Bloodthirsty Liberal

President Obama says Scott Brown, c’est moi

The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.

And now Governor Deval Patrick identifies with a truck-driving, racist, homophobic, tea-bagger (according to Keith Olbermann):

“I think there’s some familiar experiences,” Patrick said. “It was against the odds, the political insiders said it can’t happen, and it was about inviting people, many of whom feel disenfranchised, to reconnect.”

Ha! What a hoot! How is it “against the odds” that a liberal Democrat (black) man defeated a drab Republican (woman)? Ask his campaign manager, David Axelrod, if he thought it “can’t happen”.

Even John Kerry is sounding more Brown than Blue:

People want me to be part of the process and part of the solution,” Brown told reporters during a visit with Republican Senator John McCain.

Kerry, the senior senator from Massachusetts, said he favors “seating Brown as expeditiously as possible.”

All of a sudden, they can’t stand close enough to Scott—but he has other company in mind:

How I admire the Democrats. Any party that would put itself before state, before country, before the will of the people must be one hell of a political party:

It looks like the fix is in on national health-care reform - and it all may unfold on Beacon Hill.

At a business forum in Boston today, interim Sen. Paul Kirk predicted that Congress would pass a health-care reform bill this month.

“We want to get this resolved before President Obama’s State of the Union address in early to mid-February,” Kirk told reporters at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast.

…

[I]f Brown wins, the entire national health-care reform debate may hinge on when he takes over as senator. Brown has vowed to be the crucial 41st vote in the Senate that would block the bill.

The U.S. Senate ultimately will schedule the swearing-in of Kirk’s successor, but not until the state certifies the election.

Today, a spokesman for Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, who is overseeing the election but did not respond to a call seeking comment, said certification of the Jan. 19 election by the Governor’s Council would take a while.

“Because it’s a federal election,” spokesman Brian McNiff said. “We’d have to wait 10 days for absentee and military ballots to come in.”

Another source told the Herald that Galvin’s office has said the election won’t be certified until Feb. 20 - well after the president’s address.

…

In contrast, Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Lowell) was sworn in at the U.S. House of Representatives on Oct. 18, 2007, just two days after winning a special election to replace Martin Meehan. In that case, Tsongas made it to Capitol Hill in time to override a presidential veto of the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

…

“This is a stunning admission by Paul Kirk and the Beacon Hill political machine,” said Brown in a statement. “Paul Kirk appears to be suggesting that he, Deval Patrick, and (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid intend to stall the election certification until the health care bill is rammed through Congress, even if that means defying the will of the people of Massachusetts. As we’ve already seen from the backroom deals and kickbacks cut by the Democrats in Washington, they intend to do anything and everything to pass their controversial health care plan. But threatening to ignore the results of a free election and steal this Senate vote from the people of Massachusetts takes their schemes to a whole new level. Martha Coakley should immediately disavow this threat from one of her campaign’s leading supporters.”

Coakley later released this statement.

We have some fairly prestigious universities you may have heard of in these parts. And not a few high-tech companies with a lot of computing power. In short, we know how to count votes.

Oh, you bet we do. We can count ‘em so well, we can count ‘em backwards and sideways—make ‘em say anything you want ‘em to. And if the vote should happen not to go our way, we know Washington has our back.

Where exactly shall I place my foamy-mouthed fury? On Obama, Reid, et al, sure. But how did we let it get to this stage? How did we give the Democrats the idea that they could ignore, dismiss, and defecate on us with an airy wave of the hand?

What a fitting testament to the memory of Ted Kennedy (dirt be upon him).

I blame myself not least. I’m more likely to reach for a Sam Adams than behave like one. But I’ll vote for a Whig or a Bull Moose or a Know-Nothing before I vote for a Democrat again. Ever.

Oh dear, what’s an environmental activist to do?

The administration of Governor Deval Patrick, in a sharp disagreement with Patrick’s handpicked Senate appointee, said yesterday that it would be a mistake for President Obama to grant US Senator Paul G. Kirk Jr.’s request to delay federal approval of the Cape Wind project.

In a letter to Obama earlier this month, Kirk, who has largely shied away from divisive issues during his two months in office, urged the Obama administration to hold off on a decision until a federal panel can devise comprehensive guidelines for development in the nation’s waters. But officials from the Patrick administration said the governor strongly disagrees with Kirk’s request and urges quick approval. “After eight years of thorough review and as the world convenes shortly in Copenhagen to tackle climate change, the governor believes the time is now to move forward with this landmark clean energy project - the only offshore wind project that has the potential to be built in President Obama’s first term,’’ Patrick’s secretary of energy and environmental affairs, Ian A. Bowles, said in a statement yesterday.

Nice touch, Guv. That’s going to hit President Obama right in the breadbasket (or a little lower). How could he resist such an appeal?

Here’s how:

In taking up the fight against Cape Wind, Kirk is continuing a battle long waged by Kennedy, his close friend, who strongly opposed the construction of 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound.

“He’s taking a stand that Senator Kennedy would have taken,’’ said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers, who added that Kirk is sending a message that “even though the person who was the most prominent opponent of it is gone, the opposition to it still remains.’’

Each tower, each turbine, would be a urination on the grave of the late Senator Ted. Kirk is just holding up his end of the (Faustian) bargain to do as Ted would have done.

Liberal on liberal crime is always so sad.

I have to say, now that Ted is gone, that building a wind farm in one of the most scenics spots in America is a dubious proposition. I’m not saying it’s wrong—midwesterners probably object to windmills befouling the prairiescape, yet they live with them—but the Kennedy side of the argument is not without merit (wouldn’t catch me saying that when he was alive).

I just don’t trust these imbeciles to get anything right:

IT ALWAYS seemed bizarre to think that cutting down trees and burning them for fuel could be a good way to reduce carbon emissions. And yet both the Kyoto climate change treaty and a key bill in the US House look favorably on generation not just from biofuels such as ethanol but also from so-called biomass, including wood. Fortunately, scientists are beginning to consider biomass with a more skeptical eye. Late last month, Massachusetts launched a study on whether biomass power-generation plants are sustainable - the crucial question in the debate on four plants proposed for the western part of the state.

These plants could burn wood left over from landscaping, milling operations, and forest-thinning projects. But these unobjectionable sources might not be enough to feed the plants; their operation, critics worry, would require major cuts in private and public woods, reducing the forests’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide. The state’s study, which will be reviewed by an independent advisory panel, should ensure that the state does not give a boost to biomass plants that harm both the atmosphere and the state’s forests.

Calling trees “biomass” was a nice try, but they’re still trees. And the insatiable demand for power would surely lead to more chopping and more sawing. There’s room for some, I’m sure, but when we’re on the verge of paying Brazil not to cut their trees, it seems illogical to be cutting our own.

Who thinks up these ideas?

Abraham Lincoln declared in the darkest days of the American Civil War:

[T]he country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

What he said.

And may I add to the list of things for which to give thanks… the taxaholic state of Massachusetts:

The Patrick administration intends to double a key tax on employers in an effort to save health insurance for thousands of laid-off Massachusetts workers, after a fund to help them has been virtually drained by the highest unemployment rates in three decades.

The administration’s plan would also require the unemployed to shoulder more costs for certain doctors’ visits.

The emergency measures would keep the Medical Security Trust Fund solvent through the end of 2010 and preserve roughly $300 million in federal Medicaid reimbursements that Massachusetts would lose if the program failed, Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Suzanne Bump said in a telephone interview yesterday.

…

Businesses pay $16.80 per employee, per year into the trust fund, a tax that will double to $33.60 under the administration’s plan. To cushion that impact, the administration also intends to ask the Legislature to lessen the planned increase in another tax businesses are required to contribute for unemployment benefits.

…

“We are aware that the ability of the business community to shoulder these burdens is finite,’’ Bump said.

Aware, but evidently unconcerned. But maybe you think I’m cruel and heartless at a time of year when generosity of spirit should reign supreme.

Bah, bull[bleep].

A three-member board - Patrick’s commissioners of insurance, Medicaid, and unemployment assistance - are scheduled Monday to approve the plan to double the business tax to keep the health insurance program afloat. That increase would take effect in January.

Yesterday, business leaders seemed resigned to the hikes.

“It’s a good-faith effort by the administration to try and cushion the impact here, but it’s still going to be a major blow to employers,’’ said Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business group. “We already have the highest unemployment insurance costs in the nation, we and the state of Washington.’’

We have commissioners of insurance, Medicaid, and unemployment assistance? With requisite staffs, offices, and budgets? And they rubber-stamp whatever the governor puts in front of them? I think I see an opportunity for savings right there.

But only in this state does an organization called the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation—with a shrug and a sigh—work hand in glove with the government to approve state tax hikes, over and over and over and over again.

Here and Washington: no wonder we connect with certain readers out there. For which we also give much thanks.

Amherst… Amherst… didn’t I just write about Amherst three weeks ago?

This quaint leafy town in Western Massachusetts is known for its diverse mix of college students and retirees, a former farming community characterized by suburban small talk just as much as cultural institutions. But it is never one to shy from foreign policy, either.

“We like to set our own foreign policy,’’ said Ruth Hooke, a retired University of Massachusetts professor, a Town Meeting member, and participant in Pioneer Valley No More Guantanamos, a local chapter of a national movement calling for the release of detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

…

Under a petition Hooke submitted to the town’s Select Board - approved by a 2-1 vote Monday night - the town will call on Congress to rescind its ban on detainees resettling in the United States….

Right, that place.

Well, they’re at it again:

“Gov. Patrick is outraged and extremely disappointed at reports that the University of Massachusetts has again extended a speaking invitation to Raymond Luc Levasseur,” said Patrick spokesman Joe Landolfi.

The governor last night called on UMass brass to “review” the abrupt about-face.

Levasseur, now under federal parole in a Maine halfway house, was the radical leader of United Freedom Front, a violent anti-government group linked to some 20 bombings, including one at the Suffolk County Courthouse in 1976.

So, he’s our Bill Ayers, in other words. Maybe not free as a bird, but guilty as sin.

Because the group’s rage resulted in the slaying of a New Jersey state trooper and attempted assassination of two Bay State troopers, cops strongly protested and the speech at UMass-Amherst was called off last week - until news yesterday that it was still being planned for Thursday night on the publicly funded campus.

…

Law enforcement sources said the event will take place in a campus building. Separate sources said the event is being sponsored by the Department of Social Thought and Political Economy, a progressive campus group, and that a UMass professor extended the invitation to Levasseur. Attempts to reach that group last night were unsuccessful.

If this were truly about freedom of speech, I would look forward to the German Department’s sponsorship of an address by Holocaust denier David Irving, or even the Physics Department’s invitation to global warming skeptic Richard Lindzen.

But no, their views are not welcome, not worth defending (one with good reason, one without—you figure out which is which).

But I’m not letting the governor off the hook. A governor with stones would kill this thing good and dead. Sarah Palin would come in, guns blazing (literally); even Rod Blagojevich would threaten to throw a can of hairspray at the guy if he didn’t leave.

And all we got was this lousy gridlock:

President Obama, on a whirlwind visit to Boston yesterday, linked Governor Deval Patrick’s political fate to the fate of the nation, telling Patrick supporters at a downtown fund-raiser that the governor had made the kind of hard choices the country needs to make to put itself on a stronger course.

Sweeping into town for the fund-raiser and to deliver a speech on clean energy at MIT, Obama said Patrick deserves credit for implementing near-universal health care, investing in education, and making the alternative energy and biotech industries a priority. If voters fail to recognize this hard work in next year’s state election, the president said, it will not bode well for the United States.

“When the people of states reward the courageous and hard-working governors like that, that has implications for our nation as a whole,’’ Obama said at a 125-person reception at the Westin Copley Place.

125? He came to Boston, as Democratic a town as there is in the nation, on a much-publicized trip, to raise money for his brother from another mother, Deval Patrick—and he barely drew enough people to fill a black box theater?

The fund-raiser, composed of the reception and a larger ballroom gathering, demonstrated one of Patrick’s advantages in what is expected to be a difficult reelection campaign: having the president of the United States, a close friend and political soul mate, shower him with praise and help him raise money. Patrick aides said the fund-raiser would bring in more than $600,000 for him, running mate Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray, and the Massachusetts Democratic Party - although the events appeared to not be fully booked.

I hope the reporter won’t be fired for writing that. Pretty much everything else was copied with stenographic (even pornographic) exactness from the prepared texts.

As usual, one has to read the Boston Herald to get even a hint of the truth:

President Obama blows into the bluest state today facing a cold shoulder from once true-blue admirers, as gay rights activists, anti-war protesters and vexed environmentalists vow to picket a fund-raiser he’s headlining for Gov. Deval Patrick - a marquee event that hasn’t even sold out.

As of last night, liberals who once braved frigid temperatures to behold Obama were shunning tickets to the fund-raiser at the posh Westin Copley Place featuring the president, sources told the Herald. And despite campaign denials, Patrick operatives reportedly were pushing the ducats - between $500 and $6,000 - by e-mail up to the last minute.

Your gays, your eco-fuits, your union thugs, and your Code-Pinkos all pretty much have had it with the guy.

That and the hard times (which he inherited!) held numbers down:

“There really should be no doubt that this guy gets a second term. But let’s be honest. This is going to be a tough race,” Obama told a room barely half-full with 125 deep-pocketed Democrats who ponied up $6,000 for Patrick and the party. “Re-election is not a foregone conclusion because times are tough.”

Reflecting those hard times, the swanky Westin Copley Place ballroom - where the subsequent $500-a-head fund-raiser was held - was “about two-thirds full,” with about 400 people attending, according to press pool reports.

Despite the dismal box office, Patrick shouted to attendees, “You fired up? Ready to go?”

I don’t know about them, but it sounds like he’d better be.

Guaranteed to make you look and feel younger (juvenile, even), and to increase your strength and endurance to the levels of an Olympic athlete (just not a winning one):

President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated speech to Congress was intended to alleviate growing public concerns about his plan to overhaul American health care. Instead, the president sidestepped legitimate questions about his reform effort and offered up a litany of dubious “facts” to support his proposals.

First off, the president failed to adequately defend his promise that “nothing in [his] plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.” Many Americans are skeptical of this claim — and with good reason.

The House reform proposal, for instance, would require many insurers to alter the plans they sell dramatically in order to meet government-defined standards of “acceptable health coverage.” Americans who refused to move over to a plan deemed “acceptable” by the feds would lose their insurance policies and have to pay a hefty fine.

Plus, if congressional Democrats follow through on the president’s desire to create a new government-run insurance plan, millions of Americans could be jettisoned from their private coverage and onto this “public option.”

How? If a public option ends up costing less than private plans — as it inevitably would — plenty of employers would rather pay a fine or an 8 percent payroll tax and discontinue offering coverage. It would be cheaper for them to rely on the government to insure their employees.

The Lewin Group, a respected health care consulting firm, estimates that 119 million Americans would lose their employer-based coverage if Congress created such a federal alternative to private insurance.

…

As our government’s existing public options, Medicare and Medicaid, have shown, the costs of government health care programs tend to grow out of control quickly.

Medicare’s creators, for instance, promised in 1965 that the program would cost $12 billion by 1990. The actual cost in 1990 — $110 billion, nearly 10 times the original estimate.

By 2008, Medicare and Medicaid constituted nearly one quarter of total federal spending.

You think this is just overheated rhetoric? Welcome to Massachusetts, as the signs say. We hope you enjoy your stay (’cause you ain’t getting out):

Massachusetts health care executives are lobbying the Patrick administration and legislators to move cautiously before embracing a proposal to transform the way hospitals and doctors are paid - a plan one hospital CEO bluntly said is “irresponsible’’ and “sophomoric’’ in its initial form.

Three months after a state commission proposed the bold plan to control exploding health care costs within five years, many hospital executives and doctors call it unrealistic, and say it could bankrupt some providers and compromise patient care if implemented too quickly and without major changes.

…

Ellen Zane, chief executive of Tufts Medical Center and president of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, said in an interview that the state “does not understand the ramifications of the proposal.

“There are major significant questions that have to be answered,’’ she added, or “it could kill the industry.’’ Zane, who met with Patrick to make clear her concerns, is the executive who called the initial plan irresponsible.

Better doctoring through bankruptcy.

If there was one thing you’d say this country does well, it would be medicine—and that goes double for Massachusetts. Your government is about to take care of that.

I couldn’t be happier that my governor has taken to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to explain the successes of Massachusetts health care reform—soon to come to the rest of the nation. Ecstatic.

Sing it, Deval!

Our country now faces the best opportunity in decades to provide quality health care for all Americans while containing spiraling costs. My state, Massachusetts, can serve as a model for national reform.

…

When we in Massachusetts set out to change our system, some were afraid. People almost always fear change, and politicians sometimes seize on that fear to prevent it.

…

Opponents of reform claim that the Massachusetts experiment is too costly. They are wrong. State estimates and independent analysis from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation concur that health-care reform has only added moderate incremental costs to the state budget. As more of our residents have become insured, there has been a decrease in demand for costly emergency-room care. Even in the midst of the current economic downturn, our state budget was balanced.

Can I get an amen?

Here’s what the Taxpayer Foundation REALLY said:

In Massachusetts, rising health-care costs, already among the highest in the country, threaten the insurance mandate’s long-term viability. The state’s costs to expand coverage have swelled nearly 70% to an expected $1.75 billion in fiscal 2010 from a base of $1.04 billion in 2006, about half of which is supported by federal funds, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a nonprofit policy research group.

You know how I know? Because I read it in the Wall Street Journal YESTERDAY.

I also read that right-wing rag the Boston Globe-Democrat yesterday, too. Oddly, Gov. Patrick leaves out their report that the “moderate incremental costs” include your premiums jumping 8-12 % this year–twice the rate of the rest of the US.

Hey, that’s not an amen.

That’s local radio host and columnist Michael Graham:

Massachusetts, the model for the ObamaCare universal insurance plan, is the canary in the health care coal mine. Yesterday, its obit appeared on the front page of both The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe-Democrat.

Both papers reported that our Commonwealth Care reform isn’t working as planned. A new law that was supposed to control costs and drive prices down (sound familiar?) has instead sent costs soaring.

…

And it’s not just premiums that are rising. Massachusetts has accomplished the president’s goal of insuring the uninsured. More than 400,000 have joined the ranks of the insured (half under free or subsidized plans), leaving merely 3 percent of our population uninsured. That’s the good news.

But the hair-on-fire bad news is how much this is costing taxpayers. A plan that in 2006 was projected to cost “a small amount of new money in the first few years” according to the Globe-Democrat (Chronic Understatement Syndrome strikes again!) is costing more than $1 billion today.

Why? Because as Massachusetts discovered, when you give people taxpayer-subsidized insurance, they buy it! And they’re going to do the same at the national level. Only it will be worse for ObamaCare because about 15 percent of the country is uninsured - a far higher percentage than we had in Massachusetts.

…

Massachusetts passed health care reform to bring down our costs, but families who were paying $650 a month three years ago are paying close to $1,000 now.

Reform was supposed to help taxpayers. But according to The Wall Street Journal, the state’s “overall costs on health programs have increased by 42 percent (!) since 2006.”

I’m bored, you’re bored. Can we just drive a stake through the heart of ObamaCare and move on to something more exciting like “immigration reform”? President Obama is doing so much TV to try to make this turkey fly, it’s fair to employ the expression (and mix the metaphor) he’s jumped the shark.

That was a long way to go for a lame post title—but that’s the kind of blog this is.

Guess who’s paying ACORN?

I am!

Gov. Deval Patrick, a national co-chairman of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, teamed up with the Illinois senator to represent the controversy-plagued activist network ACORN in a 1993 case and secured money for the group in this year’s state budget, the Herald has learned.

Patrick secured a $33,000 grant for the Springfield branch of ACORN’s housing program in April. ACORN Housing New England Regional Director Theresa Naylor said the money was used for “foreclosure prevention.”

…

Of the governor’s ACORN ties, Patrick spokesman Kyle Sullivan said: “The governor is very proud of his efforts at the Department of Justice and at the State House to make it easier for citizens to legally register to vote and to help families keep their homes.”

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Blair Latoff blasted Patrick, saying: “The fact that Gov. Deval Patrick would even consider rewarding ACORN with taxpayer dollars is astounding.”

Think of how bad things would be if we didn’t siphon off $33,000 for ACORN’s “foreclosure prevention” program. Of course, that’s chump change compared to the $882,000 Obama gave ACORN—but at least the latter figure was his own money (via his contributors).

But this is an opportunity to remind you that as Massachusetts goes, so goes the nation. Governor Patrick is a close friend of Barack Obama. They share the same campaign manager, the same themes and slogans—even some of the same speeches.

But even we in the most liberal state in the union (is there a close second?) are sick of it. Sick… of… it.

That’s why there’s a ballot measure this fall to eliminate the state income tax. The Boston Glob regales us daily with terrifying tales of vital services cut to the bone (and clean through) if the measure should pass, but they rarely cover stories like the one above. Or the whole series of stories on public service pension scams. Or the controversy over policemen standing guard at work sites instead of lesser-paid civilian flaggers. Or any number of acknowledged black holes in the state budget down which pour millions of public dollars.

Or the “temporary” hike in the sate tax rate—still temporary nineteen years later.

Obama will carry Massachusetts by a two-to-one majority. But Question One to eliminate the state income tax may pass. If that doesn’t make sense to you, welcome to your next four years (eight, God forbid).

I try not to bore the rest of you too much with local politics; it bores me, too. But remember, we are the patriotic Americans who brought you Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis.

You guys weren’t exactly buying then—but maybe can we interest you in a nearly new governor, Deval Patrick.

I bring up our liberal black (not to mention “clean” and “articulate”) chief executive not because all such politicians are alike, but because any similarities between Governor Patrick and his admitted close friend, Barack Obama, are purely intentional.

Take the budget and health care:

Governor Deval Patrick today is expected to announce that state revenues will decline this year by as much as $1.5 billion, giving greater urgency to the state budget cuts and layoffs he is expected to announce in a televised news conference this afternoon.

…

On top of the revenue shortfalls, the state also is facing an imbalance on spending items. The state reported to investors in August that there were about $600 million in unbudgeted items. This involves things such as probable increases in energy costs or healthcare, or additional social services that will be needed during a sour economy.

…

Fiscal observers are adding the $600 million and the $1.5 billion together and saying Patrick’s problems are just beginning.

“This is at least a $2 billion problem, and it could be worse,” said Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. “It reflects the calamitous events of the last three weeks.”

…

In November 2006, Romney cut $425 million, but several weeks later restored $41.4 million when tax collections came in stronger than expected.

Patrick, who had just won election, then restored the remaining $383.6 million in emergency spending cuts made in the previous month by Romney, saying they were harmful to thousands of needy residents and not necessary to balance the state’s books.

Republicans yesterday began pointing to that decision as one of the reasons the state is facing budget difficulties.

The only difference between Democratic Governor Deval Patrick, with the Democrat-dominated state legislature, and Democratic nominee for president, with the Democrat-dominated Congress, is that the state is prohibited from running a deficit. The national government isn’t.

Imagine Reid, Pelosi, and Obama “spreading the wealth”.

Imagine a health care program modeled on “Commonwealth Care” here in Mass: over-enrolled, over budget, an untouchable entitlement.

Then imagine an economic recession and decreasing revenues—thereby requiring new taxes to pay for the promised “social equity” programs.

Oh, and if you think my linking of Patrick and Obama is “just words” (and racially tinged ones at that), read these words:

In 2006 Patrick gave a speech quoting famous phrases: “‘We have nothing to fear, but fear itself,’ … just words. ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ Just words. … ‘I have a dream’ … just words,’” he said, switching effortlessly from FDR to JFK to MLK.

On Saturday in Wisconsin, Obama said, “Don’t tell me words don’t matter. … ‘I have a dream.’ Just words. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ Just words. ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words. Just speeches.”

Obama also campaigned in 2004 on the slogan, “Yes we can,” which Patrick did in 2006.

…

Patrick and Obama have longstanding ties and similarities. Like Obama, Patrick faced a tough race against a woman, is a fellow Harvard grad and the two are old friends. They even share political adviser David Axelrod.

Blame me, I live in Massachusetts. But If Obama wins, all of America will become greater Massachusetts.