Obama Calls For Sacrifice!

Yes, Barack Obama is calling for sacrifices today. In fact, he cites the attacks on the United States of September 11th, 2001 as reason for the sacrifices – by Federal employees – of a small part of their automatic pay raises:

Citing the current economic recession — and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks eight years ago — President Obama says he will use emergency powers to cut the programmed across-the-board January increase in federal employees’ pay from 2.4 percent to 2.0 percent, according to a letter he sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Monday.

The move was not a surprise, as Obama telegraphed a 2 percent increase in the budget he proposed earlier this year. But it’s certainly not welcome news for federal employees, whose unions protested when Obama’s budget was released.

“Title 5, United States Code, authorizes me to implement an alternative pay plan if I view the adjustments that would otherwise take effect as inappropriate due to ‘national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare,’ Obama wrote in Monday’s letter. ‘A national emergency, within the meaning of chapter 53 of title 5, has existed since September 11, 2001. Likewise, with unemployment at 9.5 percent in June to cite just one economic indicator, few would disagree that our country is facing serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare.”

Loyal defender of unionized Federal employees Steny Hoyer leapt to the barricades to stop the evil Obama intentions:

“Congressman Hoyer is a strong supporter of our federal workforce as well as the principle of pay parity, which ensures equal annual compensation adjustments for both civilian federal workers and members of the military. Though he believes it is reasonable to have a smaller adjustment this year during a time of national economic hardship, he was extremely disappointed the administration did not follow pay parity,” Hoyer spokeswoman Stephanie Lundberg said.

Meanwhile, the senior citizens – who vote regularly and in large numbers – will not be seeing a draconian 0.4% cut and a net 2% raise in their benefits. They’ll see nothing at all in the way of a cost of living adjustment. For two years or more. And their net checks will go down since deductions will be going up.

Millions of older people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, the first time in a generation that payments would not rise. The trustees who oversee Social Security are projecting there won’t be a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the next two years. That hasn’t happened since automatic increases were adopted in 1975.

By law, Social Security benefits cannot go down. Nevertheless, monthly payments would drop for millions of people in the Medicare prescription drug program because the premiums, which often are deducted from Social Security payments, are scheduled to go up slightly.

This is the kind of tin-eared stupidity that gives me really high hopes for the retirement of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House next November.  

Obama did not have the guts to call for a zero raise for unionized Federal workforce, despite negative inflation - but he has no problem sacrificing the elderly’s COLA. The House leadership leaps to defend more money for unionized Federal employees – without a word for the seniors.

They obviously forget that they work for the voters. That is why they are in trouble.

It Can’t Happen Here, Right? Part Two.

ObamaCare will be better for seniors even though Obama himself has promised to wring “saving” out of Medicare to pay for his program, right? Because our politicians will be able to avoid any problems, political constraints or shortages with their awesome awesomeness, right? Nothing like this could ever happen here, right?

Prisoners have a better diet than Health Service hospital patients, scientists warn

Patients in Health Service hospitals are far more likely to go hungry than criminals in jail, scientists warned yesterday.

They say frail and elderly patients do not get the help they need with meals, and nobody checks whether they get enough to eat.

Despite years of Government promises to tackle poor hospital nutrition, food still arrives cold, and patients often miss out because meal times clash with tests and operations.

Meanwhile, prisoners are enjoying carbohydrate-rich, low-fat foods which in many cases are better than they would have been eating on the outside.

Obama will never cut costs by limiting staffing, right? Or food, right?

It looks like the elderly have a better chance at getting decent food by going to prison rather than being sentenced to a National Health Service hospital.

But it can’t happen here, right? Nor could this, right?  

Right.

Forget Tea Leaves…

…Reading the pant leg crease is the new tool for divination.

In the spring of 2005, New York Times columnist David Brooks arrived at then-Senator Barack Obama’s office for a chat. Brooks, a conservative writer who joined the Times in 2003 from The Weekly Standard, had never met Obama before. But, as they chewed over the finer points of Edmund Burke, it didn’t take long for the two men to click. “I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging,” Brooks recently told me, “but usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he knew both better than me.”

That first encounter is still vivid in Brooks’s mind. “I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” In the fall of 2006, two days after Obama’s The Audacity of Hope hit bookstores, Brooks published a glowing Times column. The headline was “Run, Barack, Run.”

If you go read the whole thing, I will not be responsible. You have to bring your own airsickness bag.

If I ever sell out in exchange for access to a politician, I’ve instructed my family to pull the plug on my computers – with a sledgehammer. 

Excuse me for a bit. I have to go wash my eyes out with Lysol after that little article.

Via Memeorandum

Double-Digit Dem Drop?

According to various experts, it is quite likely that Democrats will lose a bunch of seats come November, 2010.

At the mid-August Netroots Nation convention, Nate Silver, a Democratic analyst whose uncannily accurate, stat-driven predictions have made his website FiveThirtyEight.com a must read among political junkies, predicted that Republicans will win between 20 and 50 seats next year. He further alarmed an audience of progressive activists by arguing that the GOP has between a 25 and 33 percent chance of winning back control of the House.

“A lot of Democratic freshmen and sophomores will be running in a much tougher environment than in 2006 and 2008 and some will adapt to it, but a lot of others will inevitably freak out and end up losing,” Silver told POLITICO. “Complacency is another factor: We have volunteers who worked really hard in 2006 and in 2008 for Obama but it’s less compelling [for them] to preserve the majority.”

Historic trends point to Republican House gains in the midterm election, particularly after facing two brutal election cycles where the party lost seats in every region and even in some of the most conservative states in the nation. Over the last five decades, the party out of power has picked up seats in 10 of the 12 midterm elections.

Turnout levels may also work in the GOP’s favor: House Democrats who narrowly won election in 2008 on the strength of high turnout among African-Americans and young voters probably won’t be able to count on that same level of enthusiasm next year in a nonpresidential election.

I can think of several scenarios where 2010 turns out to be a real debacle for Democrats. I have high hopes along those lines. One thing that I did not see mentioned in this article:  House Democrats were frog-marched into passing the crap and tax bill, so their votes are already a matter of public record. If anything, that bill is very likely to become a bigger problem for Democrats in the long run than even the fraudulent health care “reform” they have been beaten over this past month.

They may hope that will be forgotten, but you can bet their challengers will not.

That issue will resurface soon. But there is still a lot of work to be done to force the end of ObamaCare. Don’t let up on that for a moment. Because the resistance to that is gaining ground against the statist agenda. That increased awareness will continue to erode Democrat’s chances next year.

Remember: 40 in ‘10 is not impossible.