We must come by the thousands.

Speaker Pelosi will stop at nothing to fulfill her corrupt conquests. She will bring all of the corrupt ACORN liars to try to bully all the Democrats that may be having pangs of guilt knowing quite surely what their votes can and will do. If they’re bullied into saying “yes,” it will destroy America.

Join me and Rep. Michele Bachmann in Washington DC at 12 noon EST so we can give all the Democrats who know what the end result will be the courage to say: “No, do not pass this destructive bill.”

I’ll see you there.

There is that word again. What exactly does affordable mean? The left tosses the word about but never bothers to define exactly what they mean by affordable. It could mean anything and everything and no doubt it will. Affordable is a political term that is unassociated with actual costs, only addresses price and means, “you pay according to the amount of political capital you have.” For instance if you belong to the SEIU you pay less than if you didn’t. But I digress.

I dare say that the only reason it takes courage to pass Obamacare is because a majority of Americans oppose it. According to a recent CNN poll only 25% of Americans want congress to pass this healthcare bill. It is particularly telling that the new left continues to depict the 75% of Americans that oppose their efforts to nationalize healthcare (which is the end game) as ignoble, uncompassionate, ignorant racists. More annoying is that they portray themselves as visionary, compassionate champions of good.

I suspect that the truth is that Americans do not like the substance of the healthcare bills – all 4000 pages! Nor are they enamored of the back room deals this administration cut in order to secure the votes of their own party. Frankly, the stench of bribes like the latest appellate-judgeship-for-yes vote is more reminiscent of B.S. than it is of hope and change.

It is also likely true that Americans have weighed the fiscal promises of huge government programs like Social Security against their reality and decided they would like to find other avenues towards reforming healthcare- other than putting it in charge of Washington bureaucrats.

Social Security was passed in 1935 as an insurance program to protect a small segment of workers in their retirements. In 1940 just over 222,000 citizens received monthly social security benefits. The program has since grown to become the single largest item in the federal budget, consuming over 22% of total expenditures. The program was originally funded by a 1% tax on the first $3000 of income, with the tax increasing to 3% over the next 12 years. In 1966 the Medicare tax rate was split from the Old Age, Survivor, and Disability (OASDI) rate. Since the inception of OASDI there have been 20 increases in the tax rate, which now stands at 6.2% for both employer and employee on earnings up to $109,000; the Medicare rate is 1.45% with no cap on earnings. Nearly 80 percent of Americans pay more in Social Security taxes than they do in federal income tax. And still social security faces a fiscal crisis. What’s more, what began as an insurance program is now simply a welfare program. The Supreme Court has ruled that citizens do not have a right to social security benefits.

This year social security will run a cash deficit for the first time in more than 25 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) those deficits will continue into 2011. The system rebounds slightly until 2016 when the deficits begin to accelerate at a steady and rapid pace. This in direct contradiction of the rosy picture painted by Budget Director Peter Orzag and Congressional Democrats, who assured us that SS was secure for at least 50 years.

And what of Medicare? Medicare trustee Tom Saving and his colleague Andrew Rettenmaier estimate that Medicare will consume 25 percent of federal income tax revenue by 2020, and 50 percent by 2040.

Both programs are in need of a fiscal “fix.” What are the Democrats recommendations? President Obama, after acknowledging that the system is running out of money, suggests taxing a larger share of income. True to progressive form Obama suggests what would be the largest tax increase in U.S. history, at least $1.3 trillion over the first 10 years. Yet according to the Cato Institute, such an increase would increase Social Security’s cash-flow solvency by just seven years.

Former Enron Advisor Paul Krugman is on record as recommending a combination of tax increases and benefit cuts. In some languages denying benefits in order to save money is called rationing. And it is into these steady and trustworthy hands that we are being asked to entrust another 1/6th of our economy.

Americans have listened ad nausea to the promises of this administration and found them to be fantastic. The mantra that a national healthcare plan will cost less money, will not raise taxes and will not result in a rationing of care is not only unsupported by history, but is patronizing as well.

Last Call!

Like wine, entitlements cost money. Sadly the more addicted we become the less money we have to spend on more important and often essential things. The wino lacks food, housing and clothing; the entitlement addict lacks employment, savings and luxury.

Consider that today our national debt stands at roughly $12 trillion or roughly 70% of our gross domestic product or GDP. But wait. We have promised today’s workers Social Security and Medicare benefits totaling another $41 trillion. Toss in another trillion for miscellaneous expenses, and suddenly our debt skyrockets to $54 trillion. In layman’s terms it means in order to pay our future obligations we would need $54 trillion dollars invested today. How much of that money does this nation have sitting around? Zip! Zero! Zilch!

The next politician that proposes to solve this problem by cutting waste should be laughed out of office. The truth is that the result of our addiction is so severe that we could end ear marks, allow the Bush tax-cuts to expire and end the war in Iraq and still be some distance from solving this nation’s fiscal crisis.

How serious is it? At the rate we are spending entitlement expenditures will represent a full ¾ of our federal budget by the year 2030. A decade later – when today’s college students begin to retire—our debt will have risen to 244% of GDP. This nation will be so broke that we will only be able to service our public debt and pay out some social security and Medicare benefits. All other parts of the government will be shut down.

What does the wino do when he has consumed all his wine? He begs others for theirs. Rather than a world leader– we will be a nation at the behest of others. Rather than a strong and secure people– we will be a nation, to paraphrase the bard, whose hearts will shake at every feeble rumor and whose enemies, with the nodding of their plumes will fan us into despair.

Clearly something must be done. I mean besides immediately instituting government health care.

On Thursday President Obama announced the creation of a deficit commission charged with rooting out ways to restore fiscal discipline to Washington. This announcement came on the heels of the President’s announcement of a $3.8 trillion budget, which anticipates — by their own accounting — a $1.6 trillion deficit. It has been reported that in certain parts of Brooklyn and in a particular household in Los Angeles it was shouted, “I’ve got your deficit commission right here!”

Chairing the bi-partisan commission will be former senate Republican leader Alan Simpson and former Clinton advisor Erskine Bowles. The president betrayed his lack of seriousness when he let slip that he expects the commission to find a way to “pay for ALL FEDERAL PROGRAMS.” (Emphasis mine)

In bringing down the deficit and reducing our national debt there are truly only two choices: either we stop spending or we raise taxes(there is also the option of both raising taxes and increasing spending favored by many on the new left or that favored by the GOP: cutting taxes while raising spending.) Our addiction makes it unlikely that we will do away with federal programs and entitlements; recent attempts to reform Social Security, for example, were met with a stone wall. And because cutting spending often means offending constituents, the solution most favored by politicians on both the left and right is that of raising taxes.

In order to keep up with our addiction we will have to double our federal tax rate across the board. It won’t be as easy as laying the burden at the feet of “the wealthy” or those making over $250 thousand per year. There simply aren’t enough people making that much money to pay for all the spending. The burden will be borne by everyone. On the bright side the increase in taxes will mean that businesses will stop hiring so a lot of folks will not have to pay the higher taxes because they will not have earned any income.

Commissions made up of Democratic fools and Republican lackeys do not automatically make for good policy prescriptions. I dare say it was some brilliant commission that is responsible for creating the mess we currently find ourselves in. The truth is that we do not yet know which congressmen will make up the body of this commission; no doubt they are all grand fellows. However unless they begin their task with a discussion on taming the $54 trillion dollar beast that awaits the next generation– none of them is serious. They are, as Curtis Mayfield sang, simply “your pusher man.”

The video I’m about to show you is like a parking garage of creepiness: wrong on every damn level.

It’s President Obama at a Washington fundraiser last week. He’s soaring high on health care rhetoric, when he brings up a dead campaign worker. Well, actually he brings up himself. Pay attention, not just to him, but how the audience responds. If you’re a cow, it’ll turn all four of your stomachs.

It takes a lot to give me the willies. But you know what? That gave me the willies. And also scurvy, rickets and the bird flu.

Sometimes you come across something a politician says that is so beyond comprehension, you start wondering if he might be losing it. Now, I’ve never said that about Obama. Unlike the jeering libs who regularly devoured George Bush over his stuttering syntax, I always chose to focus on what Obama says, instead of how he says it.

Which is why, maybe, the big O is so much scarier than Bush. Consider what he did at that fundraiser.

-He remembers the Obama shirt, but not the name of the woman wearing it. Gross? Creepy? Try a combination of both: Greepy.

-Once again, he used the deceased to make a political point. I hate this crap, because the goal is to use an example of loss or suffering to prevent those who disagree from raising an objection. It makes me think we were too hard on John Edwards. After all, he just chased ambulances. This guy is chasing hearses.

-He made it all about him. While the rest of the world wrongly focused on Rahm Emmanuel’s “retarded” comment – this is where the real outrage lies. Obama brings up the final moments of a woman’s life, and feels compelled to insert himself there. This reflects a gaping narcissism whose ghoulishness is only matched by the adulating guffaws of a cackling audience.

It’s so gross, maybe it is funny.

And if you disagree with me, you’re probably a racist homophobe who hates dead people.

Tonight’s guests:

the return of the delectable Margaret Hoover!

the great Jim Norton!

the incendiary Andrew Breitbart!

and maybe someone else, perhaps!

For too long the American people have been bamboozled and lulled into a false sense of This Is The Greatest Nation On Earth. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is, but my mother used to tell me as a kid, “Self-praise stinks.”  When I asked her why, she explained that it can intoxicate you into laziness. I’m not saying the American people are lazy, but our elected officials get up, give a speech, and somewhere say, “Greatest Nation On Earth” and we all feel better and go on about our day not paying attention, enough attention, to what’s going on, and trusting that the latest line of shit we’ve been fed is the truth — no matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on.

Then the marketing machine starts selling to the public … a pile of dung. Haven’t you heard for years the same old issues over and over and over ad infinitum?  Well, the patient is bleeding to death and we do not need a tourniquet, we need  amputations: Get everyone out of office who does not have America’s and the American people’s best interests at heart.

Last week I had the privilege of meeting Congresswoman Michele Bachmann at a dinner hosted by my good friends Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer and Jay Hoffman. I had been a fan of hers and what she stood for since first hearing her on the talk circuit and most recently on “Hannity” — and, of course when she called for people to gather on the steps of the Capital when it looked like the current health-care bill would pass. But what she said this evening should have been recorded for all to hear. Now I understand that at a dinner one is basically talking to the converted, but had this conversation been broadcast to the public conversions would have gone through the roof;  much like when one hears Congressman Thaddeus McCotter go at it.

Let me just say that Bachmann is terrific! One of the dinner topics was health care and she and McCotter have great ideas, as I’m sure others do, as well (much better than the Pelosi- Reid Socialist Bankrupt America Bill). But one of the best ideas I’ve heard yet came from a plain ‘ole American citizen, my friend Jack Kavanaugh.

When I had dinner with Jack and his lovely wife Leslie, Jack told me that before the Presidential election he was contacting various politicians about a proposed health-care plan of his. He was shut out, not given a voice, and I know how frustrating it is to have something you feel strongly about and have none of our elected civil-servant officials listen. What happened to government of the people, by the people and for the people?!?   

Our politicians act like feudal lords or movie stars who cannot be approached (I understand safety but not arrogance). Jack was a dentist, a doctor, a surgeon at UCLA, and an entrepreneur. He knows about health care and business.  So I asked him to write down what he shared with me at dinner because it deserves to be heard.

I think this is a very interesting idea.

So read on my friends,
Robert Davi

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Dear Robert,

I very much appreciated your views on the health-care problem and health-care bill. Per our discussion, the following are some of my thoughts on the matter.

Firstly, there is no question that we as a nation can and need to do much better on the issue of health care. Debates can continue ad infinitum as to whether there are 12 million people or 50 million people in this country without health-care coverage. The 12 million number is calculated by including only those who are legal, are not eligible for health care but have not applied, or have selected not to have health care coverage because they can well afford the costs. The 40 to 50 million number we have heard includes all of the categories including illegals. Nevertheless, even though the United States has available, by far, the best health care in the world and emergency rooms treat patients even without health care, the current situation does require change.

Change needs to provide full health-care coverage, not just emergency treatment, for those uninsured and very importantly, the change must not lower the standard of care for everyone else. Unfortunately, the current health care bill would destroy the high quality of health care in this country and burden the country with immense health-care costs far beyond the projections of the budget office. In its inimitable way, Congress has taken the most complex road possible, based on politics and not on that which is best for this country. Unless Congress refocuses its efforts, the result will either be no action taken or a complete disaster for health care in this country.

Just one example of the absurdity of the bill is the assumption that Medicare reimbursements can be significantly reduced while providing care for more patients. Many doctors are already leaving the system. Further reductions will devastate the number of providers available, and make the provision of anything but cursory care impossible. Ezekiel Manuel, President Obama’s chief advisor for health care, has made statements directly indicative of the administration’s thoughts that health care for seniors needs to be controlled, which actually means limited. Does anyone really want to turn over their health-care decisions or those of their parents to government agencies who know that they control costs by limiting care?

Would it not be refreshingly simple to pass a single provision bill that clearly states its purpose. For example, one that would open state borders for competition among insurance providers? Just a simple bill, nothing more, no politics, just a yes or no vote – the passing of such a bill would result in billions of dollars saved in health insurance costs.

Let’s continue in that constructive mode. How simple – a single provision bill that revamps the medical malpractice issues and reduces the high cost of malpractice insurance as well as the overly defensive mode that the specter of malpractice has imposed on doctors and the resulting additional costly diagnostic procedures that would otherwise not be ordered. Those two bills alone would significantly reduce health-care costs.

What about two other single provision bills without any tag-ons or Nebraska type of bribes – one to eliminate “pre-existing conditions” limitations, and the other one that places a $1 tax on every pack of cigarettes and taxes every bottle and can of alcohol?

Alcohol and tobacco are directly responsible for highly significant health care costs both for insured patients as well as for uninsured patients that hospitals cannot turn away. If there are no tag-ons and special interest allocations, there would be two great direct benefits. Firstly, increasing the costs of alcohol and tobacco via a “health care tax” will reduce the consumption of both and therefore, in the long term, health-care costs resulting directly from their use. Secondly, the alcohol and tobacco tax revenue should be applied to independent health-care insurance for the uninsured population.

The above four measures taken together can fully address the health-care issues in this country. Any one of the four can have a direct and major positive impact. The President called for bipartisanship, clarity and openness in Washington, no tag-ons, no closed door sessions, no bribes, not increasing deficits. The terms and manner in which the current health care proposal has been conducted belie the President’s “comments.”

Let’s have clarity – four simple direct ways to resolve the health-care issues in this country; Let’s have openness — no confusing language buried in over 2000 pages subject to interpretation; Let’s have no tag-ons; Let’s have no closed door sessions; Let’s have no Nebraska, Florida or other type bribes; and let’s not increase the deficit. And, not the least of important of all, let’s not do two things — let’s not destroy the best quality health care in the world, and let’s not let the government encroach further and further into controlling the lives of private citizens and make decisions on who will and who will not receive health-care treatment.

Jack Kavanaugh, M.D., D.D.S., M.B.A.