Obamanomics: The Record

Clear numbers driven analysis, each economics bill passed and the result. Well worth a few minutes.

http://youtu.be/ZPNjWtwDbso

ObamaCare to ObamaTax

From ObamaCare to ObamaTax. Here are the taxes being imposed by the Democrat's healthcare law. Only Democrats passed this, and the American people have been against it since the start; polls show at least 57% against as of this posting. The lowest has been 51% against. Some polls show as high as 67%. There's a lot in the law that has absolutely nothing to do with health or medicine. There's twenty or twenty one new taxes, some listed below. Full article here.

Health and Human Services (HHS)  taxes (this is already in effect) charitable hospitals $50,000 if they don't meet new "community health assessment needs," "financial assistance," and "billing and collection" rules. Don't know the number, but my bet is most charitable hospitals are Christian institutions, and we know Obama is an anti-Christian bigot. Obama is against charity; remember one of the first things he did was reduce deductions for charitable giving.

There's a tax increase of $4.5 billion for a specific type of bio fuel. This has what do to with health care?

This was one of the first to be noticed by the public: a 10% tax on tanning bed usage.

If you have a flex account through work to purchase medical stuff, that's off the table now. You can only use it for the purchase of prescription meds, not over the counter except for insulin. For cryin' out loud, prescription meds you get through your health insurance.

Your employer starting this year will be reporting your insurance on the W2. How long before that's used to tax your health benefits? Right now those are pre tax. This is the set up to take that away.

There's a 3.8% surtax on investments. What's this have to do with health insurance?

"Other unearned income includes (for surtax purposes) gross income from interest, annuities, royalties, net rents, and passive income in partnerships and Subchapter-S corporations.  It does not include municipal bond interest or life insurance proceeds, since those do not add to gross income.  It does not include active trade or business income, fair market value sales of ownership in pass-through entities, or distributions from retirement plans.  The 3.8% surtax does not apply to non-resident aliens."

Medical devices will be taxed. Need a wheelchair or prosthetic device? Taxed.

Have a special needs child? Before there was an open ended flexible spending account for them. Now it's capped. It was unlimited.

Then, most famously, the mandate. If you decide not to participate in ObamaTax, you'll pay a penalty, er, tax, on something you don't use. Same for employers, but for them it may be cheaper to pay the tax than carry employee insurance. Look to lose your private health insurance. The ultimate goal of ObamaTax is to force everyone onto a single payer system. Obama stated this several times, it's on vid, that he wanted this; he just stopped saying it when he started to campaign for president.

If you have a health plan with lots of bell and whistles, a "Cadillac" plan, there will be an 40% tax increase on that. Congress has a "Cadillac" plan. They are exempt. Of course, they are exempt from all of this.

This really really really must be repealed. It's the death knell of our constitutional republic if left in place. If the government can manage your health needs, and take even more of your money if you don't comply, you have no freedom.

In the early 1960's Reagan spoke against the very thing that's happening to us now. If you haven't heard this yet, please, listen up.

http://youtu.be/fRdLpem-AAs

Reagan Warned Us About Obama

This is a great juxtaposition of a Reagan speech over 40 years ago, with words and images of what's happening during the Obama administration. Prescient. 

http://youtu.be/P3hY1eagq88

I don't know if was amused or bemused when Our Dear Leader recently compared himself with Reagan.

4th of July As a Religious Observance (repost fm last year)

Today is one of those July 4th's that happen on a Sunday. Despite protestations to the contrary from Secularists, this nation was founded on Judaic-Christian principles. Saying anything other than affirming this truth, makes them willfully ignorant or liars. Worshiping on this Sacred Day gives yet more meaning to our celebration of it.

I loved our Responsive Reading this morning:

Worship Leader: Many years ago the founder of our great nation gathered to initiate a new experiment in government.

Congregation: They were people of faith - faith in the providence of God and the competence of all citizens to manage their own destiny.

Worship Leader: They possessed a vision of a land where the human spirit, created free and owing ultimate allegiance only to the Creator, would be free to reach its highest potential.

Congregation: We are heirs of that faith and vision. We therefore come to worship this day asking God to continue to bless this land of ours, to keep watch over it and to protect it from the power s of tyranny and all that oppresses the human spirit.

Below is a rather long speech to read, but should be read by both Secular and Religious people. Secular people must be intellectually honest, and recognize that all they claim they believe in, the values, The Bill of Rights, the rule of law, the institutions of freedom, all have at their core, Judaic-Christian tradition. If there is no religious freedom, then there is no freedom, because there is nothing else to challenge the State.

On 23 August 1984, President Reagan spoke to an ecumenical prayer breakfast in Dallas, Texas.

Part 2

"I believe that faith and religion play a critical role in the political life of our nation — and always has — and that the church — and by that I mean all churches, all denominations — has had a strong influence on the state. And this has worked to our benefit as a nation.

Those who created our country — the Founding Fathers and Mothers — understood that there is a divine order which transcends the human order. They saw the state, in fact, as a form of moral order and felt that the bedrock of moral order is religion.


The Mayflower Compact began with the words, “In the name of God, amen.” The Declaration of Independence appeals to “Nature’s God” and the “Creator” and “the Supreme Judge of the world.” Congress was given a chaplain, and the oaths of office are oaths before God.

James Madison in the Federalist Papers admitted that in the creation of our Republic he perceived the hand of the Almighty. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, warned that we must never forget the God from whom our blessings flowed.

George Washington referred to religion’s profound and unsurpassed place in the heart of our nation quite directly in his Farewell Address in 1796. Seven years earlier, France had erected a government that was intended to be purely secular. This new government would be grounded on reason rather than the law of God. By 1796 the French Revolution had known the Reign of Terror. . . .

In 1962 the Supreme Court in the New York prayer case banned the compulsory saying of prayers. In 1963 the Court banned the reading of the Bible in our public schools. From that point on, the courts pushed the meaning of the ruling ever outward, so that now our children are not allowed voluntary prayer. We even had to pass a law — we passed a special law in the Congress just a few weeks ago to allow student prayer groups the same access to schoolrooms after classes that a young Marxist society, for example, would already enjoy with no opposition.

The 1962 decision opened the way to a flood of similar suits. Once religion had been made vulnerable, a series of assaults were made in one court after another, on one issue after another. Cases were started to argue against tax-exempt status for churches. Suits were brought to abolish the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and to remove “In God We Trust” from public documents and from our currency.

Today there are those who are fighting to make sure voluntary prayer is not returned to the classrooms. And the frustrating thing for the great majority of Americans who support and understand the special importance of religion in the national life — the frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom, and openmindedness. Question: Isn’t the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? [Applause] They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives.

If all the children of our country studied together all of the many religions in our country, wouldn’t they learn greater tolerance of each other’s beliefs? If children prayed together, would they not understand what they have in common, and would this not, indeed, bring them closer, and is this not to be desired? So, I submit to you that those who claim to be fighting for tolerance on this issue may not be tolerant at all. . . .

There are, these days, many questions on which religious leaders are obliged to offer their moral and theological guidance, and such guidance is a good and necessary thing. To know how a church and its members feel on a public issue expands the parameters of debate. It does not narrow the debate; it expands it.

The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality’s foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they’re sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.

A state is nothing more than a reflection of its citizens; the more decent the citizens, the more decent the state. If you practice a religion, whether you’re Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or guided by some other faith, then your private life will be influenced by a sense of moral obligation, and so, too, will your public life. One affects the other. The churches of America do not exist by the grace of the state; the churches of America are not mere citizens of the state. The churches of America exist apart; they have their own vantage point, their own authority. Religion is its own realm; it makes its own claims.

We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. We command no worship. We mandate no belief. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief. All are free to believe or not believe; all are free to practice a faith or not. But those who believe must be free to speak of and act on their belief, to apply moral teaching to public questions. . . .

Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."

Ronald Reagan: A Personal Tribute On His 100th Anniversary

The most powerful influence in my personal life was my father. Most influence in my religious life is CS Lewis. The most powerful influence in my political thinking is Ronald Reagan. Today is the 100^th anniversary of his birth.

In 1980 I was “spiritual but not religious” and a Marxist. I was anti anything Reagan said or represented. That year I heard a speech by him. At the end of that speech I found myself thinking that what he was saying was true. How could this be? It flew in the face of every socio-political and economic belief I had. What became clear was that I had beliefs; that those beliefs were based only on what people that thought like me wrote and said. Those beliefs were not based on analysis, fact, knowledge, or wisdom. I had to own up to my being intellectually narrow minded and lazy; that I had not read or listened to any Conservative other than WF Buckley. He was in fact, the only Conservative I was aware of. I only knew of Conservative thought what fellow Leftists said about it.

The journey moving from being a Statist to Conservative began, and it took most of the eighties for me to totally reject socialism, the idea that government was the ultimate good for the Citizens of this, or any country. I began by reading two books, Up From Liberalism by WF Buckley and The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater.

That speech also began another journey, my acceptance of Christianity. There is a powerful Christian message in what Reagan said and did. That journey, my conversion, took much longer. I was pretty much an established Conservative by the end of Reagan’s presidency, but didn't return to the church until about 1994 and was baptized in 1996. It makes perfectly good sense that these two, Conservatism and Christianity are merged, because the principles of free will, liberty, the sanctity of life, and compassion are all part of it. Statists claim to believe in the same, but in fact they are provably about power and state control. They are secularists and reject Christianity for a reason; it stands against what they truly believe. I’ve been there, and they can say it ain’t so, and if they do, they are liars.

When Reagan was inaugurated, his Bible was opened to a specific passage:

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Our nation was broken. “Malaise” was the description of our plight (used by President Carter) with double digit inflation, the Iran hostage debacle, high unemployment, energy shortages, an impoverished and demoralized military that I experienced first hand, and increasing food prices.

Looking at Carter and Obama, they both say we have to cut back, sacrifice, do with less, and submit more to government. The thing is, the only reason there’s a shortage of anything, it’s because government creates shortages.

Reagan from his autobiography:

"We had strayed a great distance from our Founding Fathers' vision of America. They regarded the central government's responsibility as that of providing national security, protecting our democratic freedoms, and limiting the government's intrusion in our lives -- in sum, the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They never envisioned vast agencies in Washington telling our farmers what to plant, our teachers what to teach, our industries what to build. The Constitution they wrote established sovereign states, not mere administrative districts for the federal government. They believed in keeping government as close as possible to the people."

 From his Farewell Address:

"It's been the honor of my life to be your president. So many of you have written the past few weeks to say thanks, but I could say as much to you. ...

It's been quite a journey this decade, and we held together through some stormy seas. And at the end, together, we are reaching our destination. ...

The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we're a great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be this way. But as long as we remember our First Principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. ...

"Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which 'We the People' tell the government what it is allowed to do. 'We the People' are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I've tried to do these past eight years. ...

"I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts. ...

"Action is still needed, if we're to finish the job. An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. ...

"I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation -- from our experience, our wisdom and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries. They called it the Reagan Revolution. Well, I'll accept that, but for me it always seemed like the Great Rediscovery -- a rediscovery of our values and our common sense. ...

"Goodbye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America."

 God bless you Ronald Reagan, from the bottom of my heart, and with all my intellect, for the personal, national, and international guidance, wisdom and strength you provided.   

“Still Point in a Turning World: Ronald Reagan and His Ranch”

 This is for an upcoming film by the Young America's Foundation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvP63ETpjbM

On Reagan's 100th Birthday "A Time for Choosing"

Prescient. Delivered in 1964, Reagan addresses the exact same issues we have today, but now they are multiplied and amplified. "The more the plan fails, the more the planners plan." The planners have been running things since that statement. This is long, but please sit and hear. The message is even more important now than then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY

Protests and Sanctity

If you faint in the day of adversity,
your strength is small.
Rescue those who are being taken away to death;
hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,
and will he not repay man according to his work?

 Proverbs 24:10-12:

We can only estimate how many babies have been killed since Roe vs Wade was ruled upon by the Supreme Court in 1973. That estimate is 40 million babies conservatively, and 50 million babies probably. In pagan times there wasn’t abortion, but babies were birthed then tossed off a cliff in Rome, or elsewhere just taken outside the town, city, village and left to die.

Every year at this time, there’s the longest running and huge rally in Washington DC. It’s the pro-life rally. This year, it was held today. The Jurassic Press doesn’t report it, or if they do, hide it in deep in the pages of the paper, not reported in radio news, not reported on television. We’re talking about a yearly rally that draws more than 200,000 people of all races and ages. 

We are saddened by the fraud of the Jurassic Press in not reporting this huge annual event; you can be assured that if this were a violent anti-American rally of just a few Leftists, it would get massive coverage.

We are more saddened that so many murders are sanctioned by the State. Saddened Planned Parenthood is a taxpayer funded abortion mill. We are saddened that the sanctity of life is so diminished in our culture. We are saddened that we had once risen above a heartless pagan view of human life, and are now sinking back down to it. What was remarkable about Jesus’ saying to bring the children to Him, was that at the time children were of no or little value. They were a burden, another mouth to feed. They were not acceptable until they could start contributing by working. He pointed out their value, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

Life is sacred. People are sacred. Babies are sacred, and given by God into our care.  

Ronald Reagan Christmas Address (12/23/81)

Now: Mourning in America Then: Morning in America

This is now


This was then

Reagan came to power with problems that were more severe than what Obama started with. Without blaming his predecessor, Reagan convinced the public, without insults and name calling, to follow him, that his economic principles of low taxes and limited government work. After a tough start the economy turned about from double digit inflation and unemployment, a demoralized military and citizenry became optimistic, and we had the longest peacetime economic growth in the history of the United States.

Three Presidents on Vacation

Reagan Going for a Ride

Bush Enjoying Some Time Off

Obama Going for a Ride

"Those Voices Don't Speak for the Rest of Us" ~ Ronald Reagan

4th of July As a Religious Observance

Today is one of those July 4th's that happen on a Sunday. Despite protestations to the contrary from Secularists, this nation was founded on Judaic-Christian principles. Saying anything other than affirming this truth, makes them willfully ignorant or liars. Worshiping on this Sacred Day gives yet more meaning to our celebration of it.

I loved our Responsive Reading this morning:

Worship Leader: Many years ago the founder of our great nation gathered to initiate a new experiment in government.

Congregation: They were people of faith - faith in the providence of God and the competence of all citizens to manage their own destiny.

Worship Leader: They possessed a vision of a land where the human spirit, created free and owing ultimate allegiance only to the Creator, would be free to reach its highest potential.

Congregation: We are heirs of that faith and vision. We therefore come to worship this day asking God to continue to bless this land of ours, to keep watch over it and to protect it from the power s of tyranny and all that oppresses the human spirit.

Below is a rather long speech to read, but should be read by both Secular and Religious people. Secular people must be intellectually honest, and recognize that all they claim they believe in, the values, The Bill of Rights, the rule of law, the institutions of freedom, all have at their core, Judaic-Christian tradition. If there is no religious freedom, then there is no freedom, because there is nothing else to challenge the State.

On 23 August 1984, President Reagan spoke to an ecumenical prayer breakfast in Dallas, Texas.

Part 2

"I believe that faith and religion play a critical role in the political life of our nation — and always has — and that the church — and by that I mean all churches, all denominations — has had a strong influence on the state. And this has worked to our benefit as a nation.

Those who created our country — the Founding Fathers and Mothers — understood that there is a divine order which transcends the human order. They saw the state, in fact, as a form of moral order and felt that the bedrock of moral order is religion.


The Mayflower Compact began with the words, “In the name of God, amen.” The Declaration of Independence appeals to “Nature’s God” and the “Creator” and “the Supreme Judge of the world.” Congress was given a chaplain, and the oaths of office are oaths before God.

James Madison in the Federalist Papers admitted that in the creation of our Republic he perceived the hand of the Almighty. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, warned that we must never forget the God from whom our blessings flowed.

George Washington referred to religion’s profound and unsurpassed place in the heart of our nation quite directly in his Farewell Address in 1796. Seven years earlier, France had erected a government that was intended to be purely secular. This new government would be grounded on reason rather than the law of God. By 1796 the French Revolution had known the Reign of Terror. . . .

In 1962 the Supreme Court in the New York prayer case banned the compulsory saying of prayers. In 1963 the Court banned the reading of the Bible in our public schools. From that point on, the courts pushed the meaning of the ruling ever outward, so that now our children are not allowed voluntary prayer. We even had to pass a law — we passed a special law in the Congress just a few weeks ago to allow student prayer groups the same access to schoolrooms after classes that a young Marxist society, for example, would already enjoy with no opposition.

The 1962 decision opened the way to a flood of similar suits. Once religion had been made vulnerable, a series of assaults were made in one court after another, on one issue after another. Cases were started to argue against tax-exempt status for churches. Suits were brought to abolish the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and to remove “In God We Trust” from public documents and from our currency.

Today there are those who are fighting to make sure voluntary prayer is not returned to the classrooms. And the frustrating thing for the great majority of Americans who support and understand the special importance of religion in the national life — the frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom, and openmindedness. Question: Isn’t the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? [Applause] They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives.

If all the children of our country studied together all of the many religions in our country, wouldn’t they learn greater tolerance of each other’s beliefs? If children prayed together, would they not understand what they have in common, and would this not, indeed, bring them closer, and is this not to be desired? So, I submit to you that those who claim to be fighting for tolerance on this issue may not be tolerant at all. . . .

There are, these days, many questions on which religious leaders are obliged to offer their moral and theological guidance, and such guidance is a good and necessary thing. To know how a church and its members feel on a public issue expands the parameters of debate. It does not narrow the debate; it expands it.

The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality’s foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they’re sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.

A state is nothing more than a reflection of its citizens; the more decent the citizens, the more decent the state. If you practice a religion, whether you’re Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or guided by some other faith, then your private life will be influenced by a sense of moral obligation, and so, too, will your public life. One affects the other. The churches of America do not exist by the grace of the state; the churches of America are not mere citizens of the state. The churches of America exist apart; they have their own vantage point, their own authority. Religion is its own realm; it makes its own claims.

We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. We command no worship. We mandate no belief. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief. All are free to believe or not believe; all are free to practice a faith or not. But those who believe must be free to speak of and act on their belief, to apply moral teaching to public questions. . . .

Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."

Today is Flag Day

"Today we celebrate Flag Day, the birthday of our Stars and Stripes. As we think back over the history of our nation's flag, we remember that the story of its early years was often one of hardship and trials, sometimes a fight for simple survival. ... As the American Republic grew and prospered and new stars were added to the flag, the ideal of freedom grew and prospered. From the rolling hills of Kentucky to the shores of California to the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon, our pioneers carried our flag before them, a symbol of the indomitable spirit of a free people. And let us never forget that in honoring our flag, we honor the American men and women who have courageously fought and died for it over the last 200 years, patriots who set an ideal above any consideration of self. Our flag flies free today because of their sacrifice." ~~Ronald Reagan, Flag Day 1986