Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Reid Bill Says Future Congresses Cannot Repeal Parts of Reid Bill
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It's right there on page 1020.
Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) pointed out some rather astounding language in the Senate health care bill during floor remarks tonight. First, he noted that there are a number of changes to Senate rules in the bill--and it's supposed to take a 2/3 vote to change the rules.
And then he pointed out that the Reid bill declares on page 1020 that the Independent Medicare Advisory Board cannot be repealed by future Congresses...
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PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: 'Death panels'
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"Death panels."
Her assertion
— that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care —spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings.
Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, "Death panels? Really?"
[Amazing. Worse, a year from now most TV news consumers will remember the 'lie award' more than they'll remember she was and is right.
Don't believe? Read the top/1st post again...]
And then he pointed out that the Reid bill declares on page 1020 that the Independent Medicare Advisory Board cannot be repealed by future Congresses...
Don't bother
Bribing and Blackmailing for Historic Change
Subject: txt 1st hcare crpt reps libs - bdd - 
Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn provided the best description of the Congressional goings-on: ''This process is not legislation. This process is corruption.'' Corruption is the only way to describe the outrageous behavior on display in the United States Capitol...
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POLL: Nearly 60 percent Say President Obama’s Decisions ‘Bad for America’
Subject: txt libs mny hcare grn othr gdd -
A majority of Americans believe an increased government role in health care would lead to more government corruption, while a plurality of Americans think that scientific data supporting man-made global warming is “mostly falsified.” That is what a new poll by Survey USA reveals.
The poll also shows that 58 percent of Americans believe that decisions by the Obama administration have been “bad for America,” as opposed to 37 percent who think Obama’s decisions have been “good for America.”
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Obama Doesn't Care
Subject: txt 1st hcare -
The Senate health care "reform" bill that now has 60 votes and could pass by the end of this week is 2,074 pages long. And President Obama claims to know what's in it. Sort of.
The ideas are in there, we're told. Whatever they are.
Moments later, Obama urged senators to not sweat the details and just pass the bill...
[Health 'care' has never been the real objective, hence anything will do. It's about power, transfered from you to government.]
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Media Bash GOP 'Stalling', Praised Democrats for Fighting Bush
[Meanwhile, in our unbiased professional media...]
While Republican Senators work to slow down the full-blast freight train called ObamaCare from being passed before year's end, the media have predictably reported their efforts as partisan stalling.
How helpful for President Obama to have the media on his side. During the Bush administration when the proverbial shoe was on the other foot, Democrats were cast as brave dissenters who united in the fight against Republican agendas.
Back in 2005 when President Bush proposed a plan to reform the near-bankrupt Social Security program, Democrat Senators organized rallies to hold the line against any hint of privatization. The media promoted polling data that showed weak support for the plan and spun the results that favored Bush as a product of Republican propaganda.
On March 15, 2005, the Washington Post published a front-page attack on privatization that worked hard to claim any support was a result of fear-mongering...
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Ok, way late - taking a short cut {albeit worthwhile}, apologies, bon appetit, etc. etc.]
Obama And His Appointees Dismantling US
BY HERB DENENBERG, FOR THE BULLETIN
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009
President Barack Hussein Obama is proceeding to destroy America and has opened up a six-front war to do so:
1. He has a Democratic controlled Congress that is willing to rubber-stamp his wildest schemes, without even reading them…as we’ve already seen. The Democratic Party is now aiding and abetting the demeaning and destruction of America and has become the voice of leftist extremism. The moderates have disappeared or been transformed, issuing only occasional squeaking and whining before following the liberal party line drawn by Mr. Obama. Where have all the Democratic moderates gone?
2. Mr. Obama has immense executive authority, which he has already used to damage the country. One notable example is his decision to try terrorists in New York City, thereby giving the terrorists the premier platform to broadcast their propaganda and recruit Islamic radicals to their cause. Another example is cap and trade by fiat of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), rather than Congressional action.
3. He is filling the White House, the executive branch and the court system with an army of radicals, socialists, Communists, Marxists, Maoists, and America-haters. The most outrageous example was Van Jones, the avowed Communist and believer that 9/11 was an American plot fashioned by President George W. Bush. Van Jones wasn’t too much of an extremist for the White House; in fact, he was loved and respected as a key White House adviser, Valerie Jarrett publicly proclaimed at the time of his appointment. But, he was too extreme even for the mainstream media to cover-up and swallow. But, don’t kid yourself – extremists like that are the rule, not the exception in Mr. Obama’s world.
4. He stands ready to commit the U.S. to radical international treaties that will bleed away American sovereignty and commit the nation to destructive policies. Watch what happens in Copenhagen, and watch the directions of Mr. Obama in matters of international laws and treaties. He has made it obvious he is more interested in pleasing the international community than in protecting the citizens of America. Couple that with his penchant for bootlicking our enemies, apologizing for America, and kicking around and betraying our allies and you have a prescription for international disaster. Note the betrayal of Poland and Czechoslovakia by his withdrawal of missile defense from those two important allies. He did so to appease Russia, again bootlicking enemies while betraying allies.
5. Mr. Obama seems ready to do anything to achieve his ends, a la the formula of Saul Alinsky and his book Rules for Radicals. Alinsky believed the ends justify the means, and that means anything goes. Mr. Obama has demonstrated he is willing to lie, use fascist-style tactics to silent critics, and do what it takes to achieve his agenda. He has even expressed his disdain for the U.S. Constitution in his now infamous quote that civil rights litigation and adjudication went off track because it did not focus on redistribution. His comments, record, and policies show he believes in redistribution of wealth, and views capitalism, free markets and profit as all part of a tainted system that is unjust. One of his major priorities is “spreading the wealth around,” as he admitted to Joe the Plumber.
6. Finally, the mainstream media is sanitizing and covering up Mr. Obama’s worst excesses, as we’ve witnessed with major stories either ignored or almost totally neglected. In recent months, the dishonest, fraudulent, and biased mainstream media virtually ignored Climategate, one of the great scientific scandals of history; the Acorn undercover scandal; and the Van Jones appointment, as well as a long list of other far-out radicals. The mainstream media has become an adjunct of the Obama plan to destroy America, as we know it.
This column will focus on the wild leftist radicals that he is packing into the federal agencies and the unconstitutional czars he is filling up the White House with. I question, when America elects a president who spends over 20 years hanging around with terrorists, racists, bigots, anti-Semites, Communists, Marxists, and socialists, what kind of appointments do you think he’ll be making? And, when he packs the White House with such crazies, what kind of policies do you expect to be forthcoming?
For openers consider his latest appointment to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), the agency that adjudicates discrimination claims. Her name is Chai Feldblum, she is a professor at Georgetown University and is a most radical homosexual activist. She has advocated polygamy and has said that “sexual liberty” trumps the Constitutional right to “religious liberty.” Of course, she underwent what is called a confirmation conversation – trying unsuccessfully to lie out of previous positions. However, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League found her newfound moderation a total “farce.”
She is the primary author of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) now before both houses of Congress. The bill has been described by J. Matt Barber on the Renew America Web site as follows: “ENDA would force – under penalty of law – Christian, Jewish or Muslim business owners to hire people who unrepentantly choose to engage in homosexual or cross-dressing behaviors, despite the fact that these volitional behaviors are in direct conflict with every major world religion, thousands of years of history and uncompromising human biology. … It’s a direct assault on the inalienable rights of people of faith. It pits the government directly against the free exercise of religion and is, therefore, unconstitutional on its face.” Recall, this president has announced this is not a Christian nation, contrary to American history, a history he more often deplores than proclaims.
The Feldblum appointment is part of a larger effort to force the homosexual agenda on the American people, from the youngest school children on up. For the perfect example, take the safe-schools czar, Kevin Jennings. Here’s the way the Web site www.wordpress.com summarized his qualifications:
· A former schoolteacher
· A gay
· An advocate of promoting homosexuality in schools
· A former drug user
· Dislikes religion
· Failed to report an underage student who told him he had sex with an older man.
The views of Mr. Obama’s science and technology czar, Dr. John Holdren, are also bizarre. In the 1980s, in discussing population controls, he advocated compulsory abortion and sterilization as constitutional. No proposal is too extreme for the Obama team.
This radicalism pervades every corner of the White House and Mr. Obama’s appointments. Take Craig Becker, an Obama appointee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). He was a union lawyer, who was associate general counsel of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The SEIU is the union with close connections to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the corrupt group of community organizers best known for voter fraud and extortion and intimidation of lenders. Mr. Becker helped lay the groundwork for the Employee Fair Choice Act (EFCA). That is the proposed law that would do away with the secret ballot in union elections and would permit federally designated bureaucrats to determine employment terms if a union and employer did not reach a prompt agreement. This act is so blatantly anti-democratic that it is even opposed by a far-left liberal, George McGovern, former U.S. Senator and Democratic Party nominee for president.
Even if Congress won’t pass the EFCA, Mr. Becker believes he can get the wildly leftist Obama agenda established by rule making by the NLRB, thus eliminating the need for Congressional action. This is characteristic of the Obama administration – willing to implement the most radical measures without Congressional approval and rule by administrative diktat.
And Mr. Becker will have plenty of support from other top Obama appointees in the federal bureaucracy. There is Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, who was first elected to Congress in 2000, as the union candidate. For about 10 years in Congress, she had a perfect record of support for union proposals. And, she is likely to coddle unions and persecute employers as Secretary of Labor.
Secretary Solis has already announced her plan to give unions more power over employers and the economy. And, she has already started taking all controls off of union abuses. For example, her predecessor, Elaine Chao, took the responsibility of policing unions seriously. During her tenure, Ms. Chao obtained 929 convictions for corrupt union practices and recovered more than $93 million on behalf of union members (as reported in The American Spectator. The U.S. Labor Department unit that polices unions is the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS). Shortly after the union lapdog, Ms. Solis, took office, the Obama administration reported it was cutting OLMS’s budget by more than 9 percent. The American Spectator writes, “As a result, corrupt union bosses will have a much freer hand with which to bilk their members.”
That’s just a taste of what Mr. Obama is doing to the Department of Labor to make it an instrument of unionization and the union agenda. Two other appointments to The Department of Labor are Patricia Smith and Lorelei Boylan. Both have close ties to unions and while working for the New York State Department of Labor, they were in charge of a program in which New York state partners with unions and other liberal groups to police workplaces. The American Spectator writes, “But in practice empowering ‘regular people’ actually means that the government is deputizing unions to help police workplaces.” This is just another example of how the Obama administration seeks to control every aspect of the American economy and do so to favor their political supporters, in this case the unions. Given their way, American business will be run by union bosses and union thugs.
Another area where Mr. Obama seeks to impose government control is talk radio. There is Mark Lloyd, who was appointed to be associate general counsel and chief diversity officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He is on record of favoring all kinds of regulation of talk radio, which would be designed to muzzle conservative talk radio. To show how extreme these Obama appointees are, consider Mr. Lloyd’s comments about the tyrant of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Mr. Lloyd went on record in support of Mr. Chavez who, among other things, is a sworn enemy of America: “In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution – a democratic revolution.” There is a deadly Orwellian flavor to Mr. Obama and his appointees – a vicious tyrant is transformed into an instrument of “democratic revolution.”
The “Czars” are even more radical and even more out of control than members of the cabinet, who are subject to Senate confirmation. They can escape any Senate confirmation and, consequently, are viewed by some legal authorities as end-runs around the U.S. Constitution. Carol Browner, global warming (energy) czar, is typical. She is one of the leaders of the Socialist International and, as such, advocates “global governance” and maintains that developed nations must shrink their economy to help alleviate global warming. The czars and their threat to U.S. constitutional government are covered in detail in an article in Newsmax entitled “Czars: Never Elected. Never Confirmed. Too Powerful?”
Thomas Sowell, the brilliant conservative pundit, makes an important point for those who think these radical extremists somehow got into the White House because of a failure to properly vet them. Mr. Sowell writes, “Why should we assume Obama didn’t know what such people were like; he’s been associating with these kinds of people for decades. Nothing is more consistent with his pattern than putting such people in government – people who reject American values, and resent Americans and America’s influence in the world.”
Wake up America. We elected one of the most dangerous enemies of America and he now sits in the White House, filled with other enemies of America, relentlessly going about his task of destroying the country as we know it and as the Founding Fathers intended it. You better join the forces in opposition to Mr. Obama’s vision for America because if he continues unobstructed for three more years, it may then be too late to save it.
It’s later than you think. Mr. Obama can kill the economy and America with his version of ObamaCare standing by itself (See The Bulletin, “ObamaCare Spells Doom for America,” Dec. 6-12, and “Wake Up Before Obama Destroys America,” Dec. 13-19). And, he seems to be firing shots with machine-gun rapidity that have the potential to destroy our economy and our country. There’s some element of truth in talk show host Michael Savage’s assertion that we now have a dictatorship. With supermajorities in both houses of Congress and with seemingly inept Republican leadership, with free use of extra-Constitutional methods, i.e. czars, there seems to be no real checks and balances that should keep an out-of-control radical runaway president in check.
Even our Founders, political geniuses, still could not foresee and plan for the election to the White House of an America-hating radical, backed by supermajorities of the Democratic Party willing to follow him over the cliff to the destruction of America.
Source
Monday, December 21, 2009
POLL: MOST AMERICANS WANT CONGRESS TO PASS NO CURRENT HEALTH BILL
Subject: txt hcare
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters nationwide say that it would be better to pass no health care reform bill this year instead of passing the plan currently being considered by Congress.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 34% think that passing that bill would be better.
Notably, it's middle-income voters that are most likely than others to say that passing no legislation is the better option. One reason for this is that most Americans now believe they will be worse off if reform passes.
However, 70% of liberal voters nationwide say it would be better to pass the legislation rather than passing nothing at all. Most moderates (54%) and conservatives (80%) hold the opposite view.
[Any passage sets the course for socialized medicine, only how quickly it will occur is unknown.]
Health Bill Passes in the Senate With 60 Vote
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After Midnight: While you were sleeping, a cat burglar congress stole our country.
The roll was called at 1 a.m., with Washington still snowbound after a weekend blizzard, and the Senate voted on party lines to cut off a Republican filibuster.
Wake up and smell the coup.
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Reid gets his 60 votes - the Chicago Way
Subject: txt 1st hcare =
Yesterday morning, while Washington, DC was getting blanketed with a record snowfall, Senate Democrats treated the entire United States to what may be the greatest snow job of all time.
Biggoverment.com calls it "the most corrupt piece of legislation in our nation's history," and indeed it is.
The price for his support was 100 percent coverage of increases in Medicaid costs for his home state resulting from the legislation -- now and forevermore. It amounts to a flagrantly unconstitutional subsidy to Nebraska with taxpayer dollars from the other 49 states.
We should have seen this coming...
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The High Price of Ben Nelson's Low Vote
[HT:MT]Subject: txt 1st hcare crpt bdd -
Scream loudly about this one
It appears that the current health care bill’s plan to insure about 30 million uninsured Americans includes a provision to move a good portion of them onto the Medicaid rolls. Needless to say, that’s quite the unfunded mandate to force upon the budgets of our already cash-strapped states.
But there’s one state that today was guaranteed immunity from such a budget-annihilating burden -- Nebraska. While 49 other states will be forced to scramble and cut and tax and reappropriate in order to meet the new mandates, Nelson’s home state won’t.
And that leaves non-Nebraskan taxpayers picking up the tab – forever.
This sordid sell-out certainly represents a new low in opprobrious political payoffs.
Scream loudly about this one.
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Merry Christmas, from Harry
Here's what's going to happen to us under Harry's bill, according to the CBO
Reid bought the 60 votes needed to pass Obamacare, despite the legislation itself not being available for reading.
The CBO does not make the accounting all that easy, despite its many tables of numbers. The number Democrats like to cite is that this plan will reduce the deficit by $132 billion over the 10 years from 2010 to 019.
Imagine that, more people insured and the deficit reduced. How do they do that?
The short answer is: over $1 trillion in Medicare cuts and tax increases.
"This administration ought to know that five years' worth of Medicare and Medicaid cuts totaling $200 billion are dead on arrival with me and with most of the Congress."
[I.e., another scam, for which we'll pay dearly - snip.]
But at least no "public option," right?
"[This legislation would replace] a ‘public plan' that would be run by the Department of Health and Human Services with ‘multi-state' plans that would be offered under contract with the Office of Personnel Management..."
Are we sure that means no "public option"? Do multiple "multi-state" plans under OPM sound that much better than one federal plan under HHS? The devil is in the details, and this legislation is about 2,000 pages of such details.
And no "death panels" either, right?
"The legislation also would establish an Independent Payment Advisory Board, which would be required, under certain circumstances, to recommend changes to the Medicare program to limit the rate of growth in that program's spending. Those recommendations would go into effect automatically unless blocked by subsequent legislative action."
That is, the only thing that prevents the "advisory board" from being a "death panel" is the hope that Congress will override it.
For the longer story, read on...
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[You decide.]
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THE HEALTH BILL IS SCARY
When the government asserts the power to provide care, it also asserts the power to deny care
Even if the public option is eliminated from the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) health care reform bill, the onerous rationing provisions will remain intact. For instance:
- The Reid bill (in sections 3403 and 2021) explicitly empowers Medicare to deny treatment based on cost.
- An Independent Medicare Advisory Board created by the bill -- composed of permanent, unelected and, therefore, unaccountable members -- will greatly expand the rationing practices that already occur in the program.
- Medicare, for example, has limited cancer patients' access to Epogen, a costly but vital drug that stimulates red blood cell production.
- It has limited the use of virtual, and safer, colonoscopies due to cost concerns.
- And Medicare refuses medical claims at twice the rate of the largest private insurers.
There's more:
- The Reid bill depends on the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in no fewer than 14 places.
- This task force was responsible for advising women under 50 to not undergo annual mammograms.
- The administration claims the task force recommendations do not carry the force of law, but the Reid bill itself contradicts them in section 2713.
- The bill explicitly states, on page 17, that health insurance plans "shall provide coverage for" services approved by the task force.
This chilling provision represents the government stepping between doctors and patients....
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CBO: Real 10-Year Cost of Senate Bill Still $2.5 Trillion
Subject: txt 1st hcare -
With Obamacare, you get the good, the bad, and the ugly -- except for the first part.
The Democrats are irresponsibly and disingenuously claiming that the bill would cost $871 billion over 10 years.
But that's not what the CBO says. Rather, the CBO says that $871 billion would be the costs from 2010 to 2019 for expansions in insurance coverage alone. But less than 2 percent of those "10-year costs" would kick in before the fifth year of that span.
In its real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), the CBO says that the bill costs $1.8 trillion -- for insurance coverage expansions alone. Other parts of the bill would cost approximately $700 billion more, bringing the bill's full 10-year tab to approximately $2.5 trillion...
[But they're still saying {heard it again Friday} that this bill 'pays for itself'. Are we allowed to be insulted yet?]
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They're laughing at us
[HT:GP]Subject: txt hcare bdd vals crpt gwot -
All over the world, they're laughing, some more discretely than others. We may not like it, but we have to acknowledge it. There's just too much material.
We're we are the world's first super power joke generator.
You know where they're laughing at us the hardest? Iraq. Baghdad. You know who? Legislators.
In a remarkable, but still tender bit of anthropology, really good people - military, State Department and civilian - have been advising newly democratized Iraqi leaders about the ways of democracy, including law making.
Three WEF (Worst Enemies Forever), Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Curds, are bumpily affecting self-government.
They are coached to let every voice at the table be heard; not get to far ahead or behind constituents; to be civil to one another; to establish level playing fields and fair rules; to avoid stacking the deck; to be open with the public and to listen to them, individually and as a group.
The military advisors, being high-ranking officers, encourage leaders to set the example and keep everyone informed.
The basic lessons of democracy, the stuff of election campaigns.
Yet, what do Iraqi see from their would-be model in Washington?
They see us twice pass legislation in the middle of Saturday nights...
Petraeus Accuses Iran of Aiding Afghan Taliban
Subject: txt gwot nsec iran -
Gen. David Petraeus has accused Iran of still backing Shiite militants in Iraq and giving a ''modest level'' support -- including explosives -- to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
''Iran continues to fund, train, equip, and give some direction to the residual Shiite militias and extremists elements in Iraq,'' ''There are daily attacks with the so-called signature weapons only made by Iran – the explosively formed projectile, forms of improvised explosive devices, etc.,''
he said.
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