REAGAN INCREASED THE FEDERAL DEFICIT FROM $900 BILLION [CREATED BY ALL OF THE 39 PREVIOUS PRESIDENTS BEFORE HIM] TO $2.7 TRILLION IN 8 YEARS AFTER PROMISING TO ELIMINATE THE DEFICIT DURING HIS FIRST FOUR YEARS IN OFFICE
WITH ALL THE CRITICISM OF OBAMA’S PROGRAMS DESIGNED TO SAVE US FROM THE ECONOMIC DISASTER INHERITED FROM BUSH AND FRIENDS, THE REPUBLICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF TO SHUT THEIR MOUTHS ABOUT DEFICIT SPENDING.
THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HAS BEEN OVERWHELMING IN FAVOR OF UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE FOR DECADES; THIS TIME AROUND WE EXPECT CONGRESS TO STOP CONCEDING THE HEALTH OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO THE SPECIAL INTERESTS AND PASS THE OBAMA BILL FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH INSURANCE
From time to time when I am looking for something on TV that will make me laugh, I watch Fox News. Usually, I tune into O’Reilly or Hannity and simply enjoy the terrible distortions these two men with their midget mentalities place upon the news, particularly the agenda of Barack Obama and his effort to save this nation from the cataclysmic economic policies of the failed Bush administration.
Recently, I got two for the price of one. Not only did I get a chance to watch Hannity make a fool of himself, but he had as his guest a man who is the essence of lunacy; a man who would not know the truth if he tripped over it and on top of his ignorance he is also a pompous ass. Nevertheless, he has managed to make himself available to Fox News although he is a fool par excellence.
Dick Morris has worked for Republicans and Democrats until Clinton and after his disgusting exploitation of Bill Clinton the Democrats gave him up for Lent. Morris is the most exploitive human being I know of in today’s political arena. He even looks like a defector and to top it off he is precisely what he seems to be.
Between Hannity and Morris, I was stunned by the lies, the embellishments and the exaggerations that came out of the grubby mouths of these two intellectually challenged souls.
· These guys like most of their Republican contemporaries are fighting Obama’s health care proposal by spreading lies faster than manure spreader purveys cow dung.
· They insist that the freedom to choose your own doctor will vanish even though Obama has stipulated about a thousand times during the campaign that choice of doctor will remain with the patient.
· They insist that we will be forced to wait unreasonable periods of time to receive certain treatments and undergo important surgeries, although no such waiting period is evidenced by anyone associated with and favors this bill.
· They insist that it will cost the American people (one Republican estimates the increase in health coverage to be $3,000 while the Congressional Accounting office estimates an increase of $175 per person per year to insure every American receives their right to affordable health coverage.
· They are circulating a rumor that over ten years the deficit just for health care insurance will put the country in debt to the tune of $1.6 trillion when not one Republican raised a voice against Ronald Reagan’s $2.7 trillion deficit after eight years in office spent primarily on a monstrous increase in defense spending that proposed to create a shield over the country to protect us from bomb-transporting-missiles launched by declared enemies. After all of the expenditure few scientists believe a missile defense system to be workable and to this date those scientists have been correct].
· They believe that “Obama’s” TARP [Troubled Asset Recovery Package]; which in reality is Bush’s TARP, is being wasted on unnecessary projects that will not improve the condition of our faltering economy. The problem stems from the fact that when Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson released the first tranche of $350 billion of the total package of $786 billion asked for by Bush and Paulson and passed by the Congress, they placed these funds in the hands of several major financial and insurance institutions that were deemed “too big to allow to fail.” However Bush and Paulsen failed to place any stipulations on this money, i.e. they failed to require the banks to make loans from the billions of dollars that were given to these institutions; thus, the purpose of the loans to enhance the economic climate was lost. Obama has corrected this and saved us from the ramifications of yet another dreadful error by the Bush team.
· As for the projects, Hannity had the audacity to list every program and the amount of money devoted to it as if everything requested by Governors, Mayors, and County Commissioners, etc. would in no way stimulate the economy or create new jobs-- which is simply not true.
· I am convinced that between Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, they will do anything moral or immoral to destroy the Obama agenda. Limbaugh’s audience listens to his b… s… over 600 radio stations. According to Premier that syndicates Limbaugh’s show, he has an audience of 3.59 million during any quarter hour of the show. Pew Research found 80% of his audience to be “conservative” and Talkers magazine estimates his nearly immeasurable audience to be 14.25 million weekly. My point is that everyone concedes he has a large audience not really scientifically calculated, and he holds sway over his devoted followers referred to as “dittoheads.” When one puts his 14,250,000 listeners up against the total population of the country [303,824,640] his influence seems minor at best except for the loyalists who think of nothing but voting Republican their entire lives without giving thought to why. Fox News viewers fit into the same category.
Anybody that listens to Fox News for the facts, for the truth, for the realities of the day are being terribly short changed.
I belong to a health club in the town of my summer residence. It is a little expensive, but it is the finest health club I have ever seen. However, most of the members are right-wing Republicans and I hear some of the most ghastly exaggerations of the Obama programs you can imagine as I do my therapy in the warm water pool.
First of all, many of these people are educated and have led very successful lives in the world of business. In fact, several are multi-millionaires and the vast majority are Reagan Republicans and loyal viewers of Fox News. When one questions the veracity and the source of the utter nonsense they are spewing, inevitably they say they listen to Fox News.
While they call me a “Socialist, or a Fascist or even a Communist” in good fun, I usually respond with some quietly sarcastic remark about Republicans and their 19th century view of the world. I tell them the brightest moment of their entire Party was the Abraham Lincoln Administration and his philosophy that “Government should do for the people what they cannot do for themselves or do so well.”
Recently, I had a rather heated discussion with a lady that I truly enjoy most of the time, but on this occasion my old friend accused Bill Clinton of starting the war in Iraq. I could not take it any longer and I proceeded to give her a piece of my mind, and frankly, I don’t have much mind to give away at this stage of my life.
It is almost as if these people do not read newspapers, do not watch TV news or read books. They live in their own little political cocoon unphased by reality, facts or the actuality of life around them. They drive through slums and do not see or feel the poverty. The listen to Fox News and cannot distinguish fact from fiction. They believe that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s, helped al Qaeda with its plans to fly into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and hold fast to the lie that the war in Iraq was a right and just cause and worth the lives of our soldiers and the trillions we spent there simply because we killed a really mean dictator.
Not unlike the lady I met on the beach last winter in Florida who had the nerve to tell me that George W. Bush was the greatest president in our country’s history. Unable to control my anger, I simply said as I walked away, “Madame, you and I have nothing more to discuss.”
I was talking with a liberal friend of mine recently who wondered aloud why over forty percent of the population of this country could vote for John McCain who had endorsed every one of George W. Bush’s failed programs and not only placed our entire financial structure on the brink of disaster, but had forced our country into an unnecessary war that he had adopted from the brainless members of the Neo-Conservative movement costing nearly 4500 American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and robbed us of the precious money the tax payers of this country unwillingly spent to fight a fruitless war.
How incompetent does a president have to be lose the support of these obviously mindless people? How bad does an administration have to perform for this minority of the American electorate to see the terrible harm it has done not only to our country, but to our standing in the world?
Over the years Ronald Reagan taunted the federal government for its size and its deficits. During his first campaign for the White House, as I said repeatedly, he guaranteed that he would reduce the size of the federal monstrosity, but more importantly would eliminate the $900 billion deficit by the end of this first term. Not only did he fail to reduce the size of the federal atrocity, but he added 220,000 new personnel to the Capital rosters. Not only did he fail to balance the $900 billion deficit, when after eight years, he left office with the deficit the largest in history--$2.7 trillion dollars.
Why then are the Republicans shouting to the sky and into any television camera that they find that Obama is about to destroy America’s financial system because the Universal Health Insurance he proposes will put our country in debt to the tune of $1.7 trillion.
Where were these archaic souls when Ronald Reagan knowingly placed a debt on the shoulders of our children and grandchildren in one eight year period of $2.7 trillion when all of the previous 39 presidents had together after a depression and World War II had increased the deficit to only $900 billion?
What is even more intriguing is why every Republican candidate for the presidency in 2008 stood before the television cameras in debate after debate and proudly proclaimed to the American people that they were captivated by and if elected would emulate Ronald Reagan’s presidency. God forbid that we have another Ronald Reagan as the head of government!
The Blue Dog Democrats and the right-wing Conservatives should think hard and long before they continue their fight to destroy universal health insurance. This time the American people have loudly proclaimed their desire for health insurance that is available to all people who want it and need it, at a price that is affordable. Every Congress person that votes against it will be tracked down like dogs in 2010 election and through their asses out of the proud and majestic halls of Congress because these naysayers will prove once and for all that they are unfit to represent their constituents. This nation will no longer tolerate a Congress that cannot pass universal health insurance regardless of the cost especially under the false pretense that the nation will not survive with a $1.7 deficit over ten years.
And the vast sums of money, requested first by Bush and then by Obama to repair the damage inflicted upon our once strong economy will in many cases be paid back by the banks and other financial institutions, the auto manufacturers, and insurance companies; and in other cases, the money will come to taxpayers in the form of stock in these institutions which with new regulatory oversight and rules will operate in a more responsible manner leading to a more profitable outcome.
Obama has been in office lightly over five months. While Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Crowley, Morris, and the leadership of the Republican Party in Congress are playing dirty politics at a time when genuinely constructive leadership is demanded, the American people are able to see through their despicably destructive and derogatory treatment of the new president. Much of the Republican Party membership of the House and Senator are not patriots, but their behavior is surely pushing the envelope toward treasonable conduct.
12:28:08 PM 
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