YOU WANT A CRISIS?

Americans have been debating about the proposed universal health care bill. During this time, President Obama has stated over and over that it will be revenue neutral and that it will not increase the deficit.

While it's true that we have some obvious problems in our medical system, most Americans are satisfied with their health care. A majority sees no crisis to warrant a government takeover:

• The new polling shows that 80 percent of those with insurance rate their own coverage as good or excellent.

But when we get through the economic time that we're in right now, we're going to be confronted with an even bigger problem.

The first of the Baby Boomers started signing up for early retirement under Social Security last year and in two years they will start signing up for Medicare.

All told, 78 million people are going to stop working, stop paying taxes and start drawing benefits.

The problem is that neither Social Security, nor Medicare is ready for them.

And the federal government has made explicit and implicit promises to millions of people, but has put no money aside in order to keep those promises...

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image toon - mny sclm bbro - SSN + Medicare moon looks so close

THE THINGS BEING DONE TO BRING BACK HIGH GAS PRICES

A return to $4 a gallon gas -- or higher -- will be made even more certain if Congress and the President succeed in enacting a host of proposals to crack down on domestic energy supplies.

Instead, the federal government should support several pending pro-domestic energy measures that would help meet the nation's growing demand in the years ahead:

• Expand offshore and onshore oil production into previously restricted areas, including Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil lie beneath a few thousand acres that can be accessed with minimal environmental impact.
• Reduce the regulatory and legal delays that can slow and sometimes stop production.
• Allow further progress on oil shale.
• Prevent costly new anti-energy regulations from being imposed in the name of addressing global warming.

Such principles are contained in bills like the American Energy Innovation Act (H.R. 2828), the No Cost Stimulus Act (S. 570 and H.R. 1431) and the American Energy Act (H.R. 2846).

It should be obvious, but in Washington it is often not: discouraging domestic oil supplies with access restrictions, regulations, fees and taxes will add to the future price at the pump, while streamlining these impediments to increased production will do the opposite.

Congress and the President should be enacting measures that allow oil and gasoline to be as plentiful and affordable as possible to meet the nation's energy needs.

Instead, they are doing the opposite...

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AN INSIDE/OUTSIDE VIEW OF U.S. SCIENCE

This spring, Pew Research Center surveyed two groups of adults and members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The online survey sampled 10,000 AAAS members, excluding schoolteachers. According to the results, the public imagines scientists to be less politically partisan than they actually are, and scientists are decidedly more liberal than the general population:

• When how they seem themselves politically, 56 percent of scientists said they are liberal, two percent said conservative, while 42 percent didn't not classify with either ideology.
• When asked what party affiliation they subscribe to, most scientists answered Democrat (55 percent), 32 percent are Independents, six percent Republicans, four percent other and three percent declined to answer.

However, the public views scientists as having no political ideology (64 percent), eight percent didn't know, 20 percent said they were liberal and only nine percent answered conservative.

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Science Czar:Born Baby 'Will Ultimately Develop Into a Human Being'

President Obama’s top science adviser said in a book he co-authored in 1973 that a newborn child “will ultimately develop into a human being” if he or she is properly fed and socialized.

“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being,”

John P. Holdren

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image toon - bdd grn - John Holdren = Whitehouse Science Fiction adviso

Gun Rights Group Calls Out MSNBC for Claiming Gun-Carrying Protesters ‘Racist’

Following MSNBC coverage of ObamaCare protesters legally carrying guns, on Thursday, the Second Amendment Foundation condemned the liberal network for

"using deceptively-edited video from a Phoenix, Arizona anti-tax rally on Monday to invent a racial stereotype in its on-going effort to demonize and marginalize American firearms owners as ‘racists.’"

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FLASHBACK >

MSNBC: ObamaCare Protesters ‘Racist,’ Including Black Gun-Owner

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Bush Quietly Saved a Million African Lives

What if a president, on his own initiative, under no demands from staff or from supporters or opponents, set out to spend an unprecedented amount of money on AIDS in Africa, literally billions of dollars, at a time when the nation could not afford it, citing his faith as a primary motivation and, ultimately, saved more than a million lives?

[A: It would be ignored by the MSM, because he was of the 'wrong' party.]

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Bush Quietly Saved a Million African Lives

What if a president, on his own initiative, under no demands from staff or from supporters or opponents, set out to spend an unprecedented amount of money on AIDS in Africa, literally billions of dollars, at a time when the nation could not afford it, citing his faith as a primary motivation and, ultimately, saved more than a million lives?

[A: It would be ignored by the MSM, because he was of the 'wrong' party.]

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Sharpton Alarmed by Potential Reconciliation Between Gates and Crowley

That Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police sergeant James Crowley may attend a baseball game together has the Rev. Al Sharpton concerned.

SHARPTON: Let me start out by asking you, where, what is the status with Dr. Gates? You're his lawyer. Some people feel like we've made enough conciliations. I'm reading now he's talking about going to the ballgame with Sgt. Crowley. I need not tell you, some of us are saying that, wait a minute, enough is enough. What's going on here?

This from a man of the cloth, no less.

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Congressman Tells O'Donnell 'You're Illustrating Why MSNBC's Viewership Is In the Tank'

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell for the second time in eight days bullied a guest he was interviewing, but this time the person on the receiving end really let him have it.

As previously reported, O'Donnell last Thursday, while subbing for Ed Schultz on that evening's "The Ed Show," continually talked over his guest Peter Schiff and basically never let him answer any questions.

On Friday, O'Donnell, who was sitting in for Chris Matthews on "Hardball," tried the same tactic with Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.), but this time his guest struck back:

"You know, Lawrence, for your listeners, you're illustrating why MSNBC's viewership is in the tank because you don't allow your people you're interviewing to answer questions. And, you know Lawrence, this is why Katie and everybody else is going to the Internet because why listen to MSNBC when you won't even let the people you're interviewing answer the question?"

Bravo, Congressman.

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image photo - fnn - Sign = no trespassing Enter

image toon - hcare 1st mny = Natl Debt 800lb gorrilla in hcare town hall

What Media Won't Tell You About ObamaCare: It WILL Hurt Seniors

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There's a dirty little secret about ObamaCare the Left and their media minions are immorally hiding from the public: the plan in its current form will definitely harm senior citizens.

Of course, it's understandable politicians are comfortable not telling such a large voting bloc the truth. Just ask Machiavelli.

But the facts revealed by the Wall Street Journal Friday would be in virtually every report about this issue if we indeed had an honest media as opposed to advocacy journalists misrepresenting reality in order to advance an agenda they support (h/t Keith Rasmussen):

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Healthcare and the Resourceful Poor

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The real problem holding back the poor in the world today is not discrimination and racism; it is the tax bite and the regulatory bite and the credentials bite of the liberal welfare/regulatory state

The minute that you propose to touch a penny of the trillions of our money that liberals spend on their patronage state, the cry from the modern Tapers and Tadpoles goes up: You are balancing the budget on the backs of the poor! Everyone knows that the poor are helpless, and that without government programs the poor would go to the wall, or worse.

But are they?

We have seen James Tooley in The Beautiful Tree describe how the Third World poor pay for the education of their children when the government schools are no good. Then there is Dr. Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh and his Off the Books: The Underground Economy and the Urban Poor. He describes the urban poor African-Americans of Maquis Park on Chicago's South Side.

They appear to be anything but helpless. [snip]

The big problem of the modern poor is that they can't afford to go legit. The system is set up to force them outside the law. For the employer, it's the tax bite that cranks up the costs of labor. For the would-be employee, a legitimate job in the private sector would terminate welfare or disability payments.

The same problem was faced by the school entrepreneurs in James Tooley's Beautiful Tree. The only way they could keep their schools open was by bribing the city inspectors.

The poor are resourceful and they have the will to make it. But they can't afford to pay full freight on all the bells and whistles that the modern state hangs onto every product sale and every employee labor hour. When you insist on all that stuff then the poor have to go off the books.

Then they become victims of the police, the politicians, and the gangs.

Yet our liberal friends are even now straining every sinew to increase taxes, regulations so they can give us health care. It's a pity that the increased bite will make it even more difficult for the poor to go legit.

Here's a mad conservative vision. Imagine a world in which the poor got a few breaks. Imagine an America where the cost of government was radically smaller, and they didn't have to go off the books to hide from the tax bite, the regulation bite, and the credentials bite.

Then maybe they could support themselves instead of living as wards of the state on the liberal plantation.

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Not all Libs push astroturf canard

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Not everyone on the left is in denial of the town hall protests and propagating the notion that any opposition to ObamaCare is manufactured "Astroturf" from the right.

Former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, now a Bloomberg TV contributor, said that the issue of public sentiment isn't settled.

"I think it's still a toss-up ball quite frankly. I think everybody is looking to see who gets to be on the offensive and there is a critical effort on both sides to do that.

Whoever is usually on the offensive as you go into the legislative fight is the winner. And so, that's really the key - who can be on the offensive as we go through the next critical weeks."

Daschle said on Bloomberg TV Aug. 11.

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REPUBLICAN HEALTH CARE IDEAS

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Two interesting GOP proposals have been offered from opposite ends of the Republican ideological spectrum -- conservative and moderate.

They differ in one major way. Conservatives would end employer-based health care, while moderates would keep it. But both are aimed at using free-market competition to lower costs and make private insurance more affordable to businesses and individuals.

The conservative health care proposal has been offered in the House by Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) and in the Senate by Richard Burr (N.C.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.).

The moderate plan has been proposed by Reps. Mark Kirk (Ill.) and Charlie Dent (Pa.) and reportedly will form the basis of a full-blown GOP alternative developed by the GOP Health Care Solutions Group headed by Rep. Roy Blunt (Mo.), but not yet unveiled.

• The Ryan-Burr proposal would allow employees to opt out of their employer-based insurance plan and get a $5,000-per-family tax credit to buy health insurance or pay medical bills.
• It would also allow individuals and businesses to form pools and buy insurance anywhere in the country, not just in the state where they live.
• This will greatly expand the choices of coverage available to consumers and will also encourage broader competition and diversity among insurers.
• Along with practically every other plan, Democratic and Republican, the conservative plan would require insurance companies to offer insurance regardless of a person's pre-existing medical condition.

Meanwhile:

• Kirk and Dent's Medical Rights and Reform Act is designed to lower the cost of insurance policies through legal reform -- which will reduce the expensive practice of "defensive medicine" -- and also create interstate pools.

Both the conservative and moderate plans would allow low-income Medicaid patients to get vouchers to buy private insurance and encourage states to experiment with insurance market reforms.

Source: Mort Kondracke, "GOP has health care ideas. Why not fight for them?"

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"SUPPORT RYAN-BURR, KIRK-DENT PROPOSALS "


Senate-Reid: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
House-Pelosi: http://speaker.house.gov/contact/
YOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
YOUR Congressman: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml

or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...

and as always, pass it on...

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image toon - hcare = patient v doctors broken legs over healthcare law suits

US Pentagon thinks small for forces overhaul

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THE Pentagon yesterday unveiled a sweeping overhaul of its weapons priorities to prepare the US military to fight unconventional conflicts such as those in Afghanistan rather than against China, Russia or other major powers.

[Exactly what China, Russia or other major powers don't need to hear.]

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"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese."

Former French President Charles De Gaulle.

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With Obama In Office Kossacks Not So Worried About War

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When George W. Bush was in the White House, one of the leading anti-war voices in the nation was the ultra-liberal website Daily Kos.

Now that Barack Obama is President, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mysteriously no longer of such great concern to the Nutroots.

I guess the anti-war movement was much more about getting Bush out of office than getting our troops out of harm's way.

Such was reported by the Washington Examiner's Byron York Tuesday (h/t Paul Chesser):

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image toon gwot nsec msm reps = Oby against detention - except when he wants it

Lieberman: Fatah 'burying' any chance of peace in coming years

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The political platform formulated at the Fatah General Assembly in Bethlehem, combined with unrest in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, ''has buried any chance of coming to an agreement with the Palestinians in the next few years,'' Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday.

''the Palestinians' uncompromising, extremist positions on Jerusalem, right of return, and settlements are making a gap between us that can't be bridged.''

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With whom is Israel supposed to cut a two state deal?

[HT:NW].
According to President Obama's vision of a two-state solution, Israel must conclude a peace agreement with Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas.

But Fatah, at this week's party convention, took a leaf from Arafat's playbook and decided that it wouldn't even start negotiations until Israel completely withdraws to the pre-1967 lines, releases all Palestinian terrorist prisoners, and imposes an absolute construction freeze not only in West Bank settlements, but in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. And Fatah went on to give its full support to its terrorist wing, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, launched close relations with Iran, and demanded an absolute "right of return" to Israel for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

As if this weren't enough of an obstacle in the peace process, Hamas -- dedicated to Israel's total elimination -- has been ruling Gaza for the last two years and is not about to change its spots or its grip on half of what is supposed to become the state of Palestine.

And to complicate things even further, a Qaeda-offshoot group, known as the "Warriors of God," has emerged in recent weeks in Gaza, intent on folding all Palestinian areas into an Islamist Caliphate across the entire Middle East. At week's end, this group fought a pitched battle with Hamas from a mosque in Rafah, Gaza, which according to latest dispatches left two dozen people dead and 100 injured.

So, President Obama, with whom exactly is Israel supposed to reach a two-state agreement?

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"The quickest way to end a war is to lose it".

- George Orwell

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image toon gwot israel - Hamas truce = reload

THE NEW FEDERAL TOBACCO TAX

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Congress increased the federal tax on cigarettes by 61 cents per pack and raised the tax on other tobacco products.

According to the U.S. Department of Treasury, the resulting tax increase was much higher on some forms of tobacco:

• For large cigars, the federal tax increased 725 percent per cigar, from about a nickel to 40 cents.
• For loose tobacco, the tax increased 2,160 percent.
• For small cigars, it increased 2,653 percent

S-CHIP will now cover up to four million additional children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence that not only will these tax hikes harm poor consumers and small businesses, they will fail to deliver the promised government revenues or public health benefits.

Using excise taxes to fund S-CHIP is especially problematic, since the percentage of the population using tobacco products is shrinking, while the number of children eligible for S-CHIP coverage is growing.

According to Heritage Foundation projections, the federal government will need 22.4 million new smokers by 2017 to pay for the S-CHIP expansion.

This means that Congress will likely have to raise other taxes to cover the $33 billion estimated annual cost of the S-CHIP expansion...

[It's call 'hook-&-reel'; Start a program on the backs of a demonized minority, and when that funding dries up you're now in a much better position to get general funding to foot the bill to avoid 'loosing' what's in hand.

Duped again.]

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