If you pay attention to the news, as of late, you might be thinking that everyone at a Tea Party gathering is a wacko just waiting to crack some skulls! On the contrary it's a much more relaxed atmosphere from what I hear.

I find it interesting that all of these complaints are coming out at the same time. You would figure that the democrats would have taken a lesson from the "Run Away Prius" guy. These kinds of claims are not believable when they all happens at the same time. Democrats act as if some memo went out to the Tea Party members saying, "Let's all try and look like fools now. Let's insight violence!" These claims of violence and racist slurs are obviously false. Here is an example.

I feel that the administration wants to draw public attention away from these events:

==> Binyamin Netanyahu humiliated after Barack Obama 'dumped him for dinner'

For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.

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

“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.

We have a president who wants to have open talks with Iran, but won't talk with the only ally we have in the region? What is that all about?

==> Cuban leader applauds US health-care reform bill

HAVANA (AP) -- It perhaps was not the endorsement President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress were looking for.

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on Thursday declared passage of American health care reform "a miracle" and a major victory for Obama's presidency, but couldn't help chide the United States for taking so long to enact what communist Cuba achieved decades ago.

"We consider health reform to have been an important battle and a success of his (Obama's) government," Castro wrote in an essay published in state media, adding that it would strengthen the president's hand against lobbyists and "mercenaries."

Now that's good news for Obama! This is not the first time that Obama has received the praise of our enemies.

==> Obama readies steps to fight foreclosures, particularly for unemployed

Is that title not an oxymoron!?

The Obama administration plans to overhaul how it is tackling the foreclosure crisis, in part by requiring lenders to temporarily slash or eliminate monthly mortgage payments for many borrowers who are unemployed, senior officials said Thursday.

The new push, which the White House is scheduled to announce Friday, takes direct aim at the major cause of the current wave of foreclosures: the spike in unemployment. While the initial mortgage crisis that erupted three years ago resulted from millions of risky home loans that went bad, more-recent defaults reflect the country's economic downturn and the inability of jobless borrowers to keep paying.

Exactly how will demanding that lenders not collect money going to help the job market? I fail to see the connection here.

==> Transportation Department Embraces Bikes, and Business Groups Cry Foul

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced a “major policy revision” that aims to give bicycling and walking the same policy and economic consideration as driving.

“Today I want to announce a sea change,” he wrote on his blog last week. “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of nonmotorized.”

Transportation agencies are urged to take action on a number of fronts, including the creation of pathways for bike riders and pedestrians on bridges, and providing children with safe biking and walking routes to schools.

They are also encouraged to find ways to make such improvements in concert with road maintenance projects and to protect sidewalks and bike lanes in the same manner as roads (by clearing them of snow, for example).

Mr. LaHood also indicated the department is discouraging “transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians.”

Is this really that important? What happened to the president's "Laser Focus on Jobs"? Considering that the U.S. government is now the proud owner of an automobile manufacturer (General Motors) you would think it would be in their best interest, and ours now that we own GM, to maintain the roads for "real" traffic. Let's face it, if there is an emergency, are they going to send first responders on bikes? There are obvious reasons why the roadways are more important than bike lanes.

The articles above are why the "Tea Party Violence" distractions are so important to democrats. The Obama administration is doing more to hurt this country than help it. The media is doing the best they can to disguise what is happening.

Where are all of the jobs? I thought the first "Stimulus" was supposed to keep unemployment below 8.5%; that didn't happen. Where did all of the money go? Who was "Stimulated"? Why are these questions not being asked by the media? Is it that nobody cares? I don't buy that for a minute.

The American people need to wake up completely before November. We must "give the boot" to every member of congress who had anything to do with the passing of the health care reform bill. Those who voted for HCR are unfit to hold office. The representatives who voted to pass the HCR bill are either too ignorant to read and understand its implications, or they have a blatant disregard for the Constitution of the United States. Either way they are unfit to hold office and have broken the public trust.

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You tell'em Dick!

I agree. I think that there is going to be a huge effort on behalf of the media to make it appear as if this was a great victory. The spin has already started with the praise of Nancy Pelosi. Apparently you are a genius if you can buy people off.

A triumphant Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared the legislation to the passage of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare 30 years later.

A genius wouldn't compare the health care bill they just passed with two of the largest examples of government failure in recent U.S. history! On a similar note, Obama used the U.S. Postal Service as an example of how a public option health insurance plan wouldn't negatively effect the private sector. Obama pointed out the failures of the USPS and it's inability to adequately compete with UPS and FedEx. Now that's the way to sell your idea! Maybe these people are geniuses...

This has to be recognized as one of the greatest threats to Freedom and Liberty this country has ever faced! I think a lot of people understand that now, but more need to be made aware.

There is one major point that many have missed. Most of the large group health insurance plans brokered by employers won't reinstate until next year. The major health insurance price increases come after the November elections. The problem here is that many Americans are not going to see any change in their health costs until after the 2010 elections. So everything will appear nice and calm, until after the elections. Don't think that this was done by accident.

We need leaders who will put this bill to death legislatively. We can't count on the Supreme Court to rule the bill unconstitutional, even if the main crux of it is.

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It looks like the dems just might have this government takeover wrapped up. This is soft tyranny.

-- Freedom, as defined by the founding fathers of the United States of America, means:

Freedom to make life choices --without government coercion.

-- Freedom, as defined by liberals, progressives, and socialists, means:

Freedom from choice.

Those who wish to have someone else make life's decisions for them should not be allowed to vote. This is simple; if someone has an inability to make important life decisions, they damn sure shouldn't have the power to take that opportunity from others.

Because of this; we have laws which declare the legal voting age. Children ,generally, are incapable of making important life decisions, that is why children can not legally vote. Now we have a bunch of adults also incapable of making important life decisions (in essence children). These people elect politicians who will make tough life choices for them. Herein lies the root of our current problem.

This "health care bill" represents everything that is wrong with the education process in this country. We now have individuals fighting to loose freedom! Because they don't understand freedom or where it comes from!

Ignorance is only bliss so long as there are no resulting consequences. - Jeff Michaels

God help us.

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There's a piece of legislation so toxic that nobody wants to vote for it. With this bill so hated, why vote for it? Why even fake the vote? Just let it die!

Republicans and Democrats are locked in an unusual battle over how to vote on the health care reform package as House Republicans try to block Speaker Nancy Pelosi from using a legislative trick that would allow rank-and-file Democrats to vote for the health care bill without really voting for the health care bill.

House Republicans plan to introduce a resolution that would require an "up-or-down" vote in the House on the Senate-approved health care plan, to ensure everyone goes on the record as for or against the bill.

Democratic leaders are considering the option because many House Democrats don't want to cast a vote in favor of the Senate bill, which they oppose for numerous reasons. Problem is, the House must pass the Senate bill in order to move on to the package of changes intended to correct all the things about the Senate bill that House members don't like.

Enter the Pelosi tactic, known as a "self-executing rule."

Under this tactic, the House could simultaneously approve the Senate version of the bill while voting on the package of changes. This would "deem" the Senate bill passed, though not directly show members voting in favor of passage.

It may sound murky, but the option is winning favor among Democrats.

It doesn't sound murky it IS murky. Basically this results in the democrats circumventing the United States Constitution! The Constitution is designed to stop acts just like this from happening. Is that not the entire point of a checks and balances system!? What we have now is not government-as-usual, but a watered down oligarchy.

Robert Michels believed that any political system eventually evolves into an oligarchy. He called this the "iron law of oligarchy". According to this school of thought, modern democracies should be considered as oligarchies. In these systems, actual differences between viable political rivals are small, the oligarchic elite impose strict limits on what constitutes an 'acceptable' and 'respectable' political position, and politicians' careers depend heavily on unelected economic and media elites. Thus the popular phrase: there is only one political party, the 'incumbent' party.

Michels stressed several factors that underlie the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Darcy K. Leach summarized them briefly as: "Bureaucracy happens. If bureaucracy happens, power rises. Power corrupts."

Any large organization, Michels pointed out, is faced with problems of coordination that can be solved only by creating a bureaucracy. A bureaucracy, by design, is hierarchically organized to achieve efficiency—many decisions have to be made daily that cannot efficiently be made by large numbers of people. The effective functioning of an organization therefore requires the concentration of much power in the hands of a few. Those few, in turn—the oligarchy—will use all means necessary to preserve and further increase their power.

The only good side to this is our ability to vote. I suggest that citizens of the United States vote every single incumbent democrat out of office; this is necessary for the survival of the republic. For no other reason than the fact that so many democrats are unwilling to stand up to the few who are perpetuating this health care monstrosity. If the democrats in opposition to the bill cannot stop it then they should go as well as those who support the bill.

People should be aware that with the overwhelming number of people in opposition to the bill that there never was any grass roots movement for health care reform. The push for health care reform takeover has come entirely from within government. The push has come from the top down!

This bill will do nothing except guarantee that the government will eventually have total control over your daily life. Everything you do is related to health, is it not? Once the government is responsible for your health, how long will it be before the government can dictate what you eat or even mandate exercise?

This level of control is common place in the military. The difference is that people in the military signed a contract to this effect. The average American citizen did not sign a contract agreeing to have the government dictate their actions.

Our founding fathers signed a document to avoid exactly what is happening now. This document is referred to as the United States Constitution.

It's time for the people of this country to wake up and take it back!

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There are many things to look at when considering the future of the country. There are of course the job loss numbers, which are counted in the most ridiculous manor, based on those who are still collecting unemployment.

Then there is the debt to income ratio. If the U.S. Were trying to make a car loan, it would be turned down. If not for the amount owed currently, the amount being borrowed on a daily basis.

The outcome is NOT as sweet as some would have you believe.

WASHINGTON – A new congressional report released Friday says the United States' long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama's grim budget submission last month.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama's budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That's $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.

The agency says its future-year predictions of tax revenues are more pessimistic than the administration's. That's because CBO projects slightly slower economic growth than the White House.

The deficit picture has turned alarmingly worse since the recession that started at the end of 2007, never dipping below 4 percent of the size of the economy over the next decade. Economists say that deficits of that size are unsustainable and could put upward pressure on interest rates, crowd out private investment in the economy and ultimately erode the nation's standard of living.

Yeah that's my favorite part too, “crowd out private investment in the economy and ultimately erode the nation's standard of living.”

If private investment is crowded out, who is going to invest? I'll give you a hint GOVERNMENT! But the government doesn't really invest it just spends tax payer money, an action which by virtue weakens the economy.

Here is an interesting view of what's going on.

Obama's tax-cutting agenda is by far the biggest contributor to those budget gaps, the CBO said. As part of his campaign pledge to protect families making less than $250,000 a year from new taxes, the president is proposing to prevent the alternative minimum tax from expanding to ensnare millions of additional taxpayers. He also wants to make permanent a series of tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration, which are scheduled to expire at the end of this year.

"Over the next 10 years, those policies would reduce revenues and boost outlays for refundable tax credits by a total of $3.0 trillion," wrote Douglas W. Elmendorf, the CBO director. Combined with interest payments on that shortfall, the tax cuts account for the entire increase in deficits that would result from Obama's proposals.

While this may be true to some extent, I don't think that tax cuts are the root of the problem. In a normal economic environment tax cuts would result in higher revenue for the governemnt not less. Private investment results in wealth and job creation. The problem now is that the economic environment has been so tampered with that investment is stagnant. People (and companies) are holding on to their money, because they don't know what giant piece of legislation is coming next. Remember the part about "crowd out private investment," the government can't produce wealth, it can only confiscate it, and distribute it. Of course the redistribution is not done in a market friendly way. Take GM for example. The market dictated the collapse of GM, but the government "invested" in the failing company because it was "too big to fail." I wonder how long this mentality can continue without ECONOMIC GROWTH / WEALTH CREATION?

I blame the unsustainable deficits, and the fact that Obama administration has put it's hands in the economy to the point where private investment is too risky! If the economy / wealth were still growing deficit reduction wouldn't be such an issue.

Jobless numbers are also an indicator that investment is stagnant.

Friday's better-than-expected jobs report, while cheering stock investors, hasn't taken the threat of a double-dip recession off the table.

What's Next?

Even as the jobless rate held steady at 9.7 percent and the 36,000 workers laid off in February was much less than expected, economists and investment analysts said it's still too early to discount the economy's chances of revisiting recession.

"Eight months into the much-touted recovery, the economy should be adding jobs not just losing jobs at a slower pace," University of Maryland economist Peter Morici wrote in an analysis.

"No study of economic history could yield a conclusion other than that the US economy (walks) along the precipice of a double dip recession."

Wow finaly an economist who is not under "Hopenosis"! This has been my point all along. When are there going to be job increases. Who judges success based on a reduction of negative circumstances? Either someone who is trying to be optimistic, or someone who is lying.

There were two ways to view the Friday jobs report, and Wall Street clearly chose the more optimistic.

Uncertainty over the impact of this season's brutal weather pattern had caused wide disparities in projections, with most economists around the 75,000 mark but some whisper projections as high as 200,000.

Yeah it was the weather... Yeah...

"If the best the US labor market can do is printing modestly negative headline payroll reports at this stage of the cycle, one has to wonder how these numbers will look going forward barring either an acceleration in private final demand or a collapse in productivity growth," wrote Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg in his daily note.

Indeed!

Economist Michael Pento, of Delta Global Advisers in Parsippany, N.J., said the better-than-expected jobs number was boosted primarily by the 15,000 Census workers hired and does nothing to mask what he considers the near-certainty that the second half of the year will see another leg down for the economy.

"We still haven't created any jobs. They can't get any loans, their incomes are down and they face much higher taxes in 2011 and higher interest rates," Pento said in an interview. "I don't know why anybody would think anything else. If I'm wrong I'll fall down and build a shrine to John Maynard Keynes."

You don't have to be an economist to see what is happening. Investment anywhere is a bad idea right now (unless the possibility of a large loss is not a worry).

Let's put this together in very simple manor. Economic uncertainty is one thing, but with the course of the economy is dictated by the government, how is anyone supposed to know where to invest? At least when normal market forces were in control there was some predictability, now the economy hangs on just a few people's decisions. In short; until the government gets out of the way we are not going to recover. Or is that the plan?

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. -- Margaret Thatcher.

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