Yesterday was quite a day.   It began with President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm)  addressing the Commencement Exercise of 92,000 University of Michigan students.  In it, he touted the virtue of big government and community organizing (I’m shocked!).  He also said the following:

Passionate rhetoric isn’t new, he acknowledged. Politics in America, he said, “has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart. … If you enter the arena, you should expect to get roughed up.”

Obama hoped the graduates hearing his words can avoid cynicism and brush off the overheated noise of politics. In fact, he said, they should seek out opposing views.

His advice: If you’re a regular Glenn Beck listener, then check out the Huffington Post sometimes. If you read The New York Times editorial page the morning, then glance every now and then at The Wall Street Journal.

“It may make your blood boil. Your mind may not be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship,” he said.

Remember this for later reference. 

Meanwhile, in certain key cities around the country, illegal immigrants and sympathizers marched against the new Arizona law.  The law actually requires people to show an ID and Proof of Insurance when they are pulled over. ( Hey, that’s happened to me before.  Maybe I should march.)  It is actually an extension of a federal law already  in practice.

As evening fell, President Barack Obama kept his appointment with adoration as he and Michelle attended the National Correspondents’ Dinner.  Like Moses coming down from the mountaintop with the Ten Commandments, Scooter laid some words of extremely profound wisdom on the salivating sycophants.  He pontificated that:

There a few things in life harder to find and more important to keep than love.

(Where did you get that from, Scooter, a fortune cookie?)

“Well, love and a birth certificate,” Obama snarkily added, making fun of those who dare question his place of birth. “I happen to know that my approval ratings are still very high in the country of my birth.” Obama was born in Hawaii, but some question whether he was born overseas.

Obama also attacked Jay Leno, the comedian headlining the dinner. Obama said Leno was “the only person whose ratings fell more than mine.” ( How come he’s beating perverted old Liberal Dave Letterman in the ratings, then?)

He added that he was glad he spoke before the “The Tonight Show” host, “because we have all seen what happens when somebody takes the time slot after Leno.” Comic Conan O’Brien left NBC after his stint hosting “The Tonight Show” following Leno didn’t work out.

He took aim at his own administration too, cracking jokes about Vice President Joe Biden and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

He also attacked Republicans, of course. The President noted Sen. John McCain’s claim this year that he was not identified as a maverick. “We know what happens in Arizona when you don’t have an ID. … Adios amigos,” 

Leno did not fare as well as the Regime Leader.  Laughs were few and far between for the comedian.  Evidently, Jay was just too much of an average American for the crowd of Obamabots.

While Obama was being adored and Jay Leno was bombing at the National Correspondents’ Dinner, there was a attempted bombing of a deadlier kind on Times Square.

NYC Police announced an SUV found parked on 45th Street was loaded with explosives, smoking and about to blow up when an ordinary t-shirt vendor noticed something wasn’t right and grabbed a mounted police officer.

The officer evacuated the block and called for reinforcements.

“We avoided what could have been a very deadly event,” Mayor Bloomberg said.

“Firefighters, emergency service officers and the bomb squad responded and the bomb squad confirmed that the suspicious vehicle did indeed contain an explosive device,” Bloomberg said. 

Inside the dark green Nissan Pathfinder, Police found three propane tanks, consumer-grade fireworks, two full five-gallon gasoline containers, two clocks, some electrical wire, and a metal gun locker.

The abandoned vehicle had its engine on and hazard lights flashing, but as of now, the terrorist has not been identified or located.

“We’re in the process of identifying additional cameras which may have captured images of the vehicle and more important, people seen driving or leaving the vehicle,” said NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. 

In more disturbing news, the oil spill has reached the Gulf Coast.

The oil is flowing from the sea floor at 5,000 barrels a day — the same thing as 210,000 gallons — possibly  much more, from a well about 50 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico,threatening to eclipse the volume of the infamous Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Remind the video from that disaster?  It spilled oil onto rocky Alaskan beaches, but,  at least you can wash oil off a rock. In the Gulf, the oil is floating into wetlands that could hold on to its toxins for years.

Remember the movie Quo Vadis with Peter Ustinov playing the Roman Emperor Nero?  Nero, quite unbalanced, fiddled while the beseiged Rome burned.  It appears to me that Obama is laughing while America is under attack.

Sources:  wcbstv.com, mywaynews.com, washingtonpost.com, myfoxatlanta.com, drudgereport.com

Efforts to hold back a monstrous oil spill were hampered by high winds and roiling waves Friday as the black, floating ooze continued to seep into Louisiana’s rich fishing grounds and nesting areas, leaving government workers scrambling for new ideas as to how to deal with America’s biggest environmental crisis in decades.

While the mile-deep BP well was gushing forth an estimated 200,000 gallons of crude a day, a lawsuit was filed that claimed that workers for Liberals’ favorite whipping boy, Halliburton Inc.,  might have caused the April 20th disaster, which killed 11 people. Halliburton  has issued a denial.

The oil slick is now more than 130 miles long and 70 miles wide and is endangering scores of species of wildlife, including birds, dolphins and the fish, shrimp, oysters and crabs that make the Gulf Coast one of the nation’s most abundant sources of seafood. Louisiana has closed some fishing grounds and oyster beds because of the possibility of oil contamination.

At least 1.6 million gallons of oil have spilled, according to  the Coast Guard.

This ever widening black mass could reach the Mississippi, Alabama and Florida coasts by Monday.

There is a real possibility that this spill could eclipse the worst oil accident in U.S. history – the 11 million gallons that spilled from the supertanker Exxon Valdez off Alaska in 1989 – in just two months.

As the spectre of this horrible disaster looms over America’s Gulf Coast, where is the President?  Flying down to the coast to help the beleagured residents who are facing another natural disaster so shortly after Katrina?

No.

Sending all the resources of the Federal Government down to take care of the situation?

Not exactly. 

Within hours of the explosion, BP was sending unmanned submarines to the well to try to trigger a device called a “blowout preventer,” which is essentially a powerful valve meant to clamp down on the well and shut it off in case of emergency.

The device should have been triggered in the explosion, but wasn’t; that failure will be a central question in the investigation.

So what is Scooter doing?  Is he up all night with his Advisors trying to figure out the best way to handle this natural disaster?  Nope.  First he has to give a Propaganda, err, Commencement speech today at the University of Michigan.  Then, tonight, it’s time to party!

Our President and First Lady will be attending the National Correspondents’ Dinner tonight.  He’ll  be laughing it up with Jay Leno and the sycophantic Main Stream Media while those who make their living on the Gulf Coast watch this ominous ooze drifting in to destroy their livelihoods.

Don’t worry.  A White House Spokeman has announced that the President will bless the Gulf Coast with his presence within 48 hours.

Priorities…priorities.

But, hey.  I’m sure the First Couple will look good for the  cameras.  After all,

It’s storybook, man.

Sources:  mywaynews.com,wsj.com, Jake Tapper on Twitter

If I came up to you and offered you a chance to buy some air, you would look at me as if I was a couple of fries short of a Happy Meal.   Well, that is exactly the con job that has been going on in front of America’s eyes and it involves people in the highest positions of power in our country.  Hold on to something while I give you the details.

It all began with the Joyce Foundation.  This foundation started as the financial back-up plan of a widow whose family had made millions in the lumber industry.

After her death, it was run by philanthropic people who increasingly dedicated their giving to Liberal causes, including gun control, environmentalism and school changes.  It has grown over the years until it is now bigger than the TIDES Foundation and actually funds it.

The Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the capitol outlay to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, believe it or not, air.

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is proud to let everyone know that it is “North America’s only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.” Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002 . What a coincidence, that, as president, pushing cap-and-trade is one of his highest priorities, huh?

Currently, CCX members are legally bound together by a  voluntary agreement to regulate greenhouse gases.

The CCX provides the vehicle by which to trade the very pollution permits and carbon offsets that would be  imposed by government mandate through the administration’s cap-and-trade proposals .

Climate trading could be a $10 trillion dollar market if cap-and-trade measures like Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer are signed into law.  These measures will make energy prices go through the roof, even as companies buy and sell permits for permission to emit those six “greenhouse” gases (like paying for forgiveness of your sins).

Founders of the CCX include former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore.  Gore is co-founder of Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offsets of no value whatsoever.  These offsets allow rich polluters to continue to pollute with a clear conscience (go and sin no more, wink, wink).  Other founders include former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood, as well as Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris, also of Goldman Sachs.

In 2006, CCX received a big boost when another investor bought a 10% stake on the prospect of untold riches. That investor was (ta daaah) Goldman Sachs, currently in the spotlight for selling financial instruments it knew never had the chance of a snowball in July of succeeding.

The actual mechanism that enabled trading on the exchange was bought and patented by none other than Franklin Raines, who was CEO of Fannie Mae at the time.

Raines struck it rich to the tune of some $90 million by buying and bundling bad mortgages that led to the horrible economy that we are still dealing with.  Why would a mortgage guy be interested in Climate Change?  Simple.   Cap-and-trade will make housing costs go up, too.

Goldman and Sachs, who gave around $1,000,000 to Obama’s Presidential Campaign, is under investigation by the SEC and in the midst of an inquisition by the U.S. Senate, as I alluded to previously.  Why are they putting up with this abuse when the Democrats themselves are the ones who have benefited the most from the political benevolence  of Wall Street in the past?

Answer:  money and power.  Goldman Sachs is going along with this dog and pony show because of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  If Cap and Trade is passed, they and the rest of the investors that comprise the Chicago Climate Exchange are going to be swimming in a moat of money.

All of the above prompts me to ask the following question:

Excuse me, Mr. President, sir.  Isn’t your push for cap and trade a conflict of interest?

Sources:  investors.com, foxnews.com, chicagoclimatex.com

Set for a vote on Thursday is yet another piece of partisan stealth legislation aimed at solidifying the Democrat regime’s Socialist control over of the American people, the economy and the country.

On the horizon, it’s the Puerto Rico Democracy Act (H.R. 2499). It would force Puerto Rico to vote on U.S. statehood. It is designed to not-so-subtly force the commonwealth into statehood.   This bill is so brazen as to require the territory to vote every eight years until statehood is accepted by the people of Puerto Rico.

How did we get to this point?  Courtesy of prstatehood.com:

The committee considered four amendments during the mark-up of the bill. The two successful amendments provide that bilingual ballots will be provided during the plebiscites and that the costs of the plebiscites will be the responsibility of the government of Puerto Rico. Rep. Henry E. Brown (R-SC) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) respectively introduced the amendments. Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi (D-PR), the sponsor of the bill, accepted both amendments, noting that bilingual ballots were used in Puerto Rico’s 2008 general election and the committee members unanimously concurred.

 (July 22, 2009) By a vote of 30-8, the Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, overwhelmingly passed legislation (H.R. 2499 – The Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2009) to give congressional sanction to an island plebiscite on Puerto Rico’s status for the first time in American history. The Natural Resources Committee has jurisdiction over Puerto Rico affairs in the United States Congress in Washington, D.C..

Puerto Rico is already a fully-functioning democracy,which has repeatedly rejected attempts to turn it into a U.S. state for decades.

In a desperate effort to create new Democrat voters and elected officials, the Liberals are now stealthily trying to add a 51st state, full of potential voters.

The Libs are praying that because of a heavy population of poverty-stricken minorities, they can count on Puerto Rico to vote en masse for Democrats and all their handouts, and their representation will also consequently outnumber that of 25 other existing U.S. states.

There’s more. Puerto Ricans have an average income of less than half that of our poorest state. Their wretched state will make them instantly eligible for scores of our welfare programs.  In order to bring Puerto Rico up to American infrastructure and environmental standards, a bonanza of taxpayer dollars will also have to be continuously dumped into the territory, by federal law.

This will also make a whole lot of non-English speaking people part of our country overnight, which will bring a whole different set of headaches.

Last night, the United States Senate put a crimp in Obama’s plans to radically change America’s economy by voting 57-41 to block cloture on his new Financial Reform Bill.    This blocks the bill from moving on to debate.  Of course, the petulant President issued a statement filled with his usual gracious bi-partisian words of reconciliation (Yeah, right.).

I am deeply disappointed that Senate Republicans voted in a block against allowing a public debate on Wall Street reform to begin (I thought I had bought them off.). Some of these Senators may believe that this obstruction is a good political strategy( Hey, it worked for the Democrats during Bush’s last term.), and others may see delay as an opportunity to take this debate behind closed doors (like Healthcare Reform?), where financial industry lobbyists can water down reform or kill it altogether (or maybe Goldman Sachs will just donate another $955,473 to your next campaign.). But the American people can’t afford that (We can’t afford you, Scooter.). A lack of consumer protections and a lack of accountability on Wall Street nearly brought our economy to its knees, and helped cause the pain that has left millions of Americans without jobs and without homes ( We thought it was the corruption of a Democratic Congress and your Socialist plans.). The reform that both parties have been working on for a year would prevent a crisis like this from happening again, and I urge the Senate to get back to work and put the interests of the country ahead of party (I’ve got a mighty nation to bring to its’ knees.)

(Hold on to something.  You might fall off the chair in a fit of laughter.)  Sen. Olympia Snowe, RINO extrordinaire, opined the following:

Political cronyism is nothing new.  Where you have a political campaign, you have deals being negotiated.  As Former Speaker Newt Gingrich said to Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on his Fox News Show this weekend:

It’s the way business is done in Washington.

There were a whole lot of deals struck to achieve the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm).

Let’s look at some policy issues and Payback potential, shall we?

One of the big issues of the morning is Financial Reform.  “Dinghy” Harry Reid is insisting on getting something done in order to save his phoney baloney job.  Obama himself made a impassioned speech last week about the subject.  Methinks, he doth protest too much.  Remember the bailouts?

The following recipients of President Obama’s trickle-down-to-my-donors bailout plan rank among his top 20 contributors to his 2008 presidential election campaign, according to Open Secrets:

Goldman Sachs: $955,473

Citigroup: $653,468

JP Morgan Chase & Co.: $646,058

Morgan Stanley: $485,823

Three other banks that were significant contributors to Obama received money through AIG:

Bank of America: $274,493

Wachovia: $214,151

AIG: $112,170

Lehman Brothers, which did not survive long enough to join the list of banks leaching off the work of the American taxpayer, also gave the Obama campaign $276,088.

Individuals identifying themselves as working for the banks above gave Barack Obama’s presidential campaign $3,617,724. In other words, more than 3.6 million reasons for the president to help focus the media’s glare on the relatively minuscule $165 million in AIG executive bonuses, and away from their $43.5 billion portion of $100 billion of taxpayer dollars the administration, by design or incompetence, filtered to other banks through AIG.

In receiving $43.5 billion for their investment of just over $3.3 million, it looks like the banks that gambled on Wall Street certainly got their money’s worth out of their investment in Barack Obama.

By the way, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced last week that Goldman Sachs would not be getting their campaign contribution back.  What a surprise.

Also, on Tuesday afternoon, March 23rd, 2010, something happened at the White House that has never happened before in American history. A sitting President walked out of a meeting with the Prime Minister of one of our closest allies and, foregoing the traditional photo op, press conference, and evening meal together.

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Obama walked out of his meeting with Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a U.S. congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.

Foxnews.com reports today that:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has accepted an invitation to visit the White House for a meeting with President Obama, senior Palestinian officials told Fox News. 

The invitation was extended by Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell during a weekend visit to the region where he was trying to restart indirect peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis. Mitchell is expected to return next week, signaling he is making progress. 

So, Scooter is snubbing our ally Israel and embracing the Palestinians.  Hmmm.  I wonder why?  Probable Muslim belief system nothwithstanding, it’s also about the Benjamins.

…Obama has numerous donors who have contributed well over the $4,600 federal election limit.

Many of these donors have never been contacted by the Obama campaign to refund the excess amounts to them.

And more than 37,000 Obama donations appear to be conversions of foreign currency.

According to a Newsmax analysis of the Obama campaign data before the latest figures were released, potential foreign currency donations could range anywhere from $12.8 million to a stunning $63 million in all. With the addition of $150 million raised in September, this amount could be much more.

Puts that bow to the Saudi Prince in focus, doesn’t it?

Finally, what about Scooter’s vocal opposition to the new Arizona Illegal Immigration Law?

The actions by the Arizona legislature threaten “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans,” Obama said. It also may hamper trust between residents and law enforcement authorities, he said.

He said he has instructed U.S. authorities to monitor the state’s actions and to “examine the civil rights and other implications” of the legislation.

Noble sentiments, huh?  Not Really.  From Michelle Malkin on 12/15/09:

SEIU has been lobbying for illegal alien amnesty as a massive membership booster all year. In May, the Purple Shirts held a pro-illegal immigration rally from Malcolm X Park to the White House to put pressure on homeland security officials to call off workplace raids.

The Service Employees International Union spent $30,816,092 in independent expenditures in support of Barack Obama.  In the 2008 election cycle donations to Democrats represented 94 percent of the SEIU PAC’s overall contributions.

Retiring SEIU President Andy Stern has been a close advisor to Obama, logging 22 visits to the White House as of October 30, 2009. 

During his campaign, Obama’s handlers and the Main Stream Media told us that he was a new kind of politician.  True.  Where else but America could a Chicago Community Organizer/political hack rise from obscurity to become the Leader of the Free (for now) World?  All it took was money…and audaciousness. 

Sources:  dailycaller.com, pajamasmedia.com, foxnews.com, newsmax.com, michellemalkin.com, glennbeck.blogs.foxnews.com

What does it take for a Border State to do something about Illegal Immigration?  Evidently, it takes the murder of a rancher.

Police say Robert Krentz, whose family has been ranching in southern Arizona since 1907, was gunned down early Saturday morning, March 27th, 2010, by an illegal immigrant while out on his ATV tending to fences and water lines on the family’s 34,000-acre cattle ranch.

Reached by phone early Tuesday at his family’s ranch, Andy Krentz, Krentz’s oldest son, said his father was a churchgoing man who routinely went out of his way to help those in need.

“My father was a very good family man,” Krentz told FoxNews.com. “He supported his kids, supported his family. He went out of his way to help anybody we could without regarding to who they were.  It didn’t matter who they were.”

Sue Krentz, Krentz’s wife, said she was “pretty overwhelmed” by her husband’s death, which coincided with her parents’ deteriorating health.

“This is icing on the cake,” Krentz said.

Yes, it was.  The public outcry was deafening.

 Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law Friday, April 23rd, 2010, a bill supporters said would take handcuffs off police in dealing with illegal immigration in Arizona, the nation’s busiest gateway for human and drug smuggling from Mexico.With hundreds of protesters outside the state Capitol shouting that the bill would lead to civil rights abuses, Brewer said critics were “overreacting” and that she wouldn’t tolerate racial profiling.

“We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act,” Brewer said after signing the law. “But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created a dangerous and unacceptable situation.”

Thank you, Gov. Brewer.  I wish it had been earlier.  A  good man lost his life due to government neglience and political correctness.  So, what did the President of the United States say about this horrible situtation?  Did he comfort Mr. Krentz’s family?  Did he congratulate Arizona for cracking down on Illegal Immigration?  Are you kidding me?

“Our failure to act responsibly at the federal level will only open the door to irresponsibility by others,” Obama said at a Rose Garden naturalization ceremony for 24 members of the U.S. military. “That includes, for example, the recent efforts in Arizona.”

The actions by the Arizona legislature threaten “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans,” Obama said. It also may hamper trust between residents and law enforcement authorities, he said.

He said he has instructed U.S. authorities to monitor the state’s actions and to “examine the civil rights and other implications” of the legislation.

“Surely we can all agree that when 11 million people in our country are living here illegally, outside the system, that’s unacceptable,” Obama said. “The American people demand and deserve a solution.”

Obama lauded the work of Senators Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, to come up with a framework for legislation that can win bipartisan support.

Graham has said he’ll introduce legislation only after it’s finished and at least one other Republican signs on. He said this week that any effort to move immigration this year will fail badly because both parties need to “lay the groundwork” politically with tough border-control approaches first.

The president has been making calls to members of Congress, including Republicans, to win support for tackling an immigration law overhaul, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

Yes, sir.   Americans can always count on Scooter  to do the right thing, can’t we?  I mean, to do the right thing for his Far Left Base and Democratic Political Hack Cronies.  As he is proving time and time again, Obama does not care what the majority of Americans think and want.  He is going to do exactly what his handlers and the Far Left Moonbat Base want him to do, basically telling average Americans where to go and the temperature when we get there.

In this case, by pushing for Grahamnesty, err, amnesty, err, immigration reform, he is trying to insure a Socialist Democratic Ruling Class (Politboro) by installing a brand new voting base.  And John McCain’s pet, Lindsey “Metrosexual” Graham, useful idiot that he is, is obliging Scooter.

Has anyone heard one mention of the loss of Mr. Krentz’s life by the President?  I haven’t.  Like everything else he does, Scooter is attempting to use this situation for personal and political gain.  By legalizing these trespassers, he, along with his minions, are trying to get re-elected.  In their minds, the loss of a good man’s life is not as important as their political ambitions. 

And that is why they must fail.

foxnews.com, washingtonpost.com, drudgereport.com, bloomberg.com

The scene is the daily White House Press Briefing, presided over by the unlikable and incompetent (not a good combination) White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. (We miss you soo much, Tony Snow.) When asked about rumors regarding a possibly imminent Value Added Tax (VAT), Gibbsy replies:

I think I directly answered this the other day by saying that it wasn’t something that the president had under consideration.

You know– I know that there’s been a lot of talk around town lately about the value-added tax–(Yeah.  Paul Volcker started it.) that is something that has worked for some countries. It’s something that would be novel– for the United States. And before, you know, I started saying, “This makes sense or that makes sense.” I want to get a better picture of what our options are.

And my first priority is to figure out how can we reduce wasteful spending so that– you know, we have a baseline of the core services that we need and the government should provide. And then we decide how do we pay for that. (Why start now?)  As opposed to figuring out how much money can we raise and then– not have to make some tough choices on the spending side.

For those that do not know, a VAT is a tax which taxes the value that is added at each stage of production of certain commodities.  It is already in place in several European countries. (So, you know Scooter loves it.)

Ready for another shot to the gut?  Here’s some figures from the legendary Dr. Charles Krauthammer:

We are now $8 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that another $12 trillion will be added over the next decade. Obamacare, when stripped of its budgetary gimmicks — the unfunded $200 billion-plus doctor fix, the double counting of Medicare cuts, the 10-6 sleight-of-hand (counting 10 years of revenue and only 6 years of outflows) — is at minimum a $2 trillion new entitlement.

It will vastly increase the debt. But even if it were revenue-neutral, Obamacare pre-empts and appropriates for itself the best and easiest means of reducing the existing deficit. Obamacare’s $500 billion of cuts in Medicare and $600 billion in tax hikes are no longer available for deficit reduction. They are siphoned off for the new entitlement of insuring the uninsured.

So, Americans are looking at a  tax burden bigger than Rosie O’Donnell after three trips to the buffet line.   Will this solve Scooter’s problems and achieve his goal of radically changing America?

The United Kingdom has implemented a VAT.  I wonder how they’re doing?  Has it helped their National Healthcare System?  Not hardly.

In the United Kingdom, health care is tax-funded and government-run. The government directly pays doctors and pays hospital fees. Patients do not receive bills for National Health Service (NHS) care. All citizens and legal residents are automatically part of this universal system. In terms of financing, 95% of funding comes from taxes and around 5% comes from user charges (for items like co-payments and costs associated with prescription drugs).

Long wait times have become second nature, despite dangerous consequences. In the period between 2001 and 2006, the United Kingdom saw the median wait time increase from 44 to 51 days for hospital admission after the decision to admit had been made. In 2004, according to a BBC report, waiting times in Scotland and England were 8 months for cataract surgery, 11 months for hip surgery, 12 months for knee replacement, 5 months for repairing a slipped disk, and 5 months for hernia operations. In 2007, in 42% of the localities surveyed, hospitals had to turn women in childbirth away because their maternity wards were full.

The government’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) advises which high-cost treatments should and should not be covered. As reported in the June 8 Time magazine, “NICE uses a metric called quality-adjusted life year (QALY), which grades a person’s health-related quality of life from 0 to 1. … NICE rarely approves a drug that costs more than 45,000 per QALY.

Is there any doubt this is where we’re headed?  Especially after news leaked yesterday that:

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.

There is no doubt, that if it were solely up to the President of the United States, we would already have a Government-run Healthcare System.  If Obamacare is allowed to continue, unchecked by elections and repeals,we will.  Once single payer and the VAT are a fact of American life, Scooter will have achieved his goal of radically changing the greatest country on the face of the Earth into just another third-rate failed Marxist experiment. 

On Monday night, President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) spoke at a $35,ooo a plate Los Angeles Fundraiser for Barbara (don’t call me ma’am) Boxer.  Hilarity ensued.  (At least I think so.) 

But wait, there’s more:

Okay, not too much to see there.  Just our petulant President being petulant.

However, yesterday, the following occured:

This is the first time ever in America that the press corps has been barred from covering something like this.  Those 6 American Veterans who chained themselves to that fence had every right to be heard.  While I don’t agree with them, I will defend to the death their right to say it.

Why are Gay Activists upset with Scooter in the first place?  They helped to elect him.  This video from the 2009 Human Rights Campaign’s National Dinner helps to explain:

Gays are not the only ones suffering from unrequited love.  The Daily Caller reports: