Subject: txt 1st gwot nsec owg -
"For his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
That's what the man said.
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Friday, October 9, 2009
Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
That's what the man said.
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The Big Con Game
How can the establishment media and the Democrats say the Baucus Bill scored well and is cost positive health care legislation? By running a con game, of course
Yesterday, the CBO scored the Senate’s version of Health Care, the Baucus bill. The verdict: the bill will cost $829 billion yet knock $81 billion off the federal deficit. How does an $800 billion plus program save $81 billion dollars?
Does that make sense to you?
CBO also 'concluded' the bill would eventually insure an additional 29 million people. Putting aside the millions that would be left without coverage (wasn't that we were told was the point to all this pain?), napkin math suggests that our government is proposing covering them at the bargin rate of $27,586, a year, each.
And that's assuming that they're somehow going to magically decrease Medicare 'waste and fraud' by 400 billion.
Does anyone actually believe that?
Democrats plan on paying for this socialistic monstrosity through massive ($506 billion as listed in the fine print) and massive tax increasescuts to Medicare (more than $400 billion) at the same time they massively expand enrollment into Medicaid (the health care program for the "poor", causing an even more costly unfunded mandate on fiscally strapped states).
I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that the Baucus Bill is only a draft outline and is not written with detailed legislative language. Yet, the supposedly non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored it. Why? Did it have something to do with the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, being called into the White House in July for a closed door meeting with Obama?
Don't forget folks, the CBO historically underestimates the cost of legislation. Their cost projections should really be starting points. Remember, the CBO years ago said Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990. It ended up being $107 billion – nine times the government estimate.
So, that $829 BILLION cost projection for the Baucus bill will realistically end up a whole lot more... [snip]
Welcome to Communism -- spreading the wealth, confiscation of income through massive taxation, mandated participation, and government control over your very life...all under the watchful eye of Big Brother...
[Most insulting is the 400 billion in Medicare fraud & waste 'savings' factored into that number. If it were possible why haven't they done it already? Do it now a.s.a.p. independent of an 'overhaul' bill?
It should be tacked on to 800B cost to bring us to >1.2Trillion - now multiply that by nine...
It's all a pipe dream: its never had anything to do with health 'care' - it's a ploy to force the populace into government dependency, period.]
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Reid, Democrats will write real health care bill behind closed doors
Subject: txt 1st hcare -
That much-ballyhooed Baucus version of Obamacare is irrelevant, according to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will write the real Senate version of Obamacare and he will do it in secret.
''This partisan Finance Committee proposal will never see the Senate floor since the real bill will be written by Democrat leaders in a closed- to-the- public conference room somewhere in the Capitol,''
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Harry Reid's Scheme to Ram ObamaCare Through Congress
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CNSNews.com that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is planning to hitch a health care reform bill on to an unrelated tax bill which passed out of the House of Representatives earlier this year.
[MP3 audio here, view embedded video [above]]
Explained Bozell :
"Instead of having a debate in the House and the Senate and giving a bill to the president, you're going to get Harry Reid's bill, passed by the Senate, by the Democrats... immediately rubber-stamping it, no debate, no House-Senate conference, no Republican discussion, and it goes right to the president for his signature, and oh, by the way, no one knows what's in it. "
You can check out the October 7 story by CNSNews.com's Nicholas Ballasy here
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Watching the Constitution Disappear
The President says the Constitution is defective, and now Senator Harry Reid is preparing the coup de grace
Once Reid and Obama emerge from their transparent closed-door consultations on how to blend the two competing Senate Health Care bills, Senator Reid has a nifty parlor trick up his sleeve. The normal course of legislative events would be to debate and vote on the bill on the Senate floor, and then send the result to a House-Senate conference committee. The committee would then blend the final House and Senate bills into a product acceptable to both houses.
Unfortunately for the citizens of the United States, that normal course of events in this case would allow too much time for discovery and discussion, and it might therefore result in the public learning too much about the future of their health care. Extended public inspection might even result in the bill not passing in the form desired by the President and his allies, or perhaps not passing at all.
The American people have consistently rejected the left's attempts over the past fifty years or more to impose their idea of health care reform, and might do so yet again if given enough time and information. For Obama and his fellow travelers, therefore, time and obfuscation are of the essence, so why let an annoying and "defective" piece of paper like the Constitution get in the way and risk the people spiking government health care once again.
The plan to railroad Obamacare through was initially reported last week by Human Events and The Heritage Foundation, and has now been confirmed by Senator Reid's office.
Here is Senator Reid's plan in a nutshell, from CNS News:
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Denied
Medicare's Smoking Gun...
Investors Business Daily has put out an editorial expanding on the recently publicized report by the American Medical Association on Medicare claim denial.
From investors.com:
As for denial of care, Medicare, which we've described as the government's public option for senior citizens, has the highest denial rate in the country, according to the American Medical Association's 2008 National Health Insurer Report Card.
From March 1, 2007, to March 10 of last year, Medicare rejected 475,566 of 6.94 million claims for a rate of 6.85%.
Aetna was the only private insurer that had a similar number, denying 43,317 of 637,239 claims for a rate of 6.8%. But the average of seven carriers was 4.05% including Aetna. Dropping Aetna as an outlier takes the private sector insurance denial rate down to 3.08%.
[Snip]
The lesson here is that a government program, even one as beloved as Medicare, is only half as efficient, or half as caring, or half of both than private coverage.
Medicare even denies claims due to [gasp] pre-existing conditions.
Now I know there are people out there who cannot be swayed by all the evidence in the world (and the world is full of evidence against socialist health care). I know there are politicians who want to pass a health care bill to consolidate political power.
But at some point don’t facts have to convince a majority of congressmen and constituents alike that any federalization of health care is a bad idea?
Reality is screaming “stop!” on the health care overhaul. Will America listen?
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Mayo unit no longer to accept Medicare
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One of the Mayo Clinic's two family-medicine practices in Arizona soon will stop accepting Medicare, leaving thousands of patients to pay out of pocket for routine doctor's visits or find a new physician.
Hospital officials called the new policy is necessary because of low Medicare reimbursement rates...
[And the health 'care' bills plan to 'save' another 400 Billion dollars? What do they think the response from that industry will be?]
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Top Troop Request Exceeds 60,000
[HT:MD]Subject: txt gwot -
WASHINGTON -- The request for troops sent to President Barack Obama by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan includes three different options, with the largest alternative including a request for more than 60,000 troops, according to a U.S. official familiar with the document.
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Obama to Send Enough Troops to Keep Al Qaeda 'at Bay'
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Washington - President Obama is inclined to send only as many more U.S. troops to Afghanistan as are needed to keep Al Qaeda at bay, a senior administration official said.
The official also added that the president is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan's political future.
The assessment comes from an official who has been involved in the president's discussions with his war council about Afghanistan strategy.
[LDot: "How about killing them. How's killing them work for 'ya"]
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Troops In Afghanistan Keep Nightmare At Bay
[HT:DH]
I saw the kind of society the Taliban made in Afghanistan.
Those of us who did remember it as a nightmare no people should live again. Women could not work or attend school. They could not so much as walk outside without a male relative. We met women who said they had prepared to commit suicide, because they had no hope of change. The world tut-tutted when the Taliban did things like destroy the enormous Buddha statues in Bamiyan. But after feeling briefly ennobled, the world would turn away.
We did a story about the Kabul soccer stadium. The groundskeeper there recalled how on Friday afternoons, Talibs with guns and whips rounded up people on the streets, herded them into the stadium and locked the doors. They would parade a couple of dozen prisoners across the field, and denounce them by name and crime: theft, adultery or heresy. Then, they strung them from the soccer goal posts and — I choose to be blunt about this — chopped off their hands or feet to bleed their lives away in the grass.
Today, political corruption, tribal rivalries and violence against women still afflict Afghanistan. But there are millions of women in school and at work. Women are in the Afghan parliament. There are numerous allegations of vote fraud in the recent election, but there are political parties and free press to pursue them. It is hard to weigh the crime of vote fraud against the kind of people who chop off limbs in soccer stadiums.
It was the crime of al-Qaida terrorists, whom the Taliban let use Afghanistan, that brought the U.S. and NATO there. But even if al-Qaida now hides in the hills of Pakistan, for many of us who saw the Taliban's brutal and bloody abuse of their own people, it would seem another crime to let such murderers take power again.
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The Afghan boys groomed as Taliban suicide bombers: Next stop Britain?
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Two Afghan boys who were groomed by the Taliban to become suicide bombers revealed their determination to reach Britain today as they faced eviction from a notorious refugee camp in Calais.
The 12-year-olds are among 2,000 migrants who spent the weekend praying and dancing as they waited for bulldozers to move in to clear the site dubbed The Jungle...
[The Taliban will again make Afghanistan a petri dish from which terrorism will eventual spill over - did 9/11 teach us nothing?]
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MSM View on Afghanistan Depends on Who's President
Subject: txt gwot msm bias =
In January 2006, the Globe wrote that the "administration became so distracted with the Iraq war that it cooled in its efforts to diminish the Afghani drug trade." Later, in August of that same year, the Globe printed an op-ed from Rep. Barney Frank accusing the White House of "ignoring" violence in Afghanistan. Readers were continually told that US forces were "stretched thin" and the budget was too great a burden... [snip]
Yet, with Obama in office, the zeal to 'clean up' the MidEast has cooled. Gone was the need for swift action. In its place: a perpetual whine that Bush had made action impossible.
In August, as General McChrystal submitted a report with dire warnings of failure, the Globe kept playing Blame Bush for Everything and further lamented, "Our peace-promising president inherited a losing hand from his predecessor."
As August drifted into September and Obama still had no plan, the Globe spun this as the prudence of a master diplomat. They printed a quote from former President Clinton that Obama was "wise" to take it slow; there were elections coming up and important decisions to be made, so it was best for Obama to drag his feet.
Then news began to break that contradicted the election excuse - General Stanley McChrystal, Obama's hand picked leader of the Afghan mission, claimed that Obama wasn't talking to him at all.
Was the Globe worried about this? Not really.
On September 30, the Globe ran interference for Obama by printing an AP article that parroted spin from the White House. Suddenly, it was no longer acceptable for lawmakers to criticize a president's war policy; Congress is now just "game playing" for political points.
Apparently to the Globe, failure is in the eye of the beholder, and with their favorite politician in charge, failure is always someone else's fault...
[What bias?]
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With Obama as President, Media Not Interested in Casket Coverage
Subject: txt gwot nsec msm -
A lawsuit in April 2005 forced the release of hundreds of such photos. University of Delaware professor Ralph Begleiter, who brought the suit against the administration, citing the Freedom of Information Act, said of his victory would
"make it difficult, if not impossible, for any U.S. government in the future to hide the human cost of war from the American people."
Unless the government is controlled by Democrats, evidently.
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A Che Guevara Anniversary
Che Guevara's Whacking -- A Glorious Anniversary
Forty two years ago [yesterday], Ernesto "Che" Guevara got a major dose of his own medicine. Without trial he was declared a murderer, stood against a wall and shot. Historically speaking, justice has rarely been better served. If the saying "What goes around comes around" ever fit, it's here.
"When you saw the beaming look on Che's face as the victims were tied to the stake and blasted apart by the firing squad, you saw there was something seriously, seriously wrong with Che Guevara."
As commander of the La Cabana execution yard, Che often shattered the skull of the condemned man (or boy) by firing the coup de grace himself. When other duties tore him away from his beloved execution yard, he consoled himself by viewing the slaughter. Che's second-story office in La Cabana had a section of wall torn out so he could watch his darling firing-squads at work.
A Rumanian journalist named Stefan Bacie visited Cuba in early 1959 and was fortunate enough to get an audience with the already quasi-famous Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Upon entering Castro's chief executioner's office, Bacie noticed Che motioning him over to the office's newly constructed window. Bacie got there just in time to hear the command of FUEGO!, hear the blast from the firing squad and see a condemned prisoner crumple and convulse
The stricken journalist immediately left and composed a poem, titled, "I No Longer Sing of Che." ("I no longer sing of Che any more than I would of Stalin," go the first lines.) [snip]
Che's image is particularly ubiquitous on college campuses. But in the wrong places. He belongs in the marketing, PR and advertising departments. His lessons and history are fascinating and valuable, but only in light of P.T. Barnum.One born every minute...
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Energy Czar Raises Possibility Of EPA Implementing Cap-And-Trade
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There's more than one way to get cap-and-trade, President Obama's energy czar said today.
Carol Browner, the former Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) administrator who now serves in the Obama administration's newly created role of energy czar, floated the possibility today of the EPA implementing cap-and-trade energy policies, during an interview at The Atlantic's First Draft of History symposium in Washington, DC.
[Czars: they're just advisers, what's the harm?]
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Criminalizing everyone
Subject: txt lbrty bbro legal -
When there are so many laws that are vague, contradictory, and unfathomable, anyone can become a criminal if the state chooses to prosecute. America is too rapidly approaching this state, as a horrifying report from Brian W. Walsh of the Heritage Foundation in the Washington Times indicates.
As George Washington University law professor Stephen Saltzburg testified at the House hearing, cases like these "illustrate about as well as you can illustrate the overreach of federal criminal law."
The Cato Institute's Timothy Lynch, an expert on overcriminalization, called for "a clean line between lawful conduct and unlawful conduct."
A person should not be deemed a criminal unless that person "crossed over that line knowing what he or she was doing."
Seems like common sense, but apparently it isn't to some federal officials...
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See state bully day-care centers
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They are from the government, and they don’t want you to help.
Lisa Snyder’s neighbors in Middleville, Mich., left for work every morning before the school buses arrived. So she told her friends she’d watch their three kids at her house before school. She didn’t get paid for it. She didn’t get reimbursed for Cheerios or juice boxes. So what did Lisa get for her trouble?
Threatened with prosecution...
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State imposing host of new requirements on day-care providers
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Bay State [Mass.] bureaucrats are turning day-care centers into stringent schools, where homespun “educators” will soon be required to write progress reports on gurgling infants, prepare toddlers for the rigors of kindergarten and even brush every child’s teeth.
“It’s difficult for me to pay attention to all the children if I have to do all this,”
said Irina Zhadanousky of Newton, who currently spends the day reading, singing and playing...
[Doing what?!? Book-her Dano.
Actually when you think about it, anything but funny.]
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Democrats try to pack the courts
Obama and the Senate are emulating FDR
Democrats aren't satisfied with the one-party state in which they control Congress and the White House and can politicize the Justice Department and take over the banking and automotive industries. Now liberal Democrats are pushing a court-packing scheme as well.
A subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on the proposed Federal Judgeship Act of 2009 (S. 1653), which would create positions for 63 new federal judges - 51 in federal district courts and 12 in appeals courts. This proposal is nothing less than a sneaky equivalent of what President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried with his infamous court-packing power grab on the Supreme Court in 1937.
The only difference is that this attempt is more under the radar... [snip]
The Federal Judgeship Act of 2009 would add two new seats to that circuit before even filling the existing four vacancies. That makes no sense.
Here's a thought: If Congress really thinks the federal courts need more judgeships, why not write the law so that the new seats don't open up until after the next presidential election? That way, nobody would know which political side would benefit, and the assessment of how many new seats are needed and where would be based on merit alone rather than on partisan political considerations.
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The Cost of Debt
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"Because of its repeated efforts to stimulate the economy through fiscal policy**, Japan now faces a serious debt problem (Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio has nearly doubled in the last decade, rising from 0.58 in 1991 to 1.1 in 2000)."
Robert H. Rasche and Daniel L. Thorton
of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Long-Term US Federal Debt Projections ("Alternative" policy being more likely)
Source: General Accounting Office.
Percentage growth in real (inflation adjusted) GDP per capita from 1991 to 2000
In the US: 24%.
In France: 16%.
In Japan: 7%.
Source: Computed from US Statistical Abstract, Table 1306
[We did well - but now that we're following Japan's 'fiscal policy', **a.k.a., 'stimulus', what should we expect?
{Hint: think Einstein quotes...}]
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