In January 2010, President Barack Obama proclaimed, “everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good. Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game.”
Andrea Tantoros, In the New York Daily News (August 5, 2010) examines how Michelle Obama is observing her husband’s plea for sacrifice in her article entitled: “Material girl Michelle Obama is a modern-day Marie Antoinette on a glitzy Spanish vacation.”
Read more of Andrea’s Comments on this issue at the New York Daily News web site…
Interestingly, the Obamas seem to have a bad case of “the rules don’t apply to us.” Their lavish parties, international travel, and continuous pursuit of celebrity status just don’t seem appropriate in our lackluster economy. While many Americans are losing their homes, Michelle Obama is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to receive Secret Service protection and government transportation to an international playground of the rich and famous.
Perhaps the Michelle Obama should consider a more modest vacation destination where 100% of the taxpayer’s dollars she is using for her vacation will be spent in the United States. Perhaps she could take a lesson from Harry Truman, who chose to take his eleven Presidential vacations at the Naval Station in Key West, Florida. Harry was a practical guy, and someone who understood the symbolism attached to his actions. The Obamas could take a lesson from Harry.
Using the Search Engines
Most political candidates need three things: visibility, name recognition, and campaign donations. Visibility is the most important, because once a candidate has visibility, name recognition and donations tend to follow.
Did you know that search engines keep track of the words used in each search? They use this data for many purposes, including determining popularity of words and phrases. Knowing the relative popularity of words helps them to display the most relevant sites in their search results. They also track the actual sites chosen for specific search words and phrases entered in the search box.
Campaign supporters can use this search engine data collection to their advantage. By searching for a candidate’s name, and then choosing the candidate’s web site among the search results, a supporter will, in essence, be casting a vote for that web site to be ranked higher in the search results. The obvious goal is to have a candidate listed first in the results, because this increases visiblity.
A supporter could affect the search results, over time, by making a daily habit of searching for a candidate, then clicking on the candidate’s site. A very committed supporter could do this on multiple search engines. The following search engine sites are recommended, based on their high daily traffic:
Taking this strategy a step further, a campaign manager might want to consider organizing supporters in a group effort. Several hundred or even several thousand people making search engine requests for a specific candidate, would quickly catapult that candidate to the top of the rankings.
Once a candidate reaches the first position in search engine results for his or her name, efforts should continue to increase overall site popularity. Additional searches such as “yourtown congressional candidate” or “yourstate senate candidate” can be added to broaden the number of search terms used to find a candidate.
While this strategy seems overly simple, it can yield impressive results by increasing a candidate’s visibility on the search engines. It exposes more voters to the candidate’s name, and leads them to the candidate’s web site. Once a voters visit a candidate’s web site, they are more likely to donate to the candidate, and ultimately vote for that candidate.
Alan Grayson continues to disgrace himself and his party with childish outbursts and questionable behavior. Check out this video taken when Mr. Grayson, a Democrat, crashed a Republican private meeting, demanding to be heard. This is not an indicator of statesman-like conduct.
Excellent article discussing President Obama’s foreign policy and its shortcomings. In the first 15 months – NO PROGRESS!
Barack Obama’s Cowardly Foreign Policy
by Floyd and Mary Beth Brownin
TownHall.com (http://TownHall.com)
Check out Ben Shapiro’s Article Relating Obama’s Plans to LBJ’s Failed Great Society Programs in the Sixties:
“In short, LBJ's Great Society had two major short-term unintended consequences: First, the Great Society weakened us on the home front by foisting tax hikes and unsustainable debts on the American people; second, the Great Society weakened us abroad by sucking up cash needed to win the Vietnam War. The Great Society forced a choice between guns and butter, and the Democrats chose increasingly expensive butter, paid for by productive Americans.”
via Ben Shapiro : Obama’s Plan to Humble America – Townhall.com.
This is great analysis, using past liberal programs to disprove today’s “progressive” rhetoric.
As the nation focuses on the Congressional passage of “the health care bill,” with its thousands of constantly-changing pages, it’s easy to forget that the bill won’t affect anything except our pocketbooks until 2014. Yes, folks, we’ll be paying for the new “changes” long before we will see any benefits from them.
Why don’t we consider three areas that we can improve NOW?
- Eliminate Legal Incentives for Malpractice Suits. “Defensive” medicine is a costly problem in our health care system. Doctors and other practitioners order many unnecessary tests and procedures to protect themselves from law suits instituted by greedy plaintiffs and unscrupulous attorneys. Trial lawyers love the current system because it is a cash cow, allowing them to take up to 40% of a settlement as their fee. While experts disagree on how much the medical system will benefit from a more benign malpractice environment, most believable studies predict a 5-8% savings (WSJ Article), with some speculating that up to 20% could be saved. With health care spending in 2009 estimated to be $2.5 trillion, an 8% reduction would be $200 billion. That’s a big savings for changing a few laws, with no cost involved.
- Streamline Federal Programs. Just take the fat out! Congress needs to examine the current body of laws, and make changes to streamline the system, eliminating duplication, trimming bureaucracies, and eliminating government waste within the system. Every large organization needs to take a good look at itself every few years to make sure it is accomplishing its goals at the least possible cost. The federal government is no exception. How much would we save? It’s difficult to say, but it would be surprising if Congress couldn’t cut at least 2%, or $50 billion in health care costs through streamlining efforts.
- Reduce Fraud in Federal Health Programs. Some estimates claim that fraud accounts for up to $100 billion (CNN Money) in costs within government health care systems, primarily Medicare and Medicaid. It seems logical that our government, with all its law enforcement capabilities could do a little better with the money we’ve entrusted to it. It’s particularly disheartening to realize that the new health bill may authorize hiring thousands of new IRS Agents to ensure law-abiding Americans are buying health insurance or paying a fine (National Review). Wouldn’t it make more sense to devote those resources to discourage stealing from the current system? If we spent $200 million each year (much less than 1% of the amount lost) to increase law enforcement activities applied to health care fraud, could we eliminate at least half of the fraud? That would be another $50 billion saved, and the system would work more efficiently without all the extra load associated with fraud.
So, if we saved $300 billion, what could we do with it? Well, for starters, we could buy health care for 37,500,000 people. That’s assuming an average health care cost of $8,000 per person, which is slightly higher than the national average.
But wait, 37,500,000 is almost ALL the people in the US who don’t have health insurance, isn’t it? Could it be that we can save our way to providing health care for everyone? What would happen if we could realize larger savings from streamlining, or eliminate more than 50% of fraud? We MIGHT be able to provide a medical safety net for everyone! That’s not to argue that government should be providing free health care, but the possibilities stagger the mind…
Perhaps Congress should be considering these three improvements to our current system, instead of making plans to spend over a trillion dollars to implement unproven reforms.
Interesting article at RealClearPolitics.com by Stuart Rothenberg regarding my home congressional district (Florida District 8). Many of us have been appalled by Alan Grayson’s disgraceful behavior over the last few months. The article examines the effect of his conduct in the 2010 race. Excellent analysis.
Watch this video for a tongue-in-cheek view of the health care agenda and its proponents. Sarcasm at its very best… Very cleverly done!
PSA – Listen to Overpaid Celebrities from psamockery on Vimeo.
It seems that Joe Biden, a guy who never gives up the chance to use a microphone, is losing popularity. Check this article (and accompanying video) at Politico. com:
Wake up, Mr. Obama! The US is losing its competitive edge because you want to “lead the way” with questionable environmental standards. We WILL NOT create new jobs just because we’re playing by your environmental rules. Why do we allow China to impose regulations on us that it is unwilling to observe itself.
Folks, I don’t make this stuff up… Listen to his speech and tell me if you TRULY BELIEVE what he is saying. It is sad, truly sad, that a President of the United States has chosen to be such an activist for programs that will negatively affect our economy for so many years.
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President Obama Pushes Clean Energy from White House on Vimeo.