Now the left plays the race card for Obama
America’s golden age of race relations, which began when Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 with a seven-point lead over Republican Sen. John McCain, came to a tragic end a couple of weeks ago in July 2009.
That’s when, according to the left, the country that had elected him awoke from its state of denial, or stupor, and realized, to its unrelieved horror, that the man it had chosen was ... black.
How else for them to explain why his poll numbers slipped from astronomical to just about 50 percent, his approval ratings for his pet projects fell even further and his golden-tongued eloquence failed to persuade?
To the saner among us, these developments were due to one of three things, or perhaps all three together: the inevitable end of the honeymoon period; the fact that hopes for him were so overblown that the soufflé was bound to sink sometime; and the large block of people seduced by his temperate manner came to believe there was nothing temperate at all about his agenda, which was far more extreme than they cared to accept.
On the left, however, it seems this is all a facade, and these issues are merely a familiar channel through which racial fears are diverted.
“They’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing ... than to who he is,”
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman told everyone. Krugman says the American right is consumed by “racial anxiety.” And the American Prospect assures us that
“the mainstream right’s ‘Americanism’ ... implicitly rejects people who aren’t white.”
Right. That’s why it raised such unholy hell when President George W. Bush made Colin Powell and Condi Rice secretaries of state in succession, and tried to put Janice Rogers Brown and Miguel Estrada on the fast track to Supreme Court nominations. It’s also apparently why Republicans made Michael Steele their new national party chairman... [snip]
In fact, Obama’s deep slide isn’t the work of these terrible GOP bigots. It’s the fault of the wide swath of swing voters who boosted him in the summer, swung to McCain in the first weeks of September and swung back to the rookie when the stock market crashed. And they voted for him on Election Day, many because he’s not white, and they have no problems with that part of the package.
It’s the far-left ideological part, the spending and deficits, to which they object. Polls show that Obama himself is far more popular than his major proposals, and that if he’d only gone with a somewhat more moderate program he’d still be just fine with these folks.
But to avoid this inconvenient truth the left is now trying to convince America that the enlightened and race-neutral country that elected its first black president is really a tragically race-obsessed nation as proven by its disagreement with Obama.
I'd love to say 'good luck with that', but with the established media's backing the left's 'luck' has proven able to sell the American people just about anything...
READ MORE
Friday, August 14, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The President and the Postal Service
.
If your mailman seems a tad ticked off today. Here's why...
READ MORE
[The net's covering the gaffe but I'm unaware any of the nets have covered - anyone?]
FLASHBACK (yesterday) >Last point {today} re: health care: Caught a sound bite from Obama's town hall yesterday where he answered a question re: how the private insurance industry is to compete with a government entity that doesn't have to worry about making a profit, is subsidized, etc., to which he answered that he expects the private sector to be able to compete - and pointed to UPS and FedEx and added that it's the US 'Post Office that's having problems'.
Priceless - or would be, if anyone in the MSM pointed out his tacit admission of exactly why the government must be kept out of health care:
How Will Media Spin Obama's 'It's the Post Office Always Having Problems
Let's make one thing perfectly clear: Barack Obama without his teleprompter is like a trapeze artist without a net.
That was likely never more apparent than at the President's healthcare town hall meeting Tuesday when he actually said:
"I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean, if you think about, if you think about it, um, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. Right? The, uh, no they are. I mean, it's the post office that's always having problems. "
Yep. The supposedly most intelligent person ever to be in the White House really said these words as a reason why Americans should trust government to provide their healthcare.
How will this public performance by the President be reported in the next 24 hours? Stay tuned...
READ MORE
FNC Notes Media Obsessing Over Conservative Protest Origins, But Not Lib Protests
On Thursday's The O'Reilly Factor, FNC host Bill O'Reilly hosted a discussion with FNC analyst and former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg, as the two pointed out the mainstream media's double standard in "obsessing" over how protesters who have been challenging ObamaCare were organized, but have shown no interest in protesters organized by left-wing groups...
READ MORE
Media Ignore Democrat Astroturfing at Pelosi Event
As media members fell all over themselves last week calling town hall meeting protesters part of an angry mob financed by conservative organizations, they were totally disinterested in evidence of astroturfing by Democrats at an event attended by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.).
To highlight the supposed impact of stimulus funds on healthcare services, Pelosi joined Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless’s Stout Street Clinic in Denver Thursday.
As marvelously reported by LookingattheLeft.com, a Democrat organization made sure that healthcare reform supporters were not only in attendance for the event, but were also nicely equipped with professionally made lawn signs... [snip]
But here's the best part:
This clinic is adjacent to Denver’s day laborer pickup street, Park Avenue. Being fluent in Spanish, El Marco asked these guys “¿hablan ingles?” “casi nada” was the reply from our amigo on the left. I asked him if he could tell me what the signs said. “¿Quien sabe?” (who knows?) was all he said to me, with a big grin. I’m kicking myself for not asking them how much they were getting paid to support the 'grassroots'.
Ironic indeed, but maybe more so is how media totally ignored this. According to LexisNexis, not one major national news outlet felt this obvious astroturfing by Democrats was newsworthy.
The most powerful and obvious astroturfing is regularly performed by the left given their connection to unions and community organizers. I guess falsely accusing Republicans of manufacturing dissent is much more important to today's so-called journalists than exposing when Democrats actually do it.
In the end, if we actually had an honest media rather than advocates with bylines, they'd see through these absurd claims by the left and report the truth to the electorate.
READ MORE
Will Media Investigate Astroturf Recruitment At Craigslist?
Take for example the following advertisement placed at the online website Craiglist for New York City Monday (h/t Patrick Ruffini):
**TALENTED LEADERS needed to work for health care reform $11-16/hour**
Or how about some of these identified by Dr. Melissa Clouthier Sunday for Sacramento, California (h/t Walt Gilbert):
Aug 7 – Make social change – Help Pass Obama’s Health Care Reform!!! – (Sacramento) img <
Aug 4 – Help pass Obama’s Health Care Reform!!! Earn $9-14 an hour!!! – (Sacramento) img <
Aug 3 – ***Help Pass Obama’s Health Care Plan and Earn $325-$500/Week – (Sacramento, CA) img <
Jul 31 – Help Pass Obama’s Health Care Reform! Earn $325-550 per week! – (Sacramento) img <
What do these ads seem to all have in common other than helping to pass ObamaCare?
A group called The Fund for the Public Interest:
Fund For The Public Interest is a national nonprofit organization working to increase the visibility, membership and political power of the nation’s leading environmental and progressive groups. Current Fund partners like Sierra Club and Human Rights Campaign are expanding their donor base and passing tougher legislation against air pollution, forest clear-cutting, hate crimes, and special interest money in politics.
Now, they're recruiting for folks to help pass ObamaCare.
Is there anything wrong with it? No.
But if the media are going to accuse town hall protesters of being organized by outside forces, maybe they should take a close look at what the Left is doing to get Obama's agenda passed.
Or would that be too much like journalism?
READ MORE
Just who are these health care protesters?
Nancy Snyder says she kept quiet when abortion was legalized and prayer in schools was eliminated. Not this time.
''They did it for prayer, they did it for abortion, and they're not going to do it for our health care,''
the 70-year-old nurse from Philipsburg, Pa., said Wednesday as she and her husband Robert, 74, a retired coal miner, waited in a long, snaking line for Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter...
[Damn extremists.]
READ MORE
Georgia man convicted of aiding terrorist groups
A 23-year-old Georgia man has been convicted of aiding terrorist groups by sending videotapes of U.S. landmarks overseas. A jury in Atlanta found Ehsanul Islam Sadequee (EH'-suh-nool sah-DEE'-kee) guilty Wednesday morning. Prosecutors say Sadequee could face up to 60 years in prison.
Prosecutors say the pair took a series of videos of the Pentagon and the Capitol and that Sadequee later sent them to suspected terrorists overseas...
[Boy I hope nobody was wire-tapped to learn of this - that would be horrible.
I.e., GWOT.]
READ MORE
AMERICAN TERRORISTS
ISLAMIC MILITANTS HAVE TAKEN 20 BOYS FROM MINNESOTA TO FIGHT IN SOMALIA. WHAT HAPPENS IF THEY COME BACK?
Then, last Nov. 4, seven or eight young men - whose families assumed they were out in the streets, celebrating the election of Barack Obama - vaporized.
"We immediately rushed to the FBI," says Bihi. "We knew."
About a week later, Burhan, his friend Mustafa Ali, 17, and about five other boys - like those gone missing before them - resurfaced in Somalia, where it is believed they are being trained, most against their will, as terrorists by an al Qaeda-linked group called al-Shabab ("the youth" in Somali)...
[GWOT]
READ MORE
Is ‘Islam’ at war with us?
Last week, John Brennan, the assistant to the President for homeland security and counterterrorism approvingly recalled a key point in the speech Mr. Obama delivered in Cairo in June: "America is not and never will be at war with Islam." Unfortunately, that statement ignores the fact that the decision as to whether the United States is at war with anybody is not entirely up to our leadership or people.
The real question is: Is 'Islam' at war with us?
It is certainly true that hundreds of millions of Muslims the world over are not seeking to wage war against the United States, or other non-Muslim states. America has, as Mr. Brennan noted in his remarks before the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Thursday, a powerful interest in not making all those who practice Islam into our enemies.
Yet, it would be a grave mistake to construe the problem we face as John Brennan proceeded to do in his speech at CSIS: "We are at war with al Qaeda which attacked us on 9/11 and killed 3,000 people. We are at war with its violent extremist allies who seek to carry on al-Qaida's murderous agenda." He described that agenda as seeking "to replace sovereign nations with a global caliphate."
Unfortunately, that is the stated goal of all those who adhere to what authoritative Islam calls Shariah - a number that includes many millions of people the world over. Mr. Brennan's speech made no reference to this wellspring of jihadism...
[More, re: 'soft' (political) and legal jihad - and they are connected. Highly Recommended > ]
READ MORE
Russia sees U.S. space threat, builds new rocket
The United States will be able to hit any target in Russia from space by 2030, the commander of Russia's air force said on Tuesday, announcing that Moscow will develop a new air defence system to avert the threat.
"The development of air and space offensive weapons by foreign states demonstrates that by 2030 radical changes will take place in the exploration of air and space as an integral sphere of armed struggle,"
Russia is negotiating a new nuclear arms deal with the United States to replace the 1991 START-1 pact which expires in December -- part of an effort by both countries to improve their thorny relationship...
[I.e., all pre-negotiation bluster - but we'll likely 'trade' something away in return for their scaling back their 'plans'.]
READ MORE
The Alinsky Way Vs. the American Way
It takes neither a genius, nor a shrink, to see why Alinskyite Democrat pols are so confused by all this 1776 Redux confronting them in their home-district townhalls. Since they are so accustomed to calling up pals in unions and various other community agitators for a little rent-a-mob action to bolster support for their agendas, they naturally project this tactic onto anyone opposing their issue positions... [snip]
Those in the Democratic Party, who have adopted the Alinsky Way and thrown out the American Way, have done so with less than altruistic intentions. Keeping citizens as little children, incapable of doing for themselves, is the way to winning their votes and keeping them dependent upon the power of the state, which Democrats hope to control now and forever.
Now, there is a most telling anecdote in Horwitt's biography of Alinsky, which perfectly demonstrates the fundamental difference between the Alinsky Way and the American Way...
[Recommended > ]
READ MORE
WE BROKE THE BANK
The United States is functionally bankrupt.
Let's look at the simple numbers of our national debt. Our on-the-books national debt is $11.6 trillion, but off-the-books federal debt, including Medicare and Social Security, is $107 trillion:
- This is the amount we should have in the bank, according to the federal government's own accountants, to pay for our current promises to our retirees and future retirees.
- This doesn't include unfunded obligations that we have to the pensions and benefits promised to federal workers and veterans.
- Nor does it include huge unfunded pension and benefit obligations for other public employees at levels below the federal government.
- Now our total annual national output, or gross domestic product (GDP), is about $14.3 trillion.
- Total federal receipts, or income if stated in business terms, are about $2.5 trillion.
- This means that our debt to federal income ratio is about 47, and that ratio assumes that the federal revenues are free to retire the obligations, which they are not.
That's pretty darn broke.
Ask any accountant, banker, or anyone remotely familiar with simple accounting knowledge if we can service this debt, and the collective answer is a resounding "no." Any business with these ratios would be a complete basket case, hopelessly bankrupt.
But unlike General Motors Corp., there is no one with the wherewithal to bail out the United States...
[Yet they're still increasing spending.]
READ MORE
GOVERNMENT KEEPS ON HIRING, ADDING TO PRIVATE-SECTOR BURDEN
Even as millions of private-sector jobs have disappeared in the past year, government hiring continues to expand across the country.
The United States shed 5.5 million private-sector jobs over the 12 months beginning in May 2008, but taxpayers were required to support 116,000 more federal workers than a year ago.
State government added another 21,000.
READ MORE
CARBON OFFSETS: SCAM, NOT SALVATION
Under a cap & trade scheme, a country (or company) can meet its emission targets by paying others to reduce their emissions. To facilitate this process, the United Nations created the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an international market where buyers who need to offset their emissions can purchase carbon credits from developing countries -- effectively paying for emissions reductions by others.
Unfortunately, proving that emissions cuts are reductions that wouldn't have occurred without the offset payments is difficult. Recent evidence reveals that offsets are vulnerable to fraud and actually increase costs:
- Almost three-quarters of CDM-registered projects are already complete at the time of approval and do not need carbon credits.
- Nearly 40 percent of those projects represent "unlikely or at least questionable" emissions cuts and between a third and two-thirds of CDM offsets do not represent actual emission cuts.
READ MORE
ExxonMobil is Green. Will Media Notice?
From the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 to the high gas prices of 2008, the mainstream media has spent years finding ways to bash ExxonMobil. But here’s something the media should have a hard time finding fault with Exxon for: in its August 24 issue, Forbes magazine named ExxonMobil the “Green Company of the Year.”
Forbes’ Christopher Helman praised the oil and gas company for its efforts to go green. And it’s about time ExxonMobil got some positive press.
READ MORE
Fortune Editor Breaks With CNNers On ObamaCare; IDs 5 Freedoms Lost, Inevitable State Control
...A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. ....
page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage....
Tully then lists and discusses the five freedoms lost under ObamaCare:
- Freedom to choose what's in your plan
- Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
- Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
- Freedom to keep your existing plan
- Freedom to choose your doctors
So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier....
The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through 'the exchange'...
[Likewise for all points made; explicit language directly contradicting the assurances being sold to the people who are satisfied with their current care - an ~80% majority.
They're duping us again, and the cost will be great.]
Wow. After ready Tully's column, even those who have deeply imbibed the kool-aid won't be able to say they weren't warned.
[MUST READ > ]
READ MORE
DETROIT: THE TRIUMPH OF PROGRESSIVE PUBLIC POLICY
Imagine a city where all the major economic planks of the statist or "progressive" platform have been enacted:
- A "living wage" ordinance, far above the federal minimum wage, for all public employees and private contractors.
- A school system that spends significantly more per pupil than the national average.
- A powerful school employee union that militantly defends the exceptional pay, benefits and job security it has won for its members.
- A powerful government employee union that does the same for its members.
- A tax system that aggressively redistributes income from businesses and the wealthy to the poor and to government bureaucracies.
- In 1950, Detroit was the wealthiest city in America on a per capita income basis.
- Today, the Census Bureau reports that it is the nation's second poorest major city, just "edging out" Cleveland.
While correlation is not causation, it is striking that the decline in per capita income is exactly what classical economics predicts will occur when wage controls are imposed and taxes are increased.
Specifically, "price theory" predicted that Detroit's artificially high business costs caused by excessive regulation and above-market labor compensation rates imposed by so-called "living wages" would lead to an increase in unemployment - now the highest of any city in the U.S.
READ MORE
Dan Rather Pleads for White House Action on News Media
Rather insists he is not asking for any kind of a “government bailout” or “government control” of the media, just a high-profile discussion of the state of the media:
Why bring the President into it? Because this is the only way I could think of to generate the sort of attention this subject deserves. Academia and think tanks generate study after study, yet their findings don't reach the people who need to be reached.... [like climate scientists?]
The old news model is crumbling, while the Internet, for all its immense promise, is not yet ready to rise in its place -- and won't be until it can provide the nuts-and-bolts reporting that most people so take for granted that it escapes their notice.
This is a crisis that, with no exaggeration, threatens our democratic republic at its core. But you won't hear about it on your evening news, unless the message can be delivered in a way that corporate media have little choice but to report -- such as, say, the findings of a presidential commission.
It’s inconceivable, of course, that Rather or any other media big shot would ask former George W. Bush or any other Republican to lead such an effort. If Bush had ever entertained such an idea on his own, Rather would have led the charge against it as a huge intrusion on the media’s independence. But Rather is evidently comfortable with the idea of an Obama Commission on the news media — a sign just how closely journalistic liberals identify with political liberals.
The ills of journalism, as Rather sees it, are a subordination of the news product to the profit motive, and decay in the newspaper industry that threatens the nuts-and-bolts reporting that supports broadcast and much of the Internet.
A new media is growing up without government help or direction. Contrary to Rather’s argument, there are actually more news sources available to everyday citizens, not fewer, and the news is becoming less “homogenized” thanks to the Internet. When liberals like Rather ask for the government’s help, it usually means they don’t like the direction that the free market is headed.
And, if he wouldn’t trust a Republican president to fix the media, why should any of us trust a Democratic president with the job?
[This guy fabricated a story against a sitting President of the United States - and the MSM are still giving him air/print time.
The history of 'public' communication has been on of ever restricted public influence, with ever fewer and fewer 'owners' from book publishers for the few literate to radio station owners - a few per town at best, to TV which at one time limited editorial control down to three - count 'em; three - networks.
Now the internet has again allowed a free {of editorial control} forum for the competition of ideas {some junk - some not} - and the old guard hates that. Imagine; a democracy of the little people without the 'guidance' of our enlightened intellectuals.
Folks like Rather should be laughed out of town - but don't expect anything like that from the MSM - which for my entire adult life has been part of the problem, and nothing to be salvaged.]
READ MORE
Matthews: 'Is Sarah Palin a Poster Girl for Racism?'
On Wednesday's Hardball, MSNBC host Chris Matthews hosted a discussion with Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker and Salon's Joan Walsh as the trio discussed Parker's latest column, "A Tip for the GOP: Look Away," in which she argues that the Republican party is hurt by being centered in the South with its history of racial politics.
Matthews, who would later theorize that Sarah Palin will exploit white racism by visiting "cul de sacs of whitedom," set up the segment by reading a line from Parker's column which compares Palin to a white character in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird who falsely accuses a black man of raping her, leading to his false conviction and death in prison.
Parker suggested that Palin is indeed a "poster girl for racism," though "not consciously," and alluded to white racism being incited by a white woman and black man being pitted against each other, as in Sarah Palin versus Barack Obama, or in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
[Just when you think it's not possible to stoop any lower...]
READ MORE
A tale of two professors and Sarah Palin on Obama's 'death panels'
"The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And whowill suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course.
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
According to Cornell University law school's William Jacobson, writing for the Legal Insurrection blog:
"The incoming fire has been withering, as usual. Palin is accused of becoming the 'Zombie Queen,' certifiably insane, 'clinically wrong,' and espousing a 'gruesome mix of camp and high farce.'
"These critics, however, didn't take the time to find out to what Palin was referring when she used the term 'level of productivity in society' as being the basis for determining access to medical care. If the critics, who hold themselves in the highest of intellectual esteem, had bothered to do something other than react, they would have realized that the approach to health care to which Palin was referring was none other than that espoused by key Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekial Emanuel (brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel)."
"Put together the concepts of prognosis and age, and Dr. Emanuel's proposal reasonably could be construed as advocating the withholding of some level of medical treatment to a baby born with Down Syndrome. You may not like this implication, but it is Dr. Emanuel's implication not Palin's."
Put another, less charitable way than Professor Jacobson chose, the analyses of Palin critics would be more likely to be taken seriously if they displayed at least a modicum of intellectual honesty.
READ MORE
Comedienne Kathy Griffin Draws More Viewers Than Chris Matthews
Although the glory days of Chris Matthews and his MSNBC program "Hardball" are surely a thing of the past, getting beaten in the prime time cable ratings by a D-list comedienne has got to add insult to injury.
Here are the numbers posted by Drudge (h/t Paul Bedard):
CABLE NEWS RACE
NITE OF AUG 10, 2009
FOXNEWS O'REILLY 3,814,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 3,118,000
FOXNEWS BECK 2,417,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 2,388,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 1,988,000
FOXNEWS SHEP SMITH 1,833,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,243,000
MSNBC MADDOW 1,082,000
CNNHN GRACE 875,000
CNN KATHY GRIFFIN 810,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 710,000
READ MORE
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Government Health Care in Stealth Mode
One video is worth a thousand words (or, as in this column, about 730). The video in question, put together by a group called Verum Serum, shows public statements by three advocates of single-payer (government monopoly) health insurance explaining that a health care bill with a "government option" would move America toward a single-payer government health care system. You may not have heard of the first two, Rep. Jan Schakowsky and professor Jacob Hacker. But you have heard of the third, President Barack Obama. [snip]
Obama has never made his ultimate goal a secret; it's the same as Schakowsky's and Hacker's. The video shows him saying in October 2003, when he was running for the U.S. Senate, "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care program." He adds, "We may not get there immediately," noting the Democrats must "take back" the White House and both houses of Congress -- a condition fulfilled last Jan. 20.
Campaigning for president in May 2007, he said, "But I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately." That seems to imply that his goal remains the same as it was in 2003. "There's going to be potentially some transition process -- I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out, where we've got a much more portable system." Which of course government health insurance would be. You couldn't get away from it.
The president's defenders depict this video and others like it as a patchwork of irrelevant and misleading statements. They also cite Obama's oft-repeated pledges that any health care bill he would sign would let you keep the insurance you have. But they never address the point that you can't keep it if your employer stops offering it.
But, as Schakowsky says, "This is not a principled fight." Schakowsky, Hacker and Obama believe, out of idealism but also perhaps for crass political reasons, that America would be better off with a single-payer system like Canada's or Britain's.
But they realize that they're operating in a country where most voters don't agree. The video helps us understand how they're seeking to reach their single-payer goal through government-option stealth...
[Perhaps I should use the word 'stealth' instead of my frequent 'duped' - but is there really a difference? They're lying to us.]
READ MORE
Re: Krauthammer's Take
With due mountains of respect to Dr. K, his suggested approach of "quietly and civilly raising questions," politely pointing out that the numbers don't add up, etc., is exactly how we have come to be stuck with the stimulus, the bailouts, and obscene trillions in budget deficits.
This is not a nice, ivory tower, Oxford debate.
This is gut-check time about whether we are going to maintain the bedrock American relationship between the citizen and the state. We are in the battle against ruthless, radical ideologues who have the media and the daunting numbers on their side. On our side, we have the further burden of wavering moderates and in-Washington-too-long types who define success as making a deal — any deal — that they think they can sell as a bipartisan compromise that staved off something extreme (but what in reality would be a sell-out that is 3/4 extreme, with Obama simply coming back in 2010 or 2011 to get the remaining 1/4 ... plus)... [snip]
I just don't get the detachment from the real world here. We're not talking trivia here. We're talking about what kind of country we're going to be from here on out. That's something worth getting whipped up about. If we're not whipped up, we lose. If we are whipped up and the Democrats try to use that fact as an excuse to ram this through, then they were going to ram it through anyway.
We are a heavy underdog. To prevail, the needle we have to thread is to convince enough Dems and RINOs that there will be electoral hell to pay if this monstrosity is enacted. That requires an authentic demonstration of fervor. It's unfortunate that some people will go overboard — as happens in any human endeavor — but that's no reason to treat this as if it were an academic exercise.
If that's the approach, the game — like the country as we know it — is lost.
[As distasteful as raucous confrontations are, I'm no longer sure there's an alternative. Consider,
.....1) how do you 'debate' those who lie to your face (as is occurring daily, from Obama on down, re: what the bills will & won't do and their cost), i.e., our politicians keep 'answering' our questions re: their plans with blatant lies - we can't afford to be seen as accepting them - and
..... 2) the Democrats have already conveyed their intent to force a bill through using the Reconciliation ploy to side-step the 2/3 majority needed for the associated expenditure - regardless of how unpopular all polls show their intentions to be.
..... The only realistic chance of preventing them from forcing this change upon a majority opposed to it is conveying that there will be consequences to their doing so. The first point made in this piece is legitimate: quietly being 'civil' about our opposition was interpreted as sufficient apathy to enact the insane but power-acquiring bailouts and stimulus bills. If tactics aren't changed, outcomes won't be either...]
READ MORE
POLL: Support for Congressional Health Care Reform Falls to New Low
Public support for the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats has fallen to a new low as just 42% of U.S. voters now favor the plan. That’s down five points from two weeks ago and down eight points from six weeks ago.
Sixty-seven percent (67%) of those under 30 favor the plan [?!, what are they thinking? They'll pay the most and receive the least] while 56% of those over 65 are opposed.
Predictably, 69% of Democrats favor the plan, while 79% of Republicans oppose it.
Most notable, however, is the opposition among voters not affiliated with either party. Sixty-two percent (62%) of unaffiliated voters oppose the health care plan, and 51% are strongly opposed. This marks an uptick in strong opposition among unaffiliateds, while the number of strongly supportive Democrats is unchanged.
READ MORE
Brit PM Warns America Against National Health Care
On Friday's Glenn Beck Program, FNC aired a pre-recorded interview between host Beck and a British member of the European Parliament, Daniel Hannan, who warned against the dangers of instituting a national health system in America because of the problems Britons must endure from their country's government-run monopoly, the National Health Service.
During an interview in which he recounted the long waits, the inability to go outside the system for faster treatment, and the system's discrimination against elderly patients, Hannan summed up his amazement that Americans would consider such a system:
"I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of independence and freedom can seriously be thinking about adopting such a system in peacetime and massively expanding the role of the state when there's no need."
He also warned that once such a massive bureaucracy and voting bloc of government workers becomes entrenched, such a system would likely be impossible to get rid of...
[Read what government-run health 'care' means, from a member of the government that runs it. Recommended > ]
READ MORE
Pelosi and Hoyer Were For Drowning Out Opposing Views Before They Were Against It
"Their side will be smaller but noisier. You must bring enough people to drown them out... "
Well, it turns out that Hoyer is listed at HCAN's website, along with roughly 200 other members of Congress, as supporting this organization:
READ MORE
POLL: On Health Care, 53% Fear Government More Than Insurance Companies
When it comes to health care decisions, 51% of the nation’s voters fear the federal government more than private insurance companies.
Among those who have insurance, 53% fear the government more than insurance companies while 39% take the opposite view. Those without insurance fear the insurance companies more. [but if they don't have insurance, how can they - never mind.]
Adults under 30 fear the insurance companies more while those in their 40s are evenly divided. However, a solid majority of those over 40 fear the government more. [It's called experience.]
READ MORE
.
Last point {today} re: health care: Caught a sound bite from Obama's town hall yesterday where he answered a question re: how the private insurance industry is to compete with a government entity that doesn't have to worry about making a profit, is subsidized, etc., to which he answered that he expects the private sector to be able to compete - and pointed to UPS and FedEx and added that it's the US 'Post Office that's having problems'.
Priceless - or would be, if anyone in the MSM pointed out his tacit admission of exactly why the government must be kept out of health care:
.
Feds Name 8th North Carolina Terror Suspect
Raleigh, N.C. — A 20-year-old U.S. citizen who traveled to Pakistan in 2008 "to engage in violent jihad" has been named as the eighth suspect in a North Carolina terrorism case, according to court documents released Monday.
Jude Kenan Mohammad is charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons in a foreign country, according to a newly unsealed indictment...
[GWOT]
READ MORE
Holder Opts For a Witch Hunt
Attorney General Eric Holder report edly will appoint a special prosecutor to bring cases against low-level CIA officers and contractors who questioned post-9/11 terrorist suspects.
It's a move we'll likely regret. Not least because such cases may lead agents to be overly soft on future suspects, out of fear of prosecution. That could lead to missed chances to get potentially life-saving information...
READ MORE
Drop the Investigation of CIA Interrogators
.
"We’re going to follow the evidence wherever it takes us, follow the law wherever that takes us.” So decreed Attorney General Eric Holder in April when asked whether government officials would face prosecution over coercive interrogation tactics used against terrorist detainees. After all, he elaborated, “no one is above the law.”
Tell that to the voters in Philadelphia who were threatened by nightstick-wielding Obama supporters from the New Black Panther Party. The Panthers got a pass even after they contemptuously ignored court process and even after the government already had prevailed in the case because of their default.
For the Obama/Holder Justice Department, other considerations outweighed following the evidence wherever it led. The Panthers who turned out to be above the law include Jerry Jackson, a credentialed Democratic-party poll-watcher who brays on MySpace about “Killing Crakkkas.” Thanks to Holder’s decision, Jackson is right back in business, having obtained new poll-watcher credentials just days after DOJ dismissed the case.
The CIA interrogators are having a rougher time with prosecutors than did the Black Panthers. They are retaining counsel and preparing for a lengthy investigation that likely will prove personally and professionally ruinous. The Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend that Holder is close to naming a prosecutor to probe whether the agency and its officers committed criminal misconduct.
The interrogators — whose use of harsh tactics resulted in the capture of leading jihadists, the disruption of mass-murder plots, and the saving of American lives — are in a different posture from that of Binyam Mohammed.
Mohammed was a leading jihadist who had been plotting some of those disrupted mass-murder attacks that were to take place in American cities. He was slated for prosecution by military commission. But it turned out that he was above the law, too...
[Sickening but necessary to be aware of > ]
READ MORE
POLL: Americans See More Enemies Than Friends In Middle East
Americans remain skeptical of most of those countries eight years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks as one war in the region winds down and another one intensifies.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia fare best in the eyes of many Americans, while Iran continues to be viewed as America’s number one enemy in the region.
Of course, none of the Islamic countries comes close to the positive feelings most adults here have toward Israel.
Even as U.S. troops draw down in that country, 64% of U.S. voters say the war in Iraq is not over.
Forty percent (40%) of adults say Afghanistan is a U.S. enemy, as the Obama administration shifts more troops into the country to fight the revitalized radical Islamic Taliban there. Only 15% see Afghanistan as an ally and 39% as somewhere in between the two.
Voters oppose direct peace negotiations with the Taliban for now, and 83% expect the president will have to send more U.S. troops into Afghanistan in the next year or so.
Seventy percent (70%) of Americans say Israel is a U.S. ally, nearly twice the finding for Egypt, the most highly regarded Islamic country. Only eight percent (8%) of Americans say Israel is an enemy, and 16% put it somewhere in between.
Eighty-one percent (81%) of U.S. voters believe Palestinian leaders must recognize Israel’s right to exist as part of any Middle Eastern peace agreement.
READ MORE
US senators press Obama on Arab peace role
"We would like to understand what steps you are urging Arab states to take and what your expectations are from Arab states in the coming weeks and months,"
more than 70 of the 100 senators said in the message to the president.
"We also hope that you will continue to press Arab leaders to consider dramatic gestures toward Israel"
The US lawmakers also urged Arab leaders to end the Arab League boycott of Israel, meet openly with Israeli officials, boost trade relations with Israel, issue visas to Israeli citizens and invite Israelis to take part in academic and professional conferences, as well as sporting events.
"We also believe that Arab states must immediately and permanently end official propaganda campaigns which demonize Israel and Jews,"
READ MORE
More Obama PR will not a successful Mideast policy make
After running into a dead end in its efforts to jump-start Middle East peace talks, the Obama administration has signaled that it has evaluated the situation and understands that not all is well.
But instead of a course correction, senior administration officials have decided that what they need to do is to deploy their most effective weapon - the rhetorical brilliance of President Barack Obama - {wait for it} - ... on a recalcitrant state of Israel...
READ MORE
VENEZUELA'S BRAIN DRAIN
When they first elected him in 1998, Venezuelans hoped that Hugo Chávez would be a healer. Instead, they got a tyrant who seizes private companies and farms and harasses political opponents.
Now after a decade of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, tens of thousands of disillusioned Venezuelan professionals have had enough. An estimated one million Venezuelans have moved away since Chávez took power, says Newsweek.
The exodus is sabotaging the country's future and no industry has been harder hit than Venezuela's oil sector: [snip]
Much of the same is happening in the Axis of Hugo, the states following Chávez. Leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua are rewriting their constitutions, intimidating the media and stoking class and ethnic conflicts.
The result? More flight:
- More than one in three Bolivians under 30 have plans to emigrate, up from 12 percent a decade ago.
- Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have all fallen in the World Economic Forum's competitiveness index.
- Fitch Ratings, which analyzes credit risk, recently demoted Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador to junk status.
READ MORE
UNTANGLING THE SPAGHETTI
What’s the end-game here? I suppose it’s conceivable that there are a few remaining suckers out there who still believe Barack Obama is the great post-partisan, fiscally responsible, pragmatic centrist he played so beguilingly just a year ago. The New York Times’ David Brooks stuck it out longer than most: Only a few backs, he was giddy with excitement over the President’s “education” “reforms” (whatever they were).
But now he says we’re in “the early stages of the liberal suicide march”. For a famously moderate moderate, Mr Brooks seems to have gone from irrational optimism over the Democrats’ victory to irrational optimism over the Democrats’ impending downfall without the intervening stage of rational pessimism.
The end-game is very obvious. If you expand the bureaucratic class and you expand the dependent class, you can put together a permanent electoral majority.
By “dependent”, I don’t mean merely welfare, although that’s a good illustration of the general principle. In political terms, a welfare check is a twofer: you’re assuring the votes both of the welfare recipient and of the vast bureaucracy required to manage his welfare.
But extend that principle further, to the point where government intrudes into everything: a vast population is receiving more from government (in the form of health care or education subventions) than it thinks it contributes, while another vast population is managing the ever expanding regulatory regime (a federal energy-efficiency code, a government health bureaucracy) and another vast population remains, nominally, in the private sector but, de facto, dependent on government patronage of one form or another.
Either way, what you get from government – whether in the form of a government paycheck, a government benefit or a government contract – is a central fact of your life....
[Q: How can we control a government a majority is dependent on? A: We can't.]
READ MORE
Soaring deficit may defy forecasts
Stagnant unemployment, shrinking tax revenue and a struggling economy threaten to quadruple the size of last year's federal budget deficit, raising more questions about the timing of costly proposals to overhaul health care.
As the White House and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prepare to release new deficit estimates this month, several economists say the news is likely to be as bad as or worse than forecasts.
"They have just a nightmare in terms of these health care bills, which do nothing but make things worse."
predicts former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin...
READ MORE
71% Say Obama’s Policies Have Driven Up Deficit
Only five percent (5%) say the president’s policies have cut the deficit, and 10% say they have had no impact. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.
Not surprisingly, 88% of Republicans blame the president’s policies, compared to 52% of Democrats.
But 79% of voters not affiliated with either party agree.
Eighty-one percent (81%) of voters now say the bigger problem for the United States today is not voters’ unwillingness to pay enough in taxes but is instead the unwillingness of politicians to control government spending...
READ MORE
Washington piles on the spending
This year, millions of Americans accepted a salary freeze or even a pay cut so they could keep their jobs. They ought to be asking why the federal government isn’t willing to make a similar sacrifice.
Even though faced with declining tax receipts and increased borrowing, lawmakers and President Barack Obama have ramped up federal spending — and not just temporary spending. They intend to make this year’s big increases permanent... [snip]
The pity is that a balanced budget could be within reach. If lawmakers would return to the level of spending they maintained throughout the 1980s and ’90s ($21,000 per household, adjusted for inflation), we could balance the budget by 2012 without raising taxes.
Doing this would require discipline, of course. That’s why lawmakers should pass a strong Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights. TABOR, as it’s known, would help curb spending by limiting the growth of federal spending to the inflation rate plus population growth. That would save taxpayers trillions of dollars in the years ahead.
In these difficult times, with everyone cutting back, Americans ought to expect their government to do so as well. With a Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, our government can reduce spending, balance its budget and start encouraging growth again. It’s an idea that’s long overdue.
READ MORE
DETROIT SCHOOLS ON THE BRINK: BANKRUPTCY MAY BE REQUIRED TO GAIN CONTROL OF COSTS
Detroit's public-school system, beset by massive deficits and widespread corruption, is on the brink of entering bankruptcy court. A decision on whether to file for protection under federal bankruptcy laws will be made by the end of summer. Such a filing would be unprecedented in the United States, says the Wall Street Journal.
In Detroit -- where U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan dubbed the school system a "national disgrace" this spring -- lawmakers and bankruptcy experts see few alternatives, given the deep financial challenges confronting the district and the state.
As with General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, bankruptcy may not be the worst thing for Detroit's schools:
- A filing under Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code, which covers public entities like school districts and municipalities, would allow the district to put major creditors such as textbook publishers, private bus operators and the local gas-and-electric utility in line for payment.
- It also would give Robert Bobb, Detroit Public Schools' emergency financial manager, broad latitude to tear up union contracts without protracted negotiations.
- However, a filing also could also hurt the district's debt rating and ability to float bonds.
READ MORE
Black Panther case expands
Even if the liberal media continue to ignore it, the Justice Department's dismissal of a voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party is a full-blown scandal. Fortunately, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is pursuing justice even though the Department of Justice is not.
As reported in our news pages last Friday, the commission has sent a strongly worded letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., effectively threatening to subpoena witnesses and documents if Justice does not provide better, more complete answers about its decision to dismiss the cases.
"We believe the Department's defense of its actions thus far undermines respect for rule of law," wrote the commission, "and raises other serious questions about the department's law enforcement decisions."
The case involves a nationally broadcast incident in which two Black Panthers in paramilitary garb, one of them wielding a nightstick, stood outside a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day in November. They were uttering racial epithets and otherwise discouraging voting.
Career attorneys at the Justice Department won a default judgment against both Black Panthers, plus a national Panther leader and the party as a whole -- but at the last minute, Obama appointees at Justice dismissed all the charges...
READ MORE
FLASHBACKs >
- What is DOJ hiding in the New Black Panther case?
- Return of the Black Panther
- U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Demands Answers on Voter Intimidation Case Dismissal
MSNBC Anchor: ''Socialist' Is Becoming the New N-word'
Did you know that when you refer to someone as a socialist, you're really calling them the N-word? Such an astonishing hypothesis was offered by MSNBC's Carlos Watson Monday in a segment he refers to as "The 'C' Note."
Potentially even more shocking, after Watson offered this seemingly absurd opinion, Mort Zuckerman actually agreed with him ...
[How to tie dissent against socialism to racism. First: demonize your enemy...]
READ MORE
Some logic and horse sense
I see where several intellectuals in Massachusetts want to form a committee to explore racial harmony following the recent arrest of a Harvard professor.
In an effort to enhance my public-spiritedness, I decided to organize my own committee to analyze how confrontations between supposed adults of all races can best be avoided. Here is what my committee determined by applying a complex blend of common horse sense and elementary logic.
If your home has been previously targeted by potential burglars, it's wise not to try breaking into it in full view of a neighbor who doesn't recognize you but cares enough to summon police.
When the responding officer arrives to investigate a possible burglary in progress, simply invite him inside. Then smile and offer thanks for his putting himself in a potentially threatening situation because he was trying to stop an intruder from ransacking your home.
Do not immediately judge the officer's arrival to protect you and your home as "profiling" just because he's of a different race.
Instead, offer him a beer...
[More, all at no cost to the taxpayer.]
Now where does my committee collect its grant?
[Figures. Scratch that last...]
READ MORE
Trinkets that stick it to Obama start to sell
In the political paraphernalia department, "Yes, we can" is becoming "No, he can't."
Anti-Obama memorabilia -- from T-shirts to bumper stickers to buttons -- is increasingly emerging in the marketplace as the president's economic and health care policies polarize supporters and detractors.
While "Mama for Obama" was a popular slogan during the 2008 election cycle, that design has been retooled with angry and fickle disenchantment: "To the Mama for Obama -- thanks for the tax hike."
The "Audacity of Hope," the title of Mr. Obama's popular book, has been replaced by the "Audacity of Hype." 
Whereas we had the campaign of Obama centered around hope, now they're asking: 'How's that hopey-changey thing going?' "
The Cafepress.com store, a cultural barometer of sorts for political and social expression, offers about 3 million Obama products, she said, but now is up to about 1 million that are "anti-Obama-oriented," reflecting a "significant shift in the last couple of months than what was the trend a year ago."
READ MORE
