which Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) will introduce tomorrow, instead promotes the individual insurance market as well as employer-based markets. Instead of focusing on regulating private insurers, the plan would in fact give them more freedom to work across state lines. Republicans say the plan will be paid for by reforms of defensive medicine, creating a more efficient health care system, and overall reductions in non-defense government spending.
"Liability reform has to be one or the hallmarks of a bill," ... "We make certain we pay for our bill by making this a priority."
"It's imperative each and every American have the access to health coverage that they select," ... "The way you do that is through the tax code to make it financially feasible."
"If we go home over August and talk to the patients of America, we wil have a better product in the fall," ..."The American people will select solutions that will put them in charge, not the government."
Watching Associated Press reports evolve, or as is all too often the case, devolve, can be a revealing exercise.
Example: What happened between 8 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. Saturday that would have caused the Associated Press and writer Nancy Benac to water down the headline and opening paragraphs of their story about the Obama-Gates-Crowley situation from this ....
.
Thanks to a brilliant piece of journalism by German investigative reporter Bruno Schirra published in the July 20 edition of The Wall Street Journal Europe, we have evidence to suggest that the 2007 NIE's conclusion about Iran's nuclear bomb program [having been halted] wasn't merely wrong, but corrupt.
Simply put, while our country's intelligence service believed that Iran had abandoned its nuclear bomb program in 2003, Germany's intelligence service was amassing evidence that the Iranian bomb program was ongoing. This raises three obvious and crucially important questions:
It was as cold-blooded and vicious an honor crime as any the West has seen, but with one difference. This time, the victim was male.
A 24-year-old Asian man is clinging to life in a British hospital after seven men attacked him last week in London for having a friendship with a married Muslim woman.
The unidentified man, who is Muslim himself and has Danish citizenship, was stabbed twice in the back and beaten so severely with bricks that authorities report he is now blind in one eye and will probably lose sight in the other. Acid was also poured down the victim’s throat, damaging his tongue and throat so severely he will probably never speak again.
“The poor man got up and ran straight into a tree, then staggered back to his house, tugging at his burning clothes and banging on doors, shouting for water,” said one woman who witnessed the attack.
The victim’s body was also doused with acid, burning more than 50 per cent and leaving him in critical condition. News reports state he is not expected to survive. His assailants, police say, were all wearing gloves and masks for protection against the sulphuric acid, ... [ snip]
The motive for the attack, British newspapers report, is that the woman’s family, which is from Pakistan, considered the man’s friendship with her “insulting” to the family’s honor.
Incredibly, London police now expect the Pakistani family to attempt to further wash away more of that “foulness.” The woman, police fear, may be killed next and are trying to figure out how to protect her...
["Trying to figure it out" ? We take children from their parents for far less - why not here where there's no doubt?
Oops, forgot: don't' want to offend anyone.]
READ MORE
The Pope has condemned a ' disgusting' taxpayer-funded exhibition in which visitors are urged to deface the Bible.
Visitors were offered pens by gallery bosses so they could scrawl comments on the text - leading to a host of puerile and obscene remarks.
Pope Benedict XVI believes the stunt would not have been contemplated with a copy of the Koran.
Artist Anthony Schrag. He wanted gays and transsexuals who felt left out of religion
[Isn't that 'tolerant'.]
READ MORE
Washington - The United States and China are striking a conciliatory tone in their public comments during economic talks, although that hasn't stopped China from posing some pointed questions behind closed doors about such issues as America's soaring budget deficit to try to reassure China that the U.S. will not let deficits or inflation jeopardize the value of Chinese investments...
[Guess the days of the US asking China 'pointed questons' about its human rights violations are long gone. The consequences of becoming the world's super-debtor.
'Free' health care anyone?]
READ MORE
.
... Let's take a moment to review some of the events that led to the Zelayas now finding themselves in their new role as perpetual guests of fellow Marxist President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua:
“…any authority, moral or legal. The legal authority he lost because he broke laws and the moral authority he lost with a discourse full of lies. The most patriotic thing he could do is stay away. Anything else is just trying to impose Hugo Chavez’s project [Socialism] at all costs.”
Washington - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is taking over private companies in order to deal with the economic crisis that has affected both his country and the United States, and the Obama administration is trying to do roughly the same thing, Venezuelan political analyst Dr. Luis Vicente León told CNSNews.com Monday.
READ MORE
The illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. His policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not mitigate the recession.
The President's $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 20% of adults favor bailing out financially troubled states. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure which course is best.
These findings are largely unchanged from mid-May when California’s financial problems became national news.
Eighty-two percent (82%) of Republicans and 61% of adults not affiliated with either major political party oppose federal bailout help for states with budget problems.
A plurality (42%) of Democrats agree, but 31% think bailing out the states is a good idea.
Seventy-seven percent (77%) of voters nationwide say the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending is a bigger problem than the public’s unwillingness to pay higher taxes.
Roughly seven-out-of-10 California voters oppose raising income and sales taxes to meet the state’s massive and growing budget deficit.
Forty-four percent (44%) of American adults say, generally speaking, the government tries to do too much, but 31% believe it doesn’t try to do enough...
READ MORE
Last month, the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization affiliated with George Mason University, released "Science Suppressed: How America became obsessed with BPA,
" a report which accuses the media of ignoring the extensive research of respected scientists and major health agencies in the United States and around the world, which found BPA was not only safe but played an important role in ensuring food safety." [snip]
President Obama devoted nearly $60 billion of his stimulus package to building a new green-based economy rich in renewable energy and strategies to cut carbon.
But despite the price tag, not one green job yet exists.
It comes down to a problem of etymology. No one can yet agree on what a green job actually is...
[Guess it's now called the 'sixty billion dollar question'. Too bad no one had time to read the thing before they passed it.]
READ MORE
Just 18% of adults think it’s the government’s job to tell Americans what kind of light bulb they use, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Seventy-two percent (72%) say it’s none of the government’s business, and 10% are not sure.
The federal government under an energy bill passed in 2007 is requiring consumers to dump incandescent bulbs, the ones we’ve used for well over a century, for more expensive fluorescent ones. The plan is scheduled to go into effect over the next 10 years in the name of great energy efficiency.
Eighty-three percent (83%) of Republicans and 78% of adults not affiliated with either major political party say it’s not the government’s role to make Americans change their light bulbs. Among Democrats, 58% share that view, but 29% say it is the government’s job.
.
With their health care plans in a holding pattern — and no George W. Bush to kick around anymore — Democrats are casting about for somebody to blame.
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn says that Republicans have “perfected ‘just say no.’”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said insurance companies are chalking up “immoral profits.”
But even if they won’t acknowledge it publicly, most Democrats in Congress know the truth: It’s their own colleagues who are slowing down progress in both the House and the Senate...
[Again and again: they don't debate the merits of their ideas but attack anyone who questions...]
READ MORE
In explaining why it was OK to sock a new 5.4% tax on the highest earners in this country — to pay for health care reform — President Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said this:
“The president believes that the richest 1% of this country has had a pretty good run of it for many years.”
Face-lifts, tummy tucks and hair transplants could be hit with a new tax to help finance the trillion-dollar healthcare overhaul plan, according to sources familiar with the Senate talks.
The Senate Finance Committee has discussed imposing a 10 percent excise tax on cosmetic surgery deemed 'unnecessary' [by whom?] for medical purposes.
[Translation: how dare you pay for for just your own surgery - if you can afford that you should be made to pay for someone else's.
'Home of the free.']
READ MORE
.
Associated Press's Calvin Woodward does the primary honors in an AP Fact Check that takes aim at the President's 'accuracy' in his descriptions of his health care bill... [snip]
OBAMA: "It will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you're happy with it."
THE FACTS: A commission appointed by the government would determine what is and isn't covered by insurance plans offered in a new purchasing pool, including a plan sponsored by the government. The bill also holds out the possibility that, over time, those standards could be imposed on all private insurance plans, not just the ones in the pool.
OBAMA: "I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it."
THE FACTS: White House Budget Director Peter Orszag told reporters this week that the promise 'does not apply' to proposed spending of about $245 billion over the next decade to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients.
OBAMA: "You haven't seen me out there blaming the Republicans."
THE FACTS: Obama did so in his opening statement, saying, "I've heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it's better politics to 'go for the kill."
OBAMA: "If we had done nothing ... you'd have a $9.3 trillion deficit over the next 10 years. Because of the changes we've made, it's going to be $7.1 trillion."
THE FACTS: Obama's numbers are based on figures compiled by his own 'budget office'. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, in its own analysis of the president's budget numbers, concluded that the cumulative deficit over the next decade would be $9.1 trillion.
