According to the New York Times three Senate Republicans: Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, are working together with the Democrats to help construct a version of the Health Care Bill that would provide health insurance to more of the uninsured people in America while removing some of the most distasteful portions of the Senate and House Democrat Bills. Here are the highlights:

• Remove the “government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers”
• The modified plan would not be paid for by a surtax on high earners.
• Employers would not be required to provide health insurance for workers.

This committee is continuing to work together and I for one am glad to see some serious bipartisan efforts being made in regards to this impending health care legislation. I can’t wait to see what finally comes out of this group of lawmakers. Hopefully, their bill will be the one that is finally adopted… After all, of the choices presented so far their sounds like the least distasteful.

The news world was buzzing today with the information that President Obama would be toughening up on fuel emissions and vehicle mileage requirements. I’m not one to support government regulation of business, but I understand this. In fact, most republicans understand this. It isn’t new - the plans were already put in place by President Bush. Obama, however, has, as usual, taken something that almost every American supported and turned it into something slimy and grotesque.

Whats New?

Obama has increased the fuel economy required in new vehicles by 2016 to 35 mpg. More importantly, however, is the addition of the CO2 emissions guidelines, something the federal government has never regulated before, hopefully they won’t spread the regulation of CO2 emissions to other items… I’m a big guy and sometimes I find myself out of breadth and breathing pretty hard.. I wouldn’t want to hold my breadth for fear that I may emit to much CO2 for the massive number of trees to handle.

The Dems Keep California In The Bag

All of this, however, is to ‘help automakers’ by establishing a single federal guideline. In reality, according to even the most liberal news source, these changes are all about appeasing the California Air Resources Board that has badgered the federal government endlessly to make their regulations apply across the board. I suspect this action should net Obama and all the liberals a substantial amount of money and quite a bit of votes during the next election cycle.

What we have in North Korea is a rogue nation that refuses to abide by any U.N. resolutions and a U.N. that is completely incapable of enforcing it’s decisions. It was a slap in the world’s face when North Korea announced they’d be exiting six party discussions aimed at convincing them to completely dismantle their nuclear program.

The latest news on North Korea indicates that the Russian Foreign Minister is currently in the country for talks, the subject of which we can only hope will be their nuclear program. Though, it appears that North Korea is further distancing itself from the rest of the world - this is especially visible in their relations with South Korea.

It will be interesting to see how President Obama handles diplomacy with North Korea. Obama is going to face similar situations and decisions as those presented to President George W. Bush during his presidency. Iraq was, and now Iran is also, a rogue nation that laughed and mocked the U.N. at every turn. Bush took a somewhat controversial step and invaded Iraq when he believe Saddam Hussein was developing ‘WMD’s. When it comes to Iran and North Korea we know they are developing nuclear technology and neither Bush nor Obama have said anything to imply that there may be consequences for defying the U.N. and developing these nuclear programs anyway.

Given how low the approval ratings were for Bush’s actions towards Iraq, among conservative and liberals, what is the best course of action for President Obama? What should Obama do: Take a hard line stance similar to Bush’s? Stand by and do nothing? Is there a third option?

Cigarette smoking is a disgusting habit; It smells bad, stains your teeth, damages your body, etc - But that doesn’t make increasing the tax on the habit a good idea. If we stop and look at the effects of increasing the tax on cigarettes we are left with only two possible outcomes; Neither of them are good and at least one of them is immoral. Of course, that didn’t stop our legislators.

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In Obama’s recent Prime-Time speech  he said that he plans to attack this financial crisis on all fronts. Geithner is planning to detail to congress his list of new regulations he would like to impose on the financial sector to keep something like this from happening again. The one thing that would have made sure it was far less likely for this to happen everyone said couldn’t be done - we simply couldn’t let these businesses fail.

Letting more of these businesses fail would revitalize the economy and their respective industries. If suddenly the big 3 disappeared there would be entrepreneurs eagerly buying their old factories with dreams of starting the next big car company. The ‘lost jobs’ would only remain lost for a short while. We would have a new generation of people in top positions within these industries with new ideas. America used to be a land of opportunity… A land where creativity and hard work could put you on top. 

Now it seems, however, that America is the land of stagnation, the land where creativity goes to die, the land where entrepreneurs are trampled by the government, a place where it is more important to maintain the status quo and keep the rich on top than it is to reward good ideas and good business. Make no mistake these bailouts aren’t about the tax payer, they aren’t about the lost jobs, they aren’t really about the economic ramifications of AIG going bankrupt. these bailouts are about keeping the rich where they are so they can continue to line the pockets of politicians on both sides of the line.

You can’t reward a dog for shitting on your floor and say you’ll fix his behavior by watching him more closely.

As I read through this morning news I saw an interesting snippet regarding President Obama’s talk with the President of Brazil in the Oval Office. The interesting thing was his joke that:

“You know, I would love a trip to the Amazon. I suspect that the Republican Party would love to see me travel through the Amazon and maybe get lost.”

Perhaps I’m unique in this way but I think we are probably better off with Obama than Biden or, God forbid, a “President Pelosi”. Any thoughts? Would the GOP be happy to see Biden replace Obama?

The truth: Obama is doing a few things right. I know it’s unusual to hear a conservative say those words, however we should be hearing this far more often from conservatives.  I know some of my conservative readers may be surprised to hear this from me, especially given the criticism he usually gets at GeekPolitics, but this is only because they don’t realize how many of Bush’s policies Obama approves of, has claimed as his own, and will be enacting during his presidency.  Let’s start this article with a clip covering Obama’s inauguration day speech from America’s top news source - The Daily Show.

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I’ve already talked about the problems with the Obama administration’s goal to require that all firearms be child-proofed as well as the misinformation about the “Gun Show Loophole” (That isn’t a loop hole at all). I wanted to finish this series with a discussion on the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. The sad truth of this legislation that Obama administration would like to make permanent is that it doesn’t do anything. This legislation does nothing at all, it did nothing the last time it was enacted except serve as a way for politicians to look tough on guns.
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