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Barack Obama has decided to kill NASA's space shuttle program, kill the moon flight program, and hire Russian rockets when we need to launch anything that Russia is okay with us launching. But to show that he's still a man of vision, the president made clear that he'd like to see mankind reach Mars by 2025.
And once there, why not try to fool the martians with the old "I've got a birth certificate but you can't see it" gag?
Oh sure, it doesn't seem like it could possibly work...but consider this: Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, an 18-year Army veteran and flight surgeon, is facing a court-martial because he wants the president to show his birth certificate. And the president won't.
If Obama simply gives permission for his birth certificate to be shown, Lt. Col. Lakin will return to Afghanistan for his second tour of duty. Where, presumably, as a flight surgeon he will affect and possibly save many lives.
But for some reason...some increasingly troubling reason...Barack Obama has decided that the deaths of a few more soldiers is a price worth paying for his personal secrecy.
Maybe it's time for NASA to turn the Hubble telescope around and start looking for intelligent life in a mainstream media that finds such a trade off acceptable.
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A "Freudian Slip" occurs when a person misspeaks...but accidentally reveals what they were actually thinking. For instance, as the old joke goes, a man says "I meant to tell my wife Please pass the salt, but what I actually said was You've made my life an endless, living hell."
So, too, did Barack Obama reveal his inner thoughts when speaking before an international body at his Nuclear Security Summit, when he said "Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower."
The obvious interpretation is that the president might like it better if the United States was not a dominant military superpower.
And of course, if we weren't "dominant" then someone else would be...causing us to wonder which country or countries does Obama believe to be more competent and morally responsible than the United States?
And finally, there's the president's assertion that the U.S. "remains a dominant military superpower." Remains?! Clearly, the assertion that we're "still" a superpower implies that our position at the top is in transition. A work in progress, that the president hasn't completed. Yet.
Odds are, Americans who rely on mainstream media for their news won't hear about the president's discomfort with America's position at the top of the current world order. But 47 world leaders got the message loud and clear.
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As painful as April 15th is for many Americans, we'll be hearing fewer screams than usual owing to the fact that 47% of households will pay no income tax whatsoever. A family of four, with two children under 17, can earn $50,000 without owing a red cent.
Unfortunately, foisting the nation's tax burden exclusively on the "rich" (the top 10% of earners pay 75% of all federal income tax revenue) won't even remotely pay for the ever-growing entitlement programs that administrations from both parties have put in place (although never so much, so fast, and so disingenuously underfunded as those passed by the Obama administration).
In fact, taking 100% of the money from the "evil rich" wouldn't be enough... which is why Democrats are now gearing up for an additional VAT tax which will affect the rich, the poor, and everyone in the middle.
Because when you can't squeeze any more blood from a stone, it's unavoidably time to start squeezing the sheep.
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The Democrats weren't that concerned when they found out that the healthcare bill they hadn't bothered to read failed to deliver promised care for kids with pre-existing conditions. But now, they've discovered that the bill also creates hardships for a far more important group: themselves.
The arcane and heretofore uninspected language of Obamacare can be interpreted to take away health coverage for members of congress and their staffs immediately...better still, they're then forced to buy their health insurance from the very "insurance exchanges" they intended the rabble to use...but there aren't any "insurance exchanges" yet!
Stunningly, the NY Times sums up the situation best, saying: “If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?”
But this is no time for rhetorical questions. The answer (in case the NY Times would like to quote us) is: "No, they didn't fully grasp the details because they didn't give a rat's ass about the lives of other Americans."
And so, the Democrats have been hoist with their own petard. And when they decide to look up what that means, they can also check the definition of "Schadenfreude."
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Following announcement that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens will resign this summer, Barack Obama said that he would try to find a new nominee who shares the belief that "powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens."
Really? According to the polls, the voices of the majority of ordinary citizens were recently drowned out by the Democrats, who rammed Obamacare through over the people's strong objections. Nor are the powerful interests in Washington listening to the voices of ordinary citizens who increasingly ask "where are the jobs?!"
"Ordinary citizens" are voicing concern about the debt, about illegal immigration, about new rights for terrorists, and a weak and counter-productive foreign policy. And yet the powerful interests represented by Obama, Pelosi, and Reid choose not to listen.
Instead, the president hopes to find a Supreme Court nominee who can help reshape the Constitution so that it will protect the powerful interests of government far more than "ordinary citizens." And that is courting disaster.
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Hope n' Change Cartoons just reached our 150th follower, daily readership has reached all-time highs, and we couldn't be more delighted!
Hope n' Change was created to give conservatives something to laugh about each and every day...as well as links to important news stories and thought-provoking (if frequently tongue-in-cheek) commentary.
The growth of the strip owes everything to you, the readers. You're the ones who continue to spread the word to friends, copy cartoons into emails, post cartoons on your own blogs, and make this whole crazy enterprise worthwhile!
My sincerest thanks for making this a party...and here's hoping we can make it even bigger!
-Stilton Jarlsberg, MD
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In order to present Obamacare as "deficit neutral," the Democrats had to find fictitious sources of money to pay for it. So they proposed taking a half-trillion dollars out of Medicare, and cut other funds which were intended to pay doctors and hospitals who treat seniors. According to the president's own advisors, these cuts would drive 1-in-5 Medicare providers into bankruptcy.
To keep that from happening, the Democrats have planned all along to add a whole new form of taxes to help pay for their vast, unfunded social programs. The "Value Added Tax" is essentially a national sales tax on everything...making every dollar you've scrimped, saved, and paid taxes on worth less in the marketplace.
As an added bonus, the VAT tax will also slow the economy, discourage job growth, and give bureaucrats in Washington additional power as they trade favors to determine exactly who and what will be taxed.
A VAT makes it easy for politicians to raise taxes a little at a time...rather like slowly raising the flames under a pot of water with a frog in it. Only in this case, it's not a frog who's going to get cooked.
