Predictions for 2010

Finally, we are about to put behind us 2009, a year which almost all of us will be happy to forget. As we look ahead to 2010, we can only hope that the next year, and decade, will be better than the last. Whether it will be, is open to question. With that in mind, here are my predictions for 2010 – some serious, some not so much:

The New Orleans Saints will rally in the second half to narrowly beat the Indianapolis Colts in a Super Bowl that will live up to its name.

The summer will be very mild and the winter will be harsh, conditions that the global warming advocates will use as proof that we are on the brink of global warming annihilation.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg will resign from the Supreme Court. President Obama will nominate a very liberal judge to the Supreme Court. This will be vigorously opposed by the Republicans, who will be able to do absolutely nothing about it.

A major terrorist attack in the United States will succeed. The Obama administration will use it as proof that the Bush administration’s policies failed. Janet Napolitano will assure us that “the system worked.”

Tiger Woods will return to golf and win the British Open. All the sponsors who previously dropped him will return.

The Republicans will win back many seats in the house in the midterm elections, but not enough to regain control. Those defeated Blue Dog Democrats who voted for Obamacare will all wind up with jobs in the Obama administration or in liberal think tanks.

Prior to the mid-term elections, at least four more Democrats will cross the aisle and become Republicans.

Some team will win the World Series and no one will really care.

Rap music will remain crap.

Janet Napolitano, up until now Teflon, will finally be fired.

Joe Biden will slowly be re-allowed back into the public eye. He will inevitably say something incredibly stupid and be yanked back into obscurity by the administration.

The Los Angeles Lakers will repeat as NBA champions. Kobe Bryant will remain the biggest whiner in basketball.

There will be a bailout of newspapers, thus ending any premise of subjective journalism.

Harry Reid and Chris Dodd will be soundly defeated in their Senate elections. They will promptly receive jobs in the administration or as lobbyists.

More scandals involving Rep. Charlie Rangel will come to light, but nothing will come of them.

The economy will continue to flatline. The President will blame the Bush Administration.

A major sex scandal will involve the Obama administration. This will be largely ignored by the Main Stream Media.

Tony Stewart will narrowly edge out Jimmy Johnson for the NASCAR championship, garnering far more attention and endorsements than Jimmy Johnson ever did, in spite of the fact that he has had one of the most incredible runs in sports history.

I will not be offered a position in the Obama administration.

John Thune and Mitt Romney will emerge as leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination for 2012.

Notre Dame will be one of the year’s biggest surprises in college football, ending the season ranked in the top 10 under new head coach, Brian Kelly.

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, will resign in protest of President Obama’s continued conciliatory approach to Iran. She will prepare to run for her prior Senate seat or challenge Obama in 2012.

There will be another major scandal involving global warming scientists. It will receive about as much attention by the mainstream media as the first one did.

Realizing that criticizing Rush Limbaugh is a losing proposition, the new favorite whipping boy for the Obama administration will be Glenn Beck. In response, the Glenn Beck show will continue to rise in the ratings and at least two more major scandals will emerge as the result of Beck’s reporting.

ACORN will continue to function as if nothing ever happened.

In conference committee, unions will be exempted from the taxes on “Cadillac” health care plans in Obamacare. This will cost at least 3 representatives their seats in the midterm elections.

My golf game will not improve, my novel will only slightly progress, I will continue to be a Facebook addict, and I will lose 100 lbs. by the end of the year.

Have a happy New Year, everyone!

Letter to my Senators

This is a letter that I just sent one of my state Senators, Carl Levin. I will send Sen. Debbie Stabenow a similar letter.

Sen. Levin,

I am not entirely certain why I am writing this as I don't expect you to take it seriously, anyway. This Omnibus Health Care Bill is a travesty in many ways. It will doubtlessly raise the cost of medicine, add to the deficit (despite the mathematical maneuverings of Congress in paying for 10 years of medical care with 14 years of fees and increased taxes), it will decrease the quality of medical care, and it punishes those of us who work in the health care field.

Add to that the prostitution of Sens. Nelson and Landrieu (and who knows who else) and their vote selling, and this is a bill that should never see the light of day. We, the citizens of the United States, should be able to expect better from our elected representatives.

Jeff Chesnut, DO

Senators for Sale

A story has it that George Bernard Shaw walked up to a lady at a party and said, “Madam, if I gave you $50 million, would you sleep with me?”

“Of course,” she replied.

“How about if I gave you $10?” asked Shaw.

“Mr. Shaw,” she said, “What kind of woman do you think I am?”

Shaw replied, “We’ve already established what kind of woman you are. All we are doing now is haggling over the price.”

P.J. O’Rourke was correct when he termed the United States Congress “A Parliament of Whores”. Yesterday, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) became just the latest United States Senator to demonstrate the price for which he is willing to sell his vote. Nelson was reputedly a pro-life Senator who had stated that his conscience would not allow him to support the latest iteration of the current Omnibus Health Care Bill unless it contained strong prohibitions against using taxpayer funds for abortions.

Most pro-life advocates are such because we feel that abortion is a moral evil, the taking of an innocent life. It is a deep-seated conviction, not one that is customarily used as a negotiating tool. Sen. Nelson, however, went into a back room with the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, to discuss this issue of conscience. He didn’t come out with the anti-abortion language he desired. In fact, he didn’t come out with anti-abortion language, at all. The language to which Nelson acquiesced promises that each state may individually choose whether or not federal taxpayer money will be used to provide coverage of abortions in the government’s insurance exchange. (Incidentally, the mechanism for how the states will decide this issue is not detailed, but you can bet it will not be left up to the voters.)

Any residual pangs of conscience that Nelson may have felt were apparently assuaged by another little side agreement resulting from the closed-door meeting. It seems that Medicare will be extended to everyone who makes less than 133% of the poverty level. Now that may be perfectly reasonable but, with Medicare, every state has to pay a percentage, typically about 33-50%, of that expanded coverage.

Every state, that is, except Nebraska.

Yes, you read that correctly. That means that if you live, as I do, in the People’s Republic of Michigan, with the worst economy in the country and an unemployment rate of almost 15%, your tax dollars will be paying for Medicare for the citizens of the great state of Nebraska (11^th best economy; 4.5% unemployment rate.) Nelson also scored some additional concessions for Nebraska, some regulation exemptions for physician owned hospitals and others, but the Medicare deal is the biggie.

(By the way, can we just drop the phrase “Pro-life Democrat Senator”? I think it has been amply demonstrated that there is no such creature.)

Of course, it would be unfair to single out Sen. Nelson for this type of extortion. Earlier in this process, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), a “conservative” Democrat walked away with a deal so outrageous that it has earned the sobriquet, The Louisiana Purchase. It seems that Sen. Landrieu also had a crisis of conscience about voting for a bill that will almost certainly raise insurance rates, decrease quality and accessibility of health care, and cost the country trillions of dollars. Her guilt was salved by a provision written into the bill granting $100 million in Medicare subsidies to all states in which every county or parish were declared disaster areas within the preceding 7 fiscal years. Guess which one and only state in the US qualifies? If you said, “Louisiana,” you win the grand prize. And since these are matching funds, Landrieu correctly bragged, “I am not going to be defensive about asking for help in this situation and it is not a $100 million fix, it is a $300 million fix." Just to prove she has a sense of humor, Landrieu denied that this was the reason she decided to change her vote.

These are only the payoffs that we know of. Why don’t we know what other items may be in this bill? Because no one, except Harry Reid, has seen the bill, yet. That’s right, the bill over which the Senate has been debating is not the bill on which they will be voting. Only in Washington can this make an iota of sense. Sen. Reid plans of producing the bill at the last possible moment, just like the “stimulus” bill and the cap-and-tax bill, so that the Senators and, more importantly, the watchdogs and the media will not have time to study the bill before the vote.

Now, there is a huge rush to pass this bill before the Senate breaks for Christmas. In fact, according to Senate rules, the Senate cannot vote on the bill until Christmas Eve. Why the rush? Because health care is in such a crisis that people will be dying in the street until they get the new and improved Obamacare? If that were the case, why does the bill not even go into effect until 2014 (though we will start paying for it next year? How else can the Office of Management and Budget claim that it will not increase the deficit during its first 10 years? It is because we pay for 14 years and get coverage for 10.) No, the reason that Dirty Harry and crew are anxious to pass this is that it is a dog and they know it. They do not want to have happen what happened during the fall recess when members of Congress were confronted by their angry constituents over the bill. They want to go home with a fait accompli. Plus, 2010 is an election year and Congress is betting that the people’s memories will be short. They don’t want to be involved in this dispute in an election year.

Over the next several weeks, expect to hear of additional back-room deals, vote selling, and extortion. The Democrats know that passing this bill will cost them seats in Congress. Watch how many those “Blue Dog” Democrats that are voted out in 2010 land jobs in the Obama administration or liberal Washington think tanks. I suspect that if the public knew about all the deals that have been and will be struck, they would be appalled. This is the very reason that, according to the Gallup polling agency, Congressional approval ratings have been hovering around 25%. It is time for the public to get disgusted enough to send Congress to the unemployment line.

After all, it doesn’t matter how much she costs, beneath it all, a whore is still a whore.

President Obama's War

In what was certain to be a controversial decision, no matter what he decided, President Obama announced tonight that he will send 30,000 more troops to the war effort in Afghanistan. Much of the left wing, and a few conservatives, will lament that the US should totally pull out of Afghanistan. Most of the right wing will decry the decision, saying that the President has only gone “half-way” in meeting General McChrystal’s troop requests. And, maybe most importantly, the children of America will be angry because the President pre-empted the Charley Brown Christmas Special.

A refrain that has been heard from much of the right side of the aisle is that President Obama has an obligation to “listen to his generals.” In fact, while the President has a moral obligation to listen to his generals, he is definitely not obligated to follow those recommendations. Our founding fathers, in their wisdom, set up our government so that the ultimate control of the military was vested in civilian leaders. In fact, unlike many other countries, an active duty military man cannot even hold public office. This has served our country well for over 200 years. We have never had to undergo a military coup, as have so many other countries.

The founding fathers, remembering the dangers of power that is too centralized in one person or institution, set up our government to specifically avoid that problem. In fact, while the President of the United States is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, it is the Congress that controls the purse strings and can choose to fund or not fund wars. As commander-in-chief, however, the President is granted very broad powers in how he handles the military.

As much noise as we are hearing about the President deferring to his generals, there are a number of precedents of Presidents ignoring, overruling, and even firing his generals. Probably the most well-known example is that of Abraham Lincoln, who went through an entire panoply of generals until he came upon one, U.S. Grant, who would finally prosecute the Civil War the way Lincoln wanted it prosecuted. President Harry Truman famously fired war hero, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who took his policy disagreements with Truman public. More recently, President George W. Bush was castigated by the left for favoring Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld’s, idea of a smaller force in Iraq in favor of the larger force requested by his generals. The success of the surge, in this case, proved the generals correct.

So, while it is not incumbent upon a President to take his generals’ recommendations, it takes a large measure of self-confidence and even hubris not to do so. Of course, we know that there is no lack of hubris in this President.

I don’t know whether the President’s decision is the correct one. I hope it is. But whether it is the right decision, or not, the decision belongs to President Obama, alone. It is his strategy, not President Bush’s that will decide whether we go on to victory or defeat in Afghanistan. This is now President Obama’s war.