The FAITHFUL do not want to see or believe THAT -- just like so much more.
- Bush's Third Term?
- You're Living It
- By David Swanson
- http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175135
- You're Living It
--MJ
"I heard a news report about the NSA spying on Americans that said that this goes back to 2007. Who was the president in 2007? As I have said repeatedly, every bad policy of Obama can be traced back to Bush." -- Laurence Vance
At 03:04 PM 5/11/2014, you wrote:
I see President Obama as the third term of President Bush ... he has continued and expanded most of the policies of President Bush, there certainly hasn't been any real change and will never be until all in Congress are replaced!!!
On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Keith In Tampa <[email protected] > wrote:
- Hey Geoffrey!
- Maybe "savant syndrome"....
- No, I disagree that somehow President Obama can be compared to Bush, (And I am no Bush fan....I did think both George and Jeb were great Governors, but can you envision Jeb as President? About equivalent to Hil Clinton!)Â
- ​
- On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 2:53 PM, geoffrey theist <[email protected]> wrote:
- maybe in most cases Keith but in this instance savant should go after idiot.
- On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 10:35 AM, Keith In Tampa <[email protected] > wrote:
- > Kevin Gutzman is an idiot....
- >
- >
- > On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 8:57 AM, MJ <[email protected]> wrote:
- >>
- >>
- >>
- >> ROTFLMAO!
- >>
- >> Regard$,
- >> --MJ
- >>
- >> "Republicans commonly complain that President Obama and his supporters
- >> blame President Bush II for much of what is wrong in contemporary America.
- >> This complaint's chief weakness is that Bush II is responsible for much
- >> that's wrong in contemporary America. My chief complaint with President
- >> Obama is that in reappointing Bernanke, rattling sabers over Syria, pushing
- >> immigration amnesty, continuing the Drug War, legislating via signing
- >> statements, spending prodigally, pushing through Obamacare, etc., he has
- >> built on the foreign-policy, constitutional, and spending legacies of Bush
- >> II." -- Kevin Gutzman
- >>
- >>
- >>
- >>
- >>
- >>
- >> The Obama Watch
- >>
- >> Light at the End of the Tunnel
- >>
- >> The passing of the Age of Obama.
- >>
- >> By Peter Ferrara – 5.7.14
- >>
- >> Conservatives need to wake up and start thinking past the rapidly passing
- >> age of Obama. Increasingly likely every day is that voters this November
- >> will remove Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. By electing a new
- >> Republican Senate majority, the voters will also render Barack Obama a lame
- >> duck, one of the lamest in history, as he will have no prayer of getting any
- >> of his legislative proposals —†increasingly recoggnized as hard left —
- >> through Congress. (Despite his early national rhetoric, Obama doesn̢۪t do
- > >> bipartisanship.)
- >>
- >> That new Republican Senate majority will also be a new check and balance
- >> on Obama̢۪s appointment of federal judges, r, reversing the effect of the Reid
- >> rule change eliminating Republican judicial filibusters. That is especially
- >> crucial given that the five remaining Reagan/Bush appointees on the Court
- >> constitute the slimmest of majorities, with a couple of occasionally weak
- >> sisters among them. If just one of these five is replaced by another Elena
- >> Kagan or Sonia Sotomayor, the resulting shift from a Reagan majority on the
- >> Court to an Obama one would mean a longer-term Obama transformation of
- >> America.
- >>
- >> Given the long-term cycles of American political history, Obama̢۪s second
- > >> midterm this year should be even worse for Democrats than the disastrous
- >> Obama first midterm in 2010. And the polls are bearing out that possibility.
- >>
- >> The latest is a Pew/USA Today poll finding that 47 percent favor the
- >> Republican candidate for Congress in their district or state, while 43
- >> percent favor the Democrat. That is a sharp turnaround from last October,
- >> when Democrats held a 6 point lead in the same generic midterm preference
- >> poll, 49 percent to 43 percent. The new Pew poll also finds a 16 point GOP
- >> lead among independent voters.
- >>
- >> Moreover, the Pew poll finds that “65% would l like to see the next
- >> President offer different policies and programs from the Obama
- >> Administration while 30 percent want Obama’™s successor to offer similar
- >> policies,†as reported by Jason Riley in the May 5 WWall Street Journal.
- >>
- >> In an April 27 Washington Post/ABC News poll, President Obama̢۪s approval
- > >> rating was down to an all-time low of 41 percent. That poll featured an 11
- >> point Democratic advantage in the sample, which indicates further weakness
- >> in that Obama support, especially as compared to the 2010 midterm turnout
- >> rather than the 2012 turnout.
- >>
- >> For context, in April 2010, President Obamaâ€â„„¢s job approval in that
- >> Washington Post/ABC News poll was 54 percent. In October 2010, just before
- >> the voters administered their first midterm beating to Democrats, Obama̢۪s
- > >> job approval was still 50 percent.
- >>
- >> Similarly, the April Gallup poll showed an Obama approval rating of 43
- >> percent, compared to an April 2010 Obama approval rating in that poll of 49
- >> percent, and an early November 2010 approval rating of 44 percent. The
- >> latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found Obamaâ€ââ„¢s job approval at 44
- >> percent, compared to a May 11, 2010 approval of 50 percent, and an October
- >> 30, 2010 approval of 45 percent. So consistently in all these polls, Obama
- >> was doing better in 2010 just before that yearâ€ââ„¢s Democrat blowout than he
- >> is doing this year.
- >>
- >> The Washington Post/ABC News poll also found only 42 percent approval of
- >> Obama̢۪s handling of the economy, lower thanhan the 44 percent in the October
- >> 2010 poll. Most damning of all, 53 percent in the 2014 poll say it is more
- >> important to have Republican congressional majorities to check Obama̢۪s
- > >> policies, compared to 39 percent who believe it is more important to have
- >> Democratic congressional majorities to support those policies.
- >>
- >> Bottom line in that poll, 45 percent say they plan to vote for Democratic
- >> candidates for Congress this fall, compared to 44 percent who say they plan
- >> to vote for Republican congressional candidates. But in October 2010, the
- >> Washington Post/ABC News poll showed Democrats with a 5-point advantage on
- >> that question, just before voters granted Republicans a 63-seat gain in the
- >> House, and a 6 to 7 seat gain in the Senate (depending on how you count the
- >> November 2010 affirmation of Scott Brown’s ¢s special election pickup of
- >> Senator Ted Kennedy̢۪s seat).
- > >>
- >> These polls above, and state by state polls, are consistent with a
- >> Republican pickup in this fall̢۪s midterm of of as many as 10 Senate seats,
- >> establishing a new 55 to 45 Republican Senate majority, and 20 more House
- >> seats. To maximize that victory, Republicans need to campaign on a
- >> pro-growth platform of specific reforms to get America booming again as
- >> under Reagan. But in designing those proposals, conservative and Republican
- >> candidates, think tanks, publications, and policy intellectuals need to
- >> think past what can possibly be compromised with President Obama, and take
- >> their case for populist, pro-growth reforms directly to the people.
- >>
- >> That should begin with pro-growth tax reform. Directly contrary to the
- >> Thomas Piketty/MSNBC socialists celebrating around massive, far left,
- >> anti-growth increases in tax rates on the most productive, Republican tax
- >> reform should involve sharp reductions in tax rates for everyone, in return
- >> for eliminating tax loopholes for special interest, crony capitalists.
- >>
- >> A good model for that are the tax reform proposals developed by House
- >> Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, already included in his budget
- >> proposals approved by the full House. For personal, individual income taxes,
- >> those proposals involve a 10 percent tax rate for annual incomes below
- >> $100,000, and a 25 percent tax rate for incomes above that. For corporate
- >> taxes, the top federal tax rate would be reduced to 25 percent as well.
- >>
- >> Republicans should avoid the trap of promising that such reform would be
- >> revenue neutral, shifting the debate to that rather than the impact on
- >> growth. Their proposals should involve a net tax cut on a static revenue
- >> estimating basis (not taking into account the pro-growth effects), and a net
- >> revenue gain on a dynamic basis, considering the pro-growth effects.
- >>
- >> Another pro-growth measure would be to repeal and replace Obamacare with
- >> the Patient Power health policy reforms proposed by free market health
- >> policy expert John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy
- >> Analysis in Dallas. Those reforms would assure universal health care for
- >> all, with no individual mandate, no employer mandate, and a sharp net cut in
- >> taxes, spending, and cost-increasing regulatory burdens.
- >>
- >> Those reforms would be based on a universal health insurance tax credit of
- >> roughly $2,500 per person, $8,000 per family, that every citizen could use
- >> to help purchase the private health insurance of their choice. For those who
- >> nevertheless still don̢۪t choose to buy coveoverage with the credit, the
- >> unused funds would be sent in federal block grants to clinics and hospitals
- >> that serve the indigent. For those who get too sick while uninsured, perhaps
- >> with cancer or heart disease, to then buy private health insurance for the
- >> first time, the tax credit can be used to buy coverage from a state-based
- >> uninsurable risk pool, or from Medicaid, which would assure coverage for
- >> pre-existing conditions in any event. Medicaid should also be turned over to
- >> the states for further reform, with block grants as in the enormously
- >> successful, 1996 welfare reforms. That has also been endorsed by Ryan̢۪s
- > >> Republican budgets, and by the 2012 Romney/Ryan ticket. CBO estimates that
- >> would save $1 to $2 trillion in the first 10 years alone.
- >>
- >> Some conservative analysts, and Republican health policy staffers, have
- >> been too pessimistic about the prospects for such reforms. They have
- >> succumbed to the fundamental mistake that under any market
- >> repeal-and-replace plan like the Goodman Patient Power plan, tens of
- >> millions of Americans will necessarily lose the health insurance plan they
- >> now have under Obamacare, doing to them what Obamacare just did to millions
- >> of Americans who were falsely told by President Obama that under Obamacare,
- >> if they liked their health plan, they could keep it.
- >>
- >> The egregious error here is that since there is no mandate at all in the
- >> Patient Power market alternative to Obamacare, not a single health policy
- >> insurance plan in the entire country would be invalidated by repeal and
- >> replacement of Obamacare by the Patient Power market plan. Under that market
- >> plan, each individual chooses the health plan he will buy with the universal
- >> health insurance tax credit. The federal government does not specify what
- >> health plan anyone has to buy. So the Patient Power market reforms would not
- >> require the cancellation or invalidation, of any health insurance plans.
- >> Anyone who likes the health plan he has under Obamacare can simply use the
- >> tax credit to help pay for that one. The exact number of health insurance
- >> plans in the entire country invalidated if Obamacare is repealed and
- >> replaced by Goodman̢۪s Patient Power market et plan would be precisely 0.00,
- >> not 35 million as some analysts have misled their more credulous readers to
- >> believe.
- >>
- >> With no employer mandate in the Patient Power plan, the effects of
- >> Obamacare in destroying jobs and full time employment are eliminated. With
- >> no individual mandate and no guaranteed issue or community rating
- >> regulation, the primary effects of Obamacare in increasing health costs are
- >> eliminated as well. The elimination of increased taxes and spending under
- >> Obamacare would be powerfully pro-growth as well.
- >>
- >> Other important pro-growth reforms for Republicans to support would
- >> include a federal balanced budget amendment, fundamental reform of the Fed
- >> and monetary policy, possibly including a restored link to gold and other
- >> precious metals to at least guide monetary policy, comprehensive welfare
- >> reform based on work for the able bodied instead of guaranteed handouts, and
- >> personal savings, investment. and insurance accounts for Social Security and
- >> Medicare (instead of suicidal cuts in those highly sensitive programs).
- >>
- >> Such reforms would involve a dramatic reduction in government spending and
- >> taxes over a generation, and restore booming, world leading, traditional
- >> American economic growth and prosperity, meaning millions of more jobs,
- >> higher wages and incomes for working families, and more real equality as a
- >> result.
- >>
- >> The American Spectator Foundation is the 501(c)(3) organization
- >> responsible for publishing The American Spectator magazine and training
- >> aspiring journalists who espouse traditional American values. Your
- >> contributions are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. Each donor
- >> receives a year-end summary of their giving for tax purposes.
- >>
- >>
- >> Copyright 2013, The American Spectator. All rights reserved.
- >>
- >> Source URL: http://spectator.org/articles/59065/light-end-tunnel
- >>
- >> Â
- >>
- >>
- >> __._,_.___
- >>
- >>
- >> Visit Your Group New Members 2 •
- >>
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