Friday, July 31, 2009

Lowry on a sinking Obama--read it

Here's the title and link (column is copyrighted against excerpting): "Wanted: A Modest Obama--Obama is sinking of his own weight"
Article at:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7273666970697605402

Post: "Health Care Clunker"

"Want a sneak preview of how Washington-run health care likely will oper ate?
Look no further than your local car lot...

"It seems that demand for new cars is exceeding the "Cash for Clunker" program's $1 billion appropriation.
But here's another problem: The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that at a meeting this week of 150 Minnesota auto dealers, not one has gotten a single transaction approved by Washington.
"We asked how many had a deal approved yet, and not one hand went up," said Scott Lambert, vice president of the Minnesota Auto Dealers Association -- adding that the program is "so big and cumbersome that it can't find a way to accept anything."...

"Many dealers have agreed that any customer whose purchase is rejected can return the car and void the contract.
Alas, doctors can't make the same promise when it comes to a gallbladder.
And what happens when Washington runs out of health-care dollars?

"Suspend ObamaCare?"

More on the dismissal of intimidation charges

Hans Von Spakovsky on Holder's dismissal of charges against New Black Panther:

"The message from the Justice Department with this dismissal is that if you are a member of a black hate group, you can intimidate, threaten, and hurl racial epithets at white voters and poll watchers and the Justice Department will give you a pass. We all know that if it had been the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Brotherhood at the polls in Philadelphia acting in this manner towards black voters, Associate Attorney General Perelli and Attorney General Holder would never have even considered dismissing the case. They would be bragging in the press about their pursuit of a civil injunction against all of these defendants, and would be pressing the Criminal Division at Justice to indict them on criminal charges."

Read the unbelievable rest:
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/07/31/panther-politicization-at-obama-doj/

Yeah, those greedy rich and their free ride

'Tax Burden of Top 1% Now Exceeds That of Bottom 95%' [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Scott Hodge reports:
Newly released data from the IRS clearly debunks the conventional Beltway rhetoric that the "rich" are not paying their fair share of taxes.

"Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.

"Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. In 2007, the bottom 95 percent paid 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. This is down from the 58 percent of the total income tax burden they paid twenty years ago.

"To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/24944.html

"A god that bleeds" and Star Trek analogies

NRO's Jonah Goldberg: "In one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, Captain Kirk is mistaken for a god by inhabitants of a planet of Native Americans (it’s a long story). The illusion works for Kirk until a jealous shaman cuts Kirk’s hand, revealing that the divine being is just a man after all. “Behold! A god who bleeds!” the shaman mocks, exposing Kirk as a fraud to the rest of the tribe.

"All presidents go through rough patches, and Obama’s no exception. Odds are his poll numbers will get better — and worse — in the years to come. All of this is typical.

"But this misses a crucial point: Obama isn’t supposed to be a typical politician. He was supposed to be The One. He was supposed to change Washington. Transcend race. Fix souls. Bake twelve-minute brownies in seven minutes.Oprah promised Obama would help us “evolve to a higher plane.” Deepak Chopra said Obama’s presidency represented “a quantum leap in American consciousness.”

"Last month, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas proclaimed that Obama stood “above the country, above — above the world, he’s sort of God.”Well, now he’s the god who bleeds, and once you’re the god who bleeds, it’s hard to get the divinity back in the tube, as it were."

The rest is worth reading: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Nzc3NDI2MDA1YTZjZTJmZDg4NTA3OGE0NTkyODFkM2M=

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Obama has nothing to sell but fear itself

"Obama’s Great Health Scare: The president resorts to the politics of fear." by Carl Rove

"On the campaign trail last year, Barack Obama promised to end the “politics of fear and cynicism.” Yet he is now trying to sell his health-care proposals on fear.

"At his news conference last week, he said “Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage, or lose their job. . . . If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. If we do not act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. These are the consequences of inaction.”

"A Fox News Poll from last week shows that 84% of Americans who have health insurance are happy with their coverage. And because 91% of all Americans have insurance, that means that 76% of all Americans will be concerned about anything that threatens their current coverage. By a 2-1 margin, according to the Fox Poll, Americans want coverage from a private provider rather than the government.

"Facing numbers like these, Mr. Obama is dropping his high-minded rhetoric and instead trying to scare voters. During last week’s news conference, for example, he said that doctors routinely perform unnecessary tonsillectomies on children simply to fatten their wallets. All that was missing was the suggestion that the operations were conducted without anesthesia.

Read the rest: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574318334081271414.html

Capitalism bashers distract with fit over profits

We've heard the predictable squacking from the 'usual suspect' leftie Dems and union hacks over American businesses (cue scary music) ... actually...making...money. Conveniently timed to refresh the tired whining about the target of the moment, in this case health insurance companies, they give us cause to fear for the future of the American system of free enterprise--because every year, ever larger portions of citizens emerge from our education system relatively clueless about how our economy works. How businesses afford to hire people, pay shareholders, develop new products and services, gosh, how they are able to pay taxes:

"Profits We Should Cheer" by Stephen L. Carter

"A specter is haunting America: the specter of profit. We have become fearful that somewhere, somehow, an evil corporation has found a way to make lots of money.

"Today, the debate on the overhaul of the health-care system sparks a shiver of deja vu. The leitmotif of the conversation about the coming shape of health insurance is that the villain is the system of private insurance. "For-profit" firms come under constant attack from activists and members of Congress.

"Thus, a recent news release from the AFL-CIO began with this evidently alarming fact: "Profits at 10 of the country's largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007." Even had the figures been correct -- they weren't -- we are seeing the same circus. Profit is the enemy. America could be made pure, if only profit could be purged.

Educate yourself a little: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/29/AR2009072902626.html

We've said Obama's soft on terror--shoe bomber treatment proves the case

So the left wants us to believe there's no harm in extending rights to terrorist prisoners. What's wrong with treating them as human beings under our Constitution? Plenty, and the willingness of the Obama Justice Dept to accede to the terrorist lawyer lobby, combined with the clear, indisputable record of terrorists using every opening to further their war on America, means more attacks will happen:

"Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’
The terrorist sues to resume his jihad from prison. The Obama administration caves in." by Debra Burlingame (wife of 9/11 pilot):

"... the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal court that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which applied to that prisoner—Richard C. Reid, a.k.a. the “Shoe Bomber”—were being allowed to expire. SAMs are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when “there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications, correspondence or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury” to others...

"Reid’s own SAMs on correspondence had been tightened in 2006 after the shocking discovery that three of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers at ADX, not subject to security directives, had sent 90 letters to overseas terrorist networks, including those associated with the Madrid train bombing.

"Mr. Obama likes to observe that “no one has escaped from supermax,” but if Reid is moved from ADX Florence, he will be the first convicted terrorist to use the First Amendment to sue his way out...

"From the outset of his administration, Mr. Obama has been trying to thread the needle between national security policy and his ideological affinity with civil liberties lawyers and human-rights activists, meeting with and consulting them prior to making detainee-related decisions...

THE BOTTOM LINE: "Mr. Obama has repeatedly suggested that the security challenge of bringing more than 100 trained and dangerous terrorists onto U.S. soil can be solved by simply installing them in an impenetrable fortress. This view is either disingenuous or naïve. The militant Islamists at Guantanamo too dangerous to release believe that their resistance behind the wire is a continuation of holy war. There is every reason to believe they will continue their jihad once they have been transported to U.S. soil where certain federal judges have signaled a willingness to confer upon them even more rights.

"The position of civil rights activists with regard to these prisoners is plain. “If they cannot be convicted,” says ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer, “then you release them.”

Read it all: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203609204574317090690242698.html

Want English only? Obama will punish you

Just go straight to the article to read the sorry but true strong-arm tactics by the Obama Justice dept to intimidate citizens trying to actually, here's a thought, exercise their right to govern themselves by making their own law about the language of their government:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/30/oklahomans-hit-justices-meddling-on-english-only-m/

Who can forget the New Black Panthers case

If you don't know about it, you probably rely on in-the-tank MSM for news; you probably don't know about Obama's Justice Dept unbelievably dismissing charges when they already won the case. From NRO's Andy McCarthy:

"No. 3 Obama DOJ Official Dismissed Black Panther Voter Intimidation Case"

"The setting was a Philadephia polling station on election day. Some of the defendants were captured on videotape wearing paramilitary uniforms — one wielding a two-foot nightstick — and witnesses reported that the Panthers used racial epithets and created a thick atmosphere of intimidation, particularly against white voters (a DOJ memo also recounts that an African-American couple, Republican poll-watchers, described how they feared for their safety).

"The Obama political appointees overruled experienced line prosecutors, experienced civil-rights division supervisors, and the Justice Department's appellate division.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2M1Zjg5MzI3MDljNTIyYmUwYmVlOThkNTI0ZDVkNzA=

Here's the Washington Times article: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/30/no-3-at-justice-okd-panther-reversal/?feat=home_cube_position1

Yes, the tired canard about "poor dying in street"

"Left to die in the street? This indelible image pops up in nearly every discussion I have on this topic with a Briton or a French person disapproving of America's refusal to do things the European way. So what if almost every nationalized-health gambit on the Continent is sunk in bankruptcy? Eventually the conversation will veer to include the notion that in America, the streets are paved with the impoverished dead.

"The myth that the poor are deprived of medical treatment in the U.S. is a cherished one in the current debate. When I tried to point out a week or two ago that in France (as in Britain and as on the planet generally) there are two levels of medical service — one for the rich, one for the poor...

Read the rest: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Mjg4OWE3OGNmNjgzZWU0ZTcwMTdjYjRlYmIxZjVhOWU=

YouTube shows coherent points by Rep Ryan, non-facts, flawed ideology from leftie,

This 6 minute YouTube should be watched by anyone wanting to be informed, wanting to have an opinion, about the O-Dem proposal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdr49iGZOUw&feature=player_embedded

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/07/if_every_health_care_debate_we.asp

Gov't heath care cost increases higher--really!

The debate over data, charts and graphs and what they "prove" continues. As I posted below, a study and analysis by Jeffrey Anderson for Pacific Research Institute demonstrated that costs per person for the gov't programs have increase faster than private care. Obama defenders/single-payer proponents and lefties in general can't abide such a conclusion and so rolled out some of their own charts and graphs. Use the link to the Weekly Standard blog expaining why Anderson's analysis is correct and the critics, as presented by Ezra Klein, are wrong:

"If you look at all of private care, and don't just cherry-pick a select part of it, the picture is quite clear. As my study for the Pacific Research Institute shows, since 1970, the costs of Medicare and Medicaid have each risen one-third more, per patient, than the combined costs of all other health care in America -- the vast majority of which is purchased privately. Medicaid's costs have risen 35 percent more, and Medicare's 34 percent more, per patient, than the combined costs of all other health care nationwide.

"The costs of the two flagship government-run health-care programs have also outpaced all other nationwide health costs since 1980, 1990, and, in Medicare’s case, 2000. (Medicaid’s costs haven’t risen much since 2000, as billions of dollars have been shifted from Medicaid to SCHIP.)

"Moreover, my study is quite generous to Medicare and Medicaid in a variety of ways...Despite all of these advantages, on a per-patient basis, for every $3 that all other U.S. health-care costs have increased since 1970, Medicare's and Medicaid's costs have each risen more than $4. Klein and Co. can only claim otherwise by completely ignoring a major chunk of the private market."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/07/costs_of_medicaremedicaid_have_1.asp#more

Yes, it really will outlaw private insurance

Investor's Business Daily reported the discovery that, on page 16 of the House bill, new private health insurance policies will be outlawed. The Dems and other lefties tried to spin it otherwise but, in an article revisiting their original point last week, IBD reiterates and reinforces the point:

"Our impression was further confirmed Monday when Rep. Dave Camp, the ranking member on Ways and Means, told us that "any existing plan will not be able to enroll members." There will be "a prohibition," the Michigan Republican said, "on enrolling individuals in private health plans" after the bill becomes law in 2013."

"It was also confirmed by Ways and Means staff director Cybele Bjorklund, who, in response to questions from Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin during a committee markup session, admitted last week that insurance providers "cannot create new policies outside of that window outside of the exchange."

"Many of those who have said we are wrong pointed to this health care exchange mentioned by Bjorklund as evidence.

"But the exchange will not be a private market. It will be a program in which Americans can buy individual plans from private companies in competition with the "public option" provision of the bill that will provide taxpayer-subsidized coverage.

"But that's only part of the story. The exchange will be a highly regulated clearinghouse of providers that meet the government's standards. Only those providers that follow Washington's stringent guidelines will be allowed to join this exclusive club.

"The government, through an unelected health choices commissioner, will set premiums, dictate benefits, determine deductibles and establish coverage."

Read the rest: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=333066661999894

From Socrates to Lincoln, Marx--America's future is at stake, in jeapardy

If we cannot learn from and heed the timeless lessons brought to us by Claremont Fellow and author Harry Jaffa, America will make irreversible mistakes. Read the article and, if you have the time, listen to the interviews linked below:

"In an interview this week, Jaffa, now 91 and a fellow of the Claremont Institute, demonstrated that he still has vital things to say. The Lincoln-Douglas debates, Jaffa explained, turned on issues that were present at the very founding of western civilization--and that we must face again today. ..."

"After awhile," Jaffa says, "I realized that the issue between Lincoln and Douglas was identical to the issue between Socrates and Thrasymachus in the first book of Plato's Republic. Not similar to it. Identical. It is a question of whether the people make the moral order or the moral order makes the people."

"The secretary of state, the president, they all talk about 'values,'" Jaffa says. "A 'value' is a subjective desire, not an objective truth. George Washington said, 'The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.' If you had said, 'Oh, Mr. Washington, you mean in our 'values?' Washington would have replied, 'What the hell are you talking about?'"

"Our belief in "values" isn't just vacuous. It's perilous.

"Marx saw morality as the great enemy of human well-being," Jaffa says, "and now the society of the future is one in which moral distinctions based upon the Judeo-Christian and Greek tradition will dissolve. Without even knowing it, we are moving into a Communist world. Without a revolution, we are moving into the world that Marx wanted."

"What is to be done? We must once again recognize the objective moral order."

http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/16/henry-jaffa-lincoln-douglas-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html

http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Solutions? It's not hard to find good ideas

From Reason's Ronald Bailey: "How medical markets would improve health care and reduce costs":

"So the first step toward real reform is to give consumers responsibility for buying their own health insurance. The employer-based health insurance system must be dismantled, and the money spent by employers for insurance should be converted to additional income. This would immediately inject cost consciousness into health insurance decisions."

"Nevertheless, here's one partial vision of how a system of competitive health care and health insurance might develop if real reform were adopted.

"The typical American might purchase high-deductible health insurance policies that would cover expensive treatments for chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, AIDS, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, or the catastrophic consequences of accidents. Coverage would also include expensive treatments such as heart surgery, organ transplants, dialysis, radiation therapy, etc.

"In addition, Americans would be able to buy health-status insurance that would guarantee that they could purchase health insurance at reasonable prices in the future. ..."

The rest is a must-read:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/135081.html

Republicans ahead for a month--Rasmussen

I seriously doubt that any, repeat any, MSM outlet has given a hint of this revealing polling from Rasmussen. A month of generic peference favoring the Republicans:

"A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 42% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 39% would opt for their Democratic opponent.":

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/generic_congressional_ballot

On Obama tanking--which is a good thing

From Ben Stein: "The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith. …

"Now, the American people are starting to wake up to the truth. Barack Obama is a super likeable super leftist, not a fan of this country, way, way too cozy with the terrorist leaders in the Middle East, way beyond naïveté, all the way into active destruction of our interests and our allies and our future."

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/07/24/weve-figured-him-out

Jennifer Rubin: " Polls show the public thinks Obama is spending too much and taking on too much power. It is not hard to conclude that Obama has been caught trying to pull off a bait and switch — he ran as a moderate and is governing as a left-winger. With ample evidence that they have been conned, the voters are now registering their disapproval.

"If one accepts this interpretation of events, Obama has two options — veer toward the political center or face an ongoing backlash against his ultra-liberal policies. And if one perceives the public is uneasy — if not resentful — that they have been snookered, then the 2010 congressional elections and the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races this fall are chances to set things straight and put some restraint on the political extremism of the president.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamas-tanking-%E2%80%94-is-it-the-jobs-or-is-it-him/

British physician knows whereof he speaks

From Anthony Daniels, practicing in Britain under the system that will inevitably come to America if we let the O-Dems prevail, writes in the Wall Street Journal:

"The question of health care is not one of rights but of how best in practice to organize it. America is certainly not a perfect model in this regard. But neither is Britain, where a universal right to health care has been recognized longest in the Western world.

"Not coincidentally, the U.K. is by far the most unpleasant country in which to be ill in the Western world. Even Greeks living in Britain return home for medical treatment if they are physically able to do so.

"The government-run health-care system—which in the U.K. is believed to be the necessary institutional corollary to an inalienable right to health care—has pauperized the entire population. This is not to say that in every last case the treatment is bad: A pauper may be well or badly treated, according to the inclination, temperament and abilities of those providing the treatment. But a pauper must accept what he is given. ..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203517304574306170677645070.html

Afghanistan: We can prevail, if we have will

Read this by former Marine and defense official Bing West--very perceptive:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574302383639301864.html

Why Israel will/must attack Iran this year

Anything written by Mr. Bolton carries a lot of weight. He makes a nearly indiputable case for why we may well see Israel doing what Bush, and now Obama, should have done or prepare to do: destroy Iran's nuke facilities.

"Under the worst-case scenario, Iran will continue improving its nuclear facilities and Mr. Obama will become the first U.S. president to tie the issue of Israel’s nuclear capabilities into negotiations about Iran’s.

"Israel understands that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent commitment to extend the U.S. “defense umbrella” to Israel is not a guarantee of nuclear retaliation, and that it is wholly insufficient to deter Iran from obliterating Israel if it so decides. In fact, Mrs. Clinton’s comment tacitly concedes that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, exactly the wrong message. Since Israel, like the U.S., is well aware its missile defense system is imperfect, whatever Mr. Gates said about the “defense umbrella” will be politely ignored."

Read the very sobering rest: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203609204574316093622744808.html

One writer's case against gov't health care

Megan McCardle: "Why I oppose national health care":

"Basically, for me, it all boils down to public choice theory. Once we've got a comprehensive national health care plan, what are the government's incentives? I think they're bad, for the same reason the TSA is bad.

"I'm afraid that instead of Security Theater, we'll get Health Care Theater, where the government goes to elaborate lengths to convince us that we're getting the best possible health care, without actually providing it.That's not just verbal theatrics.

"Agencies like Britain's NICE are a case in point. As long as people don't know that there are cancer treatments they're not getting, they're happy. Once they find out, satisfaction plunges. But the reason that people in Britain know about things like herceptin for early stage breast cancer is a robust private market in the US that experiments with this sort of thing. ...

"Once the government gets into the business of providing our health care, the government gets into the business of deciding whose life matters, and how much. It gets into the business of deciding what we "really" want, where what we really want can never be a second chocolate eclair that might make us a size fourteen and raise the cost of treating us."

Read the rest if you truly want to grapple with why we oppose the O-Dem proposals:
http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/07/a_long_long_post_about_my_reasons_for_opposing_national_health_care.php

The "thug-ocracy" updated from Malkin

We have example after example of the heavy-handed approach of this administration. Liberals no doubt have no problem with it all, since the "brass knuckles" are being applied on behalf of their guy, and to advance policies they approve. But that's not how we pass judgement on the propriety of tactics, is it? Shouldn't it be, more appropiately, the standard that if you're not comfortable with the idea that your political opponents wield the same tactics against your side, it's probably not good?

From Michelle Malkin: "Last week, President Obama spilled the beans on the "Today Show" that he had met with CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf -- just as the number crunchers were casting ruinous doubt on White House cost-saving claims.

"Yes, question the timing. The CBO is supposed to be a neutral scorekeeper -- not a water boy for the White House.

"But when the meeting failed to stop the CBO from issuing more analysis undercutting the health-care savings claims, Obama's budget director Peter Orszag played the heavy. In a public letter, he warned the CBO that it risked feeding the perception that it was "exaggerating costs and underestimating savings."

"Message: Leave the number-fudging to the boss. Capiche?

"Obama issued an even more explicit order to unleash the hounds on Blue Dog Democrats during his health-care press conference. "Keep up the heat" translated into Organizing for America/Democratic National Committee attack ads on moderate Democrats who have revolted against ObamaCare's high costs and expansive government powers over medical decisions."

Read the rest: http://www.nypost.com/seven/07292009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/change_with_brass_knuckles_181814.htm

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Soldier Tribute--escort of fallen hero in GA

Copy and paste the address into a window.

http://blip.tv/play/AYGJ5h6YgmE

Lowry on O's prevarications from NRO

Titled: "Obama Leaves the ‘Reality-Based Community’
Obama can’t tell the truth about his signature initiative."

The lack of truthfulness is as obvious as if, as he explains, the CIA were issuing regular reports in 2002 confirming that there were no WMD's but Bush kept saying there were:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjUzZjJjMDc5YTUxMzg3MzhjMjg1MzZjNDBkMmQ3N2Y=

Sowell: Post-racial President Obama (not)

Subtitle: "Obama’s policies have been the opposite of his rhetoric, with race as with other issues.":

"For those who are interested in facts — and these obviously do not include President Obama — there has been a serious study of racial profiling in a book titled Are Cops Racist? by Heather Mac Donald. Her analysis of the data shows how this issue has long been distorted beyond recognition by politics.

"The racial-profiling issue is a great vote-getter. And if it polarizes the society, that is a price that politicians are willing to pay in order to get votes. Academics who run black-studies departments, as Prof. Henry Louis Gates does, likewise have a vested interest in racial paranoia.

"For “community organizers” as well, racial resentments are a stock in trade. President Obama’s background as a community organizer has received far too little attention, though it should have been a high-alert warning that this was no post-racial figure.

"What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose."

The rest is must-read:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTMzMmNlMzM0NGYwNTZjZTUzMTlhNjBjYWFjYzU0ODc=

Nothing O-Dems do is fixing anything--example

Let's start at the beginning, with the housing bust, the result of which was the foreclosure crisis, the main problem of which was the fact that 1) people had mortgages they couldn't afford, could never have afforded (in many cases) on 2) homes no longer worth the outstanding debt.

The time-tested free market resolution involves foreclosure, which rather efficiently transfers property from those who don't have the wherewithal to continue to own it, to those who do, at a market price. The larger real estate market resets in a timely manner, with assets either liquidated or transfered, as has happened for most of modern economic history. One key element to this whole health-restoring process is that it also sorts out lenders who can make it, and those that can't. That has to happen also in a timely manner so that those with the soundest books can survive.

So, you now can perhaps understand how this whole perversion of that process, called mortgage modification, ultimately undermines the restoration of the whole real estate/lender/institutional market health and recovery.

Read an excellent post from Hot Air: "Surprise: Lenders not keen on mortgage modification for people who can’t pay"

From the first graph: "After all, if our nation’s universities did a better job of educating people on basic economics, the fact that banks don’t want to waste money and time modifying mortgages for people who are bad risks wouldn’t make news at all, let alone front-page news at the Washington Post.

Read the rest: http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/28/surprise-lenders-not-keen-on-mortgage-modification-for-people-who-cant-pay/

Would a graph of the deficits help?

Here, from Hot Air/Keith Hennesey are two charts that are worth way more than a thousand words:

"Despite Barack Obama’s promises, the cost-saving techniques in ObamaCare only offset about a quarter of all the new spending in the plan by 2019. The offsetting tax increase, Rangel’s surtax, will only generate $87 billion a year by that time, slightly more than half of the next spending increase — and note that revenues almost flatline while spending increases at a much higher rate..."

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/28/bend-it-like-barack-into-the-red/

Fortune: Losing 5 freedoms with Obamacare

As Hot Air introduces the article: "For all of the effort to rapidly pass a health-reform bill, one would think that the entire system had collapsed. However, Gallup polling shows that 83% of Americans consider themselves satisfied with their current insurance plans, and care continues to excel. The biggest problem is the cost, which has risen substantially — although as the Washington Post pointed out this weekend, that primarily comes from enormous technological leaps in treatment that saves lives."

Here's what you stand to lose (go to Fortune/CNN link for the rest):

Forget about having any of the following:
1) Freedom to choose what’s in your plan
2) Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
3) Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
4) Freedom to keep your existing plan
5) Freedom to choose your doctors

http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/economy/health_care_reform_obama.fortune/index.htm

Economy: Up, down sideways, pick your data

Here's the link to a post at Hot Air, " Obamanomics 101: The Bad News Is, the Good News Isn’t Really That Good" that has links and excerpts you just have to read to believe:

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/28/obamanomics-101-the-bad-news-isthe-good-news-isnt-really-that-good/

Some credit, respect for Palin, trumpted up ethics charges, her speech, wackjob left

Noticing an ever-reliably-anti-Palin AP news piece that provided what they thought was the only newsworthy item about Sarah Palin--an actually, truly, reliably totally independent investigator found evidence, yes evidence, that Palin violated ethics rules by raising money for her defense fund--I was chagrined to find "the rest of the story" from Fox News.

Here's the story: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/23/palin-investigator-ties-democratic-party/?test=latestnews and notice the title, "Palin Ethics Investigator Closely Tied to Democratic Party", then the sub "Independent investigator Thomas Daniel has contributed $3,500 in recent years to Democratic causes, including $1,500 to John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004 and $1,000 to Alaska Sen. Mark Begich's senatorial campaign last year,"

Then the story: "The independent investigator who has accused Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of violating state ethics laws is a major donor to the Democratic Party as well as a partner in a law firm that represented Barack Obama's presidential campaign."

"Thomas Daniel was hired by the Alaska Personnel Board in late April to investigate several complaints against Palin, including one filed by an Alaska resident who claims the governor used her official position for personal gain by authorizing the creation of a trust to use as her legal defense fund.

"In a July 14 report leaked to The Associated Press and major news organizations, Daniel accused Palin of drawing improper gifts and unwarranted benefits...Palin's supporters say the governor, who will resign on Sunday, needs the legal fund because of a quirk in Alaska law that prevents state officials from defending the state's chief executive against ethics allegations.

"The whole situation is nuts," said John Coale, a prominent Washington attorney who helped set up the legal fund, which so far has accepted $500,000 in donations. "Alaska has an ethics law that is unsustainable."

Coale also accused the personnel board of being "either vicious or idiotic" to hire Daniel, whose law firm is closely tied to the Democratic Party...

Here's my email to a news editor on the situation and the reporting:

"I noticed with chagrin the supposedly "straight news" story about the ethics charge by a so-called "independent investigator" over Gov. Palin's legal defense fund. Before even getting into the tall or even short grass, I had to shake my head over the obvious fallout from this criminalization-of-politics culture that has combined with anti-Palin hysteria by the Democrat left and the badly written/conceived Alaska ethics law. The law, signed by Palin, for supreme irony, has allowed the dozens of charges, none of which have panned out, to which Palin and her staff must devote time to respond to, tying up resources', casting a cloud over her conduct, with no check or balance in the process. One simple problem is that there is no penalty to anyone that makes what turns out to be a false or frivolous charge, which they have all been up to now. This has been the definition of the reprehensible trend called "the criminalization of politics."

"I knew immediately that what was left out of the AP story (the same AP which was from the start of the Palin Veep saga, obsessed with digging any dirt they could find--sorry to slam your beloved AP) was any background on the possible/likely partisan slant to the charge and the "independent investigator." I knew on first read that it was a hit-job that essentially said that "we (the Democrat opponents) will use the system to level charge after baseless charge, force you, Palin, to fight and spend to defend against them, and now we are gonna make yet another baseless charge that you're in the wrong to solicit funds to defray what you've had to spend in the kangaroo-court process.

"I can't really express the disgust, the anathema, the bile I have for the entire Democrat/media complex that will not leave this woman alone. I could have forgotten about it and her story if it were not the obsession, the howling-at-the-moon distortion of all that is right and decent, of these people to destroy a public servant, a mom, a symbol of conservative values. They all make...me...sick."

Here are the YouTubes of her speech from Monday, a true inspiration beyond anything I have ever heard come out the teleprompter's mouth, Obama:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhAnDsXEPEI

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ALswHoIpPo

Now, here's the first cheap shot from the enviro/dem/wacko/moveon.org left over Palin's determination to advocate for energy for America's future:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25KfNHn0wms&feature=player_embedded

and the HotAir blog on it:

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/27/video-moveon-launches-new-energy-campaign-targeting-noted-private-citizen/

Monday, July 27, 2009

Obama's Misleading Medicine by Samuelson

The always incisive Robert J. Samuelson gives another brilliant take-down of the hypocrisy inherent in, the fallacies staring us all in the face from, Obama's sales job on destoying the world's best system with British/Canadian health care, I mean "heath care reform":

"The most misused word in the health care debate is "reform." Everyone wants "reform," but what constitutes "reform" is another matter. If you listen to President Obama, his "reform" will satisfy almost everyone. It will insure the uninsured, control runaway health spending, subdue future budget deficits, preserve choice for patients and improve quality of care. These claims are self-serving exaggerations and political fantasies. They have destroyed what should be a serious national discussion of health care."

Read the rest:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/26/AR2009072602188.html

Here's why Obama's falling...hard...and faster

"Obama Misunderestimates Why He Won the Presidency" By Clark S. Judge, recounts the beginning of the slide and how it relates to misreading the electorate:

"There are limits to what a great communicator can accomplish if he is communicating the wrong message. In the last few weeks, Barack Obama has been receiving a lesson in this truth and learning, perhaps, too, that he, in the words of his less audibly gifted predecessor, “misunderestimated” why he won the presidency. ...

"On Sunday the prolific and (over the last two presidential elections) the nation’s most accurate pollster, Scott Rasmussen, reported that 40 percent of likely voters now “strongly disapprove” of President Obama. On Inauguration Day that number stood around 15 percent, with “strong approval” ratings over 40 percent (today “strong approvals are down to 29 percent). This is a big and in some respects unprecedented change in a very short time. What is going on?"

Read the rest of Mr. Judge's column:

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/e6322ded-311f-4ba9-b0c4-141d441422da

Obama released Iranian terrorists in Iraq

Something I found out about when going through old news from while I was on vacation, under the heading "Iranian diplomats released" as CNN described them. Even Obama's own State Dept described them as "associated with" Iran's Quds force "an element of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. They are helping kill Americans in Iraq." (from Powerline)

Here's Andrew McCarthy's quote: "There are a few things you need to know about President Obama's shameful release on Thursday of the "Irbil Five" -- Quds Force commanders from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds -- yes, hundreds -- of American soldiers and Marines.

"First, of the 4,322 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003, 10 percent of them (i.e., more than 400) have been murdered by a single type of weapon alone, a weapon that is supplied by Iran for the singular purpose of murdering Americans. As Steve Schippert explains at NRO's military blog, the Tank, the weapon is "the EFP (Explosively Formed Penetrator), designed by Iran's IRGC specifically to penetrate the armor of the M1 Abrams main battle tank and, consequently, everything else deployed in the field."

"Understand: This does not mean Iran has killed only 400 Americans in Iraq. The number killed and wounded at the mullahs' direction is far higher than that -- likely multiples of that -- when factoring in the IRGC's other tactics, such as the mustering of Hezbollah-style Shiite terror cells."

Read the entire post and the links to Weekly Standard, etc.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/07/024022.php

Sunday, July 26, 2009

NRO's Adler on the dissembling over jolt/no jolt

Joe's Jolts [Jonathan Adler]

"Today Vice President Joe Biden argues that the stimulus bill is misunderstood. He writes: "the act was intended to provide steady support for our economy over an extended period — not a jolt that would last only a few months." Yet as Mark Silva reports:

"As recently as June, at a roundtable in New York, Biden called the Recovery Act "an initial big jolt to give the economy a real head start.''

"In March, the vice president said ''the Recovery Act, as we call it, provides a necessary jolt to our economy to implement what we refer as 'shovel-ready' projects.''

"And in November, as a new White House in planning was assembling its new economic team, President-elect Barack Obama said: "The most important thing to recognize is that we have a consensus, which is pretty rare, between conservative economists and liberal economists, that we need a big stimulus package that will jolt the economy back into shape and that is focused on the 2.5 million jobs that I intend to create during the first part of my administration. We have to put people back to work."

The farce of "transparency"--fraud from start?

From Hot Air blog by Ed Morrisey:

"The Special Inspector General for TARP, Neil Barofsky, made headlines this week when he estimated that the Obama administration had committed itself to spending as much as $24,000,000,000,000 to fix the American economy. The Treasury fired back at its own SIGTARP, saying that Barofsky inflated the numbers and that they had no intention of spending almost twice America’s annual GDP...

"Barofsky comes close to getting the problem right. He’s doing math. The White House calculates. There’s a big, big difference.

"I seem to recall when Barack Obama promised the most open and transparent administration ever. Since his inauguration, Obama has fired one IG for daring to oppose a sweetheart settlement with a political ally, allowed another to get dumped by the agency she oversaw, and now have publicly feuded with Barofsky. Earlier, they tried to limit his authority by claiming that Barofsky didn’t work independently of Treasury, which got a stern letter from Senator Charles Grassley. It looks as though the White House has declared war on transparency, and especially the IGs who exist to provide it."

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/25/barofsky-fires-back-at-treasury-says-24000000000000-estimate-sound/

Economy not improving? Maybe it's the economic illiterate in the Oval Office

From Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard, we have unassailable accusations, obvious observations, about the President, who now has complete ownership of the state of the economy:

"Know-Nothing-in-Chief There's no evidence Obama has even a sketchy grasp of economics."

"Is President Obama an economic illiterate? Harsh as that sounds, there's growing evidence he understands little about economics and even less about economic growth or job creation. Yet, as we saw at last week's presidential press conference, he's undeterred from holding forth, with seeming confidence, on economic issues."...

"But the president talks as if free market solutions are nonexistent, and in his mind they may be. Three weeks after taking office, he said only government "has the resources to jolt our economy back into life." He hasn't retreated, in words or policies, from that view."

"Another tax hike--especially on top of the increased taxes on individual income, capital gains, dividends, and inheritances that Obama intends to go into effect in 2011--is sure to impede investment. It's an anti-growth measure, as those with even a sketchy grasp of economics know. But Obama doesn't appear to."

The rest simply must be read in full:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/765kishz.asp

Fed and Ca laws still deal w/nonexistent gw

Lest we forget, the supposed crisis of global warming, which I've posted below as being a nonexistent problem, prompted the state of California to pass, and Congress to partly pass, onerous and economy-killing legislation to supposedly "fight" it. Well, whether it's George Will or Mark Steyn, pointing out that there's been no net warming for over a decade, elicits snark, derision and insult as a substitute for actually addressing the underlying issue. Here's some of Steyn's comments from NRO:

" But, if you mean the argument on "global warming", my general line is this: For the last century, we've had ever so slight warming trends and ever so slight cooling trends every 30 years or so, and I don't think either are anything worth collapsing the global economy over.

"Things warmed up a bit in the decades before the late Thirties. Why? I dunno. The Versailles Treaty? The Charleston?

"Then from 1940 to 1970 there was a slight cooling trend. In its wake, Lowell Ponte (who I believe is an expert climatologist and, therefore, should have been heeded) wrote his bestseller, The Cooling: Has the new ice age already begun? Can we survive?

"From 1970 to 1998 there was a slight warming trend, and now there's a slight cooling trend again. And I'm not fussed about it either way."

"But I like the way Professor Ian Plimer puts it:

"I’m a natural scientist. I’m out there every day, buried up to my neck in sh**, collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase."

Steyn: "In the mid-nineties, which climatologist and which model predicted the cooling trend of the turn of the century and the oughts? And, if they didn't, on what basis do you trust their claims for 2050 or 2100?"
Comment from a clearly obsessed, vituperative Mr. Larry Gray:

"Again, I quote you, Mr. Polson. "I have nothing to be ashamed of, Mr. Gray, and could PROVE (emphasis mine) the amounts of money and other forms of support I give for our local and national military." So, Mr. "Intellectual honesty," put your money where your mouth is. You said you could prove it, so please do so."

Me: I've contributed literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars, as well as other in-kind materials, to Soldiers Angels, USO, Adopt-a-Platoon and our local Military Family Support Group, which I hesitate to provide the names of the people because they have better things to do than confirm what I say, to some raving fanatic, but Supervisor Bob Williams is a public figure who would no doubt be willing to confirm my support for that group.

As to your other comment, Mr. Gray, it was deleted due to the insulting nature that made it beneath contempt for me to dignify with space.

How 'bout higher wages to really kill economy

Yup, proving that the lessons of failure during the Great Depression (like trade restrictions--check, higher taxes--check, gov't spending that crowds out the private sector--check) are truly lost on today's liberals in Washington, the minimum wage is doing what: it's going up. Un-be-liev-able. It's true that all of the above were instrumental in turning a bad recession into the Great Depression, especially the artificial propping up of wages and prices. Completely counter to the ability of the free market to adjust to weak economic conditions--meaning that if the price of labor floats to its proper level, companies will hire more people than if wages are artificially propped up. It's simple economic logic.

Read the brilliant column "Mandating Higher UnemploymentBruce Bartlett, 07.24.09, 12:00 AM EDT This is a terrible time to raise the minimum wage."

"If there could ever be a worse time to raise the minimum wage, it's hard to imagine it. Businesses everywhere are desperately trying to cut their labor costs. At many companies workers have accepted significant pay cuts so that their employers could avoid layoffs. But this option is not available to businesses employing large numbers of minimum wage workers. Since they are legally prohibited from reducing wages they have no choice but to lay off workers."

Read the rest: http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/23/raising-minimum-wage-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html

Obama polling in negative big-time: Rasmussen

While the media boosters and hacks continue to prop up the notion that O's numbers are "well above 50 percent (Reuters)", from the most accurate pollster of likely voters, Rasmussen, we have a better picture. R's "Approval Index Rating" is now in minus double digits (-11).

"The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 29% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11. That’s the first time his ratings have reached double digits in negative territory (see trends)."

"Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty percent (50%) disapprove. It is important to remember that the Rasmussen Reports job approval ratings are based upon a sample of likely voters. Some other firms base their approval ratings on samples of all adults."

"The President is now seen as politically liberal by 76%. That’s up six points from a month ago, 11 points since he was elected, and the highest total to date. Forty-eight percent (48%) now see him as Very Liberal, up 20 points since he was elected..."

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Stossel on the arrogance behind Obama-care

"It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August.Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system."Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system. Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are...

"How do these arrogant, presumptuous politicians believe they can know enough to plan for the rest of us? Who do they think they are? Under cover of helping uninsured people get medical care, they live out their megalomaniacal social-engineering fantasies—putting our physical and economic health at risk in the process...

"Leave aside how much power the state would have to exercise over us to run the medical system. Suffice it say that if government attempts to control our total medical spending, sooner or later, it will have to control us."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/134987.html

Wouldn't it be smart to look at how it worked?

That would, of course, be a health care system remarkably like what the O-dems want to shove down Americas collective throat. There are several examples: Massachusetts, Oregon and, most importantly, Tennessee. Read about it, as explained by a Tennessee doctor and representative:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/22/tenncare_lessons_for_modern_health_care_reform_97570.html

O: "Not about me" Liar, liar, pants on fire

Via jammiewearingfool blog, we have a quote from Obama that directly puts the lie to his prior assertion that the health care "reform" legislation is "not about" him:

""Let's just lay everything on the table," Grassley said. "A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn't going to pass if there weren't some changes made ... and the president says, 'You're going to destroy my presidency.' "

Read the short rest of the post: http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/07/youre-going-to-destroy-my-presidency.html

Speaking for me and probably most conservatives, we don't consider that we want Obama's presidency "destroyed." We simply want anything he is trying to do with his congressional majorities, that is contrary to the Constitution, and the principles of liberty which have made America great (and since Obama hasn't given the slightest hint that he has one iota of belief that America is great, we'll not be relying on his judgement), to be stopped, in whatever way is necessary.

The folly, the 'bait and switch' of O-care

From Jonah Goldberg, brilliant and incisive writing:

"Let us for a moment adopt the proposition that health care is in fact a “right,”...Under his plan, an official body — staffed with government doctors, actuaries, economists, and other experts — will determine which health-care treatments, procedures, and remedies are cost-effective and which are not....The Democrats call this “cost-controls.” But for the patient and the doctor, it’s plain old rationing...

"Now, imagine if the government had a body of experts charged with figuring out what your free-speech rights are, or your right to assemble, or worship...Which is the whole point. Health care cannot be a right, because rights cannot come from government. At best, they can be protected by government. The founders understood this, which is why our Bill of Rights is really a list of restrictions on the government in Washington. “Congress shall make no law . . . ” is how the First Amendment begins."

"That’s why in his press conference Wednesday night, President Obama used very conservative, even free-market language to sell a program that is actually still premised on the left-wing nostrum that health care is a “right.” His plan will create “a marketplace that promotes choice and competition.” He’s in this to “control costs” and bring down the deficit...Now, Obama has come nowhere near meeting the burden of proof that the still inchoate and murky proposals in a still half-baked health-care bill will do anything of the sort."

"But Obama understands that he cannot sell his health-care reform in the language of the Left...He’s in such a hurry because he senses Americans understand a bait and switch when they see one. On Monday he even proclaimed, “The time for talking is through.”In fact, it almost sounds like he actually does want to ration free speech, too."

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Nzk1ZmQ0ZjhmYWZiNmViZWI0NzgyNWU1ZGU5Njg3OTQ=

Quasi-racist black prof author of his woes

Mark Steyn with his usual biting sarcasm,

"A black president, a black governor, and a black mayor all agree with a black Harvard professor that he was racially profiled by a white-Latino-black police team, headed by a cop who teaches courses in how to avoid racial profiling. The boundless elasticity of such endemic racism suggests that the “post-racial America” will be living with blowhard grievance-mongers like Professor Gates unto the end of time.

"In a fairly typical “he said/V.I.P. said” incident, the V.I.P. was the author of his own misfortune but, with characteristic arrogance, chose to ascribe it to systemic racism, Jim Crow, lynchings, the Klan, slavery, Jefferson impregnating Sally Hemmings, etc. And so it goes, now and forever."

Read it all:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWU3NWRmYzY5MmZjOTZjN2NiYTMwOGI3ZTBiZDA5ZjM=

They screwed up simple lead regs--you can only guess how badly they'll screw up health care

Hugh Hewitt has nailed this argument for months:

"One of my mantras for the past eight months has been that the aftermath of Congress's ham-handed response to the "lead-in-Chinese-toys" crisis of last year is a predictor of the aftermath of a far more complicated Congressional intervention into American medicine represented by all versions of Obamacare now on the table."

Read the rest:
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/bad208b7-665d-450c-9bdf-465b33454b64

Friday, July 24, 2009

ATF clamps down on state's 2nd amend't rights

From the Nashville Post:

"Assistant Director of Programs and Enforcement Services Carson Carroll pens a letter to a local firearms dealer asserting that the Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act, which exempts from federal regulations firearms which are manufactured in the state and do not leave its borders, has no force in law."

http://politics.nashvillepost.com/2009/07/19/atf-declares-tennessee-firearms-freedom-act-null-and-void/

When WaPo writers notice the descent to Carterism

"Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from political allies and foes alike. According to a July 13 CBS News poll, the once-unassailable president's approval rating now stands at 57 percent, down 11 points from April. Half of Americans think the recession will last an additional two years or more, 52 percent think Obama is trying to "accomplish too much," and 57 percent think the country is on the "wrong track."

"From a lousy cap-and-trade bill awaiting death in the Senate to a health-care reform agenda already weak in the knees to the failure of the stimulus to deliver promised jobs and economic activity, what once looked like a hope-tastic juggernaut is showing all the horsepower of a Chevy Cobalt. "Give it to me!" the president egged on a Michigan audience last week, pledging to "solve problems" and not "gripe" about the economic hand he was dealt.

Read the rest: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/17/AR2009071702093_pf.html

Here's a smarter guy saying it's failed & why

"It's not surprising that the much-ballyhooed "economic stimulus" hasn't done much stimulating. President Obama and his aides argue that it's too early to expect startling results. They have a point. A $14 trillion economy won't revive in a nanosecond. But the defects of the $787 billion package go deeper and won't be cured by time. The program crafted by Obama and the Democratic Congress wasn't engineered to maximize its economic impact. It was mostly a political exercise, designed to claim credit for any recovery, shower benefits on favored constituencies and signal support for fashionable causes.

The Squandered Stimulus

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071901762.html

Would Gates prefer to just get burgled and report to Monty Python police?

Watch the youtube and imagine if there is some kind of profiling going on to single out the crime victim for his characteristic (hint: his "trait" is that he simply tries to talk normally). Maybe Gates would prefer a comedy skit to actual professional law enforcement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L57-vQvo34E&feature=player_embedded

Limit lawsuit abuse--lower health costs

Read a short article on the experience in one of those laboratories that the framers designed to experiment with things like health care reform--the states, in particular, Texas. Bottom line: if implemented nationwide, you'd have fewer lawsuits, but still for actual damages, you'd have lower premiums, more doctors accessible to more people.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/columns/oped_contributors/Texas-style-health-care-reform-is-bigger-and-better-51538527.html

Black professor and Obama vs. white cop; whose side are you on?

Me? Based on all the reported facts--unreservedly for the white cop. The behavior of first, the professor, with his outrageous race-baiting tantrum unleashed totally without justification at the responding officer, and then President Obama making (by his own admission, ignorant) judgemental comments worthy of a gutter level, race-baiting ACORN rabble-rowser...both cases inspire utter disgust.

As any reasonable person could surmise, the cop had to sort out exactly what was going on given the report of two men appearing to be breaking into a home. As the cop stated in interview, among the possible scenarios were: 2 intruders somewhere in the home, even if the man he encountered were the homeowner; the man was one of 2 burglers trying to bluff his way out of it; the man was under duress by a hostage-taking type burgler, to get the cop to leave, etc (use your imagination). Any reasonable, cop-respecting homeowner wanting to shorten the inconvenience of the cop's visit, would have slowly acquired photo ID with home address, or photo ID with utility bill with address.

Gates is on the record stating he provided a university ID--does anyone know (reporters might have made that simple inquiry of the university before calling the race-hustlers) if, in fact the ID has both a photo, and the professor's address? Most employment IDs don't have home addresses for obvious reasons.

So, the O-bots and knee-jerk race apologists are left with no refutation to the reasonableness, the appropriateness of the officer attempting to determine exactly who was yelling at him before leaving some unidentified man, with an as yet undetermined second man, in possession of a home they were reported to have broken into.

Nope, instead we have Obama stupidly, and ignorantly, shooting off his mouth to condemn a white cop because he's a white cop and O's friend is a black professor. That's a racist reaction.

Here's Victor Davis Hanson's take:

"If someone were to call a policeman in Cambridge to investigate a possible entry by two African-American looking suspects into the home of the country’s leading emblem of racial theory and grievance, the officer would be entering a cultural minefield from which he might not escape unscathed: come too late to Professor Gates’s home: racist; come not at all to Professor Gates’s home: racist; come to Professor Gates’s home: racist

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTIyN2UzN2FkNWEzMGExYjc3NzRiMDc1ODgxYmYyMWI=

Justice, Obama/Holder Style

Via National Review Online:

Justice, Obama/Holder Style [Andy McCarthy]
Binyam Mohammed: jihadist plotting mass-murders against American cities — released outright.

Laith Qazali: abduction/murder of five U.S. soldiers in Karbala — released outright.

Irbil 5: Iranian IRGC operatives (i.e., the same guys who murdered 19 of our air force at Khobar Towers in '96) coordinating Iraqi terrorist operations that have killed HUNDREDS of U.S. forces in Iraq since 2003 — released outright.

New Black Panther Party operatives on videotape intimidating anti-Obama voters — charges dropped after DOJ had already won the case.
CIA Interrogators who obtained information that saved countless American lives — under investigation.

Bush officials who deliberated over national-security policies that prevented another 9/11 (many of which the Holder/Obama DOJ have defended in court and, however inadvertently, in Congress) — under investigation.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Don't forget the monstrosity of cap 'n tax

It passed the House weeks ago, has dropped below the radar and lacks the votes in the Senate (60), but it still needs to be exposed to illustrate the Dems ideas for supposedly "dealing with global warming":

From National Review's Stephen Spruiell and Kevin Williamson: "Two main things to understand about Waxman-Markey: First, it will not reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, at least not at any point in the near future. The inclusion of carbon offsets, which can be manufactured out of thin air and political imagination, will eliminate most of the demands that the legislation puts on industry, though in doing so it will manage to drive up the prices consumers pay for every product that requires energy for its manufacture -- which is to say, for everything. Second, it represents a worse abuse of the public trust and purse than the stimulus and the bailouts put together. Waxman-Markey creates a permanent new regime in which environmental romanticism and corporate welfare are mixed together to form political poison.

If enacted, the bill will create constituences that will assuring its survival in perpetuity. "If you take the time to read the legislation," Spruiell and Wiliamson write, "you'll discover four major themes: special-interest giveaways, regulatory mandates unrelated to climate change, fanciful technological programs worthy of The Jetsons, and assorted left-wing wish fulfillment."

Read the whole thing "Garden of piggish delights": http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTc1MmVhMGYxY2UzNzAwMTJlODBjZjg2NDJjNmM2MWE=&w=MA==

From the post at Powerline: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/07/023969.php

Attention seniors: Medicare will be history

From Dick Morris: "Obama’s health care proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it. The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access...

"In our new book, Catastrophe, we explain - in detail and in depth - the consequences the elderly of Canada are feeling from just this kind of program. Limited colonoscopies have led to a 25% higher rate of colon cancer and a ban on the use of the two best chemotherapies are part of the reason why 42% of Canadians with colon cancer die while 31% of Americans, who have access to these two medications, survive the disease.
Overall, the death rate from cancer in Canada is 16% higher than in the United States and the heart disease mortality rate is 6% above ours’...

"Today, 800,000 doctors struggle to treat adequately the 250 million Americans who have insurance. Obama will add 50 million more to their caseload with no expansion in the number of doctors or nurses. Indeed, his plan will likely reduce their number by lowering reimbursement rates and imposing bureaucrats above them who will force medical decisions down their throats. Fewer doctors will have to treat more patients. The inevitable result will be rationing."

http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/2009/07/09/obama-will-repeal-medicare/

Not all health expense costs are bad

Isn't it worthwhile to consider/think a little counterintuitively about why health care expenses, or any other expenses for that matter, go up: technological improvements, more affluence in the hands of more people willing to spend it on their health, which is, after all, something without which the rest of life has marginal value:

From Classical Values blog: "The Marginal Cost Of Life"
"In case you didn't catch Glenn Reynolds' must-read piece on health care this weekend:

"But there's another cost that isn't getting enough attention. That's the degree to which a bureaucratized healthcare system will squash medical innovation just as we reach a point where dramatic progress is possible."

"There's a sense in the political class that health care costs are spiraling out of control and Something Must Be Done. But as Megan McArdle notes, pet health care costs are rising at almost exactly the same rate as human health care costs. That argues strongly that the main driver is people's increasing ability and willingness to pay for new treatments to extend their lives and the lives of those they love, number of legs notwithstanding. What's really spiraling out of control is medical progress -- and that's all to the good."

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/07/the_marginal_co.html

Graphing the utter, inexcusable fiscal mess

From Powerline, we have the graph, by the CBO Director himself, to Congress, supplementing his testimony that the O/Dem health reform will explode the debt/budget. Note the spikes in the debt-to-GDP happened due to war, or depression. We will have neither after the current slowdown ends, but we will have astonomical and unsustainable debt:

"The extent of the fiscal malpractice being committed by the Democrats in Washington can hardly be comprehended."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/07/024067.php

Cal has huge problems, but NY is the key to New Deal Obama-ism/socialism

Myron Magnet: "The Obsolete New York Model"
Where a tax-eating majority votes itself a permanent income, from the Manhattan Institute's 'City Journal': (Folks, if you really want to learn how it turned into what we have, and what Obama intends to do, read the excerpts, then take the time to read the whole article, then realize why it all must be, must be, stopped)

"It’s worth recalling that when the Founding Fathers led the American colonists in revolt against British oppression, they weren’t rebelling against torture on the rack or being chained in galleys or having to let aristocrats deflower their daughters. They were rebelling against taxes. To them, having to pay duties they hadn’t voted for themselves was a tyrannical taking of property—theft—and, in true Lockean fashion, they concluded that since government exists to protect life, liberty, and property, a regime that does the opposite renders itself illegitimate...

"If the tax code ensures that those who pay the bulk of the taxes are always a minority of those who vote for the legislature that imposes the taxes, isn’t that taxation without representation? Isn’t it also the tyranny of the majority that the Founders tried to prevent?...

"As New York’s governor, FDR had already begun in 1931 to provide the state’s jobless with welfare proper—direct relief in money, food, and clothing—for the first time in over half a century. As president, he made the program national in 1933 through the Federal Emergency Relief Administration,...

"Taken together, all these programs not only expanded government unimaginably but also created a comprehensive new rationale for it, very different from the Founding Fathers’ political philosophy. Not content with ensuring the liberty in which individuals are free to pursue their own happiness in their own way, government was now going to hand it to them....

"A much subtler thinker, Roosevelt—in the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste, as a modern Democrat would put it—calculatedly used the Depression as an occasion to remake society in accordance with his own vision of “social justice” and freedom, though his new birth of freedom stood Lincoln’s on its head....

"FDR pronounced. “Our task now is not discovery, or exploitation, of natural resources, or necessarily producing more goods. It is the soberer, less dramatic business of administering resources and plants already in hand, . . . of distributing wealth and products more equitably.”

"The scale of his imagination was much grander than the Founders’ vision of a government powerful enough to protect individuals from the depredations of others but strictly limited and hedged by checks and balances to keep it from becoming an instrument of oppression, as history shows most governments have been....

"...the mayor gave the welfare city a new justification: creating racial justice. For the first time, though, with New Deal money no longer flowing, the cost of welfare put the city budget in deficit. La Guardia’s successors raised taxes by dribs and drabs, a hotel levy here, a sales-tax boost there....

"Redressing three centuries of racial wrongs became America’s Number One political crusade. As always, New York marched in the vanguard, with LBJ taking as his chief antipoverty model a Lower East Side far-left community-organizing group called Mobilization for Youth, which emphasized confrontational political activism to change “the system,” poverty’s supposed cause. ..

"But in New York, with its vast population of the hereditary minority poor, we now have something less like the rest of America and more like the European welfare state: heavily and inequitably taxed; undemocratic, unsustainable, and largely pointless; with government telling us what to eat and where to smoke, using its total control of the school system to accomplish little beyond boosting costs dramatically...On top of which, New York State, judged the “least free” in the nation in a new George Mason University study of personal and economic liberty, is quicker than the other 49 states to wield eminent domain to take away private property and give it to someone else...

"Struggling under the accumulated burden of eight decades of “progressive” government, we New Yorkers can serve as a warning to our fellow Americans as President Obama, following the New Deal playbook, seeks to use the current financial crisis to provide a new rationale and legitimacy for the gargantuan machinery of the federal government.

"Once the tax eaters outnumber the taxpayers and can vote themselves an income, you have arrived at elective despotism. And despotism is the real issue, much larger than high taxes and bad services provided by public employees...

"More important still, the propounders of the individualist work ethic, from Alexander Hamilton onward, had it right: a free society isn’t one that alleviates the burden of supporting ourselves and our families, but rather one that provides the opportunity to labor in a way that brings to light whatever human excellence may lie within us—a way that perhaps even adds to the sum of human progress...."

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/nytom_taxes.html

Number aren't lying--O and policies not winning heart, minds, support

"Net approval: Down 15 points since June. Net who say they’d vote to reelect The One rather than vote for someone else: A measly +3, down 13 points. Number who say they’re confident the stimulus will turn the economy around: 39 percent, also down 13 points. And the number who say the country’s “seriously off on the wrong track”: 55 percent, up 13 points...."

Diegohotlinepoll: "In the context of decreasing levels of confidence in the current stimulus package, coupled with discussion about the viability of another one, the Poll shows very little support for a proposal for another stimulus package, with only 36% saying they would support such a proposal and 52% saying they would oppose it, with 40% saying they would strongly oppose it.
"At the same time, it is clear that concerns over the prospect of greater deficits trump concerns over economic recovery. When given the choice, voters would prefer a slower economic recovery that incurs smaller deficits than a quicker economic recovery with greater deficits..."
More at:
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/15/oh-my-obama-drops-nine-points-overall-15-points-among-indies-in-one-month/

Rasmussen has the "wrong track" number at 63%--that's getting down to the Bush level:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/right_direction_or_wrong_track

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Crack in the media wall--AP on O-care lies

" President Barack Obama's assertion Wednesday that government will stay out of health care decisions in an overhauled system is hard to square with the proposals coming out of Congress and with his own rhetoric."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090723/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_fact_check_8

Meanwhile, NY Post column, "83 MILLION OF US WON'T KEEP OUR INSURANCE":

"That's right. The $1.3 trillion House health-care bill would cause millions of Americans to lose the insurance they have now -- while the rest of us would pay even more than we do now."

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07222009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/rx_for_disaster_180586.htm?&page=1

Rahm-bo also suffering from the worships-his-own-words syndrome

This youtube sums it up. (You do feel like O has "rescued the economy" don't you? Aren't the signs all around you?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y-WrBXQYHQ&feature=player_embedded

Rasmussen has the numbers that doom O-care

"...47% would prefer to avoid the tax hike and do without reform. Forty-one percent (41%) take the opposite view."

"The opposition is stronger when asked about a choice between health care reform that would require changing existing health insurance coverage or no health care reform and no change from current coverage. In that case, voters oppose reform by a 54% to 32% margin."

"Also, by a 50% to 35% margin, Americans oppose the creation of a government insurance company to compete with private insurers."

Finally, folks don't, repeat don't want tax hikes and, in this case: "Surveys released at the end of this past week show that 78% believe the passage of health care reform is likely to mean middle-class tax hikes."

Me: Obama and Democrats in safely leftwing districts won't care, but everyone else in Washington? They ain't gonna touch this political-career-ender!

Lowry on Obama's brazen dishonesty

From his National Review post: "Maybe I'm naïve, but I continue to be shocked by Obama's willful and blatant dishonesty on health care. Again today, he said, "If you like your current plan, you will be able to keep it. Let me repeat that: If you like your plan, you'll be able to keep it." This is just not true.
"The Lewin evaluation of the House bill says 80 million people would lose their employer coverage under the plan. Obama can't admit the truth here or it would be devastating for his case. So he keeps up with the same rote prevarication. And right before that line, he said this, "Americans will be able to compare the price and quality of different plans, and pick the plan that they want." Also, untrue.
"As Jim Capretta discusses here, the Democrats are erecting "firewalls" precisely to limit people's choices. And earlier in his remarks, Obama said, "Health-care costs are the biggest drivers of our deficit. Nobody disputes that." Yet again, not true. In 50–80 years, if it's not under control, health-care inflation will be the largest driver of our deficit, but in the medium term it is the aging of the Baby Boomers (who will keeping aging even if ObamaCare passes).

"It is a sign of how weak Obama's position is on health care that he can't argue for it honestly."

So Obama's focused, driven; Bush was rigid inflexible

NRO's Anthony Dick just nails the hypocrisy:

"As you note, what's striking about his health-care agenda is how hurried and ideologically focused it has been, with comparatively little concern for the practical details of how the massive new program is supposed to function, much less control costs. He has brought all hands on deck to ram through a government health-care system, any government health-care system, without showing a lick of real interest in bipartisan compromise or concessions to fiscal reality.

"If this were a Republican president, he would be rigid, inflexible, dogmatic, and all the rest. Instead, he's simply devoted to his principles of reform in the service of social justice.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/

HH: "Ready, fire, aim--Obamacare"

Fair Tax Fantasy co-author, H. Adler, just nails the utter legislative ludicrousness of it all:

"There are certain facts that are incontrovertible in today's healthcare discussion. The United States Senate has not made a proposal, the President of the United States is admittedly unfamiliar with key provisions of the House of Representatives proposal and the President and his advisors have had extensive meetings with various elements of the healthcare community, yet no one knows with precision whether any of these discussions are reflected in anything.

"The President has declared that anyone against these plans is playing politics and/or "trying to put off decisions on legislation "until special interests can kill it." Wow.When did our system of democracy erase the general idea of our representatives and the public knowing what is in key legislation before passing it?"

Read the rest:

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/9f1576c7-249b-4b35-b9ee-1347a12ca26c

Testimony on the devastating effects of O-care

A restauranteur emailed Hugh Hewitt with a ground-level, rubber-meets-road reality check:

"Hugh- as a small business restaurant owner I’m appalled that very few (politically, media) are discussing the massive impact Obama-care will have on small businesses. We simply cannot afford mandated employer health care in our industry, and keep in mind that our industry is one of the most critical backbones of the entire American economy- there are over 945,000 restaurants in America, employing over 13 million people...

" We are already hammered by mandatory minimum wage increase that have siphoned off critical profits from our business in this time of recession- contributing greatly to significant price increases and labor force reductions already. Now Obama-care is proposing an 8% payroll surtax to finance mandatory healthcare?! This is INSANITY!"...

"What does the administration think businesses will do in reaction to this law? For starters we will be forced to drastically reduce staffing in an effort to reduce our payrolls and offset the tax impact on our profits- I anticipate the current hiring freezes in the industry to turn into massive layoff waves, and the industry to cut back dramatically..."

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/ca993f12-8b9a-4ba7-9f45-968d33226640