President Obama made an announcement that the Pay As You Go mentality is back. However, I urge my viewers not to be caught up by this. The reason is this: the major areas that contribute to our deficits like Defense, Social Security and Health care is exempted.

President Obama : “ This year I have proposed another $20 billion worth of budget cuts. I have also called for a freeze in government spending in 3 years. It won’t affect benefits through Medicare, Medicaid or Social security.”

The vast, vast majority of spending every year are on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Defense and National security. They amount to nearly 2/3 of our spending. And of these, President Obama is not going to touch and bother about.

We can carry on giving out more and more Social Security benefits but not pay for it. We can carry on having vast defense plans but we may not pay for it. We can carry on the rot of a health care system that we have, but we can carry on giving benefits, paying for the uninsured…

Why? The reason is that to pull this off, President Obama would be taking a very large gamble. For example, he needs to ram a healthcare bill through Congress with a cost controlling measure. But he failed so miserably in that. His party and negotiated away the only measure that both parties could come up with that controls cost, the public option.

He can put Social Security in the green, that is we earn from Social Security taxes, by making the rich pay as much as us. But he won’t. People like Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno can cap their Social Security by working 2 days and they do not have to pay it for life. Make them pay it like us, and we would not have a problem with Social Security for the next 70 years!

We can compromise on things like education, infrastructure and NASA, but we would not be bothered to do anything about Defense? Why? Because President Obama does not want to start a political battle with the Republicans and be labeled as the guy that is not supporting our troops.

To sum it all up, President Obama does not have the balls to carry out real budgetary reforms. It is really that simple. He can do it instantly, but he does not have the fight to do it. All talk of change we can believe in, new-age politics and so on. Now was the time for him to prove it. But he did not. He has proven to be a spineless Democrat more than anything else.

When are we going to have a real leader in America? The last we had was JFK in 1960s. I am not saying that President Clinton did not do a good job, but he has been part of rotting away of our governance since President Carter in 1976.

When are we going to have people like Governor Jesse Ventura, General Colin Powell or Governor Howard Dean? And it is not as though people are not frustrated with politics as it is. There are many people who support Representative Ron Paul that also supports Representative Dennis Kucinich even though they are on the opposite ends of thought. This is because they would support people who are sincere rather than natural politicians.

I really hope that our political system get a jolt. Our country really needs it, not nutty Tea Parties.

Though not as much fun as the first time it was on air, it was still entertaining. On the one corner, there is the Michael “America-needs-to-be-socialist” Moore and his opponent, Sean “America-needs-to-be-fascist ” Hannity. Lets the games begin!

The first topic Hannity brought up was that many of the government run services are going bankrupt. He gave the examples of the Post-Office, Social Security and Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae.
In this argument, I think neither deserves any claim to this issue. Well, Moore is right about certain services not needing to make profit, but cost management is an important factor of an efficient government. Sometimes you got to raise revenue, sometimes you got to cut cost. It is not as simple as the argument that they are having.

A similar verdict for the next argument. Hannity asked how much tax should Americans pay? Ask anybody on Earth and their answer would be a big fat zero. Ask them to run a country, city etc, that way and not a single one would offer zero taxation. Neither would we want a slave economy of 100% taxation with welfare. How much is a statistical and a mathematical deduction, not a political question. As of now, I think that the American tax code for tax paying citizens should be from 20%-75% with corporate taxes at 20%.

Hannity did score the first point when he brought up all the promises that President Obama promised but failed to keep his promises of lobbyists, earmarks and that the jobless figure not exceeding 8%. Though I think that the last point is in no part President Obama’s fault, the first 2 is something that any of the big 2 party speak of but would never be able to keep; unless something is done about campaign reform. But Hannity is right, President Obama did not keep those promises. 1-0 to Hannity.

The next flash-point was about the Cuban hospitals. He showed a clip of a “hospital” in Cuba. I am sorry, but Hannity was outright lying about it. I may not have been to Cuba, but I have seen Cuban doctors at work. They do not lack doctors. If Hannity is expecting me to believe that the hospitals over there have poor amenities, I may have believed it. But if he is expecting me to believe that the hospitals have no patients, nurses or doctors, sorry that is a joke. 1 all.

Next came the “gift of complains” that Hannity gave to Moore about the British National Health System. Again, another pile of B.S. Ask any Brit to privatize their system like ours and you would get them to protest just like Americans did when they believed that the government was going to take away Medicare. This is utterly rubbish! Don’t you think that they would protest if they do not receive health-care? Come on! 2-1 to Moore.

Then Hannity made this ridiculous claim that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. My goodness, either this guy has no brains or is really out of touch with the American people. The reason social security is going broke in America and not in other countries, is just due to mismanagement. I also think that social security should be a flat tax for all, as what Michael Moore said. 3-1 to Moore.

The last round though belongs to Hannity. He challenged Moore that if he believed that capitalism was so bad, why not give his wealth up. Guess what, Moore chickened out again! It is all hot air. He would never part with his dollar and cent. You think he really want to see his taxes go up? Please! In the end, he cannot back what he said up.

Hannity was just short yet again. Unlike Hannity vs Moore 1, Hannity lost this time because he self destructed by saying things such as Social Security being a Ponzi scheme. Michael Moore lacked the punches this time and was just lucky.

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From what I call the land of the weird, ironic and crazy political figures like Senator Al Franken, and Representative Michele Bachmann, President Obama gave a speech to an audience of 15000 people. The crowd was very thoroughly checked and 100% partisan.

The speech in this was way better than the union speech and similar to the one he gave at the join session of Congress. It had a mix and match of both parts. A firing up of his base and a fight back to the Republicans. There was no drama.

If you had gone or listened to both speeches though, chances are that you would get bored with this one. The story of the fire-me-up old lady was told again, the same speech to the senior citizens and the promise to go after Republicans should they misrepresent the picture. In fact, it would have been a repeat if they had let hecklers come through!

The biggest headline grabbing news was that there was a big boo which people thought were coming from the crowd degrading President FDR. I can tell you that this was not true because of the controlled crowd. You could not hear a word of dissent against the President in this crowd, the same way you cannot hear dissent on Glenn Beck at Tea Party rallies!

The point the President was trying to make was that when President FDR introduced Social Security, it was called socialism then, just like his programs are now. The crowd was booing the Republicans calling the President’s policy socialism. That was what happened.

However, there is an effect that needs to be noted. The real people that are going to decide what is going to happen in this bill is not going to come from the Left or the Right, the power is with the Independents. And believe it or not, they are having a very strong opinion. More than 60% do not approve how the President is handling the issue of health-care in America, but about the same want the public option in the bill.

I think that we are going into this way too early. I think that there should be other things that we should be thinking of, which the Democrats and Republicans are not coming up with. I would like to go along the ideas of a trade war or some way to open up en-masse competition. I think we should only have universal health-care as the very last option but I am open to it an know that it can work.

That being said however, should the President not have public option in the bill, the bill would need to be killed. It is that simple. I have no assurance yet that the President would want the public option in the bill. The reason is this; without the public option, our premiums are going to sky-rocket. There is no good alternative coming out at all to keep cost down.

If we have HR3200 without the public option, it would force everyone to have insurance, force people to be covered regardless and tax people that are not having any, we would have enormous demand vs the same supply. That would bring costs up. The only thing that is keeping cost down, is the cap on profits which can change at the call of the Secretary of Health and Human services, which is just too much power in one person that is not elected.

Lastly, the President just gave another speech when this articled was finished (1p.m., EST). It is about regulating financial services. This has sparked a war of words amongst think-tanks. We have not seen any legislation yet on this and we would get to this topic as soon as possible.

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