Freedom Line Blog

In CFIF’s most recent Freedom Minute video, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses how with the passage of ObamaCare, Americans are being forced to sacrifice fundamental liberties and the nation’s character.

Despairing over the passage of Obamacare? Beginning to fret that you sound like those liberals who are constanly promising to emigrate if a Republican wins the White House? Fear not, my friends, the health care bill contains an escape hatch for those of you who’d like to avoid the European Med-State to come. But you better be able to grow a beard.

As I’ve chronicled on Freedom Line before (here and here), the Amish and Old Order Mennonites have long pushed for an exemption from the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, as their religious beliefs forbid it. Well, they got it. And some are speculating that Muslims may be the next in line for an opt-out.

What would happen, one wonders, if millions of conservative Americans started declaring themselves Amish when the Obama Administration’s insurance company-underwritten collection agency came knocking?

Are you curious to know when your taxes will spike?  When one of approximately 17,000 new IRS agents will come knocking for failure to have government-approved insurance?  When senior citizens can expect to see those massive cuts to their Medicare Advantage plans?

Congressman Dave Camp, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee, has put together a handy timeline outlining when all the major provisions of ObamaCare are set to kick in.

Check it out here (.pdf).

American liberals love to praise supposedly superior European governance and culture, oblivious to the irony that they nevertheless continue to live in the United States.  This phenomenon became particularly visible during the ObamaCare ordeal, as liberals claimed that we must somehow join the rest of the “industrialized world” in providing unsustainable government-controlled healthcare.

Well, here’s a dose of sobering reality.  As noted on a front page story in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled “Europe’s Choice:  Growth or Safety Net,” Europe has stagnated economically for the past two decades compared to the United States.  Worse, this has occurred even as Europe continued its failure to carry their own weight with respectable defense expenditures.  From 1990 to 1999, Europe’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 2.0%, compared to 3.3% for the U.S.  From 2000 to 2008, Europe only grew 1.7%, whereas the U.S. grew 2.2%.

Yet we’re supposed to emulate their example?  Can’t liberals just move there instead?

In a speech in Iowa City, Iowa today, President Obama urged Republicans to “Be my guest,” and, “Go for it,” in efforts to repeal ObamaCare.

His tone was mocking, taunting, laying down a political challenge.

We don’t know the tone of the American people polled by CBS News yesterday.  Presumably it was serious.  They were asked, “Should Republicans continue to challenge the health care bill?”  Overall, sixty-two percent said yes, including 89 percent of Republicans, 66 percent of Independents and 41 percent of Democrats (who somehow seem to have taken a pass on the Inside the Beltway Democratic exuberance).

Go for it, indeed, because those are tripartisan landslide numbers, anyway you slice them, anyway you dice them.

Here at CFIF, we don’t make it a habit of promoting chain emails.  But one such email, which has landed in our inboxes on more than one occasion today, is worth an exception.   The author is unknown.  Here it is as it has been sent to us.

Senator Harry Reid goes to a local GM dealer in Washington, D.C. with the intention of buying a brand new vehicle. Harry looks around and finds one he likes.  

After going back and forth with the salesman, Harry settles on a price of $45,000. 

Harry and the salesman go back to the office to complete the paperwork. Harry works out a 4 year payment plan, and signs on the bottom line.

The salesman shakes Harry’s hand and says, “Thanks Senator Reid, the car will be ready for pickup in 4 years.”  Harry says, “What are you talking about?”  

“Where are the keys to my new car?”  The salesman replies, “No, you don’t understand Senator.  You make payments for 4 years…THEN we give you the car.  You know, just like your health plan.”

“We consider health reform to have been an important battle and a success of [Obama],” wrote Castro.

Full story here.

Where are you, Hugo Chavez?

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Less than 48 hours after Democrats in the House of Representatives passed their government-run health care bill, President Obama this morning signed it into law.

In doing so, the president violated yet another promise he made to the American people.  In fact, the “ethics” page of Obama’s “Organizing for America” website still reads:

Sunlight Before Signing:   Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them.  As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.” [emphasis added]

Then again, the president has reneged on that specific promise on at least 32 occasions prior to today.  At this point, why even bother counting? 

H/T:  ATR’s Center for Fiscal Accountability and Real Clear Politics

After a wasted year in office during which he could have concentrated on revitalizing American employment, Barack Obama presides over a smoldering rubble that was once his electoral mandate.

Yet he and his administration label this radioactive ObamaCare ordeal a “victory?”

Obama began his self-destructive crusade last year possessing the strongest Democrat majorities in decades, but finished it with a string of jarring defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and then Massachusetts.  He entered office riding a crest of popularity and goodwill, but then saw his approval drop worse than any elected President in the history of scientific polling.  His wasted year ignited the Tea Party movement, and propelled Republicans to enormous leads on the generic ballot as November elections approach.

For such a supposedly effective leader, he could only manage to win a razor-thin victory despite enormous Democrat Congressional majorities.

And for what?  Over 90% of Americans already possessed insurance when Obama went on his hyper-partisan warpath, 90% of whom were satisfied or very satisfied with their care.  Even under the rosiest projections, ObamaCare will add only 5% to that number of insured.  Meanwhile, another $1 trillion will be piled atop the rotting federal budgetary heap, Americans will literally be compelled by law to purchase insurance that bureaucrats deem appropriate, unemployment festers at a 10% rate fully one year after Obama’s “stimulus” and Democrats may lose one or both houses of Congress.

Any more divisive, costly “victories” like this, and the term “Pyrrhic victory” will soon be renamed “Obama victory.”

Proponents of ObamaCare make the intellectually sloppy claim that health insurance is a “right.”

Simultaneously, however, they insert an individual mandate requiring American citizens to purchase that “right” as a necessary component of the bill.  A mandate enforced by none other than the IRS, and which is potentially unconstitutional, oh by the way.

But wait a moment.  How is it that one can label something a “right,” and then turn around and mandate its purchase under penalty of imprisonment and IRS persecution?  Does the Second Amendment’s individual right to keep and bear arms require that the federal government mandate firearms purchase by citizens who don’t possess them?  Does the First Amendment right to free speech require that the federal government mandate the purchase printing presses?

It’s dishonest, and it’s cognitively vapid.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

“A Date Which Will Live in Infirmary” — The Drudge Report

Democrats in the House of Representatives just approved the Senate-passed health care bill by a vote of 219-212.  They did so without any Republican votes and against the will of the American people. 

November can’t some soon enough.

Politico.com reports:

In a surprise move today, Democrats decided to vote on the Senate bill directly instead of using the so-called Slaughter Solution, a procedural maneuver that would have shielded them from a direct vote on the bill.”

Now it’s time to “Kill the Bill.”

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

According to Gallup:

President Barack Obama’s job approval is the worst of his presidency to date, with 46% of Americans approving and 48% disapproving of the job he is doing as president in the latest Gallup Daily three-day average. …

“Americans hold Congress in far less esteem than they do the president — 16% approve and 80% disapprove of the job Congress is doing.”

High unemployment and the struggling economy are without a doubt a major source of the American people’s frustration.  But it is no coincidence that the president’s job approval numbers have toppled to a record low during the same week, as Gallup reports it, “in which the White House and Democratic congressional leaders are working to convince wavering House Democrats to support healthcare reform, which they hope to pass using a series of parliamentary maneuvers in the House of Representatives and Senate.”

Yet, with two out of every three Americans opposed to ObamaCare, the Associated Press informs us that the president is telling fence-sitting House Democrats that “their political fates are linked to the bill’s passage.”

Huh?

Ask anyone on your local street corner if they think politicians in Washington are out of touch with the people they claim to represent.  Nine times out of ten (if not 10 out of 10) you’ll get the obvious answer, “Yes!”   But simply being “out of touch” doesn’t even begin to describe the audacity of this president.

The ongoing, excruciating, resource-draining attempt by Democrats to foist ObamaCare upon an unwilling American public (what ever happened to their promise to “focus on jobs” in 2010, anyway?) by any means necessary, legal or illegal, will obviously cause deafening reverberations in November’s Congressional elections.  With each passing day, scientific polling suggests that a Republican takeover is more and more likely.

In a brilliant commentary in today’s Wall Street Journal, however, Michael Solon points out that ObamaCare’s impact may be even more dramatic than Congressional midterms, or even the 1994 Congressional elections that vaulted Republicans to majorities in both houses for the first time since the 1950s.  This is because not only are Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s majorities in jeopardy, but so are Democrat seats in governors’ mansions and state legislatures, which control Congressional district realignment following the 2010 census.  As stated by Solon:

Of all the political consequences that could flow from the national healthcare effort in 2010, the potential of the fall elections to shift 2011 redistricting to the Republicans’ advantage may be the most important.  That puts the long-term viability of the president’s healthcare reform in serious jeopardy, no matter the outcome of the 2012 elections.  While the election of 1994 did signal a political realignment, none of that alignment translated into the much more permanent benefit that redistricting could provide in 2010 if the GOP takes over state legislatures across the country…  As Democratic legislators consider their choices, many are missing the impact of an electoral wipeout in 2010 on the redistricting of Congressional seats as well as those in the state legislatures.  The electoral advantage gained from 2011 redistricting would extend the short-term pain of 2010 at least through the redistricting of 2021.”

The late Thomas “Tip” O’Neil once said that “all politics is local.” But the Democrats’ suicide mission in trying to pass ObamaCare may turn O’Neil’s observation on its head and prove that not only are local politics sometimes national, but also enduring.

In these week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses how President Obama and his allies have sacrificed both sound policy and basic ethics in their push for government-controlled health care.