and honest economy in order to succeed. The Keynesians have a bit of an edge in this, because it is easier to control inflation than deflation in a fiat regime, and the natural growth of inflation tends to satiate the impulse to greed. They don’t care if they can buy more as long as they can say they HAVE more. People tend to be irrational, and there is a percentage of the population that is irrationally greedy and obsessively rapacious. People are not naturally ‘good.’

The greatest flaw in the many studies that come from each of the schools to prove their point is the brutal way in which they flatten the reality of the markets and make assumptions to allow their equations and analysis to ‘work.’ They spend most of their energy showing while the ‘other school’ is a group of ignorant fools, doomed to ignominious failure, in an atmosphere reminiscent of a university departmental meeting.

This has quietly scandalized those from other scientific disciplines who review the work of many of the leading economists. Benoit Mandelbrot was poking enormous holes in the work of the leading economists long before Nassim Taleb made it more widely known. The ugly truth is that economics is a science in the way that medicine was a profession while it still used leeches to balance a person’s vapours. Yes, some are always better than others, and certainly more entertaining, but they all tended to kill their patients.

The most intractable part of the current financial crisis, and the ongoing problem of the US economy is the huge tax which is levied on the American public by its corporations, primarily in the financial and health care sectors, and a political system based on lobbyists and their campaign contributions.

There are hidden taxes and impediments to ‘free trade’ at every turn. The ugly truth is that capitalism-in-practice hates free markets, always seeking to overturn the rules and impose oligopoly if not outright monopoly through barriers to entry, manipulation of the political process, distortion of regulation, predatory pricing, brute force, and the usual slate of anti-trust practices.

Some of these ‘hidden taxes’ are the bonuses on Wall Street which require an increasing percentage of the financial ‘action.’ The credit cards fees and penalties levied by banks to support profits in a contracting economy. The Sales General & Administrative portion of the Income Statements of the pharmaceutical industry which only American consumers seem willing to pay. A health care system which is a monument to overspending, outrageous pricing, and greed.

The notion that “if only government would not regulate markets at all everything would be fine” is a variation of Rousseau’s romantic notion of the noble savage which no one believes except those who wish to continue to act like savages, and those who get no closer to the real work of an economy than their textbooks. Economic Darwinism works primarily to the advantage of the sharks. Anyone who believes that ‘no regulations’ works well has never driven on a modern highway at peak periods.

Yes, a certain portion of the population are adult, and generally good and fair. But there is a percentage of the population that is not. And since the 1980’s they have been encouraged by the culture of relativism and greed to ‘express themselves’ and so they have, with a vengeance.

Discussion rarely proceeds very far because of the dialectical nature of American thought. Both extremes are wrong, but they seem to content to merely bash each other, pointing out their errors, while repeating the same mistakes over and again.

The engineering of the economy has become married to the engineering of the political dialogue by the corporate media and their political parties. “The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.” Edward L. Bernays 1947

The condition of the American economy is strikingly similar to the Soviet state economy of the last two decades of the 20th century. People are trying to sustain a system “as is” that is based on bad assumptions, unworkable constructions, conflicting objectives, and a flagging empire laced heavily with elitist fraud and corruption. The primary difference is that the US has a bigger gun and its hand is in more people’s pockets with the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. But the comparison seems to indicate that the economy must indeed fail first, before genuine change can begin, because the familiar ideology and practices must clearly fail before they can recede sufficiently to make room for new ways and reforms.

A new school of Economics will rise out of the ashes of the failure of the American economy as happened after the Great Depression. Let us hope that it is better than what we have today.

In the short term, what does all this mean?

There is NO system that will work without substantial, continuing effort, and continual adaptation and commitment to a certain set of goals that are more about ‘ends’ than ideological process.

Because our system has been abused for so long, and is so distorted and imbalanced and dominated by a relatively few organizations beholden to a self-serving status quo, reform is not an afterthought, it is the sine qua non.

It means that until the banks are restrained, and the financial system is reformed, and balance is restored, there can be no sustained recovery.

Hat tip to probably the best financial site out there these days, Minyanville.com 

Sorry I’m soo late alerting you to healthcare tea parties tomorrow… I’ve been in vacation prep mode (will be hitting the beautiful beaches of the Outer Banks next week), and I missed the rally prep… my bad.

If you have some free time tomorrow, I would encourage you all to get to your congressional offices tomorrow to make your voices heard.

Here is the website organizing tomorrow’s nation-wide events:

http://recessrally.com/

Hope you can make it tomorrow/today (if you are reading on Sat!)

I’ve never been one to say that there is typically an abundance of logic in any liberal argument, but the ‘Medicare is Great!’ talking point that has been distributed on the left to support the position of a government take over of healthcare takes the cake…

The talking point goes somthing like this:

So there you go… the lib argument is Medicare is great, so why not force a Medicare type system on us all? Rep Weiner, what color is the sky in your world? Medicare is nothing but a ponsi-scheme welfare program.

This argument is akin to a pre-defunct Bernie Maddoff telling one of his investment clients who question his investment strategy, “look do you like getting the consistent 10% returns or not?”

Medicare is essentially BANKRUPT! It is unsustainable. It has $36+ TRILLION in unfunded obligations. For you libs out there, that means it owes $36 TRILLION more than it can pay. You don’t have to believe me on this one, here’s the warnings from the Medicare trustees:

 The Trustees report that Medicare’s Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund will become insolvent earlier in 2019 than reported last year.

This from the Heritage foundation:

The trustees also estimate that Medicare’s long-term unfunded obligation–the benefits promised but unpaid for–will amount to more than $36 trillion, or roughly two-and-a-half times the size of the entire U.S. economy.[6] In other words, every American household’s share of Medicare’s unfunded obligation is like a $320,000 IOU.

And this is the program that hopelessly moronic liberals, like Weiner (yes, that is his name), point to as their ideal healthcare model for all Americans… ’nuff said.