Krauthammer on the Obama Foreign Policy

George Will on the Stimulus, er, "Jobs" Bill

"He called Wednesday for a third stimulus (the first was his predecessor's, in February 2008) although the S-word has been banished in favor of 'jobs bill.' It will inject into the economy money that government siphons from the economy, thereby somehow creating jobs. And you thought alchemy was strange."

KAHPOW!!!

Republicans Should Call for a Stimulus Reset

The Dems seem to like the image of the "Reset Button." Let's use it on them. Nearly 2/3 of the $800B+ Stimulus Bill passed last year has yet to be spent. Clearly, the Stimulus Bill hasn't worked. It hasn't produced any private sector jobs. It has mainly fended off state and local public employee layoffs that might have occurred due to state and local government budget crises.

Now the Dems want to double-down on stimulus. They are being careful to call it "jobs" vs "stimulus" because they know the word stimulus has become discredited. But why should net new funds be spent on a "jobs bill?" Let's hit the reset button on the stimulus bill, claw back the unspent funds (which if they haven't been spent by now can hardly be expected to be stimulating anything), and use them to fund real stimulus, i.e. meaningful and permanent tax cuts. For example, making the Bush tax cuts permanent and more.

The case that the unspent billions are not stimulative, and merely represent shameless and unprecedented pork barrel spending, is easily made. And in the current climate of voter sensitivity to runaway spending, such a case would be most compelling.

In one fell swoop, the conservatives could reverse hundreds of billions of wasteful spending and the associated debt hangover, and find a source to fund the tax cuts we need to truly get the economy back on its feet again.

In Case You Need More on Copenhagen...

Gullible eager-beaver planet savers - Mark Steyn - Macleans.ca: "I’m always appreciative when a fellow says what he really means. Tim Flannery, the jet-setting doomsaying global warm-monger from down under, was in Ottawa the other day promoting his latest eco-tract, and offered a few thoughts on “Copenhagen”—which is transnational-speak for December’s UN Convention on Climate Change. “We all too often mistake the nature of those negotiations in Copenhagen,” remarked professor Flannery. “We think of them as being concerned with some sort of environmental treaty. That is far from the case. The negotiations now ongoing toward the Copenhagen agreement are in effect diplomacy at the most profound global level. They deal with every aspect of our life and they will influence every aspect of our life, our economy, our society.”"

...“The environment” is the most ingenious cover story for Big Government ever devised. You float a rumour that George W. Bush is checking up on what library books you’re reading, and everyone goes bananas. But announce that a government monitoring device has been placed in every citizen’s trash can in the cause of “saving the planet,” and the world loves you.

...At their Monday night poker game in hell, I’ll bet Stalin, Hitler and Mao are kicking themselves: “ ‘It’s about leaving a better planet to our children?’ Why didn’t I think of that?” This is Two-Ply Totalitarianism—no jackboots, no goose steps, just soft and gentle all the way.

As usual, Mark Steyn's entire column is both entertaining and enlightening. Read it and weep.

The RINO is out!

Republican Scozzafava Drops Out of New York Congressional Race - FOXNews.com: "Republican state Assemblywoman Dierdre Scozzafava has suspended her campaign for upstate New York's 23rd Congressional District seat, giving a possible boost to Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman against Democrat Bill Owens, Fox News has confirmed.

The move comes on the heels of a new poll that showed Scozzafava had fallen behind her two competitors in a close race.

The special election is Tuesday, and political analysts believe upstate New York could be a preview of congressional races nationwide in 2010 and 2012 as Republican leaders struggle to rebuild, redefine and regain control of Washington."

Take that Newt. We don't have to settle for RINOs. Only by running principled conservatives like Hoffman can the GOP take back the House in 2010.

Sign Up to Oppose "Carbon Reparations" and Violation of US Sovereignty

Unfortunately, with the current administration in power, it is necessary to go on the record for positions that used to be obvious:

1) The US should not cripple its own economy to fight fictitious global warming, particularly when giants like China and India have no intention of playing along (a position affirmed 95 - 0 by the Senate when presented with the Kyoto Treaty)

2) The US must not and cannot cede its sovereignty to any world body for any reason

3) US citizens must not ever be made liable to pay taxes to any world body, for any reason

All of the above are currently contemplated by the Copenhagen treaty

Follow the link above to take a stand against this monstrosity.

The Inescapable Allure of the Public Option

As we near the finish line on health care "reform" legislation, the Dems are converging on various flavors of "public option." The pundits are all weighing in on the political considerations driving this move (mollify the MoveOn wing of the party), and no doubt that has its role. But the real reason it has come down to the public option is that the public option is the only type of plan that Congress can rig to appear as if it is saving the taxpayer money. Only in a public option can Congress get the CBO to score fictitious savings that are written into law by fiat. For example, legislating a schedule of reimbursement decreases to health providers year after and then counting those "savings" as offsetting the massive costs of their plans.

I think almost all Americans know that such savings will never materialize. And in case anyone had any doubts just look at the "Doc Fix" bill that went down to defeat last week. The Doc Fix bill was a brazen attempt by the Dems to buy off doctors by cancelling out years of legislated reductions (aka "savings" of $250B) in payments to health providers. Year after year, Congress backs out the phony savings promised when they passed the bill, under pressure from reality as well as from special interests:

"Since its enactment in 1997 the so-called 'sustainable growth rate' mechanism [aka "savings'], which uses a complex formula to establishes annual target costs for physicians' services under Medicare, has not kept up with actual costs.

That's required Congress to step in almost annually with one-year fixes to prevent doctors from facing ever-bigger potential cuts in payment rates. The cut that loomed for doctors in 2010 was 21 percent. Without a permanent redo of the payment formula, Congress would presumably have had to continue to do one-year fixes, something that would also have cost money and that doctors hated because of the uncertainty involved."

Rural legislators hated these legislated "savings" because it had the effect of greatly diminishing the supply of and access to quality health care in their rural districts.

For the "savings" to ever become real would require Congress and the President, year after year, to have the discipline and the integrity to follow through with the painful choices that need to be made, and resist the temptation to cave to special interests or to buy votes by reneging on their responsibilities. The sad history of our Congress clearly argues against our ever seeing any savings.

The Congress is not serious about fiscal responsibilities. It is telling you so by cancelling out Medicare "savings" at the same time it is telling you its new health care plan will be paid for through "savings" in Medicare. And the President is going along with this charade, all the while accusing his opponents of intellectual dishonesty. How stupid do they think we are?

Great News! Taxpayer RIghts in Blue State America

..."voters in two liberal states on opposite ends of the country will also take up measures to limit spending. The outcomes will give us a clear sense of the public mood toward runaway spending.

Maine and Washington are both more liberal and secular than the rest of the country. Barack Obama carried each state with identical 17-point margins, and both have powerful public employee unions that have driven up the cost of government to the point that a backlash has developed." ...

"A similar law, the 'Gann Limit,' passed in California in 1979. It helped keep the Golden State's balance sheet stable until 1990. Then Republican Gov. George Deukmejian teamed up with public employee unions to convince 52% of voters to fund a transportation spending package that slyly rewrote the spending limits, effectively emasculating them. Voters were left with the illusion that they still had a curb on spending when they didn't. California has since experienced three state budget crises as runaway spending combined with volatile revenues left it with junk-bond ratings on its debt and enormous future pension and benefits obligations. With a real Gann Limit, its budget would be balanced now.

If voters in Maine or Washington state pass a taxpayer bill of rights, it will be a clear sign that even in blue states the public is coming to believe that government spending is out of control and that elected officials can no longer be trusted to rein it in. That's a message that will likely reverberate in Congress regardless of who wins in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races."

Deficit spending/public sector debt is the Holy Grail of issues for conservatives. We must put forward fiscally conservative candidates who can articulate the small government philosophy of the Founders, and who will stand firm against growth in government spending. If we do, we will win.

Mark Steyn on The Nobel Prize Winning Presdient of the World

Investors.com - No Laughing Matter: "Obama’s priorities lie not in the Hindu Kush but in America: Why squander your presidency on trying to turn an economically moribund feudal backwater into a functioning nation state when you can turn a functioning nation state into an economically moribund feudal backwater?"

...Barack Obama will have history’s most crowded trophy room, but his presidency is shaping up as a tragedy — for America and the world.

Now that the world has a President, when will America get one?

We Should Be Beating the Drum To Stop the Stimulus

Robert J. Barro: Stimulus Spending Doesn't Work - WSJ.com: "The bottom line is this: The available empirical evidence does not support the idea that spending multipliers typically exceed one, and thus spending stimulus programs will likely raise GDP by less than the increase in government spending. Defense-spending multipliers exceeding one likely apply only at very high unemployment rates, and nondefense multipliers are probably smaller. However, there is empirical support for the proposition that tax rate reductions will increase real GDP.

Mr. Barro is a professor of economics at Harvard. Mr. Redlick is a recent Harvard graduate. This op-ed is based on a working paper issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research in September."

I believe that public disgust and anger over the $800B stimulus is largely responsible for saving us from ObamaCare. The President really shot himself in the foot backing that boondoggle. If he were as smart as people say he is, he'd call for the unspent stimulus dollars to be canceled. We all know they are not stimulating the economy. This research only confirms what we already knew. Canceling stimulus spending is the right thing to do and a political winner.

I Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

Holman Jenkins: Why Obama Bombed on Health Care - WSJ.com: "The public is not as dumb as it's made out to be, and Mr. Obama's public option died a bipartisan death yesterday in the Senate Finance Committee. What's left is a package of 'reforms' that are mere trite extensions of what we've been doing for decades. That is, piling up mandates on private insurers and then lying that this somehow isn't driving up the cost of health insurance; piling up subsidies for health consumption and then lying that this somehow isn't responsible for runaway health-care spending."

Well said. Of course, I won't consider the public option dead until co-ops are also off the table.

Administration's Honduras Position is Bogus Says Independent CRS

Mary O’Grady: Hillary’s Honduras Obsession - WSJ.com: "Now a report filed at the Library of Congress by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) provides what the administration has not offered, a serious legal review of the facts. 'Available sources indicate that the judicial and legislative branches applied constitutional and statutory law in the case against President Zalaya in a manner that was judged by the Honduran authorities from both branches of the government to be in accordance with the Honduran legal system,' writes CRS senior foreign law specialist Norma C. Gutierrez in her report."

The shocking fact is that while thugs like Achmadinijead and Chavez are welcome at the UN, the leftists of the Obama administration are preventing the legitimate interim president of Honduras from entering the US. This report should remove all pretense of legitimacy from this shocking policy.

Powerful Parable

PatriotPost.US: "Many years ago, as a small child, I was told one of those old-fashioned fables for children. It was about a dog with a bone in his mouth, who was walking on a log across a stream.

The dog looked down into the water and saw his reflection. He thought it was another dog with a bone in his mouth-- and it seemed to him that the other dog's bone was bigger than his. He decided that he was going to take the other dog's bone away and opened his mouth to attack. The result was that his own bone fell into the water and was lost...

..the passing years and decades have made me ralize how important that story was, because it was not really about dogs but about people.

Today we are living in a time when the President of the United States is telling us that he is going to help us take that other dog's bone away-- and the end result is likely to be very much like what it was in that children's fable.

Whether we are supposed to take that bone away from the doctors, the hospitals, the pharmaceutical companies or the insurance companies, the net result is likely to be the same-- most of us will end up with worse medical care than we have available today. We will have opened our mouth and dropped a very big bone into the water."

Thomas Sowell is a great thinker and renowned economist. He could throw around the economic and health care jargon with the best of them. But with this simple fable, he has made one of the most compelling arguments I have read for opposing ObamaCare. I recommend reading the whole column.

Hat tip to Horendo for bringing this one to my attention.

Where's the Fact Check Czar When You Need Him?

President Obama is Wrong About Insurance Costs - WSJ.com: "Speaking of health-care distortions, as President Obama likes to do, consider his assertion to Congress that 'buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer.' He liked that one so much that he repeated it over the weekend in Minneapolis, this time as a swipe at 'the marketplace.'

The media's 'fact-check' brigade hasn't noticed, but this is simply false. The Congressional Budget Office expects premiums for employer-sponsored coverage to cost about $5,000 for singles and $13,000 for families this year on average. 'Premiums for policies purchased in the individual market,' adds CBO, 'are much lower about one-third lower for single coverage and half that level for family policies.'"

The President continues to cite bogus "facts and figures" to support his health care. This one is so obvious. Of course individual coverage is cheaper, because INDIVIDUALS are scrutinizing the costs and the benefits, because it is THEIR money. We need to harness the power of millions of American consumers, scrutinizing their health care costs, to bring down the cost of health care. This is the essence of every conservative proposal for health care insurance reform. Virtually every leftist proposal undermines the power of the consumer to bring control to health care costs. That's why no matter how any of the leftist health bills are scored today, all of them promise runaway health care spending for the future.

The President Should Appoint Another CZAR - the Fact Check Czar

Scott Harrington: Fact-Checking the President on Health Insurance - WSJ.com: "To highlight abusive practices, Mr. Obama referred to an Illinois man who 'lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found he hadn't reported gallstones that he didn't even know about.' The president continued: 'They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it.'

Although the president has used this example previously, his conclusion is contradicted by the transcript of a June 16 hearing on industry practices before the Subcommittee of Oversight and Investigation of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The deceased's sister testified that the insurer reinstated her brother's coverage following intervention by the Illinois Attorney General's Office. She testified that her brother received a prescribed stem-cell transplant within the desired three- to four-week 'window of opportunity' from 'one of the most renowned doctors in the whole world on the specific routine,' that the procedure 'was extremely successful,' and that 'it extended his life nearly three and a half years.'"

This column is well worth reading. The President, while essentially calling his opponents liars, is going around repeatedly citing bogus statistics and examples to support his health plan. This cites two anecdotes the President uses, as well as his attack on Alabama insurers, which range from highly suspect to completely wrong. You'd think with so many new positions created in the White House, they could find someone to check their facts.

The Joe Wilson Affair - A "Teachable Moment" Squandered

The mainstream media coverage of Congressman Joe Wilson's audacious "speak truth to power" moment in the joint session of Congress on Wednesday predictable avoids the real issues at hand:

1) Mr. Wilson is right - the President's speech was a litany of falsehoods and half-truths.
2) Mr. Wilson was only screaming from the frustration of being subjected to yet another high profile speech that served up all the same, discredited Democrat talking points, instead of the President answering the concerns of tens of millions of Americans about this plan - which was how the speech was billed by administration
3) How else are Republicans to be given a chance to debate this plan - they have been virtually shut out from any meaningful debate in Congress over where we should take our health care system in the future. Would you have ever heard about Joe Wilson's point of view if he hadn't shouted out of turn in the House chamber the other night?

Mr. Wilson should have offered a conditional apology: "I will apologize for my outburst when the President offers some concrete evidence in any of the pending legislation for his claim that these health care benefits will not be extended to illegal aliens." If you don't know the background, Mr. Wilson was a supporter of two amendments offered up in the House that would have required the Democrats to do just that, and both were soundly defeated. For some reason, the Democrats, who have generated thousands of pages of law on this topic, are unwilling to commit to paper the rules and procedures designed to ensure illegal aliens do not abuse our health care system.

Tell Your Government Health Care Buddies To Watch This Video

John Stossel does a terrific job of exposing the failings of government-run health care. Click the link above and enjoy...

The Ghost of Health Care Future

'Cruel and neglectful' care of one million NHS patients exposed - Telegraph: "One million NHS patients have been the victims of appalling care in hospitals across Britain, according to a major report released today."

What we have to look forward to when our health care is run by NICE guys in the government. Read the story.

They Don't Have DEATH PANELS in Britain Either...

Sentenced to death on the NHS - Telegraph: "In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states."

The fact that the words "death panels" don't appear in the legislation doesn't mean that's not where we are heading.

Stop Bullying Honduras

Stop Bullying Honduras by The Editors on National Review Online: "As for the Obama administration, its mistreatment of the interim Honduran government is an ongoing travesty. In removing Zelaya from office, Honduran officials took a legal, constitutionally authorized stand against Chávez-style authoritarianism. They deserve praise, not punishment."

The leftists in the Obama administration are turning up the heat on Honduras to return their Chavez wanna-be deposed President to power. I suggest you let your Congressional delegation know that you are embarassed to find the US on the side of a political thug and against the constitutionally legitimate government of Honduras.