Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Now They Tell Us: CBO Double Counted Medicare Savings
.
After allowing Democrats for weeks to argue that their Medicare cuts would both help finance the new health care legislation and extend the solvency of Medicare, the Congressional Budget Office explained today that the bill could do one or the other, but not both at the same time...
Sen. Jeff Sessions, after conversing with CBO director Doug Elmendorf, said that without the revenue from the Medicare cuts, the bill would actually increase deficts by nearly $300 billion...
READ MORE
Health Care Legislation Will Affect 16% of GDP - Minimum
Subject: txt hcare -
In the headline I said it would affect "at least" 16 percent of GDP, and that's because in spite of Obama administration promises that health care legislation will bend the cost curve, by the end of the decade, we'll actually be spending a lot more on health care than we are now, and even more that we would if we were to simply do nothing.
That's according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is the division at the Department of Health and Human Services tasked with tracking national health care expenditures, from which the "16 percent of GDP" statistic comes from.
According to two recent reports issued by the actuary at CMS, the Senate bill would hike health care spending to 20.9 percent of GDP, and the House bill would raise it to 21.1 percent of GDP...
[This is ruinous.]
READ MORE
Dems Against Democracy
Subject: txt hcare crpt lbrty libs reps -
As DC Democrats slink behind closed doors to craft a final health-care bill -- thousands of pages long and sure to sap the nation's economic future -- Americans need to ask: Just what are Dems so ashamed of?
"We will do what is necessary to pass the bill,"
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted, as she and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moved to forgo a panel to finalize legislation.
Instead, they'll build their Frankenstein's monster of a bill in secret, mocking democratic principles all the way.
So much for President Obama's vows of transparency -- and bipartisanship.
READ MORE
What the Dems Know: 'Universal' Voter Registration
Subject: txt crpt sclm bbro lbrty 2010 -
Many are puzzled that Democrats persist in ramming unpopular and destructive legislation down our collective throats with no apparent concern for their plummeting poll numbers.
We may have found out. The Wall Street Journal's John Fund described the Democrat plan recently;
In January, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank will propose universal voter registration. What is universal voter registration? It means all of the state laws on elections will be overridden by a federal mandate. The feds will tell the states: 'take everyone on every list of welfare that you have, take everyone on every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of property owners, take everyone on every list of driver's license holders and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be ...'
The problems with universal voter registration are numerous and obvious. Many states' lists include vast numbers of illegals, including some states which allow illegals to obtain drivers licenses; because many homeowners have more than one home, there will be duplicates; because so many people are on so many separate federal and state government agency lists, there will be duplicates; and because so many lists exist with little or no cross-checking capability, all of these duplicates are likely to go uncorrected.
Add to this the fact that Dems hope to extend voting rights to felons, and the whole thing begins to look like a nationwide Democrat voter registration drive facilitated by taxpayers...
READ MORE
Obama's nuclear-free vision mired in debate
Subject: txt nsec -
President Obama's ambitious plan to begin phasing out nuclear weapons has run up against powerful resistance from officials in the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies, posing a threat to one of his most important [? childish fantasy is one of 'most important' ? It's the LATimes] foreign policy initiatives.
Obama laid out his vision of a nuclear-free world in a speech in Prague, Czech Republic, last April, pledging that the U.S. would take dramatic steps to 'lead the way'. [I.e., unilateral disarmament]
Nine months later, the administration is locked in internal debate over a top-secret policy blueprint for shrinking the U.S. nuclear arsenal and reducing the role of such weapons in America's military strategy and foreign policy.
The Pentagon has stressed the importance of continued U.S. deterrence, an objective Obama has said he agrees with. But a senior Defense official acknowledged in an interview that some officials are concerned that the administration may be going too far.
The debate represents another collision between Obama's administration and key parts of the national security establishment, after scrapes over troop levels in Afghanistan and missile defenses in Eastern Europe.
White House officials, unhappy with early Pentagon-led drafts of the blueprint known as the Nuclear Posture Review, have stepped up their involvement in the deliberations and ordered that the document reflect Obama's preference for sweeping change...
[No doubt utilizing his vast experience as a community organizer to countermand the advice of our national defense professionals.
Why do we allow any adults, in the media or the White House, to say such things as 'nuclear free' and not be publicly ridiculed for their insanity? Does any adult not understand that the closest thing to it possible is leaving only the bad guys with them?]
READ MORE
While Obama Slept
Is there evil in the world? And is this a useful way of describing despotic regimes?
What does evil mean? A dictionary definition would state that evil is that which is immoral, wicked, harmful, injurious. And yet, for many it has religious overtones, implying that the use of that term to describe Iran, Iraq and North Korea, as in axis of evil, is somehow indicative of right wing nuts who continually try to push us to war. These are the ones who lack the sophistication of the more articulate elites, and so earn the scorn of the MSM and the Hollywood and Washington know-it-alls... [snip]
I experienced 9-11 in Manhattan, close enough to Ground Zero to smell the dust and see the tears of the bereft in the days following. It was a profound "teaching moment." [snip]
And what word shall we use for those who dither while the evil ones torture and kill? Willful naïveté? Lethal foolishness? Immoral cowardice? ...And so the fight continues, but with the major powers AWOL. Obama pontificates, the UN ponders. Our leader believes that his charm and flowery rhetoric will calm the evil beast. The brave Iranian dissidents, inside that nation and around the world, know better. They have first hand knowledge of what we are dealing with, as they continue their battle, most recently at the United Nations... [snip]
In 1938, Neville Chamberlain promised the world that we would have "Peace in Our Time". Faced with Nazi Germany, a powerful and threatening dictatorship, he got tough with small democratic Czechoslovakia. He appeased the gods of war by lopping off a piece of that hapless nation and giving it as a gift to its tyrannical neighbor. And that neighbor defied expectations by gobbling up the rest of that small nation, and then invading Poland, setting off World War 2.
Seventy years later, Barack Obama tells us that Iran shares a common goal of "peace between nations." Faced with the prospect of a nuclear Iran, and with the Iranian regime rattling sabers, President Obama gets tough with small democratic Israel. If only Israel halts settlement construction, all else will fall into line and we will again have "peace in our time".
Winston Churchill wrote a prescient book, "While England Slept" in 1938, about the unprepared status of Great Britain, lacking any kind of serious purpose while Hitler raced to build a military machine that would subjugate Europe.
Who will write "While Obama Slept"?
[Recommended > ]
READ MORE
America Retreats -- Mullahs Advance
Subject: txt intl gwot nsec islm -
Is it really true that Iraqis wanted their freedom after three decades of Saddam Hussein's brutal fascism? The Left, both here and abroad, always denied that there were freedom-fighters in the Soviet Union. Then came Nadezhda Mandelstam, Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, the Samizdat underground press, and Nathan Sharansky. We forget those names at our peril. Obama will not remember them for us... [snip]
And there's even more good news from Iran itself: a whole generation of heroes of freedom -- unfortunately not being helped by the United States, either in word or in deed, for fear of offending the fascists in power. It's tough noogies for the Freedom-Fighters of Tehran... [snip]
As Caroline Glick points out in the Jerusalem Post, the mullahs are now making extremely rapid geostrategic gains in the Middle East. They are encircling Israel from all sides except for Egypt and Jordan, and in the south they still have the Gaza strip filled with Hamas radicals. [snip]
Europe would die without Middle Eastern oil. The Europeans are deluded, historically ignorant, and lazy to boot, enticed by hot pursuit of an illusory Peace of the Lion and the Lamb, Forever and Ever, Karl Marx Willing. Under President We're So Sorry!!!, the United States doesn't scare anybody.
The whole Middle East knows it, too. That's why the dominoes are falling Ahmadinejad's way right now. The Arabs and Turks know there's no downside to dissing this American president, but there is a huge downside to upsetting the mullahs.
So they make rational choices and go with the strong horse, just as Osama bin Laden told us they would...
READ MORE
Legislating Discrimination
Subject: txt bdd vals hcare sclm bbro - 
Take Reid’s bill. It directs the secretary of health and human services to award federal grants worth billions of dollars to educational institutions that train medical-service providers. However, “priority” for federal dollars is to be given only to those institutions offering “preferential” admissions to underrepresented minorities (according to race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation).
Thus, schools will be unable to compete for essential federal funding unless they adopt admission policies that intentionally and deliberately discriminate. It guarantees the institution of racist and sexist quotas sanctioned and encouraged by the federal government in what Linda Chavez of the Center for Equal Opportunity correctly calls “a new racial spoils system.”
The bill also declares that institutions training social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, behavioral pediatricians, psychiatric nurses, and counselors will be ineligible for federal grants unless they discriminate. According to Section 756, these programs must enroll “individuals and groups from different racial, ethnic, cultural, geographic, religious, linguistic, and class backgrounds, and different genders and sexual orientations” and demonstrate “knowledge and understanding of the concerns of the[se] individuals and groups.”
If the schools fail to abide by these requirements, they will be liable for “liquidated damages.”
The Senate bill even creates a federally funded and administered medical school called the United States Public Health Services Track to “grant appropriate advanced degrees.” Priority in admissions is to be given to “students from rural communities and underrepresented minorities.” (“Underrepresented minorities” is liberal code for “Asians need not apply.”)
Instead of helping ensure all Americans access to high-quality medical care, Harry Reid’s bill seems intent on populating the medical community with more bad physicians like Patrick Chavis. The bill’s discriminatory provisions are both unconstitutional and immoral. Over time, they will erode the quality of patient care.
That’s no way to “reform” our health system.
[Its never had anything to do with health care.]
READ MORE
AP,Conveniently Change Its Definition of 'Recession'
Subject: txt mny msm -
The Associated Press's business writers' year-end roundup of 2009's top business stories is so biased and error-prone that I am devoting a weekly column to nuking it, the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa writes that:"After four quarters of decline, the economy returns to growth during the July-to-September period, signaling the end of the deepest and longest recession since the 1930s."
All of a sudden, Aversa is telling us that that the recession really ran from the third quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2009. She says that the recession ended during the third quarter of 2009 simply because the economy has returned to positive GDP growth (i.e., the "signal" went from a minus sign to a plus sign), which means she is now pegging it as having begun just four quarters earlier.
In other words, after using the NBER to define the beginning of the recession, she is using the "normal people" definition of a recession to say it's over.
Well, isn't that special?
['Typical' is closer to the truth.]
READ MORE
Bankruptcy Filings Rise 32%, Top 1.4 Million
[HT:FG]Subject: txt mny -
U.S. consumers and businesses are filing for bankruptcy at a pace that made 2009 the seventh-worst year on record, with more than 1.4 million petitions submitted, an Associated Press tally showed Monday. The AP gathered data from the nation's 90 bankruptcy districts and found 1.43 million filings, an increase of 32% from 2008. There were 116,000 recorded bankruptcies in December, up 22% from the same month a year before.
[Not to worry, the recession's over - the AP's said so...]
READ MORE
The EPA's Goldilocks Rule
Subject: txt grn sclm bbro bdd -
As the poster child for these greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide has received the most attention, although methane, nitrous oxide, and certain fluorocarbons are included in the list of alleged greenhouse gases of concern. As thoroughly discussed in the media, the issues associated with regulating such a ubiquitous compound as carbon dioxide pose many problems.
Carbon dioxide's overwhelming contribution is by natural sources, it is well mixed in the atmosphere, it permeates the entire globe, and it is inherently linked to our modern world. There is literally no human activity that cannot be controlled by regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
The U.S. EPA Endangerment Finding is complete with emotionalism, the clear and unmistakable marker of liberalism that many times substitutes reality to those with a liberal worldview. Within the overview of Ms. Jackson's Endangerment Finding is the following.
Finally, the Administrator places weight on the fact that certain groups, including children, the elderly and the poor, are most vulnerable to these climate-related health effects.
As a true-to-life caricature, it seems beyond the liberals' ability to stop themselves from throwing this final point into the mix of their scientific rationale: inferring a unique harm to children, the elderly, and the poor... [snip]
One point is clear: The potential regulation of green house gases under any portion of the Clean Air Act will result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land...I believe the ANPR demonstrates the Clean Air Act, an outdated law originally enacted to control regional pollutants that cause direct health effects, is ill-suited to the task of regulating global green house gases.
[This has nothing to do with any environment other than that of your protected liberties.]
[Highly Recommended > ]
READ MORE
France's Constitutional Council rules carbon tax illegal
Subject: txt grn engry intl -
I note that this story didn't make many newspapers in America and probably for good reason; our cap and trade [still alive and 'working' in congress] bill is very similar to the French legislation and could be unconstitutional for many of the same reasons.
Anthony Watts at Watts up with that has the story: [funny, I thought the press luved it when we emulate Frogville - details, nonsensical {French}... snip]
Australia shelved their own carbon schemes recently while New Zealand is rethinking theirs. Here in the US, it appears that coal state senators are set to torpedo any cap and trade legislation that is introduced while the whole idea of selling carbon credits to reduce global warming in Europe is being challenged.
Unfortunately, some very powerful interests are heavily invested in carbon trading so it is not likely that we've seen the last of it. But if big countries continue to question its fairness and efficacy, Al Gore and his friends may be in line to lose a bundle.
READ MORE
The outrageous truth slips out
Subject: txt intl sclm bbro libs bdd immig -
So now the cat is well and truly out of the bag. For years, as the number of immigrants to Britain shot up apparently uncontrollably, the question was how exactly this had happened. Was it through a fit of absent-mindedness or gross incompetence? Or was it not inadvertent at all, but deliberate?
The latter explanation seemed just too outrageous. After all, a deliberate policy of mass immigration would have amounted to nothing less than an attempt to change the very make-up of this country without telling the electorate. There could not have been a more grave abuse of the entire democratic process.
Now, however, we learn that this is exactly what did happen...
[Do we really think their {UK's} socialist left any different than ours?]
READ MORE
GPS Phone to Lead Illegal Border-Crossers to Water
Subject: txt immig - 
A group of California artists are developing a GPS-enabled cellphone to help dehydrated illegal migrants find water - and regale them with poetry - as they trek through harsh deserts into the United States.
The designers - three visual artists on UCSD's faculty and an English professor at the University of Michigan - are undeterred as they criticize a U.S. policy they say embraces illegal immigrants for cheap labour while letting them die crossing the border.
The effort is being done on the government's dime - an irony not lost on the designers whose salaries are paid by the state of California.
"There are many, many areas in which every American would say I don't like the way my tax dollars are being spent. Our answer to that is an in-your-face, so what?"
[The attitudes of the 'higher educated'.]
READ MORE
To Overhaul Immigration, Advocates Alter Tactics
Subject: txt immig -
Lacing up new pairs of walking shoes with a flourish, four immigrant students set out on foot from downtown Miami on Friday, starting a four-month walk to Washington to protest what they called the Obama administration’s lack of action on legislation granting legal status to illegal immigrants. Three of the four protesters, who are current or former students at Miami Dade College, do not have legal-resident status... [snip]
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, a group in Chicago, is preparing rallies for mid-January with labor unions and African-American churches, hoping to persuade American workers that immigrants would be less likely to undercut wages if they had legal status and could participate openly in unions... [snip]
“Allowing millions of illegal immigrants to stay and take jobs away from citizens and legal immigrants is like giving a burglar a key to the house,”
said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.
READ MORE
Cut the Power of the Family Courts
[HT:LB]Subject: txt bdd vals lbrty bbro -
Do you think judges should have the power to decide what religion your children must belong to and which churches they may be prohibited from attending? We have long suspected that family courts are the most dictatorial and biased of all U.S. courts, routinely depriving divorced fathers of due process rights and authority over their own children, but this December a Chicago judge went beyond the pale.
Cook County Circuit Judge Edward Jordan issued a restraining order to prohibit Joseph Reyes from taking his 3-year-old daughter to any non-Jewish religious activities because the ex-wife argued that would contribute to "the emotional detriment of the child." Mrs. Rebecca Reyes wants to raise her daughter in the Jewish religion, and the judge sided with the mother.
As Joseph Reyes' divorce attorney, Joel Brodsky, said when he saw the judge's restraining order:
"I almost fell off my chair. I thought maybe we were in Afghanistan and this was the Taliban."
READ MORE
NPR using your tax dollars to insult you
There's no question NPR is for the Administration and against its opponents but with the nation being almost evenly split between the parties and the Tea Party gaining support every day, how much chutzpah does it take for an organization which gets a lot of tax revenue for operations to insult the tea party as it does in this "Learn to Speak Tea Bag" video.
It is time for NPR to be thrown on the ash heap of history. When tax dollars are used to promote a video that is dripping with contempt for the tax payers themselves it is time to stop feeding the beast.READ MORE
Fox News Channel establishes ratings dominance over rivals in 2009
2009 was a remarkable year for Fox News Channel. Despite being ensnared in seemingly weekly controversies involving accusations that its coverage of the Obama administration was laced with right-wing political bias, the year-end numbers are in, and they show Fox News establishing dominance over rivals CNN and MSNBC. In short, 2009 was the best year in the network's 13-year history.
According to Nielsen, the ten-most-watched cable news shows in 2009 were all Fox News programs.
With conservative-leaning opinion shows like "The O'Reilly Factor," "Hannity," and "Glenn Beck" leading the way, Fox News' average daily prime time viewership rose 8 percent in the coveted 25-54 demographic from its 2008 level. Also, the network's straight news programs, "Special Report with Bret Baier," "The Fox Report with Shepard Smith," "Studio B with Shepard Smith," and "Your World with Neil Cavuto," all scored their best years ever in 2009. In fact, every single show on the network saw a double-digit increase in ratings from 2008 in the 25-54 demographic... [snip]
Beck particularly enjoyed a meteoric rise to prominence on the national stage in 2009, partially by establishing himself as a bit of a political organizer of the "Tea Party" movement. An increasingly polarizing figure, a recent Gallup poll placed Beck fourth among the most admired men by Americans, trailing only President Obama, former President George W. Bush and South African leader Nelson Mandela...
READ MORE
WaPo: Bumbled Terror Attack Showed Napolitano's Competence and 'Almost Unlimited' Potential 
An airplane didn’t explode over Detroit because the Islamic jihadi was incompetent.
But Washington Post columnist David Broder decided he would start the New Year by making a fool of himself. He suggested on Friday that the incident showed Janet Napolitano’s excellence. The headline read"Napolitano’s ‘no drama’ competence shows her potential."
Does Broder think he’s writing for The Onion?
READ MORE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
