I agree with Obama?

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,” he said. “It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”


Who am I quoting above?  President Barack Obama.  Yep, back in 2006 when George W. Bush was president...and he actually did vote against it.  It passed anyway, 52-48.  I find it strange to say that I completely agree with every word he said.


The thing that I find disturbing is the drastic change in his thoughts between 2006 and 2011.  He now says that he regrets his vote against raising the debt ceiling.  The White House has gone so far as to say that "the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling would be Armageddon-like in terms of the economy."


So what exactly is the debt ceiling?


It seems pretty simple...it's a cap set by Congress on the amount of debt the federal government can legally borrow.  We are currently $14.216 trillion in debt, which is only $81 billion shy of the cap.  The ceiling has been raised 74 times since 1962.  So raising it is hardly a new thing.  However, it's hardly  a good thing either!


The treasury is constantly borrowing money to fund operations and pay creditors.  In short, we consistently spend more than we bring in.


If the debt ceiling is not raised the options are: to cut spending or raise taxes by $738 billion dollars (just to be able to make it through the next quarter), or default on some of our debt obligations.


Would defaulting on our debt be bad for the entire world?  Oh yeah.  


So I get why they want to raise it.  However, there truly has to be a day of reckoning.  We simply must put an end to living beyond our collective means.  We need a responsible budget.  Budgeting the money we have and not spending any more than that.


In high school civics you probably learned (but may have forgotten) that Article 1 of the Constitution states that one of the responsibilities of Congress is to "appropriate funds" or make a budget.


It's April and we still don't have a budget.  It is quite a mystery why they didn't pass one when they had a Democratically controlled house, senate, and white house.  That would have been much easier and made a lot of sense...but I guess they were too busy shoving Obamacare down our throats to worry about trivial things like a budget.  Or maybe they just wanted to wait until the Republicans got some power so they could blame the stalemate on them.  We may never know, but it is inexcusable.


My family has a budget.  We are raising four children on one income...it's pretty much a necessity to know where our money goes.  We have student loan debt, a mortgage and one car loan, and we are working to pay it down as quickly as possible.  So yes, I see that sometimes debt is a necessary evil.  We do not, however, have ANY credit card debt.  Racking up debt on credit cards would allow us to live beyond our means, but I am happy to report that we are smarter than that.  Don't we all wish congress was as smart as me? :)


No, our country has found that it is really fun to live beyond your means.  You can throw around money funding all kinds of entitlement programs and making everybody happy.  Then you see the chart below and realize that you have gotten yourself into some serious trouble.

In February, the Obama Administration posted the largest monthly deficit in US history.  It's pretty scary because there is no end in sight.  Just to put it in perspective: That single month's deficit is 4 times as large as the spending cuts proposed by house Republicans and more than 30 times the cuts offered by Senate Democrats.


Have no fear though.  President Obama has begun his reelection campaign and announced today his plan to save us all.  He is going to raise taxes on families making over $250,000 ($200,000 for individuals).  Well thank goodness!  And the rest of us thought we might need to cut some of the out of control spending!  


Yikes!  I think they should all be forced to take a Dave Ramsey Financial Peace class before they are sworn in.  We are going to have to take some serious steps to get out of this much debt, and it's going to hurt a little ("Beans and rice; rice and beans" for those Dave Ramsey disciples out there).  Bottom line though, it has to be done.  Simply raising the debt ceiling every time you approach it is unacceptable.

Why we don't want universal healthcare...

I was able to experience Socialized healthcare firsthand today. I could have paid $15 a pop to get flu shots for our family at our family doctor. Instead, I decided to be a tightwad and get the free flu shots that the government was giving out today.

I sat in line in my car for two and a half hours with four very unhappy children.

It was miserable to put it mildly. My only thought was that this could be, in the foreseeable future, our only option for healthcare. This time it was my choice.

If the United States adopts a universal health care system, waiting will be the name of the game.

Here are a few examples:

Mark Cannon, 30, from the United Kingdom died eight and a half weeks after being admitted to the hospital with a broken leg. He was clearly distressed and in pain, but he had to wait three days to see the pain team.

Lindsay McCreith, 66, from Canada was told he had a brain tumor but that he would have to wait four and a half months to obtain an MRI to rule out the possibility that it was cancerous. Unwilling to risk the progression of what might be cancer, Mr. McCreith obtained an MRI in Buffalo, which revealed the tumor was malignant. Even with this diagnosis in hand, the Ontario system still refused to provide timely treatment, so Mr. McCreith had surgery in Buffalo to remove the cancerous brain tumor in March, 2006. In Ontario, Mr. McCreith would have waited eight months for surgery, according to his family doctor. Eight months is enough time for a cancer to worsen, spread and progress to an irreversible stage. Had Mr. McCreith not paid $26,600 for immediate care, he might be dead today.

Jordan Johanson, 18, from Canada died at Rockyview Hospital in late March. He died following a 12-hour wait for surgery on his appendix.

Sheila Nunn, A woman from Canada suffering seizures, was told by her doctor that she urgently needed an MRI scan. She was also told she would have to wait three months to have it done locally. Nunn, who had been suffering blackouts, memory loss, confusion and seizures for two months, decided to take action: She paid $1,100 to have the MRI scan done in Michigan.

Gerald Carroll, 46, of Australia had chemotherapy for tumors in his jaw and behind his eye. After that treatment, he had a three-month wait for radiotherapy. “But in the three months it took to get the stereotactic radiotherapy I needed, the tumor had grown too large to treat,” Mr. Carroll said. “The radiotherapist referred me back to my oncologist. I’ve been on chemo since February and now’s it’s reduced the tumor to a point where I can have the radiation. I’m on the waiting list for stereotactic radiosurgery at this time.”

With socialized medicine, doctors will have little incentive to strive to be good at what they do. They will be government employees and have far less accountability, as well as lower pay. Could we still expect the best and brightest to strive to be doctors? Probably not.

Many on the left love to complain that the United States is one of the few industrialized nations without a government health care system. Yet they rarely note that the United States produces disproportional amounts of the new, life-saving drugs, largely because of the profits drug companies make. Will we continue to produce these drugs if we abolish the profit motive? Not likely. Chances are, they will not be produced at all, and more people will needlessly suffer and die as a result.

When we examine countries that have embraced socialized medicine, we find long waits, expansive red tape and little concern for the individual. Do you really want to be told which doctor to go to? Do you want to wait years to have necessary medical procedures performed? If so, then socialized medicine is for you.

Not for me.

In fact, I don’t particularly like ANY kind of socialism!

Let’s define socialism really quickly, because I know there are some of you that are thinking “Aubrey’s being dramatic again...we'll never have socialism.” I will turn to Wikipedia for a definition:

“Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods”

“Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and creates an unequal society. All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly”

"Some socialists advocate complete nationalization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange; while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Social democrats propose selective nationalization of key national industries in mixed economies combined with tax-funded welfare programs.”

Think Fannie and Freddie and the whole bank bailout.

I am not saying that I think Obama is the one behind all of this. This has been a long lime coming. Our country creeps closer and closer to socialism everyday. My fear is that now we aren’t creeping…we’re sprinting.

I am trying to post a YouTube video of Ezra Taft Benson. He was President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture. He gave us a warning 50 years ago about socialism. I hope you will go to this link and hear it directly from Secretary Benson’s mouth, because I can’t get it to post!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKFloXeBIwo#

He spoke with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and this is a quote from their exchange:

“You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands!”

I’m afraid Khrushchev has been proven right.

A Dark Day

I didn’t sleep very well last night. I may not sleep well for the next four years. I couldn’t shake the stress and worry as I tossed and turned all night. In one dream that I remember, I went to the ATM to get money. Instead of the usual screen, there was just Barack Obama’s face laughing it me. Hilarious that I would want to access my own money.

Today I will start looking for a contractor to build a false wall somewhere in my house. I want a stash of food and money that the government can’t find. I’m contemplating buying a gun to hide in there. Don’t take the right to bear arms for granted. The Constitution means nothing now.

How about the freedom of speech? That one won’t hang around long.

But the liberals love their freedom of speech, right?

Only when you’re speaking the right things. One of the first things on the agenda is to get rid of talk radio. Talk radio is the only place that conservatives can get news that isn’t filtered by people like Keith Olbermann. The television news, magazines and newspapers are overwhelmingly liberal.

But the Democrats insist that talk radio isn’t fair because it’s too conservative. The Fairness Doctrine would mean that radio broadcasts have to be split fairly between conservative and liberal views. Liberal talk radio has been tried, and nobody listens. Why would they? If you want liberal news, you can turn on any channel. The First Amendment means now means nothing. The Democrats have been chomping at the bit for this, and now they will get their chance.

Even more scary is Obama’s 250,000 person “civilian force” that's going to be just as strong, just as powerful and just as well funded as the U.S. military. No, I am not making this up. This is really his plan.

Let’s go back in history to when Wilson was president. The Sedition Act was passed. This imposed prison terms of up to 20 years and fines of up to $10,000 for "all forms of expression in any way critical of the government.” The Justice Department turned over the enforcement of that act to the citizen "loyalty leagues". Sounds kind of like a “civilian force” to me.

There was a huge media campaign where people were asked to anonymously turn in anyone critical of the administration to the Justice Department. By January 1920, they had organized the largest mass arrests in U.S. history, rounding up at least 10,000 individuals.

Obama plans to cut the funding of the military in half to fund his little civilian force. I feel safe, don’t you? I can just see a bunch of people running around wearing a red armband with a big “O” on it.

My biggest concern is that since so much of the military funding will go to the Obama Loyalty League, our country will not be protected. We have been so blessed with safety since the September 11 attacks.

I think a lot of people take that for granted.

I will be praying everyday that when the next attacks occur, and they will, that the target will not be the headquarters of the world’s largest retailer.

I plan to keep this blog going as long as I can…until the people with the armbands come for me.

My Final Plea

The election is tomorrow. Many of you may have voted early, but if you know me, you know I have not. I love Election Day; it’s like a holiday.

The liberal media has worked hard to get Barak Obama elected, and they are working even harder in the final days to make us believe that this election is over, and Obama has it won by a landslide.

Don’t believe it.

Don’t let the media dictate what you think. This election is not over.

Yes, I am aware of the hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes for the Democrats. This will be very hard to overcome. The Obama campaign has insisted that all claims of voter fraud should be investigated after the election. They have written to the Attorney General and insisted that it is the people who discovered and reported the fraud that should be investigated. In one of the letters the Obama campaign states that the attempt to uncover the fraud is an effort to “harass voters and impede their exercise of their rights.” Seriously?

Ohio is a critical state. There have been several instances of people registering and voting on the same day (thankfully most states have better voter protection laws). Unfortunately, they registered and voted with somebody else’s address. They catch a few of these, but thousands get through- enough to swing an election.

But I don’t despair, because this is not over.

Obama is very smart. He only pushes as far as he thinks the electorate will let him. People say “he’s only for universal healthcare for kids”. Yeah…for now. If he is able to get that thorough, he will certainly move on to the entire population. Universal healthcare for kids failed in Hawaii after only 7 months. Everyone was dropping their private healthcare- duh! So they had to get rid of it.

Universal healthcare sounds good. Change sounds good. Helping minorities and poor people buy houses sounded good. It is the same thing. It is the government thinking that they can run our lives better than we can. Did it really help those people to get into a house, only to lose the house and be left with ruined credit?

I would like to give just one reason not to vote for Obama (I have hundreds, but here is the most important)

Please, please, please don’t vote for Obama because you think he will be good for the economy or lower your taxes. If you have other reasons why you think he is the best choice, that is your prerogative. But if your choice is based on the economy, you MUST reconsider.

Here are a couple of quotes from President Clinton:

"We will lower the tax burden on middle class Americans by asking the very wealthy to pay their fair share. Middle class taxpayers will have a choice between a children's tax credit or a significant reduction in their income tax rate." [Putting People First, September 1992.]

On October 19, 1992 he said, "I will not raise taxes on the middle class to pay for these programs. If the money does not come in there to pay for these programs, we will cut other government spending or we will slow down the phase-in of these programs. I am not gonna raise taxes on the middle class to pay for these programs."

On Aug. 10, 1993, he signed the LARGEST TAX INCREASE IN HISTORY, raising taxes by almost $280 billion over five years.

Now I’m not saying Obama is Clinton. I’m just asking you to think about it. Use your own brain; don’t regurgitate what you hear on the news.

Ask yourself if Obama can really institute all of his new programs and give us all a tax cut.

The first thing he would do is let the Bush tax cuts expire. Then he will tell us that this isn’t really a tax increase, the cuts are just expiring. Bottom line is that my taxes will go up and so will yours (most of you…unless you are that lucky bottom 40% who will be getting a check).

The other way that Obama will kill the economy is through the Card Check Bill. I am willing to bet money that most of you haven’t even heard of this. It’s not something the liberal media wants you to know about. (Do you ever get frustrated that the media controls what information the public gets?)

Anyway, the Card Check Bill has to do with unions. The current policy is that if workers want to unionize, there is a secret ballot. The Democrats and Barack Obama want to take away the secret ballot so that workers don’t get a chance to vote. They will be able to go to workers’ houses and intimidate them into signing a card. If they get half of the workers to sign…poof…they’re unionized. Small businesses will have unions telling them how to run their business, they will have to hire labor lawyers, and their costs will skyrocket.

The really crazy thing is that this is an exact parallel of the Great Depression. The key negative component to deepening the depression was the massive increase in unionization, from 13 percent of the workforce in 1935 to 29 percent in 1939. The coordinated raising of prices by businesses that Franklin Roosevelt allowed after unions organized an industry also played a role in deepening the Depression.

Not only will the Card Check Bill deny employees the right to a private vote, it will lead to a surge in labor costs and reduction in competitiveness for U.S. companies at just the wrong time.

I am positive that Obama policies will be bad for our economy. Don’t vote for what sounds good. Vote for what is good.

Avoid the houses with an Obama sign in the yard!

Just kidding...sort of!

My friend Stefani sent me this and I love it!

Obama's new welfare program...I mean tax cuts

Sarah Palin was on Glenn Beck today. She had some really great things to say. Here is my favorite quote:

"GOVERNOR PALIN: See, Glenn, people have got to hear his words, don't just be there at these rallies or anything else. Listening to what he's saying. You have to really, really hear what he is saying. Barack Obama claims that he will cut income taxes for 95% of Americans. The problem is more than 40% pay no income taxes at all. So how do you cut income taxes for folks who don't pay them? What he's going to do is write them a check and call that a tax cut, even though it's really a tax credit. And where is he going to get all the money for all those checks? By raising taxes on America's families and on our small businesses and folks just like Joe the plumber, and Barack Obama is playing with words to hide his real agenda of redistributing the hard earned money of American families and I mean, you've got to hand it to Joe the plumber in Toledo. He's the one who succeeded in finally getting Barack Obama to, in plain speak, explain what his intentions are for these quote/unquote tax cuts."


Here are some of Obama's ideas for redristributing wealth:

- A $500 tax credit ($1,000 a couple) to "make work pay" that phases out at income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 per couple.

- A $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.

- A 10% mortgage interest tax credit (on top of the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies).

- A "savings" tax credit of 50% up to $1,000.

- An expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year, up from $175 now, and give these workers up to $1,110 if they are paying child support.

- A child care credit of 50% up to $6,000 of expenses a year.

- A "clean car" tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.


"Here's the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be "refundable," which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer -- a federal check -- from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this "welfare," or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a "Demogrant." Mr. Obama's genius is to call it a tax cut." (Wall Street Journal)

ACORN

ACORN, short for The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, began in 1970 with noble goals. They wanted better housing and wages for the poor, more community development investment from banks and governments, and better public schools.

They fought and “demonstrated” and were able to push through many of the policies that led to our current financial crisis. Any bank that didn’t lower credit standards and give loans to people that couldn’t pay them back were labeled “racist” and ACORN would conduct strikes against them. ACORN protesters will break into private offices, show up at a banker’s home to intimidate his family, or pour protesters into bank lobbies to scare away customers, all in an effort to force a lowering of credit standards for poor and minority customers.

This wasn’t too big of a problem until the 1990’s. Freddie and Fannie would not buy the bad loans. The banks that got pushed around by ACORN would try to sell their risky mortgages to Fannie and Freddie, and they said “no way!” Unfortunately, ACORN found a friend in President Clinton and many Democratic members of Congress.

In June of 1995, President Clinton announced his new strategy for raising home-ownership in America to an all-time high. He said that: “Our homeownership strategy will not cost the taxpayers one extra cent. It will not require legislation.” Clinton meant that these informal partnerships between Fannie and Freddie and groups like ACORN would make mortgages available to people with bad credit and people without money.

Great plan…we know now that this has indeed cost taxpayers far more than “one extra cent”.

It’s probably important to mention that Barack Obama was the attorney representing ACORN at this time. Just a small detail…

Another small detail to mention is that ACORN is funded by our tax dollars! Seriously!! And Democrats tried to give them more money through the recent “bailout”. Remember…the one that started out at $700 billion…then they added $150 billion in pork. Yeah, that bailout. Well, the first version had more money going to ACORN! Thank heavens that didn’t make it through. At least the pork is just going to NASCAR and wooden arrow makers.

So we have the American taxpayers giving this group lots of money. This has given them the ability to jump into a whole new area.

Voter Registration.

Yep. We are paying for them to register as many liberals as it takes to get Barack Obama elected. Of course, Obama is doing his part too. His campaign gave ACORN over $800,000 for get-out-the-vote efforts. Somehow he initially reported that this contribution was for “staging, sound and lighting.” His campaign says it was a “clerical error” and has amended their report. I’m sure he wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he gave a large sum of money to a liberal organization that has been convicted of voter fraud. No…it was a “clerical error”. (This happened at the end of August…you probably didn’t hear about it…why would the media run a negative story about Obama?)

This year ACORN is spending $16 million to register new Democrats. The question is: how many are real? Mickey Mouse…Tony Romo…probably not very many of them.

Just to prove my point…here are some of the states where the fraud is taking place. Notice all of the battleground states…coincidence? I think not. Why bother trying to win the election fair and square when you can falsely register an entire phonebook and be done with it?

Connecticut - falsifying/forging voter registration cards; Bridgeport, Connecticut estimates about 20% of Acorn's registrations were faulty.

Florida - falsifying voter registration;

Indiana - falsifying/forging voter registration cards; Lake County has already found more than 2,100 bogus applications among the 5,000 Acorn dumped right before the deadline. "All the signatures looked exactly the same," said Ruthann Hoagland, of the county election board.

Michigan - "a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications."

Missouri - looking into hundreds of dubious Acorn registrations.

Nevada - a raid on Acorn's offices, following complaints of false names and fictional addresses (including the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys). Nevada's Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said he saw rampant fraud in 2,000 to 3,000 applications Acorn submitted weekly.

New Mexico - hiring felons to work on registration drives;

North Carolina - fraudulent registrations submitted;

Ohio - 200,000 fraudulent registrations (no, I did not add a zero…it’s really that many. The crazy part is that the election in that state will probably be won by less than 200,000 votes) one man ACORN registered to vote over 70 times; The very liberal Secretary of State is trying to let all 200,000 stay, because legitimate voters will be disenfranchised if they have to prove their information is correct. PLEASE!!!

Pennsylvania - $2k reward offered for ACORN temp charged with perjury, identity theft and vote fraud;

Texas - 40% of 27K registrations from Houston rejected;

Washington - worst case of registration fraud in state history;

Wisconsin - hiring felons as “special registration deputies” and investigating Acorn employees for, "making people up or registering people that were still in prison."

This means that in 2/3 of the states where ACORN ran voter registration drives, they were involved with fraudulent registrations.

That’s just this year!

In 2004, four Acorn employees were indicted in Ohio for submitting false voter registrations. In 2005, two Colorado Acorn workers were found to have submitted false registrations. Four Acorn Missouri employees were indicted in 2006; five were found guilty in Washington state in 2007 for filling out registration forms with names from a phone book. It goes on and on. And did I mention that they are funded by the federal government?

So how does Barack the "community organizer" fit into all of this? Right in the middle of it!

In 1992 he led voter registration efforts as the director of Project Vote, which included Acorn.

He served as a lawyer for Acorn in 1995

During his tenure on the board of Chicago's Woods Fund, that body funneled more than $200,000 to Acorn

In a speech he gave to ACORN in December 2007, he said that "before I even get inaugurated, during the transition, we're going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda." Holy cow! They are NOT the ones I want shaping the agenda!

This past November, he applauded Acorn's leaders saying "I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work." Did you catch that…"smack dab in the middle of it"

And of course there is the $832,000 donation this year.

Obama says that he has “limited ties” to ACORN. Sure.

There is good news:

The numbers in Ohio are so ridiculously high that the FBI is getting involved. They are investigating ACORN to see if there is a “coordinated national scam.” Hopefully something can be done to stop ACORN.

Today, House of Representatives Republican leader John Boehner called for ACORN to be barred from receiving federal monies, and for a ban on ACORN contracting with candidates for federal office. He said, "ACORN spent decades promoting the housing policies that brought America's economy to the brink, and similarly over the years has committed fraud on our system of elections"

Now that’s a guy I’d vote for!