The Real Obama

Lately, there have been a lot of rumors circulating around about the racist, Islamo-fascist, stuck up, too black, not black enough, inexperienced terrorist Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. Oh, wait, maybe that isn't really who he is. Let's take a look:

Barack Obama isn't now and never has been a Muslim. Obama's father, who left after he and Barack's mother divorced when Barack was 2, was raised a Muslim but was not practicing. In Obama's 5 year stint in Indonesia as a child, he attended one school run by Muslims (not a madrassa), where Muslims comprised a majority of the student body and for two of those five years attended another School run by Catholics. Essentially his mother was just trying to get him into the best school possible and wasn't concerned about the religion of the students or faculty at these facilities. Barack Obama began his professional career working with Churches as a community organizer and is a Christian. Even so, I don't recall the Constitution requiring a person to pass a religious test in order to be President. I don't recall Muslims being forbidden from running for office? That being said, why doesn't anyone make a big deal about Obama's half sister being a Buddhist or John McCain's adopted daughter being from Bangladesh (Formerly Eastern Pakistan), a Muslim country.

He has no Experience: Barack Obama has spent more time in elected office than Hillary Clinton and also more time than George Bush had spent prior to him becoming President. Although, I will be the first to admit that George Bush's lack of experience is painfully obvious and has had disastrous consequences. Bush had 5 years experience as a State Governor, Hillary has served in the U.S. Senate for 6 1/2 years and Obama served in the Illinois State Senate for 8 years and has been in the US Senate for 3 1/2 years for a total of 11 1/2 years of experience.

Obama is a member of the following committees: Senate Foreign Relations Committee with 30 year Incumbent Richard Lugar of neighboring Indiana, Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Hilary would contend that her time as first lady counts as "experience" but I used to date an artist and that doesn't make me a painter.

Racist: One paragraph ago you thought he was a Muslim terrorist but as we all know he attends the Trinity Church of Christ on Chicago's south side. This Church had a preacher who, like many preachers in black churches, gives sermons inspired by current events and issues. He says things like America has historically been racist, that white people have more opportunities than black people, that laws have been put in place which targets blacks and that we have stuck our noses in places where it didn't belong and some people have taken exception to that among other things, none of them false. Again, this was Obama's preacher, who isn't running for President, who said these things, not Obama himself.

Obama is half white. His mother was a white lady from Kansas. From the age of 10, he grew up with his white grandparents in Hawaii. He attended Columbia University and was president of the Harvard Law Review. He eats arugula salads; with the exception of him joining a Polka band, you can't get any whiter than that. To say he is racist against white people is simply ludicrous.

If he was forced to vote yay or nay on the Iraq War, he would have caved in and authorized the attack on Iraq: Yet another fallacy. On October 2, 2002, the day Congress authorized the use of force; Obama spoke at an anti-war rally in Chicago condemning the actions of Congress and his fellow Democrats such as Hilary Clinton who voted for the war. He was against it then and is against it now. How good was McCain's judgment and experience on that issue?

He is an elitist: Being educated and not eating 5 Big Mac's a week doesn't make you an elitist. Eating 5 Big Macs a week and not getting the connection between who is running this country and the price of gas, makes you an idiot. Getting into Yale based on your fathers legacy, dodging Vietnam with your fathers political clout makes you an elitist, declining the offers of over 600 glamorous law firms all over the country offering huge salaries but turning them down for less money to work for a firm dedicated to civil rights, voter rights and helping out the people in poor neighborhoods and registering them to vote does not make you an "elitist".

He won't recite the Pledge of Allegiance: Wrong, he does say the Pledge of Allegiance and places his hand over his heart when doing so. He doesn't put his hands over his heart when saying the national anthem but any third grader or fan in a football stadium will tell you that it isn't required. He also doesn't wear a flag pin but neither does Hillary or McCain. I fail to see how a one inch by one inch flag pin made in China proves your patriotism.

He is related to Saddam Hussein: Barack Obama isn't related to either Saddam Hussein nor the late King Hussein of Jordan, an American ally or anyone with the last name Hussein. His middle name is Hussein which is derived from the Semitic word "hasan" meaning good. "Barack" is also derived from a Semitic word meaning "blessed" which appears often in the Hebrew Bible, 62 times in Genesis for example.

Will raise your taxes: If you make over $200,000 per year, then sure, he may restore your tax rate to what it was in the 1990's, one of the most prosperous times in our history. As an Illinois Senator, Obama was responsible for providing over $100 million in tax cuts to working families while expanding early childhood education programs.

He is Liberal: As opposed to someone who thinks the poor should pay all the taxes, that diplomacy is only a last resort after war fails, that thinks the earth is more than 10,000 years old, that thinks teachers make too much, that this is a nation for the corporation by the corporation as opposed to for the people by the people, that subsidies for corporations who export jobs and avoid taxes is sound fiscal policy, that we should bomb people who don't agree with us, that rich people are having a hard time right now and need tax cuts, that the Iraq war was necessary (for Exxon to obtain record profits), that our trade deficit and weak dollar is a good thing, who thinks only people who wear flag pins are patriotic, that by torturing people you will always get the information you are looking for an it will be accurate and inspire other countries to treat our prisoners with compassion, that eight year olds should be able to buy automatic weapons, that companies who give loans to homeless people need to be baled out by the government but the people who can't pay their mortgages are deadbeats, etc. Then yes, thank Buddha, he is liberal.


Oh, and if Clinton fails to get the Democratic nomination, it's not because of sexism, it's because she didn't get as many votes. Ya, we get it, white, uneducated, rednecks in red states won't vote for a black guy but they aren't going to vote for a Democrat in the general election anyway.

Fox News' Fair and Balanced Take on National Healthcare with Rebuttal

The fact that 5 NHS doctors were just arrested in relation to the latest attacks says that the UK screening process for foreign doctors is shitty, not that a universal health care system breeds terrorism. There are a zillion other universal health care systems in the world and we’ve never heard anything like this from anywhere else.

You know, they could have just given Sicko a bad review, was this really necessary? One of the things they failed to mention is that doctors from around the world leave places with national healthcare to try to make it rich in America, If America had national healthcare and the government no longer allowed Doctors and Hospitals to rip people off, then the doctors in those other countries would have no incentive to leave Britain for instance, and go elsewhere to practice. The fact is the United States is one of the only industrialized nations without national healthcare. If the United States had national healthcare then the only other options doctors would have would be in the third world where they would make even less money than a state run system. Therefore, places like Britain wouldn't have to import so many doctors and the United States would become a less desirable destination for doctors from the Middle East.

The other thing the critics of national healthcare fail to realize is that we don't have to copy anyone else’s imperfect system. We have the freedom to design our own system which would eliminate the short coming of other countries healthcare systems. That being said, our current system has plenty of faults as well. Since when do Americans get the help they need right away? Since when do Americans not have to wait to see their doctor or to schedule a surgery?? Sure, with the way everything is now, maybe the government couldn't bear that magnificent of a financial burden but that's not the problem, it's the solution.

So, how could we afford to provide everyone with healthcare? That's simple, you take the 528 billion dollar tab that Americans already pay out in life and health insurance premiums and you feed that into the new system just like our social security deductions. Americans who are already paying premiums will now continue to pay that same rate but now in the form of a tax that goes towards healthcare. The only difference would be that they will no longer have to pay deductibles and copays. You can also take the 200 million per year the industry spends on lobbying congress. You also regulate costs and put price caps on drugs and medical procedures and services just like Wal-Mart does to their vendors. The main thing is you would go from a system that benefits from keeping us sick and medicated to a system which focuses on keeping us healthy. At last, if you wan't to provide healthcare to the people in the US, you stop bombing people in Iraq only to provide them with free medical care when dealing with their burns.

Here are some facts:

*The American healthcare system is already the most expensive in the world.
*Americans already spend over 2 Trillion dollars, 16% of their GDP or $6,697 per year, on healthcare and that number will only increase over the next couple of decades.
*In Canada, they spend 9.7% of their GDP on healthcare for everyone.
*The US Government is already the largest insurer in America and government programs already account for over 44% of healthcare expenditures.
*More than 30% of US healthcare costs go towards administrative overhead which could be greatly reduced under a single national system.
*Germany, Australia, Canada and Sweden all provide national healthcare and have more nurses per capita than the US.
*Sweden, Germany and France all have more doctors per capita than the United States.
*There is a nurse shortage in the United States.
*Americans spend roughly $200 million per year for prescription drugs.
*For prescription drugs, Americans spend more than 50% more than what is paid by people in other industrialized nations because costs aren't monitored by any oversight.
*Over half of all family bankruptcies today are caused by medical bills.
*There are more than six prescription drug company lobbyists for every United States Senator.
*Society already pays for the gang/gunshot victims, the drug overdoses and other uninsured emergency room visitors in the form of higher taxes, hospital costs and insurance premiums for everyone.
*With private healthcare, Americans have one of the highest infant mortality rates and lowest life expectancy rates in the industrialized world and this administration claims it is pro-life.
*For the money Americans spent on health care last year, we could have hired a group of skilled physicians, paid each one of them $200,000 to care for just seven families, and provided healtcare for every single American citizen.

*Instead,we have spent about $440 Billion so far in Iraq and estimates speculate it could cost over 1 trillion before wars end.

Yes, in case you are wondering, I saw Sicko this weekend.

If you are wondering how we could afford to pay for national healthcare look at the numbers below.

Quick math with annual round numbers:

520 billion in health/life insurance premiums we are already paying so we can obviously afford this part
110 billion in useless wars (which we are currently spending)
600 billion in overhead savings (30% of 2 trillion)
100 billion if we paid what Europeans pay for prescription drugs
3 billion in aid to Israel
200 million in lobbying money
= Approximately 1.3 trillion dollars

I just paid for over half of a national healthcare system without raising taxes, cutting services or hiring terrorists and putting over 810 billion dollars back into consumers hands. Guess what an average 6% sales tax on 810 billion dollars would be?? Its about another 48 billion dollars. Add that to the list of sources that could fund a national healthcare plan without any additional costs. That's not counting the savings that would come from taking a preventative approach to healthcare which would keep people from getting sick as opposed to waiting until they're sick and then profiting from them when they become sick.

Imagine how competitive a company like GM would become overnight if they no longer had to bare the burden of health care and could again compete with companies such as Toyota, Honda and Volkwagen who have no such concerns due to their country's national healthcare plans. Sure, this would hurt insurance industry stocks but imagine what it would do for every other company in this country that provides health coverage for their employees. They could afford to hire all the laid off insurance employees.