Obama to Circumvent Normal Congressional Vote on Health Care Reform

Our lovable president got on national TV Wednesday night and waxed eloquent about how Congress was actually in agreement on about 80% of the ideas needed to pass health care reform and that the bickering needed to end so they could get something done. He talked about his grand ideas to provide affordable health insurance to all Americans without adding a penny to the deficit, despite the fact the Congressional Budget Office, using the numbers given to it by the White House, predicted a $220 billion increase in the deficit over the next 10 years as a direct result of Obama's health care plan.

The president made a noble request for bipartisanship to get this reform done "because something has to be done." And less than 48 hours after his speech on Wednesday night, he's laying the groundwork to use the budget reconciliation maneuver to circumvent a true congressional vote on the bill.

So much for listening to the people who turned out in 10s of thousands at town hall meetings in August to express their concern about this health care bill. We the people can state our opinions all we want, but our leadership simply doesn't care. According to a recent Gallup poll, 39% of the people polled said they would direct their representative to vote AGAINST Obama's health care plan as opposed to 37% who would direct their representative to vote for it. The other 24% had no opinion. 64% of the people said their vote in 2010 would be directly affected by how their representative votes on health care.

Despite all of this, Obama continues to ignore the citizens. In the article above talking about use of the reconciliation measure, Obama is quoted as saying, "there are a lot of politicians like that who, all they're thinking about is just, ‘How do I get reelected?’ and so they never actually get anything done." That quote was followed by this one from an administration official:

“I think getting something done is paramount here," a senior administration official said before Obama’s address to Congress. "We want to bring along everyone who’s willing to come with us, but the fact that not everyone is willing to come with us is not an excuse to fail in dealing with what is really a fundamental issue that has to be done."

There you have it. This administration has an agenda and they couldn't care less what you and I think. We need to "get something done" because we the people are apparently too stupid to decide what's best for us. We need some out of touch elitists in Washington to make those decisions for us.

In summary, our president thinks that a representative or senator who votes against health care reform because his or her constituents have requested him or her to do so is purely an act of selfish desire to get re-elected. Sounds like a classic Catch-22 to me--represent your constituents by voting against health care and be smeared by the president and his democrat buddies for playing partisan politics, or ignore the majority of your constituents and vote for health care, thereby ensuring you don't get re-elected.

Experimenting with Posterous

For those of you who don't know me very well, I'm always on the look out for new technologies, even if they aren't particularly useful for me.  Free technology is my Achilles heel.  Today I found a pretty cool free technology and am trying it out to see if it will be useful for me.

Posterous let's you post to your Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc by emailing content to certain email addresses.  You create an account and set up your linked accounts like your own blog and then use certain email addresses to post to your various linked accounts.  For instance, I'm posting this to my blog by emailing all the content to blog@posterous.com.

I'm still not sure how useful this will be, but I wanted to give it a shot.  Posterous has some other cool features that I'll be trying out in the near future.  I'll keep you updated on whether it's worth it or not.

Posted via email from camplogic's posterous

The Twitter Experience

As most of you have probably seen, I have a "Follow Me on Twitter" button on my blog. I've been using Twitter for several months now and I must say I'm really enjoying it. For those of you who don't know, Twitter is a micro-blogging, social networking medium. In other words, it's a replacement for (or supplement to) your Facebook status updates.

But what non-Twitter users don't really understand is that Twitter allows you to do so much more than simply update your status. By using a common language made up of hash tags, you can keep track of trending topics. You can also follow your favorite people just like you can friend them on Facebook.

As an example, I'm a UH Cougar alum and I follow Cougar Athletics religiously. Football season is inching closer and closer and I want to make sure I get breaking news updates on all things Cougar football. So, I follow @UHCougarSports and @campbellcoogs, 2 Twitter users who focus on Cougar sports in general and football in particular. But, I want to see if there are other people out there talking about Cougar football. So I use the hash tag system to search for #UH, #UHCougars, #UHfootball, etc. There I can find all the people discussing UH football in real time and can choose to follow those people if I so desire.

It's also great to use as an educational and networking tool for your occupation. If you're a small business owner, in marketing, sales, or whatever your profession, you can find people on Twitter doing the same thing and exchange ideas with them.

Finally, it's a good way to market your wares. Let's say you like to sell things on ebay. Create your listing in ebay for your item and then post a short description and link to your item on Twitter and use the #ebay hash tag. This lets people find your listing when they search Twitter using the #ebay hash tag. The same can be done for Craigs List entries or anything else you want to sell.

I hope this helps. I know there are lots of people out there on the fence about Twitter because they like Facebook and don't care for another social networking tool. Just remember that Twitter and Facebook can be used in completely different ways. Leave me a comment if you have any questions or have some other ideas for Twitter usage.

If you decide to sign up, you can follow me by clicking the button on my blog or going to www.twitter.com/TyCamp. Also, check out this Twitter guide book put out by @Mashable. It will tell you a lot more about how to use Twitter and get the most out of it.

Have You Changed Your Mind?

Ok, we're 8 1/2 months in to President Obama's first term which has given us plenty of time to observe what his policy ambitions are, how those ambitions may or may not differ from his campaign promises, how he intends to handle congress, whether any of his campaign promises are coming true or likely to come true, whether he can be trusted in general, and whether he is leading our country in the right direction.

Having had that time to review and reflect, would you change who you voted for in this past election? This is not aimed solely at those who voted for Obama. If you voted for McCain and wish you had voted for Obama or someone else, I'd like to know why. Likewise, if you voted for Obama but have changed your mind about him, I'd like to know your reasons for that too. All too often people get married to their choices even if they have come to realize they were bad choices. It's ok to change your mind as long as you have a good reason for it.

So, leave a comment and let me know what you think. I know most of my followers are conservatives and I certainly want to hear your opinions. But if you have any friends or family who voted for Obama, please send them the link to this post so I can see what they have to say, regardless of whether they have changed their mind or not. Once I get a good amount of comments, I'll create a new post summarizing my thoughts.

Thanks for helping me satisfy my curiosity!

Vacation Time

Well, the Mrs. and I are headed out on vacation tomorrow to the great state of North Carolina. I'll try to twitter some of the action for anyone who cares. In the meantime, I leave you with this article that provides a pretty good summary of Obama-style unity and bipartisanship. Enjoy and I'll be back soon.

A Brief History Of White House Thuggery

Simple Lesson in Economics

Let's say you win some kind of odd lottery and you have two options for payout:

(1) You can have 50 people pay you $1,000 a year for the next 10 years

or

(2) You can have 100 people pay you $750 a year for the next 10 years

Which one would you take? The answer is pretty simple, right? Apparently not for our government. They would rather take $1,000 a year from a few people than smaller amounts from a lot of people.

Can someone please point me to one time in history where a tax increase stimulated an economy? Just one. Saying a tax increase brings in more money for the government ignores everything except for the fact that you have an immediate, short-term, temporary increase in revenue.

Amanda and I own a small business. By small, I mean we have 5 employees. If our sales start to pick up and we have more and more customers coming in, we'll need to hire an additional person to keep up with the pace. Now, let's assume the government increases our taxes to help pay for something it wants to do. It also increases taxes on our 5 employees. Does the government get more money initially? Sure it does. It gets the difference between what we and our employees were paying collectively and what we're collectively paying now. The drawback is that with increased costs, we can't afford to hire anymore employees.

Wouldn't it make more sense to either decrease our taxes or leave them alone? In doing so, we could afford to hire an additional employee and the government would then be getting additional tax revenue from that new employee in addition to the same revenue it was getting before from us and our 5 other employees. If the government actually decreased our taxes, we might even be able to hire more than one new employee to try to grow our business rather than just keeping pace with current business. Extrapolate this across America, and it's easy to see why a broader tax base is a much better way to increase tax revenue than increasing taxes on existing tax payers.

The honest truth is, the democrats know all this, but they would rather punish the successful than require everyone to chip in. History shows that when you raise taxes on businesses and the wealthy, jobs suffer. When jobs suffer, people suffer. It really is a simple concept that gets largely ignored by our government. I, for one, am sick of it. Why should I seek to excel in my job if I'm only going to be punished by higher taxes? Socialism kills innovation and hard work. Just look at the former Soviet Union. In just a few more years, we might be able to say, "just look at post-2009 America."

The Great Hunter

So, as you've seen from one of my earlier posts, I recently stumbled onto a way to give Bailey a decent amount of exercise that fits my limited athletic ability. Yesterday morning I ventured back to the pond again thinking since it's 380 degrees outside, Bailey might enjoy a swim in the pond. To my surprise, she found something more exciting than swimming--hunting butterflies.

For those of you who don't know, Bailey is a Brittany. Brittanies are specifically bred for bird hunting and are pointers by nature. Bailey has never had any pointer or bird hunting training, but she certainly knows how to point. When she sees something she wants to hunt, she will freeze in place and watch for an opportunity to pounce. It's a very majestic sight.

Anyway, back to the story. As I'm pacing Bailey back and forth by the pond trying to get her to jump in, she sees something and freezes into the point position. I was able to get my phone out and take some pictures before she pounced on her prey--a tiny yellow butterfly/moth which she proceeded to chase around for the next 20 minutes or so. I'm so proud!