The blog has been intermittently unavailable today due to problems with the server it is located on. The great folks at Hosting Matters are going to move me to another server, which will resolve these issues.

Sorry for the problems.

UPDATED: The move is complete and all appears well. Many thnaks go out to the folks at Hosting Matters.

In case you were wondering, it is now clear that President Obama is not just tone deaf; he’s decided that he doesn’t care what the citizens of the United States think about his health care reform bill. So, like it or not, he is trying to get the Democrats in Congress to commit political suicide and use reconciliation (otherwise known as the “Nuclear Option”) to shove his multi-trillion dollar government takeover of the health care industry down the people’s throats.

On Tuesday, President Obama offered Republicans a small bipartisan olive branch. On Wednesday, he hit them with a partisan sledgehammer by vowing Democrats would ram his “new” health care plan (a revised version of the bill the Senate passed on Christmas Eve) through Congress using a budget tactic known as reconciliation that was never designed for passing legislation revamping one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

Once again, the Democrats’ arrogance will lead to their electoral defeat at the polls this November. They know the public is against this version of reform, and they don’t care because they think you’re just too stupid to know any better. They think if only Obama would weave his rhetorical magic on the people and explain his plan to them in a way that would allow them to actually understand how brilliant it is. What they don’t seem to grasp is that lacking a clear and understandable description of what they want to do is only half the problem. The other half is the fact that the actual legislation doesn’t even exist yet. Remember, Obama is an “idea” guy; he’s great at thinking up popular ideas. Actually constructing the legislative language to make the idea work is, apparently,  completely beyond his abilities. He leaves that to others under the guise of “getting other ideas.” It is a perfect example of his lack of any type of leadership ability. A leader would have made a reform proposal with actual details and strategies to accomplish the reform. Instead, he just handed it over to a group of people who can’t decide what to eat for lunch and said, “you do it!”

Now, it appears that Obama wants his reform passed by Congress before the Congressional Spring Break, in an effort to keep Democrats from having to face their constituants and explain why they refuse to represent them:

Democrats are racing the clock to pass health care reform ahead of a wave of Tea Party-driven town hall meetings planned for the spring recess — the kind of gatherings that nearly derailed the package last August.

But there’s a big difference this time around. Last summer, Democrats were encouraged to hold the town hall meetings, and they were blindsided by the backlash, which was recorded and promoted in countless YouTube clips. This time around, they have a good idea of what’s coming — and they’re lying low, in case work on health care carries over into the recess.

Watching Obama trying to get his seizure of the health care industry through Congress is like watching a six year old child try to do something he knows he shouldn’t. He tries to get it past the parents (the American People) with little or no explanation and before anyone knows what’s going on. He knows that if the parents catch on to what he’s doing, he’s done for. In this case, so are most of his friends.

This guy’s arrogance is appalling, and should be reason enough for his electoral defeat in 2012. With luck, a Republican-controlled Congress will be able to rollback any of the “reforms” he is able to get passed, and all of this will be just a bad dream.

Having already spent more tax dollars in one year than all other Presidents have spent in over 200 years, Obama is preparing a scapegoat to blame for even more tax hikes.

President Obama on Thursday named two Washington old-timers to scour the sofa pillows in search of some change — enough to bring down the government’s massive deficits by 2015.

Former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson were introduced as co-chairmen of a debt commission, which will look to reduce the federal budget deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product in five years.

Obama said they were “taking on the impossible.”

“They’re going to try to restore reason to the fiscal debate and come up with answers,” he said.

There are two glaringly obvious conclusions which can be drawn from this exercise: first, this “commission” will recommend that taxes be raised and second, that when they do make this recommendation, Obama will use it to deflect criticism of his economic policies. Also obvious, if Obama continues to spend tax money like a drunken sailor, nothing anyone recommends is going to reduce the deficit.

But the president’s commission, issued by executive order, will be a much weaker version of the debt commission Congress recently rejected, meaning the commission’s recommendations will not have the force of law.

The commission is likely able to offer up only unpopular ideas — cutting Social Security and Medicare or raising taxes — meaning getting Congress to go along will be no picnic.  It has to vote them up or down or could just shelve them.

Chances are that Obama and the Democrats in Congress will simply use this commission’s recommendations to continue to redistribute the wealth of America’s economic producers to the favored special interest groups of the left, such as the poor, the unions, and groups like ACORN. The Democrats simply have not learned a very simple principle regarding economics: Tax increases in and of themselves do nothing to strengthen and grow the economy. You also have to cut spending in a real and significant amount. By real, I mean an actual reduction in the amount spent, not a reduction of the amount of increase in spending.

Thanks to Obama and the Democrats’ economic policies, the next generation (or two) will be the poorest ever with the lowest standard of living of any American generation in modern times. I mean, Obama has already spent their tax money and their children’s tax money, so they are starting out in a very deep hole.

Also, with all of the taxes Obama is going to levy on small businesses, jobs are going dry up and the unemployment rate will continue to climb. He loves to tell everyone that he is only going to tax the wealthy, but he fails to realize that it is the wealthy who run businesses and create jobs. The more wealth he removes from the private sector, the fewer jobs that will be available.

Fewer jobs, lower standard of living, and record spending and deficit increases. Is this really the “Hope and Change” the Democrats were talking about?

Martha Coakley lost the Senate election in Massachusetts last week, but according to liberals it wasn’t her positions that were responsible. After all, she’s a liberal, so her positions are automatically correct, right? Therefore, the problem has to be…

So, essentially, we have a lot of voters who are dumber than rocks. That is the problem with democracies I guess. Lots of poorly informed, ignorant and, in some cases, downright stupid, people marching off to the polls and voting contrary to their interests.

Of course! Those stupid, stupid voters. You know, the people who magically become educated and well-informed when they vote for liberal policies, but suddenly become brain-dead when they vote against them. After all, liberals are so much more enlightened and intelligent than everyone else. If only the American public would allow them to make all of the decisions for them. Then, they would be much better off!

The arrogance of the liberal mind never fails to astound me. It is the one weakness they have which practically guarantees eventual failure at the ballot box.

Sent to me anonymously:

And so it begins.

Does Tuesday’s Republican victory in the deepest blue state in the country foreshadow what is in store for the Democrat Party in the fall elections? I would love to state unequivocally “YES”, however at best it only remains a distinct possibility. It all depends on how committed the Tea Party folks are come election time.

If the Tea Party can get people motivated enough to show up at the polls in November, something akin to the 1994 shift in Congressional power will happen again and Barack Obama’s quasi-socialist political agenda will come to an end. People like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, if not removed from their positions in Congress altogether, will be so marginalized as to render them immaterial. Finally, it will become a very real possibility that Obama will serve only one term of office, and be relegated to the dustbin of history right next to Jimmy Carter.

For now, I intend to savor the flavor of this victory of common sense over liberal entitlement. I know that the story from the Democrats is that Coakley lost the election because she was a bad candidate and ran a bad campaign. In truth, Coakley ran the type of campaign that liberals in that part of the country have run for decades. Campaigns in which Democrats took the voting public for granted, turned a deaf ear to what the voters were saying, and counted on Union support to win the election. It didn’t work this time. Hell, even The One© himself flew into the middle of the fray and failed to raise even an eyebrow.

That’s gonna leave a mark.

Republicans, if they are smart and learn from what has happened, will immediately start planning their fall campaigns around the simple, common sense themes of Brown’s campaign. Killing Health Care Reform as currently proposed, tax cuts for business and individuals, spending cuts throughout the government, smaller more efficient government and pro-small business economic policies would be a great place to start. Cutting taxes for small businesses will lead to job growth, and killing the tax burden which ObamaCare will force on small business owners and individuals will free up money for investment. These are simple, common sense measures which will not bloat the budget deficit or the national debt, while putting the private sector back in control of job growth.

Democrats, I’m going to take a minute here to say something as sincerely as I can. What you take from the results of this election will help determine the trajectory of your Party over the next 10 – 20 years. If you take the time to really listen to what the Democrats and Independents in Massachusetts are telling you about why they voted for Brown, you may have a chance to turn the tide which is heading your way. If you turn a deaf ear to them, you do so at your own peril.

So, as I go to sleep tonight, I do so knowing that short of the Democrat Party committing political suicide and trying to pass ObamaCare in the middle of the night using some sort of procedural trickery, that ObamaCare is dead and I now have a chance to receive all the medical care I’ll need in the years to come.

Democrats: You have been warned.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Stay safe and enjoy the time with your family and friends.

Here are the results from the last CD Poll:

With all that is going on in the world, should Obama have traveled to Denmark to promote Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics?

Please register your opinion in the new CD Poll in the sidebar: Should Health Care Reform be passed, as currenty proposed?

The Democrats in Congress are currently trying to jam an unpopular version of health care reform down the throats of the American people. The reasons that this version is so unpopular are numerous and include its increased costs, rationed care, and its expansion of the government’s power over our lives. At one time or another, there were at least 5 different versions of this proposed legislation floating around the Congress looking for approval. The proposal which came out of the House was just under 2,000 pages long; the Senate proposal is currentl around 2,100 pages long. Also, it seems that almost nobody in either House of Congress has read either bill.

Yet, they want to have something passed by the end of the year, if not sooner. Why? Some on the left have suggested that it has to be passed because it is “historic” and may not survive to be passed later. Seeing as this is Obama’s big issue, Democrats also want it passed so that Obama doesn’t look weak. Obama has said that if it isn’t passed, the country will go bankrupt:

The president laid out a dire scenario of what will happen if his health care reform effort fails.

“If we don’t pass it, here’s the guarantee….your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you,” he said. “Potentially they’re going to drop your coverage, because they just can’t afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year.“

The president said that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are on an “unsustainable” trajectory and if there is no action taken to bring them down, “the federal government will go bankrupt.”

Now Obama is worried about the country going bankrupt — after spending trillions of dollars we don’t have on government spending which will not create jobs or grow the economy. After tripling the national debt and spending tax revenue which won’t be collected for decades to come.

The problem with the Democrats’ proposals is that they do not incorporate common-sense approaches to reducing costs and increasing coverage. Instead, they use government-mandated purchase provisions to force people, whether they want it or not, to buy coverage, while driving private-sector insurance providers out of business by forcing them to compete with a government-subsidized government plan.

Before doing anything as drastic as has been proposed, the Congress should do three things to reform health care:

1. Eradicate government regulations which prevent private insurance companies from selling on a national basis.
2. Institute tort-reform to reduce the skyrocketing cost of litigation.
3. Increase efforts to find and eliminate Medicare fraud.

Allowing insurance companies to operate nationally will quickly bring down the cost of insurance to consumers by increasing choice in the marketplace. Lowering the cost of insurance premiums is the key to increasing coverage of the uninsured. Tort-reform will also reduce the cost of insurance premiums by placing limits on the cash settlements and attorney’s fees that can be won in litigation. Finally, eliminating fraud is just a good idea all around. These three ideas could eliminate billions of dollars in costs without costing the taxpayer anywhere near what is currently proposed.

Once these three steps are taken, then we can look at other, more drastic options as are currently being proposed by the Democrats in Congress.

Dear Singer/Vocalist/”Artiste”:

The Christmas Season is once again upon us, and soon you will be put into situations where you will want to join with others and sing the songs of the season. This may mean that you will sing a solo piece at church, or if you are fortunate enough to make a living making music, you may be entertaining large crowds. Everyone, myself included, loves the traditional carols which have flourished for decades, and hearing them always brings a little happiness and cheer.

However, some of you out there are ruining the joy that Christmas music brings. You are literally strangling all of the joy and happiness out of the music before our very ears. How? With the warble.

First made famous by Whitney Houston when she sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl awhile back, warbling is when the singer holds a note for much longer than was intended, and then tries to sound like a jazz saxaphone player by singing free-form melody over the background music. The problem is, 99 times out of a hundred, this sounds like someone stomping on a cat’s tail. Its just that irritating.

Now, don’t get your little feelings hurt. I know you are just trying to “make the song your own.” What you need to remember is this: The audience doesn’t want you to make the song your own. They don’t want to listen to you warble on and on. They just want to hear the damn song the way it was written.

You see, the reason why the audience wants you to stick to the music is because of what the music represents. It isn’t about you, or your multi-octave voice, or your musical identity. This music is about time spent with family on Christmases past, about your family’s holiday traditions and memories. Yes, we love the music, but mostly we love the memories the music evokes in us.

Your warbling drives a stake right through the center of those memories and kills them dead. It drives us insane. Really, it does (just ask my wife).

So, this year leave the warbling to the birds and just sing the song like it was written. It will be appreciated more than you know.

Thanks.