President Obama’s health care reform bill (HR 3200) is the most radical health care reform bill in U.S. history.  There are three major serious problems with this bill:  a) The cost, 1.6 trillion dollars for the first 10 years, b) it will kill private insurance and c) it will transfer control of your health care to the government.  I will present facts to back up these claims by pointing you to the specific sections of the bill that call for these drastic measures and finally I will present common sense solutions. 

No one argues that we need health care reform, but is President Obama’s solution the right one?  No, it is not.  First of all the high cost.  The President and the Democrats have yet to tell us how they’re going to fund this bill.  They’ve given us partial answers.  One partial answer is that approximately ½ of the funding for the bill is to be taken from Medicare and Medicaid in which 10.5 million seniors are now enrolled. Second, the CBO estimates that the 1.6 Trillion cost will still leave 36 million uninsured.  We know from experience that health care costs always have a tendency to rise rapidly. As an example, the House Ways & Means Committee in 1967 estimated that Medicare would cost $12 Billion in 1990.  The actual cost was $110 Billion. 

In a private study done by two Harvard Medical School professors, Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmeistein, published in the July/August 2002 issue of “Health Affairs” titled “Paying for National Health Insurance – and Not Getting It,” tax-financed government expenditures as a percentage of total health care expenditures rose from 11.4% in 1965 to 31.8% in 1999. 

In a “Barron’s” article of 7/29/09 titled “The Massachusetts Mess” three years after enacting universal health care the Massachusetts Governor ordered a stop to auto enrollment of low-income people to the public option because the State cannot afford it.  Boston Medical Center this year will operate at a $38 million loss and expects a $100 million loss next year.  The reason for the loss:  State price fixing. 

President Obama keeps making the claim that the reason he is in such a hurry to pass health care is that there are 48 million uninsured in the U.S.  However, this figure is misleading.  Of the 48 million:

            - 15 million earn $60,000 per year and can afford it but choose not to buy.

            - 11 million are in between jobs

            - 12 million are illegal aliens

            - 10 million are eligible for existing programs but not enrolled. 

The following is a detailed summary analysis of the scary parts of HR 3200 analyzed by Matt Staver, Dean Liberty University Law School: 

HR 3200 will kill private insurance by not letting any new policies be written after the Public Option becomes law (p. 16), 

Government commission will decide what treatments you get (p.30), 

Illegal aliens will get free health care (p.50), 

Government will have access to bank accounts (p.59), 

Government will pay ACORN and AmericaCorps to sing-up individuals for government health care (p.95), 

No private company can challenge government for price fixing (p.124), 

Any employer with a payroll of $400K or over will pay8% penalty on payroll for not providing he Public Option (p. 149, Lines 16-24), 

Doctors will be paid the same no matter the specialty (p. 241), 

Doctors cannot own or invest in health care companies (p. 317), 

Government to provide end of life counseling; among required counseling it states:  “such consultation SHALL include an explanation of end of life services (p.425), 

Government mandates end of life program treatment (p. 427 and 430, lines 11-15), 

Government provides for taxpayer-funded abortion on demand (p. 771-72), 

Employers must automatically enroll employees into Public Option (p. 145, lines 15-17), 

Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plan (Part B) HMOs, etc., forcing people into the Public Option (p. 341, lines 3-9), 

Government will restrict enrollment of special needs people (p. 354, Sec 1117), 

Attorney General will have access to all HHS data for law enforcement purposes (p. 735, Lines 6-25), 

Government will decide which health care conditions will be paid (p.801, Sec 1751), 

Government will penalize hospitals for what they deem preventable re-admissions (p. 280, Sec 1151), 

Government will design a home visitation program for families with young kids and those expecting kids (p. 838-40), 

You cannot enroll in private health insurance after the start of the Public Option (p. 15-16), 

Proposed Solutions that make sense

• Stan Katten, former RAND Corp. Analyst 

 Standardize minimum insurance coverage among all states and make it fully transferable,

 Tort reform,

 Expand HMO-managed Medicare Advantage programs,

 Expand health saving accounts and make available Catastrophic Care Insurance,

 Computerize records,

 Make all health care costs fully tax-deductible,

•   Charles Krauthammer MD, Syndicated Columnist, Washington Post 

 Strip current inefficiencies,

 Tort reform.  A study found that 5 of 6 doctors admitted ordering test solely as protection.  Such tests have been found to cost 25% of all costs.  This would save about 200 Billion per year,

 Abolish malpractice system and create a new pool from which people injured in medical errors can draw from.  A board of medical experts would adjudicate this,

 Tax employer provided health care benefits and return money to employee with a government check to buy his or her own medical insurance like car and home insurance,

 Eliminate law prohibiting buying medical insurance across state liens,

•     John Mackey, Whole Foods Alternative 

 Remove legal obstacles that slow the creation of high deductible health plan and health savings accounts,

 Equalize tax laws so that employer provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits,

 Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines,

 Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover,

 Tort reform.

•    GOP Health Solutions “Patients Choice Act” 

 Leave in place tax deductions companies receive for providing health insurance and create a Medi-Choice tax rebate that will give individuals $2,200 and families $5,700 to spend on health insurance,

 Give families who purchase their own insurance a tax benefit similar to one companies get for providing health benefits,

 Pass medical liability reform that will reduce costly junk suits,

 Step-up efforts to detect and punish Medicare and Medicaid fraud which costs an estimated $60 Billion per year,

 Allow Americans to buy insurance across state lines,

  

A free market is crucial to the advance of medicine.  Why is America the world leader in medicine?  When a rich Muslim sheik from Saudi Arabia or anyone, for that matter, anywhere in the world, needs life-saving surgery, where do they go?  Do they go to Iran, India, Indonesia or even Europe?  No, they come to the United States.  When the Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, earlier this year needed cancer treatment, did he go to the best hospital in Italy, or Europe?  No, he went to the Cleveland Clinic, one of the best places in the United States to get treatment.  Has it ever occurred to anyone why the world comes to America, not just for jobs or economic opportunity, but also for heath care?  The answer is very simple – America is the world leader in health care, and medicine in general.  Why America?  Why not Europe? Or the Middle East or Asia?  As I write this, I’ve found a column written by Bishop Harry Jackson Jr. of Washington DC on Townhall.com titled “Above All do no Harm,” which recounts a personal horror story, as well as stories of other people from around the world who flock to America to solve their health problems. 

Most of us Americans take it for granted that we get great medical treatment.  We complain that we have some problems with our system, but forget where the world looks to when it comes to medical innovation.  Now, I agree that our system of delivering medical care can and should be improved.  What I passionately disagree with is President Obama’s cure.  Why?  Simple – his cure is to make health care resemble European health care, a socialist model of health care which has proven to be a failure; don’t just take my word for this, just ask any Englishman, Canadian or European who has to wait for years for life-saving surgery.   Obamacare is literally terrifying most Americans.  Peggy Noonan, in a Wall Street Journal today, recounts how this is terrifying them.  There are countless solutions to the problem.  I want to suggest three here: 

First, a free market economy works the best.  Just look at all the world economies; which ones are more successful?  A free market like the U.S. market or, say, the Venezuelan model, or the Chinese model, or any socialist model.  The strongest economies have always been free market economies.  Likewise, if you want a health care system to work, it should be a free market system, not a socialist health care system as Obamacare.  President Obama has stated that all he wants is for a government plan to compete with private plans.  What he fails to tell you, though is that his plan insures that the private plans will disappear as fast as a magician’s snapping of his fingers.  You see Obama’s plan tells you that “if you like your private plan you can keep it.”  This is a flat out falsehood; it contradicts the provisions of his bill.  According to Obamacare, if you have a private plan which you want to keep, and should your employer later on decide that he cannot afford to continue your plan, the employer can elect to stop providing your plan because it could be cheaper for him to pay the government penalty for not providing your private plan.  In this scenario, you then, would have to take the government plan because you will not be eligible for another private plan, or that a private plan is so much more expensive that it is cost prohibitive to you.  This is the typical bait and switch trick that Obamacare is not telling you about. 

Second, the socialist health plans such as those in Canada or in Europe have been able to survive mostly on the shoulders of American medical innovation and expertise.  What I mean by this is that the rest of the world mainly depends on the innovation and leading edge expertise of American medicine.  So, Europeans and Canadians do not have to spend the tons of dollars that it takes for research, just as the Europeans leave most of their military defense to the United States.  Europe, for instance, does not need to have a large military or spend extensively for military needs because they know that in case of trouble, the American cavalry is ready to go rescue them at a moments notice, just like America rescued, France, England and Russia in World War I and II, or Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq recently.  Socialist systems can depend on American innovation and medical expertise to provide the latest techniques in medical care, so they can afford to have a socialist health care system, even though they pay enormous amounts of taxes.  Once the American system is transformed to a socialist health care system such as the European and Canadian model, medical innovation and progress will screech to a halt and we will become just another third world medical system. 

Third, what is the best way to improve American health care?  When you go see your doctor for a problem, he looks to see what is causing it and attacks the problem.  What Obama wants to do is get rid of the baby with the bath water.  He is not looking to fix what ails the health care system he wants to replace the entire system, the good and the bad with an even worse solution – socialized health care. How about fixing the bad rules that impede the delivery of good and cheap health care such as eliminating the rule that insurance companies cannot insure across state lines?  What about looking at the parts that are not working well?  When my water pump fails on my car I replace the pump with a new one, I don’t get rid of the entire car.  Oh well this makes too much sense for the left, after all, their main goal is equality for all, even if we drive everybody to poverty, as long as we’re all poor together. 

I’ve left out many more reasons in the interest of space here.  One other huge reason is the huge cost – It is estimated that Obamacare will cost 1.6 Trillion dollars in the first 10 years.  As you are aware, these estimates are always way too low.  As an example, when Medicare was started in the mid 60s, they estimated that it would cost 12 Billion by 1990.  The actual cost in 1990 was 110 Billion, just a slightly higher amount, only 10 times higher.  Bottom line:  You cannot and must not trust the government with your health care.

One of President Obama’s major goals as president is to pass a universal health care bill.  This is a very bad and deadly idea for many reasons.  Why would one be against government health care?  Many people feel that this is a great idea and that it will solve their health insurance problems.  After all, who would be against free health care?  The first rule of life is that if something looks too good to be true – it is.  Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

What government agency, with the exception of the military, do you know that is efficient and has great customer service?  Have you ever called the Social Security Administration, the DMV, or the Post Office?  Government, by definition is a poor manager of any business.

Second, would you rather be in charge of your health care or would you trust the government?  Having universal health care is very dangerous to your health.  All you have to do is to look at countries that have such care, countries such as Canada or any European country.  While I was in Italy last May I had a discussion about socialized medicine with an Italian who loved it.  He told me that he had had a heart by-pass operation and paid nothing.  This sounds great until you look into government-sponsored health care.  First of all, given the inefficiency inherent in government run businesses, the cost would be astronomical.  The Obama health plan is estimated to cost one 1.6 trillion dollars for a ten year period, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office – that is one thousand, six hundred billion dollars.  Additionally, this plan would leave 36 million people without insurance. This cost would easily triple the national debt, consequently causing untold damage to our economy and causing extensive inflation.

Third, I’m sure you’re aware that Social Security is sick and dying.  It is estimated that Social Security will be broke by 2017.  If we cannot afford a small socialized program such as social security, how can we afford to have the entire population on a socialized program?  Where would the money come from?  Medicare, for instance, pays hospitals 71% of what private insurance pays them.  What would happen to doctors?  Would they be attracted to practice with such meager payments?  What would happen to quality of care?

In England where they have socialized health care, an average person making $60,000 per year would pay 45% in income taxes alone– $27,000 for one year; the equivalent person in the United States with this yearly income pays less than 10% in income taxes, or $6,000.  You call this free health care? Could you buy a good, private health care for that extra $21,000 you just paid for one year?  I think so.

President Obama says that one reason for having socialized health care is that is would provide competition to private health care providers.  Currently, there are about 1,300 private companies providing health care insurance.  Competition?  President Obama says that if you like your private plan you can keep it.  Well, this sounds good but, again, this is deceptive.  Government, because it has huge resources, can drown private companies by, at first, providing health care that is cheaper.  This would drive all private companies out of the business.  Once private companies are out of the business, you’re stuck with the government and if you don’t like the services they provide, well you can go to Canada, or Mexico, or pay for a private doctor.  Does this sound good?  I don’t think so.

There are many, many more reasons.  You could fill a book of 500 pages to explain all the reasons why universal health care is deadly to your health.

A “Love’ in” was a term used in the 1960s, a decade of enormous change.  The term refers to the a gathering of “Hippies.”  The gathering was sort of a party with like-minded people, who loved to smoke dope, and hang out together, and do what young people usually do, usually not of the approved moral order.  The 1960s changed America forever, most for worse. 

I attended college in the 1960s, an era that was the start of the decay and fall of the great American society.  It took me about 20 years to unlearn all the false and stupid stuff I learned in College.   The decay started with the assassination of President Kennedy.  Not only did Camelot end with Kennedy, but also the start of the degeneracy of our society started and has now given fruit.  I’m referring to our culture of self-gratification, our drug culture and the fall of Hollywood as a force for good. 

In the 1960s I was a happy Democrat.  The Democratic Party was the party of the people in those days; the party of the workers.  The impact of what was happening in 1960s changed everything, even the Democratic Party.  It took me another 20 years to realize that the party I belonged to no longer represented my values or me.  As a matter of fact, the party represented everything I opposed by the time I got out in 1990.  What follows is why the Democratic Party is no longer a party I can support – it is a party that I oppose now 100%.  I can’t think of one thing that I agree with in the Democratic Party. 

The Democratic Party was a respectable party, in my view, up to the 1970s.  Something happened to the party; the party went from a moderate party to a hard left party.  There are many reasons why the party changed.  I will concentrate on two of them. 

The first bad influence was the “Love-in” age of the 1960s.  This was the age of the popularization of drugs.  Timothy Leary, a psychologist and College professor at the time, was a proponent of taking drugs and was famous for the saying "Turn on, tune in, drop out."  The 1960s turned our culture upside down.  Young people started challenging authority – all authority, their parents and government.  These young people considered themselves as “enlightened” and smarter than their parents. 

Ask any mother or father who is dealing with the drug abuse problems of their child and see if they think that taking drugs is romantic or enlightened.  We owe the culture of the 1960s for the ravages of today’s drug problems.  Entire countries, such as Mexico and Columbia are being held hostage by the drug lords who have more power that their government.  The cost of the drug culture of our day is incalculable.  The rest of the world cannot control drug use. 

The second bad influence on the Democratic Party was the feminist movement.  The movement originally had honorable aims such as equality of women in the workplace and society in general.  However, the feminist movement quickly fell off the edge of the cliff.  The movement proclaimed that in order to be equal woman had a right to kill their unborn babies; they were equal to men in all respects.  College professors taught that there were no differences between men and women, for instance.  The feminist movement even went so far as to claim that women did not need men.  In fact it was considered honorable for women not to marry or prefer a career to motherhood.  What we’ve reaped as a result of the feminist movement is the breakdown of the traditional family, abortion for any reason for all nine months of pregnancy, the feminization of males, the loss and importance of a father in the home, and the breakdown of the nuclear family. 

As of this writing, 40% of all births are to unwed mothers.  The breakdown of the family has also given us more crime.  Our society has abandoned the importance of having a father in the home.  We now claim that fathers are not important for the rearing of boys.  Just look at crime statistics and see how many criminals are from single mother homes compared to a mother and a father homes.  The statistics quoted here are nothing short of alarming for fatherless homes.  The breakdown of the family has been the most damaging affects of feminism. 

These two events had a substantial influence on the Democratic Party.  The party went from being pro-life to pro-abortion; from a party of family values to a party that now promotes no moral values at all and more specifically the worst values of our society, such as homosexual marriage, out of wedlock births, and a proponent of replacing the nuclear family with the government taking care of you from the cradle to the grave (socialism in disguise). 

The Democratic Party endorses a culture of moral relativism.  Here are just a few ideas promoted and defended by the Democratic Party: 

Homosexual marriage,

Abortion on demand for all nine months,

Taking God and religion out of the public square,

Moral relativism,

Persecution of anyone who dares make references to the Bible, or standing in front of abortion clinics,

Promoting a socialist/ Marxist philosophy that government knows best not the family,

Taking God and religion out of the classroom,

European style secularism.

 There is a saying that your friends say a lot about who you are.  The best friends of the Democrats are the Hollywood crowd which believes in a narcissistic moral relativistic philosophy of life of anything goes as long as you want it; people like George Soros who believes in Socialist/Marxist political philosophy, America haters such as the American terrorist Bill Ayers, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and the United Nations.  George Soros, who has become one of the richest men in world, thinks America is an oppressive state.  Soros loves communism but hates America, which has made him what he is today.  Democrats are big supporters of such Internet hate sites as Moveon.org and the Huffington Post. 

As a Christian with Judeo-Christian values, I find that the Democratic Party has none of my values.  Many Christians and Catholics are Democrats.  This is a contradiction to me.  How can a Christian support a party that has such degenerate moral values as described above?  A partial answer is that liberal Christians believe, for the most part, that as long as they take care of the poor, this is all that is required of them.  They have replaced the Bible with current political activism that they consider beneficial.  Leftist Christians such as Protestants Tony Compolo and Jim Wallis, or Catholics such as the Norte Dame Theologian, Fr. Richard McBrien believe that this is the sole Christian mission.  This philosophy is what is called Liberation Theology, a theology that came out of South America, based on Socialist/Marxist philosophy, in the late 1960s and which has been condemned by the Vatican.  

I vote according to my values.  I find that the Democratic Party has none of my values.  The party’s socialist bent is very disturbing because it promotes government as the father and mother to us all.  This also promotes irresponsibility and what Larry Elder calls “victocrats” – people who always consider themselves as victims with no responsibility for their lives; “ it’s always someone else’s fault for why I’m the way I am” type of thinking.  This is a very bad philosophy.  Socialism has been tried for over 100 years and failed at every attempt.  Don’t believe it?  Tell me of one socialist society that has been successful.  

Change is the buzzword for the Barack Obama campaign for President of the United States in 2008.  The word “change” can mean many things, both good and bad.  One of the changes that Obama wants to make is in the Supreme Court.  It is estimated that there will be, at least, two or three vacancies in the Supreme Court in the first term of the next president.  Obama has made it perfectly clear that his choice of a Supreme Court judge will not be one like the last two judges appointed by President Bush, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.  Obama will appoint someone in the leftist, activist judge mode of justices Ruth Bader-Ginsburg or David Suter.  This also means that no one who is, or possibly could be pro-life, or a conservative, would ever be considered. 

There are two very distinctive philosophies in the current Supreme Court.  Those on the left are activist judges and those who are not are considered strict constructionists.  Judges Scalia, Alito and Thomas, for instance, are very much strict constructionist, while the liberal judges such as Suter, Ginsburg and Stevens are activist judges.  Activist judges believe in a “living Constitution.”  A living Constitution means that they can interpret the law to mean what they believe, regardless of whether it is in the Constitution or not.  The famous 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade is a famous example of judicial activism run amuck.  The right to an abortion is nowhere to be found in the Constitution or any of the Constitutional Amendments.   In Roe they found a “right to privacy” in the 14^th Amendment.  However, such a right is nowhere to be found in the 14^th Amendment.   So how did they justify it?  They justified it by coming up with what they called “penumbras and emanations,” meaning they somehow added a connection even though there was none.  Other famous Supreme Court decisions that used penumbras and emanations were Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992. 

 If you’re still mystified by penumbras and emanations, so is everybody else.  Translation:  you can make up any connection you want from any law - in other words plain judicial tyranny.  This should scare anyone, liberal or conservative because it represents a judiciary that is out of control and not representative of anybody.  A current example of judicial tyranny just happened in California.  The California Supreme Court ruled that same sex marriage is constitutional; despite the fact that California voters voted 60% to say that marriage is between a man and a woman (Proposition 22).  Yet, five activist judges told us that they know better than the entire State population.   Where did they find it in the California Constitution?  They did not – penumbras and emanations; they made it up. 

The August 2008 issue of Townhall.com Magazine has a brilliant article by Curt Levey titled “Holding the Line.”  This article clearly describes the fallacies and outright dangers to our society that judicial activism can produce.  Levey states, “judicial activism is not the failure to follow precedent.  Courts must generally adhere to their past decisions and those of higher courts.  But, as law professor Gary Lawson notes, “if the Constitution say X and a prior judicial decision says Y, a court has not merely the power, but the obligation, to prefer the Constitution.   Judicial activism threatens, not only the rule of law, but also the American political process and, potentially, each and every American.  Because judicial activism lacks any standards, it cedes unchecked power to judges.”  

Judicial activism is a favorite of the political left and the Democratic Party.  Since most of what they want cannot happen through the ballot box, such as the definition of marriage in Proposition 22 in California, an activist court, overturns the will of the people and rules for homosexual marriage.  Activist judges are the bread and butter of the left.   A few years ago the 9^th Circuit Court ruled that in the Pledge of Allegiance,” under God” was unconstitutional, overturning the United States Congress with passed this law in 1954.  The 2-1 ruling overturns the will of the entire country’s representatives.  Laws are made by the legislatures of the states or the Congress of the United States, these some bodies can change them, but activist judges do not want legislatures to rule, they want to rule.  This is an obvious contradiction.  The job of any judge is to rule on the law, as written, not to make it.  They conveniently ignore this simple axiom. 

Many of my fellow Republicans are lukewarm about John McCain.  McCain would have been my last pick for President, but compared to what we would get in Obama, it is a slam-dunk for me to vote for McCain.  Judges is one of the reasons.  Judges are on the bench for as long as 40 years.  A liberal, leftist activist judge would do irreparable harm to the United States and the rule of law.  We would no longer be people ruled by the will of the people but by the will of one or two unelected, unaccountable judges.  This is extremely dangerous and will hurt our country.  We do not want judges who make laws, that is the job of our legislature.  Electing Obama would be the same as picking activist judges who will make law, rather than ruling on the law as written.

Tell me who a person’s friends are and I will tell you who the person is.  Your associates, friends and acquaintances say something about who you are and what you believe.  If many of your friends were shadowy figures, mobsters, America haters and other unsavory characters, there is a good likelihood that you will also be an unsavory character just like the friends that you have. 

The Democratic Party has a long list of questionable characters that they associate themselves with, such as George Soros, the billionaire socialist who wants to turn America into a Soviet style socialist republic, Jesse Jackson, who believes that victimhood is what blacks should aspire to, and the government should be responsible for what they do or do not do, such as get an education and a job.  Then there are the far left web sites who spew hate like McDonald’s Restaurants serve hamburgers.   These include The Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, the Huffington Post and many others. 

Additionally, the Democrats associate themselves with people and organizations that are hostile to religion as a whole, such as the ACLU, which has its origins in the 1920s and many of their founders were communist sympathizers.  The ACLU is notorious for suing to rid government of any religious symbols. 

The Democrats are very strongly pro-abortion and will not tolerate anyone who is pro-life.  Whenever a judgeship comes up, the first question they ask is the candidate pro-life; if he/she is they are excluded from consideration or they will all vote against anyone who is.  All you have to do to prove this point is to look at the last two Supreme Court appointees of President Bush, Samuel Alito and John Roberts.  Although neither of these two proclaimed being pro-life, the mere suspicion that they were compelled all Democrats to vote against them.  The Democrats also tend to suspect anyone who is particularly religious, unless they are of the religious left persuasion.  Liberation Theology, a Socialist, Marxist religious worldview, is a favorite religious philosophy of the Democrats. 

During this year’s Presidential campaign, much has been made of Barack Obama’s close association with certain questionable characters such as the following:  Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Fr. Michael Pflegler, Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers.

 Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been his pastor for the past 20 years and he considers him his close confidant, advisor and friend until he was forced to disown him after he clinched the nomination.  We have all heard what Rev. Wright said about America, if not, click on the last hyperlink to see this YouTube video.   He has stated that we should not bless America but damn it.  He also said that American was responsible for 9/11 and the United States purposely spread the HIV virus to kill blacks.  Fr. Pflegler , a renegade Roman Catholic Priest, is a Rev. Wright clone.  Although Fr. Pflegler is white he speaks like a black preacher and condemns America even more vehemently that the Rev. Wright. 

Tony Rezko, a Chicago developer and close friend of Obama, has recently been convicted of 16 counts of corruption.  Rezko is a long-time supporter of Obama.   Bill Ayers is a 1970s terrorist who belonged to the Weather Underground whose purpose was the overthrow of the United States government.  In a Chicago Magazine article recently he is shown proudly standing on an American flag.  His wife is Bernadette Dohrn who is also famous as a Weather Underground terrorist. 

Obama has never distanced himself from any of these figures.  Now I do not believe that Obama is like any of these people.  I believe that he is a decent and good person.  However, I strongly question his judgment in keeping such characters as associates and or friends.  Let me ask another question.  If John McCain had such friends would the mainstream media ignore it like it has ignored these friends for Obama?  I have yet to see anything in the mainstream media anyway critical of these associations. 

If you are an employer and Barack Obama applied to work for you and you knew of such associates, would you hire Mr. Obama?  Yet, this man wants to be your President.