Monday, August 31, 2009
Jaws Drop: Would Mary Jo Kopechne 'Feel It Was Worth It'?
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Melissa Lafsky is the deputy web editor at Discover magazine, where she writes the Reality Base blog. She was previously the editor of the New York Times's Freakonomics blog, and is a former associate editor at HuffPo's Eat The Press." So she's a major-media-certified pundit - who last week wrote about Chappaquiddick drowning victim Mary Jo Kopechne:
"Mary Jo was a dedicated civil rights activist and political talent with a bright future....We don't know what she'd have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history [?].
Still, ignorance doesn't preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn't automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted's death, and what she'd have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) [?] heralded.
Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it."
[After all, what's your life compared to enabling the 'most successful liberal senate career in history'.
Another example of why some of us so frequently use the word delusional in connection with the liberal left.]
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Newsweek Foreign Editor: Chappaquiddick One of Ted's 'Favorite Topics of Humor'
Newsweek’s Ed Klein (told interviewer) Katty Kay about Kennedy’s love of humor. How the late senator loved to hear and tell Chappaquiddick jokes, and was always eager to know if anyone had heard any new ones.
Not that Kennedy lacked remorse, Klein quickly added, seeming to intuit that my jaw and perhaps those of other listeners had just hit the floorboards.
I gather it was a self-deprecating maneuver on Kennedy’s part, exercised with the famous Kennedy charm, though it sounds like one of those “I guess you had to have been there” things.
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NBC Exploits Kennedy to Push ObamaCare: 'National Sorrow Has Created Political Momentum Before'
Proffering how “national sorrow has created political momentum before,” Wednesday's NBC Nightly News devoted a story to the hope of Democrats that Senator Ted Kennedy's passing will propel ObamaCare to victory. Noting how Kennedy was “passionate” about more government in health care, from Hyannis anchor Brian Williams proposed
“ironically, the fact that he did not live long enough to see a possible overhaul of the system” ... “Will this be the very thing that might break the log jam over getting it done? Or not?”
Leading into a clip of President Lyndon Johnson using President John Kennedy's assassination to push for civil rights legislation, O'Donnell delivered the “national sorrow has created political momentum before” formulation, recalling:
"Today, a similar suggestion from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “Ted Kennedy's dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration.”
And outside groups were even more direct. The seniors lobby, AARP, wrote:
“As Congress seems poised to act this fall, Senator Kennedy will no doubt be watching.”
And the service workers union said:
“Let us continue his cause. Let us take action this year to pass health care reform.”
[Our professional media.]
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Ted Kennedy 'Would Have Brought Comfort' to Mary Jo Kopechne 'In Her Old Age'
Over the course of the past four decades, the media elite have touted Kennedy as a “liberal lion,” spending far more time celebrating his ideological agenda than reminding people of his behavior that night in 1969. As my colleague Brent Baker noted in an op-ed back in 1999, the media have come to refer to Chappaquiddick as a “Kennedy tragedy,” not a “Kopechne tragedy.”
Perhaps the most egregious example of the liberal media planting a pro-Kennedy spin on Chappaquiddick came in a January 5, 2003 Boston Globe Magazine profile of Kennedy:
“If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age,”
wrote the Globe’s Charles Pierce. The quote was recognized as the worst of the year at the MRC’s DisHonors Awards in 2004.
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Obama's Road to Healthcare Serfdom
President Obama is desperate to pass sweeping healthcare reform and now has resorted to pure socialist rhetoric to encourage Americans to support his plan. In his Saturday radio and internet address, President Obama encouraged Americans to call upon
"what's best in each of us to make life better for all of us."
Fortunately, an accurate account of history and a long line of great thinkers point out the contradiction in the President's remark, which is an obvious appeal for Socialism.
The most notable of these thinkers is F.A. Hayek who educated readers about the unintended consequences of government planning in his famous work The Road to Serfdom. His central thesis can be summed up by the line,
"What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven."
Regarding the self-sustaining nature of government insurance we have to look no further than Medicare. The following figure provided in the 2009 report from the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees illustrates that since its inception Medicare has never been self-sustaining based on its dedicated revenue from payroll taxes and premium payments despite the fact that it reimburses at rates 20% less than private insurers.
Medicare has relied on increasing contributions from the general fund revenue for years and this trend only shows signs of increasing... [snip]
Hayek believed that through the inevitable mismanagement of resources and goods at the disposal of the state, all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny... [snip]
There should be no doubt, this fight over healthcare reform is much bigger than providing a public option or not; it's about changing the core principles this country was founded upon; it's about individual freedom versus the tyranny of socialism.
Here's how: ...
[The steps, many already taken, down the path to serfdom through the government's control of a critical service - Highly Recommended > ]
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Obama 2006: Combining Private and Public Health Insurance 'Worst of Both Worlds'
As Barack Obama and his media minions try to force healthcare reform down the throats of the American people, the President has repeatedly said that a public option would increase competition for private insurance companies and thereby drive down prices.
This apparently wasn't his view in 2006 when he said the expansion of medicare to include prescription drug coverage for seniors was "the worst of both worlds: we've got the price gouging of the private sector and the bureaucracy of the public sector."
One would think that in the middle of the current debate about healthcare reform an honest media would share what then Sen. Obama told CBS's Bob Schieffer on June 14, 2006, and that the President would be asked what he meant back then as well as what changed his mind about such a combination:
Think we'll be seeing this video during the Sunday political talk shows tomorrow, or that the President -- whenever his vacation ends -- will be asked to elaborate on this statement three years ago?
If this does get covered, so-called journalists might also point out that during this same interview, then Sen. Obama told Schieffer that President Bush should alter the caustic political tone in Washington by reigning in the partisan attacks by his surrogates:
If Obama felt it was the President's responsibility to prevent partisan attacks in 2006, shouldn't media hold him to the same standard now that he's in the White House?
Or would that be too much like journalism?
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Cop Forces Town Hall Protester to Take Down Anti-Obama Sign
"It ain't [America] no more, okay?"
So amazingly said a police officer at a town hall meeting in Reston, Virginia, Tuesday when he refused to allow a protester to display an anti-ObamaCare sign (pictured right).
I kid you not.
If we had an honest media in America, the following video would have been broadcast repeatedly over the past few days to demonstrate how free speech in our nation is indeed under attack (h/t Gary G. Howell):
[WATCH THIS > ]
Shocking.
Rush Limbaugh was quite right Wednesday when he told Fox News's Glenn Beck, "It is the most dangerous time in my life for freedom and liberty in this country."
It certainly is. [Hence my problem with slamming Rush for his narcissistic and bombastic style; his core points {when he finally makes them} are more often right than wrong.]
Too bad we currently have a media unwilling to report such tyranny and too stupid to understand that these restrictions to free speech will eventually affect them as well.
[Unfortunately the video implies, and I've read nothing to suggest otherwise, that the protester acquiesced to the cops demands. That won't do, in that it's basically doing nothing in the presence of wrongdoing. He should have refused and been arrested {as the officer promises in the video} so he could challenge this behavior in court where such conduct must be fought.]
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Thugs
."If you want the next four years lookin' like the last eight, then I'm not your candidate. But if you want real change...then I need you. I need you to go out and talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors...I want you to argue with them, get in their faces...you guys are the ones who can make the change."- Candidate Barack Obama to supporters 2008
Early last fall, an old friend of mine and long-time volunteer for Republican women's associations, called me from her home in Orlando, Florida. She was quite shaken. She had just returned from what was intended to be a small, quiet McCain support outing, just like the ones she had been dutifully attending for 30 years.
The small group of middle-aged homemakers took their little signs to an approved street corner, carried their small American flags and assembled to do their hour's vote-for-our-guy walk before heading off to the nearest coffee shop to divvy up coming-week duties of stuffing envelopes and making phone calls.
But something had changed between the last election and 2008.
My friend told of a morning from hell, in which the women were rudely accosted on the street by young male thugs (her word), who called them "c*nts," "whitey whores" and "stupid bitches." These young males got in their faces and jostled them with angry shoves.
My friend said that in all the years she had been doing just this simple patriotic activity, she had never had such a frightening experience. It was to be the first of several, which have left her shaken to this day... [snip]
Dr. Lynette Long, a former Hillary supporter compiling data on what she deemed, "Caucus Fraud." She referred me to a set of video testimonials, in which middle-aged women mostly, gave grizzly accounts of the same thuggery employed against them in caucus settings.
The data compiled by Dr. Long, along with the video-recorded testimonials of dozens of caucus-goers, are indeed convincing.
According to Dr. Long, in a personal interview, reports from caucus attendees are pretty horrifying at worst, wholly undemocratic at best. Female Clinton supporters reported being called "c*nts" and other sexual epithets, being spat upon by Obama supporters, being threatened physically, and an overall environment of hostility...[snip]
In the end, it was the caucus states, where such strong-arm tactics were employed by Obama supporters, which finally gave Obama the victory. As Dr. Long points out, the only caucus in the entire nominating contest that Obama lost was Nevada. In every other caucus, relying heavily on thug intimidation, Obama prevailed.
So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the same thug tactics are now being used against MediCoup** resisters at town halls around the Country...
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CIA Investigation insanity
Flashback to 9/11 and imagine the reaction if George Bush stood with the firemen amid the smoldering ruins and said the United States government will prosecute CIA interrogators for blowing cigar smoke in the face of the terrorist masterminds... [snip]
The Attorney General, Eric Holder, worked for the law firm that defended terrorists before he was chosen by Obama to lead the Justice Department, similar to putting the lawyer for an organized crime family in charge of the FBI... [snip]
What happened to the critic's complaint that President Bush wasted precious seconds seated in front of school children instead of manning the battle stations during 9/11? They're now complaining the CIA was too mean? In a war where the enemy uses women with Down's syndrome as suicide bombers in city markets, making threats is considered torture?
The Cold War was replaced by the War on Terror which now has been replaced by the War on 1970s Television.
The generation growing up with "All in the Family" and "M*A*S*H" are now in positions of power. Meathead has gone to Washington. Corporal Klinger is a K Street lobbyist for GE and the green industrial complex...
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The Commander in Chief Hides
The president has been playing the “Look, Ma—no hands!” game for the better part of a week, denying responsibility for the decision to name a special prosecutor to go after CIA operatives interrogating terrorists overseas.
Democrats are ignoring the whole thing, now dimly aware that this is not the sort of thing the public likes. Conservatives are furious and taking the president to task for his refusal to take responsibility for the decision and not stop what is in his power to end...
[And nary a peep from the MSM...]
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Lockerbie bomber 'set free for oil'
The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.
Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards...
..and not a peep from the White House...
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POLL: 82% Oppose Decision To Release Lockerbie Terrorist
Eighty-two percent (82%) of Americans disagree with the decision to release the terminally ill terrorist convicted of blowing up a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland so he could return home to die in his native Libya.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 10% agree with Scotland’s decision to release Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the incident in which 270 people were killed. Eight percent (8%) are not sure.
Sizable majorities in every demographic category disagree with the decision to return the convicted Libyan terrorist to his own country.
Many U.S. politicians are now questioning the decision, charging the British government may have been seeking lucrative oil deals with the Libyans and pressured the Scots to release the terrorist...
[Relying on the middle east for oil is suicidal - yet we continue to do so despite our having more reserves than it does...]
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Energy saving light bulbs offer dim future
Energy saving light bulbs are not as bright as their traditional counterparts and claims about the amount of light they produce are ''exaggerated'', the European Union has admitted.
Soon they will be the only kind of light bulb allowed, but now officials in Brussels have admitted that energy-saving bulbs are not as bright as the old-fashioned kind they are replacing...
[How much did they spend on studies to determine the obvious?]
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GERMANY: GETTING AROUND THE EU BAN
As the deadline for the implementation of the first phase of the European Union's ban on incandescent light bulbs approaches, German shoppers, retailers and even museums are hoarding the precious wares -- and helping the manufacturers make a bundle.
The EU ban calls for the gradual replacement of traditional light bulbs with supposedly more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). The first to go will be 100-watt bulbs. Bulbs of other wattages will then gradually fall under the ban by 2012.
But many have mocked the light bulb legislation as just another example of an EU bureaucracy gone wild. In fact, in creating this legislation, the EU failed to address consumer preferences and the reservations of a number of other groups:
- For example, many have complained that the light emitted by a CFL bulb is colder and weaker and that its high-frequency flickering can cause headaches.
- Then there are complaints about the mercury the CFL bulbs contain, how there is no system for disposing of them in a convenient and environmentally friendly way, and how they allegedly result in exposure to radiation levels higher than allowed under international guidelines.
- For some, the issue is also one of broken promises: manufacturers of CFL bulbs justify their higher prices by claiming that they last much longer than traditional bulbs, but a recent test found that 16 of the 32 bulb types tested gave up after 6,000 hours of use.
- And then, of course, there's the issue of the light the bulbs emit. Many complain that the lights are just not bright enough and that they falsify colors.
Bi-Polar Liberals?
For example, they talk incessantly about "choice", as in a woman's right to choose. Or "choosing a life style", which is code for appeals to the gay and lesbian community.
But even though the LPDs preach "tolerance" and "diversity", in terms of certain other "choices" they are utterly intolerant.
School choice comes to mind. As does any healthcare choice other than the so-called public option for health care insurance.
So, are they for or against the concept of individual choice? [snip]
And this apparent bi-polar disorder reveals itself in areas other than healthcare.
Take the Global Warming (Oops, I mean 'Climate Change') debate. LPDs announce that all CO2 emissions from ANY source are evil and are in fact, according to NY Times writer Paul Krugman, "treason against the planet". So the LPDs have determined that we must destroy our economy, reduce our standard of living, and risk the lives of the elderly living on minimal incomes by raising the costs for them to heat their homes - while the Obama administration loans [guarantees the loans] Brazil two billion dollars to develop it's offshore reserves.
Of course China and India have both said they won't even consider adopting such economy-killing restrictions. In fact, the Chinese are planning to continue their massive expansion of coal fired electrical generating plants which will more than offset in CO2 emissions what the LPDs will "cap" with the Waxman-Markey climate bill...
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Monday, August 24, 2009
Follow-Up: Virtually No U.S. Media Interest In 'Imploding' Canadian Press State-Run Health Care Story
[Last] Sunday evening, the Canadian Press (CP), which is that country's rough equivalent to the USA's Associated Press, reported that incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association said that the supposedly idyllic wonderland known as Canadian medical care is in deep trouble:
'The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.
Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.
"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize,"'
Given the current debate in the U.S. over health care and private insurance, and the president's seeming determination to force a state-controlled and ultimately state-run health care regime onto the remaining portion of the system that is still privately run, you would think that the story out of Canada might have attracted the interest of U.S. establishment media outlets.
Four days later, proving that "the Obama-loving media" is more than a mere slogan, there has virtually no original source establishment media coverage of what Ms. Doig said, or of anything else relayed in the Graham's CP report.
The New York Times -- nothing.
The Washington Post -- zip.
The Los Angeles Times -- nothing relevant.
The AP, whose search scope is seven days -- nada.
Both the outgoing and incoming CMA presidents are advocates of expanding private medical services up north.
While our president and the congressional majority are attempting to move health care decisively in a statist direction, the establishment media has apparently decided that news consumers couldn't possibly benefit from learning that there is significant sentiment in Canada's medical community for going the opposite way.
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Health care reform that actually works
Rather than looking to Massachusetts or Tennessee for examples of health care reform, why not look to Texas?
The Lone Stare state has its problems, but in recent years it has made major progress in improving health care availability, especially in predominantly poor and minority regions. Being Texas, the solution wasn't budget-busting, either.
Their answer? They got rid of the lawyers... [snip]
"We ended the practice of allowing baseless but expensive lawsuits to drag on indefinitely, requiring plaintiffs to provide expert witness reports to support their claims within four months of filing suit or drop the case...
"Changes were seen immediately, and continue to be felt. All major liability insurers cut their rates upon passage of our reforms, with most of those cuts ranging in the double-digits. More than 10 new insurance carriers entered the Texas market, increasing competition and further lowering costs.
"As a result, Texas doctors have seen their insurance rates decline by an average of 27 percent.
"The number of doctors applying to practice medicine in Texas has increased by 57 percent."
Further, according to the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, tort reform has resulted in an improvement in the quality of health care in Texas, with the percentage of complaints about medical care actually going down.
Yet, despite the striking evidence of tort reform benefits in the nation's second most populous state, this simple, basic and essential component of health care reform is completely missing from all Democrat proposals...[snip]
According to opensecrets.org, Democrats received over $178,000,000 from lawyers' donations during the 2008 election cycle -- three times what they donated to Republicans. Over $43,000,000 of that went to the Obama campaign.
Forty-three million reasons why Obamacare doesn't include the one component of health care reform that has been proven to work: tort reform.
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Palin: 'No Health Care reform without legal reform'
[HT:VT].
Stopping the practice of defensive medicine by doctors will save billions.
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Media Bias: AP Infers Blue Cross Blue Shield monopolizing markets
People woke up this morning to read a quarter-page story published in newspapers throughout the country with the headlines "Competition lacking among private health insurers". The AP story is a prime example of a so-called unbiased major media organization that has once again failed to actually check the factual accuracy of a story.
The story, based upon a report published by the left-wing Urban Institute Public Policy Center cites that health care reform would lower individual health care costs by more than $200 billion by offering a public option that would compete in the private market.
The report and article, including a nice graphic provided to print media, cites the lack of competition among private insurers due to the dominance of Blue Cross Blue Shield throughout the United States with a nearly 47% market share throughout the country.
However, Blue Cross Blue Shield is an association, not a single company. Blue Cross Blue Shield was established to provide consumers a continuity of coverage and network of coverage nationwide. It is an association of privately held insurance companies, and is comprised of separately owned Blue Cross or Blue Shield companies...
[And on and on - i.e., another fabricated hit piece against the 'demonic' health insurance industry. - snip]
The only good thing to come out of this article is a single statement by Dr. James Rohack, the president of the American Medical Association.
"When you've got the federal government involved, it can infuse money into a plan to keep it solvent even if the premiums are lower than its actual costs."
This single statement sums up the essence of the health care debate and the reality of hopeful and misleading propaganda coming from the media and the White House. Unfortunately, most local edition newspapers conveniently cut off the end of the article.
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Petraeus: it's the human terrain that wins the war
ON A blustery August afternoon in Edinburgh last week, the most celebrated military commander of his age was quietly doing the rounds with a group of injured British soldiers in the south of the capital.
The commander of US Central Command, General David Petraeus, was talking about his legendary running exploits.
Petraeus was in town on a "semi-private" visit, having flown in from Kyrgyzstan earlier in the week, at the invitation of his fellow Iraq veteran, Major General Andrew Mackay, General Officer Commanding of the British Army's 2nd Division.
Petraeus fascinates because he breaks the mould. This is the soldier who, in 2003, commanded the 101st Airborne Division through some of the fiercest fighting of the Iraqi conflict, but who has also been named as one of the world's top 100 intellectuals...
[Impressive bio...]
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Dog days of August
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[HT:LDot]
Some dogs get to enjoy the dog days.
For the rest,
"thanks buddy, good dog!"
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Our New Middle Eastern 'Think Tank'
A newly formed "educational think tank," the International Council for Middle East Studies (ICMES), is poised to influence U.S. policy toward the Middle East in ways that could further harm American interests in the region.
It will be led by Norton Mezvinsky, a radical anti-Zionist who recently retired after a 42-year-career teaching Middle East history at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). If Mezvinsky remains true to form, ICMES will advocate for holding U.S. policy hostage to the fallacy that Israel is always at fault for the region's troubles.
For example, in 2002 Mezvinsky told an entire class of teachers that, contrary to historical fact, "‘the well-armed and well-funded Israelis' fought the Palestinians in 1948", but did not mention that armies of five Arab countries first invaded the U.N.-sanctioned Jewish state. [snip]
Mezvinsky's career and recent appointment illustrates one of the most serious weaknesses in contemporary Middle East Studies: the politicized writing and teaching that have displaced objective scholarship, and the redefinition of academic freedom as the liberty to dispense with academic standards.
All of the above should raise serious questions about the credibility and education Mezvinsky will disseminate to a much larger audience through his International Council for Middle East Studies.
[Recommended > ]
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Gadhafi's Son Says U.K. Played Role in Libyan Agent's Release
A son of Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi said Saturday that the U.K. government played a key role in the release from prison of the terminally sick Libyan agent convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
Saif al-Islam Gadhafi said he believed the Scottish government's decision Thursday permitting Abdel Basset al-Megrahi to return to Libya "on compassionate grounds" would further improve relations between the UK and the oil-rich North African nation.
"I would also like to personally thank our friends in the British government who played an important role in reaching this day, and I can assure them that the Libyan people will never forget the courageous stand of the British and Scottish governments,"
His latest comments raise further questions about the circumstances of Mr. al-Megrahi's release and appear to contradict the U.K. government's position that the decision to release Mr. al-Megrahi rested entirely with the Scottish government and its Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill.
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Health care and the ailing Constitution
Here's the question I didn't get a chance to ask President Obama when he stopped by Montana recently. So far as I know, no one else has asked it of him either:
"If the federal role in health care is not enumerated in the Constitution, and it isn't, then shouldn't it be reserved to the states or the people as guaranteed by the 10th Amendment?"
The 10th Amendment, for those of you who don't already know, says,
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Pretty powerful stuff, if anyone followed it -- but they don't.
Scour the Constitution as you will, you won't find anything regarding health care. And don't resort to the cheap politician's trick of finding an excuse to do whatever you want in the "general welfare" clause from Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. The "general welfare of the United States' refers to the survival and health of those very states, not the individual well-being and medical check-ups of each and every individual citizen. The specific powers of Congress are indeed quite limited, and for good reason.
If you don't believe it, then explain why the Founding Fathers went to the trouble of detailing powers of Congress such as the power to "punish piracies' and "establish post offices," but didn't put in anything about "establish rules to ensure adequate health care" for all citizens. Based on the wording of the 10th Amendment, It seems obvious that the omission was because they saw health care as a power 'reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
And if you don't believe me, then what about James Madison, himself a Founding Father, who wrote in Federalist Paper No. 41, the following:
"For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? "
Madison, the Father of the Constitution, was trying to allay fears of those who foresaw a "power grab" by Congress under the pretense that the "general welfare" clause gave them unlimited powers. Not so, Madison said. "General welfare" only gives Congress the power to carry out the "enumerated powers' of Section 8, not to invent new ones...
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THE BIGGEST MISSING STORY IN ECONOMICS
[Heard Mr. Woods speak at the Los Vegas Freedom Fest, where he explained that until 2007, one of the most sever and rapidly recovered from recessions our country has ever had didn't even have an entry in Wikipedia - which has an entry for everything - and that the " '21 episode' continues to be ignored in our institutions of 'higher learning' to this day. Read and decide why that might be for yourselves...]
Wikipedia:
The 1921 recession was an extremely sharp deflationary recession following World War I. It lasted from January 1920 to July 1921 [18 months].[1] The extent of the deflation was not only large, but large relative to the accompanying decline in real product. [2] The 1921 episode is shocking in terms of both the severity of the downturn and for the rapid nature of the recovery.
The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the 1921 recession from a general business peak in January 1920 to a trough in July 1921. The recession in the United States was brief relative to the Great Depression later that decade, but it included a very sharp price deflation. The decline in the GNP price deflator from 1920 to 1921 is the largest one-year percentage decline in the series in the more than 120 years covered.[2]
Various estimates show that one-year deflation figures were 18 percent, 13.0 percent, and 14.8 percent, respectively. The closest comparator is the 11.5 percent deflation recorded for 1931-32, the third year of the Great Depression. All other years of the Great Depression in which real GNP declined were all well below the 1920-21 figures.[2]
[I.e., it started out considerably worse than the great depression...]
Austrian school economists and historians argue that the 1921 recession was a necessary market correction, required to engineer the massive realignments required of private business and industry following the end of the War (which had marked a period of mass government distortions to free markets).
President Harding's laissez faire economic policies during the 1920/21 recession, combined with a coordinated aggressive policy of rapid government downsizing, had a direct influence (mostly through intentional non-influence) on the rapid and widespread private-sector recovery.[3]
A buoyant expansion followed the severe contraction of 1920-1921. In the 22 months after the depression bottom, industrial production rose 63%, the money stock expanded by 14%, and wholesale prices rose by 9%. Net national product rose 23% in the corresponding two calendar years.
Woods argues that the massive 1921 recession and subsequent rapid recovery is an episode in the history of capitalism and economics that is woefully understudied. He believes it to be a watershed case proving that free markets adjust prices and supplies much more efficiently than any government coordinated action, and that Keynesian philosophy ignores the '21 episode because it suggests government intervention prolongs such "crises."
[And our 'professional educators' today? Most are still teaching Keynesian economics as valid, despite all contrary negative (our 1930's, Japan's 1990's) or positive (Kenedy, Reagan, Bush tax cuts) evidence to the contrary. Why? Because such artificial influence on economies is code for government intervention - with which come social power.
You connect the dots. Lessons will be repeated until learned.]
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The Branch Carbonian Cult
The Global Warming Movement (AGW) has taken on the worrisome attributes of a pseudo-religious cult, which operates far more on the basis of an apocalyptic "belief" system than on objective climate science.
Since this worldwide Movement and its strident policies of Less Energy at Higher Prices (in order to achieve reductions in everyone's "carbon footprint") are at the heart of America's enormous energy shortfall, it poses a national security threat of major proportions.
And in this context, the AGW Crusade should be understood in a "Know Thy Enemy" frame of reference -- perhaps not in terms of a fully conscious or intentional enemy of the American people at a time of war and economic crisis but as a deadly threat to our economic stability and national security, nonetheless... [snip]
Truths to be Ignored or Denied
On the more climatically correct side, all that is needed to begin the collapse of this house-of-cards scam is yet another list of certifiable facts and truths -- one which will disprove much of the Cult's mission, tactics and alleged "solutions" -- namely,
- (a) the fact that while Arctic ice may (or may not, of late) be receding, Antarctic ice has been increasing for about 40 years,
- (b) the fact that global temperatures have been on a slightly decreasing trend since 1998,
- (c) the fact that Mars (which features no man-made factor at all) is experiencing "global warming," as well,
- (d) the fact that Antarctic "ice shelves" which occasionally break off, float away and melt at sea, do not raise ocean levels at all,
- (e) the fact that several of the "hottest years" on record were in the 1930s and 1940s, when CO2 levels were much lower than today's,
- (f) the fact that ever more scientists assert convincingly that atmospheric CO2 is a lagging consequence, rather than a triggering cause, of alleged global warming,
- (g) the fact that all earlier glacial and inter-glacial periods were clearly caused not by man but by solar, ocean and volcanic cycles and "natural" fluctuations,
- (h) the fact that di-hydrogen oxide (H2O) molecules -- water vapor -- and methane molecules are 20-30 times more heat-retentive than CO2 molecules are,
- (i) the fact that termites worldwide expel about as much "greenhouse gasses" into the atmosphere as does all the burning of fossil fuels by human beings,
- (j) the fact that even if all Kyoto-type limits on CO2 were obeyed by all nations, the claimed net impact by 2050 would be less than half a degree F -- with a ruinous cost-to-benefit ratio of thousands to one, when the standard requirement is no more than one to one.
Conclusion: Since every such Prophet-led, scare-mongering, pseudo-religious conspiracy needs a properly descriptive name, and since this one's primary concerns over alleged depletion of the so-called "ozone layer" over Antarctica have shifted to a panic over CO2, instead, a fitting name for this cultic gaggle might be the "Branch Carbonian Cult" --
[+ the 10 Commandments of the Cult - please consider passing this brief or source piece on to a friend you know needs it - Highly Recommended > ]
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Hispanic groups call for Census boycott
Some Hispanic advocacy groups are calling for illegal immigrants to boycott the 2010 Census unless immigration laws are changed.
The National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders, a group that says it represents 20,000 evangelical churches in 34 states, issued a statement this week urging undocumented immigrants not to fill out Census forms unless Congress passes "genuine immigration reform."
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A Porn-Pop Summer
[HT:LP]
The baby boomers are trotting out the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the "Summer of Love," complete with all that soggy and groggy Woodstock nostalgia. Perhaps the singular statement of that summer was the music and the open celebration of "free love."
All of which, believe it or not, is preferable to what is on the air this summer.
Start with the big hit "Birthday Sex," which brought quick 'fame' to a singer named Jeremih. His basic lyric is "Don’t need candles and cake / Just need your body to make / Birthday sex." But Jeremih also elaborates about how he wants sex in the kitchen, on a waterbed, and so on. It’s an audio porn movie.
Sadly, few can be found to disapprove of foisting these "adult situations" lyrics on children. Radio station managers are, as a group, completely apathetic. But school administrators? The Chicago Public Schools enlisted their newly famous alumnus Jeremih in an online Twitter campaign to 'urge' Chicago teens to go back to school this fall.
[We must have universal school vouchers to drive the privatization of education over time. Nothing with change without them.]
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NBC Online Store Offers 29 Pro-Obama Items
NBC Universal isn't just showing its love for Obama on the news airwaves:
If you're a fan of all things Obama, NBC Universal's online store has no fewer than 29 options for your buying pleasure -- from a shirt with the president's picture proclaiming "YES WE DID"...to both of his books...to a special inauguration DVD...to a refrigerator magnet of the first couple.
The items are promoted with pro-Obama lingo.
Lott reported what might seem obvious: there’s no Bush merchandise, and "NBC did not say whether it ever sold Bush items after his victory in 2000." Lott noted NBC is unique, that the CBS and ABC online stores sell books about the president, but no merchandise. Fox and CNN do not sell books or merchandise.
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Nets Fail to ID Party of Pols Arrested in NJ; CNN Misleads Its Viewers
Continuing a well-established pattern, the broadcast network evening newscasts all failed to point out the party affiliation of the major New Jersey office-holders amongst the 44 people the FBI arrested Thursday for corruption.
As the AP pointed out, all but one are Democrats:
“Among the 44 people arrested were the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, Jersey City's deputy mayor, and two state assemblymen. A member of the governor's cabinet resigned after agents searched his home, though he was not arrested.”
Nonetheless, CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Deborah Feyerick saw a bi-partisan scandal...
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Too Big To Vote?
CALIFORNIA
How do you run for California's top political offices when you often have failed to vote yourself and have no political experience? Some big names in the GOP have rallied behind former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as she eyes a run against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as she prepares to run for governor. (Snip) But both former CEOs have a boardroom-sized problem: They have shoddy voting records.
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You're A Racist! The Ultimate Emotional Intimidation
I am on the email list of a dear black friend of 20 years. He is a minister, writer and professor. He has mentored and advised me with great wisdom on numerous occasions. With me being a black conservative Republican and he a Democrat, we avoid talking politics. Since the election of Obama, my friend will talk about nothing else... [snip]
Behind all of my friend's intellectual yada, yada, festers a deep hatred for the rich and white people. In a conversation, he said with great glee that Obama was going to "reign in Wall Street" and CEO's salaries should be limited to $500,000 per year. I thought, "Who the heck are you to dictate how much someone should be permitted to earn. This is America. The sky's the limit." [snip]
Many sincere white Americans thought by electing a black president America could never again be characterized as a "racist country." Shamefully, this characterless administration betrayed Obama voters by exploiting race, using it as a tool to implement their far left agenda. If you don't agree with everything Obama wants, you must be a racist. Rather than the election of America's first black president bringing the races together, Obama's administration is tearing us apart. They will continue to play the tired, old and tattered geriatric "race card" as long as it is effective.
Ironically, "Black Racism" has blinded my long time friend as well as many other black Americans from seeing beyond Obama's skin color. MLK would not be proud... [snip]
Obama wants to redistribute wealth, punish achievers, decide who lives or dies and control as much of our lives as possible. It is just that simple. His must be stopped. Do not allow yourselves to be manipulated and intimidated for fear of being called "racist."
Folks, please, please, please do not fall for it. The stakes are far too high. Boldly speak the truth and stand up for what you know in your hearts to be right for America...
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LA Times Accidentally Lists 'Jackass' in Olbermann's Time Slot
The Los Angeles Times Calendar section on Thursday accidentally listed MTV's hit series "Jackass" as airing on MSNBC at 7 and 10PM.
7 and 10PM just so happen to be when "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" replays on the West Coast.
Innocent mistake or Freudian slip?
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Friday, August 21, 2009
Obama Bears False Witness, Saying Abortion Coverage in Health Bill is a "Fabrication"
While the White House "reality check" website was silent on the issue of abortion in Obamacare, his campaign website quotes a false factcheck statement that "In fact, none of the health care overhaul measures that have made it through the committee level in Congress say that abortion will be covered".
In fact, the Capps Amendment passed by the House Energy and Commerce committee would require the establishment of at least one plan covering elective abortions in every federally-subsidized exchange, and it gives the HHS Secretary the authority to include abortion coverage in the public plan and requires that the public plan cover abortion if the Hyde amendment (which bans funding of abortions through Medicaid) is repealed.
Can any intellectually honest person call it something else?
As Reason's Jacob Sullum wrote, "The Democrats might as well tell the anti-abortion taxpayer that they won't use his money to kill fetuses, which will be done only with money from taxpayers who have no compunctions about the procedure."
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Reprisal for Opposing Part of Obama's Plan
In a move some fear is a reprisal for opposing President Obama's health care plan, Democrats sent 52 letters to health insurers requesting financial records for a House committee's investigation. Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Bart Stupak, D-Mich., sent a letter warning health insurers that the House Energy and Commerce Committee is
"examining executive compensation and other business practices of the health industry."
[They haven't received any tax dollars. And they're private businesses. Is this still America?]
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MORE CAPITALISM THE CURE FOR HEALTH CARE
Many Americans that think capitalism has failed to provide the country adequate health care are unaware that there hasn't been a free market approach in the U.S. for nearly 50 years due to Medicare.
Consider the fact that Medicare faces $34 trillion in unfunded liabilities and President Obama wants to add 45 million people to the bankrupt system:
- President Obama's health care model is the Canadian system; yet, Canada's mortality rate for colon cancer is higher than the United States because the Canadian government refuses to purchase the two most effective drugs to treat the disease.
- The proportion of middle-aged Canadian women who have never had a mammogram is twice that of the United States, and three times as many Canadian women have never had a Pap smear.
- This lack of screening is partly responsible for the fact that the mortality rate in Canada is 25 percent higher for breast cancer.
While we might debate its affordability, there's no debating the fact that U.S. medicine is the best in the world.
When American billionaires become seriously ill, they seek treatment at home. And while much is made of the fact that U.S. life expectancy is a bit shorter than that of other countries, if you adjust for violent crime and automobile accidents, Americans have the longest life expectancy in the world...
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Learning From Canada's Mistakes
Before Americans adopt Canadian-style health care regulations, we might want to ask Canadian doctors what they think of their system.
The Canadian Medical Association gathered for its annual meeting on Sunday.
Warnings from doctors to our north are important to dispel the Obama administration's claim that its government takeover is a way to get costs under control...
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Arab League welcomes bomber's release
Cairo - The Arab League has welcomed the release of a terminally ill Libyan convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, it was reported today. '
'The Arab League welcomes the Scottish court decision to release Megrahi, taking into consideration his serious health condition,'' [but healthy enough to walk up and down airline ladder-stairs]
Assistant secretary-general Ahdmed Bin Hilli said that
"Libya would receive compensation for its suffering during the years of ongoing sanctions''
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Panetta Revealed
Joseph Finder at the Daily Beast has the scoop on Leon Panetta: CIA Director Leon Panetta’s emergency testimony to Congress about an illegal assassination program has set off a crisis at the spy agency. The Daily Beast’s Joseph Finder exclusively reports that: • The secret assassination “program” wasn’t much more than a PowerPoint presentation, a task force and a collection of schemes—it never got off the ground.
[Expect front page corrects in the NYT... "soon" ...]
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Flashback: When Gibson was Enthralled by Cindy Sheehan
Washington Examiner's Byron York how ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson declared “enough already” when asked on Chicago's WLS Radio (audio) about Cindy Sheehan's plan to travel to President Barack Obama's Martha's Vineyard vacation spot next week to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. York observed how “that's a remarkably different stance from the one Gibson took four years ago” when he was co-host of Good Morning America: [Gibson on multiple multiple dates]
“We're going to turn next to the standoff that is playing out near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Cindy Sheehan, you know, the mother who lost a son in Iraq, is now on the move, but she's still standing her ground."
[snip]
“All across the country protests against the war in Iraq, inspired by the mother standing her ground at President Bush's ranch.”
[snip]
"This morning a war of words. All across the country protests against the war in Iraq, inspired by the mother standing her ground at President Bush's ranch."
With "CAN ANTI-WAR MOMS STOP BUSH?" on screen throughout the interview session, Charles Gibson gave her a lot of credit, asking in the midst of giving her publicity:
“You are but a small group there that is perched on the approach to the President's ranch. One hundred, two hundred people. Do you really think you've got people talking about the war?"
Now that it's a Democrat President she's protesting?
"Enough already".
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Row over Afghan wife-starving law
Afghan legislation allowing a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex has been published in the official gazette and become law.
[It's just a 'different' culture and we should all be tolerant.]
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Yale Surrenders
The capitulation of Yale University Press to threats that hadn't even been made yet is the latest and perhaps the worst episode in the steady surrender to religious extremism—particularly Muslim religious extremism—that is spreading across our culture.
A book called The Cartoons That Shook the World, by Danish-born Jytte Klausen, who is a professor of politics at Brandeis University, tells the story of the lurid and preplanned campaign of "protest" and boycott that was orchestrated in late 2005 after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten ran a competition for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Yale University Press announced last week that it would go ahead with the publication of the book, but it would remove from it the 12 caricatures that originated the controversy. Not content with this, it is also removing those by Dante, William Blake, Sandro Botticelli, Salvador DalÃ, and Auguste Rodin - so there's a lot of artistic censorship in our future if this sort of thing is allowed to set a precedent.
According to Yale logic, violence could result from the showing of the images—and not only that, but it would be those who displayed the images who were directly responsible for that violence.
Let me illustrate: The Aug. 13 New York Times carried a report of the university press' surrender, which quoted its director, John Donatich, as saying that in general he has "never blinked" in the face of controversy, but "when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question." [snip]
Last time this happened, I linked to the Danish cartoons so that you could make up your own minds about them, and I do the same today.
Should some homicidal theocrat decide to take offense, I reject absolutely that I will have instigated him to do so, and I state in advance that he is directly and solely responsible for any blood that is on any hands.
He becomes the responsibility of our police and security agencies, who operate in defense of a Constitution that we would not possess if we had not been willing to spill blood—our own and that of others—to attain it.The First Amendment to that Constitution prohibits any prior restraint on the freedom of the press. What a cause of shame that the campus of Nathan Hale should have pre-emptively run up the white flag and then cringingly taken the blood guilt of potential assassins and tyrants upon itself.
[Just what are our young being taught from such stalwarts of American 'higher learning'.]
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[BTW:
Click each image to enlarge. [when you get to the site.]
.
THE COST OF RAILROADING AMERICA
[HT:PW]
Congress approved $8 billion for President Obama's high-speed rail program without ever asking what the total cost would be, how to pay for it, or who would ride the trains.
The dismal answers to these questions reveal much about American politics:
- State estimates indicate Obama's plan will cost around $90 billion, or about $1,000 for every federal income taxpayer.
- Since 17 states, including Arizona, aren't even in the plan, a truly national network would cost far more.
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POLL:54% Fear Government Will Do Too Much To Fix Economy
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 37% are more worried that the federal government will not do enough in reacting to the nation’s current economic problems.
Among the nation’s Political Class, (70%) worry that the government will not do enough. As for those who hold populist or Mainstream views, an identical percentage (70%) fear the government will do too much. (See more on the Political Class/Mainstream divide).
Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Republicans and 66% of voters not affiliated with either major party worry the government will take too much action, but 60% of Democrats worry it won’t do enough.
Most voters (53%) believe increases in government spending hurt the economy and there is strong opposition to a second economic stimulus package.
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40% Say Cutting Deficit Is Top Priority
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that, of the four priorities outlined by the President earlier this year, 21% rate health care reform as the most important. Eighteen percent (18%) say ensuring that every child has access to a complete and competitive education should be the priority, and 15% put the emphasis on development of new sources of energy.
Although deficit reduction is the top priority for voters, it’s also seen as the least likely to be achieved. Two-out-of-three voters (67%) rate it as least likely while just seven percent (7%) say it’s the goal most likely to be achieved.
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