Want A Fair Shake From the Dems Health Plan?

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Illegals Freed From Dictates Of ObamaCare: "the Senate Finance Committee plan creates a new preference for illegal aliens by exempting them from the mandate to buy insurance. That's right. Law-abiding, uninsured Americans would be fined if they didn't submit to the Obama-Care prescription. Law-breaking border-crossers, visa overstayers and deportation fugitives would be spared."

...Better be a union employee or an illegal alien. The Dems refuse to impose citizenship verification on health care under their plan - so all you seriously ill Mexicans, better start hoofing it to your nearest US hospital! And unlike US citizens, you won't be subject to fine for not having an "Obama-approved" health care plan.

Congress Passing Momentous Laws That Haven't Even Been Written Down Yet

SteynOnline - JACKSONIAN AMERICA: "Government has now effortlessly outpaced the nimble typing fingers of Congressional stenographers, there was no actual physical copy of the bill in existence at the time the House voted for it.

Is that even legal? To pass a law that’s not in writing? Hey, relax. Someone probably tweeted the high points. It’ll be out there somewhere. The White House asked Ashton Kutcher to tweet National HIV Testing Day, so I’m sure they asked Lady Gaga or Perez Hilton to tweet National Unread Unwritten Fifteen-Hundred-Page Bill Day. No taxation without Twitterization!"

I'll admit, I've been too angry to follow very closely the wheeling and dealing on Crap and Trade, but I think it's scandalous that I am just learning for the first time in Mark Steyn's column that Crap and Trade was passed before it even got committed to writing. Where is the press? Where is the outrage?

Read the column - as usual, Mark's gallows humor will still manage to bring a smile to your face.

I Have a Rule I Live By

I have a rule I have lived by my entire adult life - I don't make important decisions with a gun held to my head. If the great deal or the great job can't wait for me to carefully consider my decision, then by default, I pass it up. This has saved me from many a timeshare sales pitch, overpriced autos, unsuitable jobs, and bad investments.

Congress and the American people would do well to heed my rule in the face of the President's high pressure sales tactics. Our healthcare system is too important to radically change it in such a rush that we don't even have time to know what we're getting, much less consider whether we want it or not.

Further, Americans should ask themselves why the President and Nancy Pelosi want to do this in such a big hurry. Most of those high pressure salesmen I disappointed over the years had only one reason for giving me a deadline - they knew that if I had walked away from the emotion of the moment and studied the deal they were offering, I wouldn't have taken it.

I suspect the motivation is the same with health care. The President and his party know that, given time to understand and dispassionately consider their plan, most Americans would opt against it.

Sorry, Obama, Americans Still Aren't Brain Dead

Poll: Less faith in Obama's economic abilities - USATODAY.com: "• By 49%-47%, those surveyed disapprove of how he is handling the economy, a turnaround from his 55%-42% approval in May. The steepest drop came from conservative and moderate Democrats.

• By 50%-44%, they disapprove of how he is handling health care policy.

• A 59% majority say his proposals call for too much government spending and 52% say they call for too much expansion of government power."

The failed Porkulus and obvious lies about health care are quickly eroding the wave of good will upon which Obama arrived in the White House.

We're Still Waiting, Mr President

Remember Obama’s Promise to Cut $100 Million in 90 Days? - Washington Wire - WSJ: "Three months ago, when President Barack Obama announced he was extracting $100 million in spending cuts from his cabinet secretaries, the reviews were not terribly kind, not with a budget well in excess of $3 trillion and a budget deficit shooting toward $1.8 trillion.
Obama_July20_CV_20090720153001.jpgAssociated Press
President Barack Obama attends a roundtable discussion with health care providers at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, Monday, July 20, 2009. The teddy bear is the hospital’s logo.

But the president had a deadline to keep: “As part of his commitment to go line by line through the budget to cut spending and reform government he will challenge his cabinet to cut a collective 100 million dollars in the next 90 days,” the White House fact sheet proclaimed."

They couldn't bring themselves to cut even this laughable amount out of the budget in 90 days, as promised. Another promise broken.

Detroit News - Cut the Spending - GIve Stimulus Job to the Taxpayers

Editorial: Obama's stimulus plan is not working | detnews.com | The Detroit News: "The administration and Congress should act now to bring the spending train to a screeching halt, find ways to make deep cuts in the federal budget and let individual taxpayers act as the primary agents for stimulating the economy."

Amen.

Obama Has CBO Director Over for Tea

No, this move doesn't stink to high heaven.

They Squandered $787B on a Bogus Stimulus, But Trust the Dems on Healthcare!

Robert J. Samuelson - President Obama, Democratic Congress's Squandered Stimulus: "It's not surprising that the much-ballyhooed 'economic stimulus' hasn't done much stimulating. President Obama and his aides argue that it's too early to expect startling results. They have a point. A $14 trillion economy won't revive in a nanosecond. But the defects of the $787 billion package go deeper and won't be cured by time. The program crafted by Obama and the Democratic Congress wasn't engineered to maximize its economic impact. It was mostly a political exercise, designed to claim credit for any recovery, shower benefits on favored constituencies and signal support for fashionable causes.

As a result, much of the stimulus's potential benefit has been squandered."

I think one of the main reasons the Obama train is hitting the skids is because a majority of Americans know that the they were suckered by the Democrats on the Porkulus. Trust in the Dems and Obama is deeply eroded.

How Does Government "Control Costs?"

Obama Talks Health Bill With House Panel - WSJ.com: "the biggest focus of negotiations right now is on finding additional ways to curb the rapid growth of health-care costs for families and businesses, and in keeping the overall cost of the bill under control."

OK, I am relieved that we seem to be moving beyond the fantasy that the House bill as originally advised did ANYTHING to control health care costs. However, these negotiations, now going on primarily in the Energy and Commerce committee, are focused on containing costs within the framework of ObamaCare. In other words, the only ideas on the table are big-government, central-planning solutions, like the NICE board in Britain. Committees of faceless bureaucrats deciding who's health care procedure is worthy of funding, and who's isn't. Americans must be made to see that everything about this approach is ANTI-CHOICE and ANTI-LIBERTY.

In every part of our economy that works well, we use the power of the free market to make our choices on how scarce resources are to be allocated. This allows everyone to have input, not just a blue-ribbon panel. Government has proven over and over and over that it cannot hold a candle to the free market in making such decisions.

The reason that health care has so many problems is that government is already TOO involved. It distorts the economics of health care with its massive spending on Medicare and Medicaid. It shifts costs from those programs to private insurers and hospitals. It dictates and mandates the rules of private health plans, prevents purchase of health plans across state lines, subsidizes employer-paid health-care and disadvantages individual-paid health care, and enables the tort bar to suck $800B a year out of the system.

Even with all this meddling our healthcare system has managed to be the envy of the world. To make it better, make it freer:

Enable a national health insurance marketplace
Stop dictating what coverages must be in plans - let consumers choose
Give individuals the tax break or the tax credits for health care, not employers
Reform Medicare and Medicaid to encourage participants to be wise health care consumers
Encourage heath savings accounts

Of course, Obama and the Dems will never endorse such a plan - it turns over more power to the people, instead of piling up more wealth and power in Washington.

CBO - "The Emperor Has No Clothes!"

Budget Analyst Assails Cost of Congress's Health-Care Proposals - washingtonpost.com: "Congress's chief budget analyst delivered a devastating assessment yesterday of the health-care proposals drafted by congressional Democrats, fueling an insurrection among fiscal conservatives in the House and pushing negotiators in the Senate to redouble efforts to draw up a new plan that more effectively restrains federal spending.

Under questioning by members of the Senate Budget Committee, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose 'the sort of fundamental changes' necessary to rein in the skyrocketing cost of government health programs, particularly Medicare. On the contrary, Elmendorf said, the measures would pile on an expensive new program to cover the uninsured."

The courageous Mr. Elmendorf (probably soon to join the ranks of the unemployed) laid bare the ridiculous contradictions of the President's health care argument:

1) Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupting the federal government
2) Only health care reform can save us from this crushing burden
3) Only by vastly expanding the federal government role in health care can we bring about reform.

Mr Elmendorf agreed with point 1. But, inconveniently, he pointed out that there is no real reform in the Democrats' plan (making moot point 2). And, even more inconveniently, he indicated that Mr. Obama's vast expansion of the federal government's role will only exacerbate the problem raised in point 1.

Or, in other words, Mr Elmendorf didn't buy this line of reasoning:

1) Current government health care spending is bankrupting the nation
2) Therefore, to address the problem, government is henceforth going to spend much more on health care
3) Problem solved

I know what you libs are saying: "You are ignoring the key point the President is making. The REFORMS in this bill are going to save us so much money, that we will be able to expand health care while spending less overall. This is due to the well-known superior efficiency of government vs the private sector." Well, to quote Mr. Elmendorf, the Democrat-selected head of the Congressional Budget Office: ":[The] bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose 'the sort of fundamental changes' necessary to rein in the skyrocketing cost of government health programs."

Here's a list of all the things government does more efficiently than the private sector:

1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Sorry, OOFS Relapse

I admit it, this blog has slowed down of late due to a relapse of OOFS, Obama Outrage Fatigue Syndrome. Of course, the 100 degree weather doesn't help. You have to give it to the Obama, he's energetic. Just when you get done trying to fend off the largest tax cut in the history of the Milky Way Galaxy (crap and trade), you find yourself tring to stop the program to destroy the best health care system in the Milky Way Galaxy (ObamaCare), and then you find out in the middle of it all, he's been busy trading away our strategic missile defense program in exchange for the Russian's giving up nothing (START). And those are just the big issues.

He can't slow down, because the more America knows about his programs, the less they like them.

Obama Trades Away Our Nuclear Security in Exchange for the Sleeves Off of Putin's Vest

Charles Krauthammer - Obama's Nuclear Arms Deal With Russia Is Plumage -- But at a Price - washingtonpost.com: "Unfortunately for the United States, the country Obama represents, the prospective treaty is useless at best, detrimental at worst.

Useless because the level of offensive nuclear weaponry, the subject of the U.S.-Russia 'Joint Understanding,' is an irrelevance. We could today terminate all such negotiations, invite the Russians to build as many warheads as they want and profitably watch them spend themselves into penury, as did their Soviet predecessors, stockpiling weapons that do nothing more than, as Churchill put it, make the rubble bounce."

Read the column. The Russians are going to have to make the reductions called for in Obama's grand START accord, whether we agree to anything or not. They can't afford to maintain current levels. Any concessions from the US come at zero cost to the Russians. They do come at the cost making our nuclear deterrent less reliable.

I Didn't Copy - Great Minds Just Think Alike

If you follow this blog at all you know that Mark Steyn is one of my favorite writers out there. Right after posting my last post, I went to Steyn online to find that he had already posted the Kyl story with virtually the same headline. Naturally, his is funnier. Click on the heading for this post ad enjoy...

Administration Makes Kyl An Offer He Can't Refuse

The Associated Press: White House turns up heat on Arizona senator: "The White House on Tuesday released letters from four cabinet secretaries to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, citing Kyl's comments and outlining transportation, housing, Indian education and other projects in his home state they said would be eliminated if the senator has his way.

Kyl, the No. 2 Senate GOP leader, has said the stimulus spending hasn't succeeded in boosting the economy and that it's adding to the deficit. He's suggested on his Senate Web site and in interviews that spending not already allocated be halted.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, one of two Republicans in Obama's cabinet, made no attempt to conceal his needling.

Kyl 'publicly questioned whether the stimulus is working and stated that he wants to cancel projects that aren't presently under way,' LaHood wrote Brewer. 'If you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, as Senator Kyl suggests, please let me know.'"

Isn't this a great modus operandi:

1) Steal the assets of a the Senator's constituents
2) Offer to give some of it back in the form of "federal aid"
3) When the Senator objects, threaten to withhold "federal aid"
4) Tell the constituents they aren't getting any of the money back because their senator won't play ball

Obama's Chicago roots are showing. Hat tip to Horendo...

I See A Pattern Here

Ever notice how the left in America is pursuing policies that have already been proven failures? The Dems, flush with power, are hurtling toward a European socialist model that the Europeans are now backing away from. They are trying to impose on us the same type of socialized medicine system that has forced Canadians and Europeans to travel to America to find decent/timely healthcare. The want to adopt the fiscal policies of California and New York. They want to vastly expand the healthcare bureaucracy that has brought us bankrupt Medicare and Medicaid programs. The list goes on and on.

Add to the list binding arbirtration for labor disputes, as called for the in "Free Choice" (ha-ha) Act:

The 'Free Choice' Act and Binding Arbitration - WSJ.com: "In 1969, the Wolverine State embraced a form of compulsory arbitration nearly identical to the one proposed in EFCA to resolve disputes with its police and firefighters. Years later, Detroit mayor Coleman Young -- who had authored the original law as state senator -- rued what he had done. 'We now know that compulsory arbitration has been a failure,' he lamented to the National Journal in 1981. 'Slowly, inexorably, compulsory interest arbitration has destroyed sensible fiscal management and has caused more damage to the public service than the strikes it was designed to prevent.'"

I guess the point I am missing is that there was actually never anything wrong with any of these policies. We just lacked a leader brilliant enough to implement them properly. Until now.

Obama's Vision - The World's Nightmare?

James R. Schlesinger: Why We Don't Want a Nuclear-Free World - WSJ.com: "'Nuclear weapons are used every day.' So says former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, speaking last month at his office in a wooded enclave of Maclean, Va. ...

We use nuclear weapons every day, Mr. Schlesinger goes on to explain, 'to deter our potential foes and provide reassurance to the allies to whom we offer protection.'...

Mr. Obama likes to talk about his vision of a nuclear-free world, and in Moscow he and Mr. Medvedev signed an agreement setting targets for sweeping reductions in the world's largest nuclear arsenals. Reflecting on the hour I spent with Mr. Schlesinger, I can't help but think: Do we really want to do this?...

'If, by some miracle, we were able to eliminate nuclear weapons,' he says, 'what we would have is a number of countries sitting around with breakout capabilities or rumors of breakout capabilities -- for intimidation purposes. . . . and finally, probably, a number of small clandestine stockpiles.' This would make the U.S. more vulnerable.

Everyone keeps telling me how brilliant the President is. Well, there is intelligence and there is wisdom. The President may be extremely intelligent, but he has no wisdom. And his left-wing indoctrination has inoculated him from the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Any eighth-grade-educated hayseed from fly-over America could tell the pursuit of a nuclear-free world is a stupid and dangerous idea. Our Harvard Law Review president will have to learn through trial and error. Trial and error experimentation with a an international nuclear order that has prevented World War III for six decades - not a brilliant policy in my eyes - but I only went to a public university.

Venezuela's Chavez Moves to Tighten Control Over Private Media

In Caracas, Venezuela:

Venezuela's Chavez Moves to Tighten Control Over Private Media - WSJ.com

Public Works Minister Diosdado Cabello, who is also head of the government's broadcasting regulator, announced Thursday the government's new blueprint for the media industry.

The new regulations will bring under government oversight private Venezuelan channels that only broadcast through private cable providers.

Mr. Cabello's plans to "democratize" the airwaves involve turning over the frequencies to community groups that back Mr. Chavez.

MEANWHILE, in Caracas on the Potomac:

FCC Chairman Nominee: ‘I Do Not Support’ Reinstating Fairness Doctrine: conservatives say the new administration may try to use existing FCC regulations, such as its “localism” policy, to bring back the requirement that broadcast stations either present “both sides” or avoid talking about controversial issues. Under localism, which is already in place, "local content boards” would be created to ensure that a broadcasting station is up to par with community standards. ..

[Conservatives} say the boards would likely bow to political influence to determine what should – and should not -- be aired – in some localities, which could wind up excluding some conservative talk radio shows that dominate the talk radio airwaves. [Emphasis added]

Kudos to TEXAS Senator Hutchison for attending the hearing and asking questions of the nominee. However, it does not seem like she got a straight answer. The Dems are smart enough not to acknowledge support for the Fairness Doctrine any more. The "localism" policy, cited above, along with shorter terms on broadcasting licenses will be the way they go after talk radio. It doesn't appear Sen. Hutchison managed to sound out the nominee on the implementation of "localism" under his chairmanship.

Here's What I Say About Porkulus II - Son of Sham

Democrats now say they underestimated the severity of the recession and that they need to double down on the stimulus. I think it was the Wall Street Journal that pointed out the absurdity of this claim, noting how many Democrats have since last fall been calling this the worst financial calamity to hit the US since the Great Depression.

Conservatives, including Gone2TX, have been saying since the outset that the $800B stimulus bill was a sham, containing very little true stimulus, with most of that occurring in the out years. Time and the facts on the ground have shown that we were right. Less than 10% of the stimulus has been spent, and the economy has declined far more than projected by Obama's economic team when they were selling us on the need for that enormous pork barrel spending bill. In fact, unemployment now exceeds what Obama's wiz kids said it would be WITHOUT the stimulus. So much for their credibility.

Isn't it just like the left? Whenever their policies fail it was because we just didn't implement the policy on a grand enough scale. They never consider that the policy itself might be flawed. Apparently, $787B is chump change these days, and no one can expect much to be accomplished with so little "investment." So now, like Einstein's definition of insane people, we are asked to keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

We must not acquiesce to this madness. Here's what we propose instead:

We agree that the Porkulus bill didn't work. It didn't work because it did not inject enough stimulus into the economy fast enough. That is because it is dominated by Democrat spending intitiatives that won't kick in for months and years - too late to provide a kickstart to the ecomony here and now - in 2009 . So, we are prepared to go back to the table with you and figure this out. Let's pass a bunch of new stimulus measures that immediately put more money in the hands of individuals and businesses. We can do so by declaring tax holidays (e.g. capital gains) or distributing stimulus checks. Because we are ALL very concerned about the burgeoning deficit, we will cancel out a corresponding amount of out year spending in the Porkulus bill. That way, we get the immediate stimulus we need without exceeding the original $800B price tag agreed to at the outset.

Chicago Tribune Sees Budget Hurricane on the Horizon

A budget hurricane -- chicagotribune.com: "A deluge of debt, looming on the horizon, threatens to wreak frightful damage on our economic future. But instead of taking steps to minimize the risk, we're acting as though the skies are clear and always will be.

That's the essence of a new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which has the thankless task of reminding us that our budgetary choices have consequences. The CBO says that in recent months a dismal outlook has gotten even darker as projected future spending -- particularly on entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- expands much faster than expected revenue. Federal debt held by the public peaked at 113 percent of total GDP right after World War II, when the U.S. government had to spend vast amounts to defeat Germany and Japan. Today, the debt stands at about 41 percent of GDP.

But with the government running trillion-dollar deficits and facing the Baby Boom generation beginning to retire, CBO estimates that the debt will break the previous record by 2026 and hit 200 percent of GDP by 2038."

The hurricane flags have been hoisted, but the Obama administration is still doing keg stands at the Democrats Gone Wild beach party. But it's worse than that. They are encouraging everyone to come to the shore in their Winnebagos.

Anecdotes From Public Healthcare

Mark Steyn regularly reports on horror stories from the public health systems in the UK and Canada. He has another great one in the post linked below:

And Another Mopping Up Operation . . . - Mark Steyn - The Corner on National Review Online: "When we quote stories like these at NRO, we get a lot of e-mail saying these are just 'anecdotes.' And yes, if you look on yourself as being part of a government health system of millions of people, getting a bedsore and dying in hideous pain is no big deal in the scheme of things. But I look on myself as being part of the Mark Steyn health system. So if I get a bedsore and die, as far as I'm concerned, that's a 100% systemic failure. The difference between government health care and a private system is that, under the latter, you're free to say, 'This dump's filthy. I'm going to the state-of-the-art joint five miles up the road.' You may have to get out your checkbook, but ultimately the decisions are yours."

Mark Steyn has also written a health care piece in the current print edition of National Review. Choice, personal power over you own medical destiny, independence, freedom - these are what are lost when a society goes to public health care. Oh, and of course, quality of care, innovation, and excellence.

Something YOU Can Do To Stop ObamaCare

In addition to writing your Senators, you can sign on to this petition:

http://www.freeourhealthcarenow.com/

and use the link it provides to pass it on to your friends.

ObamaCare is absolutely the CRUCIAL issue for us to defeat. Do it now.

Think Sotomayor's Racial Preference Was Rejected 5-4? Try 9-0.

National Journal Online -- The Ninth Justice -- Justices Reject Sotomayor Position 9-0 -- But Bigger Battles Loom: "the court was unanimous in rejecting the Sotomayor panel's specific holding. Her holding was that New Haven's decision to spurn the test results must be upheld based solely on the fact that highly disproportionate numbers of blacks had done badly on the exam and might file a 'disparate-impact' lawsuit -- regardless of whether the exam was valid or the lawsuit could succeed...

...even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 39-page dissent for the four more liberal justices quietly but unmistakably rejected the Sotomayor-endorsed position that disparate racial results alone justified New Haven's decision to dump the promotional exam without even inquiring into whether it was fair and job-related."

Stuart Tayor, in National Journal, explains how Sotomayor's racial justice positions are to the left of EVERY current Supreme Court justice, not just the 5 that voted to overturn the Ricci decision. The Republicans need to make this clear in the Senate hearings on her nomination.

Shamulus - The Numbers Are In

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Stop The Madness That's Killing Jobs: "the June jobs data mark a milestone of sorts: Our unemployment rate equals that of the no-growth Eurozone nations.

Why is this job decline happening? The private sector — the real engine of economic and job growth — won't hire because it's scared of what it sees coming out of Washington.

On the horizon, as far as the eye can see, are higher taxes, uncontrolled spending and layers upon layers of new regulations.

Who would hire new workers faced with that?"

No surprises here. Nothing this administration is doing will shorten the recession - from start to finish, they seem to be following the recipe book for converting recession to depression. Domestically, Obama is FDR on steroids. Internationally, he is Carter on steroids.

Congratulations, It's a . . . Cross-Border Incident! - Mark Steyn - The Corner on National Review Online

Congratulations, It's a . . . Cross-Border Incident! - Mark Steyn - The Corner on National Review Online:

"Here's the latest entry, from Hamilton, Ontario:

Hamilton's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was full when Ava Isabella Stinson was born 14 weeks premature at St. Joseph's Hospital Thursday at 12:24 p.m.

A provincewide search for an open NICU bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two-pound, four-ounce preemie to Buffalo that evening.

Well, it would be unreasonable to expect Hamilton, a city of half-a-million people just down the road from Canada's largest city (Greater Toronto Area, 5.5 million) in the most densely populated part of Canada's most populous province (Ontario, 13 million people) to be able to offer the same level of neonatal care as Buffalo, a post-industrial ruin in steep population decline for half a century."

Read Mark Steyn's entire hilarious post. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll write your Senator to urge him oppose ObamaCare.

Fly-Over America Isn't Drinking the Kool-Ade

9 of 10 Americans worry about Obama's spending deficits: Poll | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times: "The shift in public assessments of the stimulus package has clear political ramifications: At the 100-day mark of Obama's presidency, 63 percent of people in states that were decided by fewer than 10 percentage points in November said the stimulus act had or would boost the economy.

Today, in the telephone poll of 1,001 Americans conducted Thursday through Sunday, the number has plummeted to 50 percent in those closely contested states, with nearly as many now saying the stimulus program will not help the national economy."

Wait and see how they feel when the bill for all this spending comes due. I wouldn't want to be a Democrat candidate in those states in 2010.

The Ministry of Information Requests The honor of Your Presence at the Premiere's Next "Press Conference"

Dana Milbank - Washington Sketch: Welcome to ‘The Obama Show': "The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world -- Iran included -- that the American press isn't as free as advertised. But yesterday wasn't so much a news conference as it was a taping of a new daytime drama, 'The Obama Show.' Missed yesterday's show? Don't worry: On Wednesday, ABC News will be broadcasting 'Good Morning America' from the South Lawn (guest stars: the president and first lady), 'World News Tonight' from the Blue Room, and a prime-time feature with Obama from the East Room."

The Obama administration is pre-arranging questions at press conferences and making arrangements for hand-picked questioners to be in attendance, front and center. The author of this Washington Post column is no conservative, but he has become increasingly concerned about the servile posture of the Washington press corps.

The RNC has created a good spot on this topic: http://www.gop.com/weeklytrunk/index.html

Color-Blind Justice, At Least Until Obama Gets His Second Pick

EDITORIAL: Sotomayor reversed again - Washington Times: "Martin Luther King can rest easy. His dream is being protected by the Supreme Court - against and over the opinion of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

The high court's landmark decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Haven, Conn., firefighters case, is a dramatic stride toward the cherished goal of achieving a colorblind society. In Ricci, the court told us that people of ability can succeed regardless of skin color, and government bureaucrats seeking racially biased outcomes can be thwarted in their racist designs."

It's sad that the court is already so far gone that this obvious conclusion was only decided on a 5-4 basis.

See No Evil

Target: Hawaii - WSJ.com: "The Pentagon recently announced that it is repositioning ground-to-air radar and missile defenses near Hawaii in case North Korea decides to launch another long-range missile, this time toward the Aloha State. So at least 1.3 million Hawaiians will benefit from defenses that many officials in the current Administration didn't even want to build.

But what about the rest of us? It's an odd time to be cutting missile defense, as the Obama Administration is doing in its 2010 budget -- by $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion, depending on how you calculate it. Programs to defend the U.S. homeland are being pared, while those that protect our soldiers or allies are being expanded after the Pentagon decided that the near-term threat is from short-range missiles. But as North Korea and Iran show, rogue regimes aren't far from having missiles that could reach the U.S."

This administration's missile defense position is to ignore the threat and hope it will go away. Perhaps if we tour the world making grand speeches about a nuclear-free world, regimes like Iran and North Korea will beat their nuclear swords into plowshares.

Right.

Green Jobs and the Wishful Thinking of the Left

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Spain Tilts At Windmills And Pays Price: "The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the U.S. president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating 'green jobs' in 'alternative energy' even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1% — more than double the European Union average — partly because of spending on such jobs?...

Calzada's report concludes that they [green jobs] often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies. Wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation — sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency — of capital."...

Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs from elsewhere in Spain's economy.

Yet another example of the fallacies and myths behind Obama's policies. Cap and trade will "create" jobs? Perhaps, but he never tells you about the greater number of jobs it destroys. The last thing our nation needs during a very serious recession is to pass the largest tax hike in the history of the world. But Obama would have you believe it can be done without any cost to the society. He takes these mythical positions on virutally every issue:

- We can provide healthcare for all Americans and SAVE money - because of the efficiencies of electronic medical records and the mythical savings associated with disease prevention (see next post)

- We can SAVE money on healthcare without having to ration it

- We can divulge all of our interrogation techniques to our enemies and not make the country more vulnerable to terrorists

- We can triple the deficit in a matter of months, creating countless permanent new entitlements and not expect it to weight down our economy

- We can expect 5% of taxpayers to be willing and able to foot the bill for everyone else

- We can repeatedly raise taxes on the "rich" and not expect the taxes will change their economic behavior in any way

- We can cheat bondholders out of their money - and give it to our pals in the unions - and expect those bondholders to be willing to lend out their moeny to other industries that need it

- We can stand in the way of domestic energy production but actually become more energy independent

- We can cut the defense budget as we surge in Afghanistan, maintain the peace in Iraq, and face down lunatic nuclear regimes in North Korea and Iran

- We can close down Gitmo without having a plan for what to do with 250 incorrigible detainees that none of our "allies" want either

Nearly the entire agenda of this President is built upon wishful thinking and false promises.

A Doctor’s View of Obama’s Healthcare Plans - WSJ.com

A Doctor’s View of Obama’s Healthcare Plans - WSJ.com: "Prevention of a disease, we all assume, should save us money, right? An ounce of prevention . . . ? Alas, If only such aphorisms were true we’d hand out apples each day and our problems would be over...

It is true that if the prevention strategies we are talking about are behavioral things—eat better, lose weight, exercise more, smoke less, wear a seat belt—then they cost very little and they do save money by keeping people healthy.

But if your preventive strategy is medical, if it involves us, if it consists of screening, finding medical conditions early, shaking the bushes for high cholesterols, or abnormal EKGs, markers for prostate cancer such as PSA, then more often than not you don’t save anything and you might generate more medical costs. Prevention is a good thing to do, but why equate it with saving money when it won’t?"

The author is Abraham Verghese is Professor and Senior Associate Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University.

Not sure what Dr Verghese's position is on nationalized health care - but what he is clear about is that it is not going to save money in any way EXCEPT by rationing health care. Once again - who do you want rationing health care, faceless bureaucrats in Washington, or you and your family? If we fix many of the government policies that currently distort the choices being made (procedure-driven Medicare reimbursement methodology, too-low deductibles, subsidization of employer-provided healthcare vs individual-provided, lack of competition in insurance market, plaintiff-slanted tort system, etc) we can make huge strides in improving what is already the best health care system in the world. And we won't have to give up control over the most personal decisions in our lives to get there.

Be the Party of No

George F. Will - A Regrettable 'Fix' on Health Care - washingtonpost.com: "As market enthusiasts, conservatives should stop warning that the president's reforms will result in health-care 'rationing.' Every product, from a jelly doughnut to a jumbo jet, is rationed -- by price or by politics. The conservative's task is to explain why price is preferable. The answer is that prices produce a rational allocation of scarce resources.

Regarding reform, conservatives are accused of being a party of 'no.' Fine. That is an indispensable word in politics because most new ideas are false and mischievous."

The GOP should EMPHATICALLY be the party of "no." It will serve both the nation and the party well.

Steyn on Sanford

Mark Steyn: Jacko, Sanford and weirdness | governor, state, bubble, sanford, one - Opinion - OCRegister.com: "As my National Review colleague Kathryn Jean Lopez observed, a sex scandal a week from the Republicans will guarantee us government health care by the fall – in the same way that the British Tories' boundlessly versatile sexual predilections helped deliver the Blair landslide of 1997. And once government health care's in place the game's over: Socialized medicine redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in all the wrong ways, and, if you cross that bridge, it's all but impossible to go back. So, if ever there were a season for GOP philanderers not to unpeel their bananas, this summer is it."

Sadly, hilariously true.

We Have A Month or Two To Get the Truth Out

Despite living under "the most transparent administration in history," the truth about the global warming hoax is being suppressed. The only way the Dems can pass this is if the truth is concealed, as the EPA has tried to do:

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Carbongate: "the institute's Richard Morrison said 'internal EPA e-mail messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the administration's agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.'

Reading the report, available on the CEI Web site, we find this 'endangerment analysis' contains such interesting items as: 'Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until at least 2030), there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.'"

We have until the Senate vote, probably in September to get the truth out. It's not going to come from the mainstream media, but through the grass roots efforts of each of us to inform our fellow citizens.

Obama to Your Mama - Take A Chill Pill

Obama's Health Future - WSJ.com: "'Look, the first thing for all of us to understand that is we actually have some -- some choices to make about how we want to deal with our own end-of-life care,' Mr. Obama replied. After discussing ways 'we as a culture and as a society [can start] to make better decisions within our own families and for ourselves,' he continued that in general 'at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.'"

Of course, tough choices do need to be made at end-of-life - but the issue is WHO makes them? Do you want the President and his army of faceless bureaucrats to decide when doctors should throw in the towel on your mom?

The Candidate Who Wasn't Going to Raise Your Taxes Pushes for the Largest Tax Increase In American History

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Waxman-Markey: Man-Made Disaster: "It is the largest tax increase in American history — a tax on all Americans — even the 95% that President Obama pledged would never see a tax increase."...
And what would we get for all this pain? According to an analysis by Chip Knappenberger, administrator of the World Climate Report, the reduction of U.S. CO2 emissions to 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 — the goal of the Waxman-Markey bill — would reduce global temperature in 2050 by a mere 0.05 degree Celsius.

The cap and tax plan is all pain and no gain.

Haste Makes Waste

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Why The Rush?: "A pattern is emerging for this new presidency. The more radical and far-reaching the plan, the less time the public gets to debate it. Is this due to ambition or fear of push-back?"...

Obama may act supremely confident, but his haste here suggests insecurity. He acts as if he believes his political capital is dwindling so fast that it will be gone by the end of this year.

A stronger leader would take his time. He would not fear being called a wimp for appointing blue-ribbon commissions, because such drawn-out deliberation is actually what the country needs. Health care and finance both need work. But the first step is to understand the problems and think through the possible solutions.

Obama needs to cram this socialist agenda down our throats before the American people catch on. We need to slow him down at every opportunity. The more people know these plans the less they like them. America is not ready for nationalized health care or a centrally-planned economy. Obama knows that - which is why he's in a hurry.

Obama Misses the Point With Iran Response - washingtonpost.com

Charles Krauthammer - Obama Misses the Point With Iran Response - washingtonpost.com: "All hangs in the balance. The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen. And what side is the Obama administration taking? None. Except for the desire that this 'vigorous debate' (press secretary Robert Gibbs's disgraceful euphemism) over election 'irregularities' not stand in the way of U.S.-Iranian engagement on nuclear weapons...

And where is our president? Afraid of 'meddling.' Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world."

I can't add anything. As always, I recommend you read Charles Krauthammer's column.

Inconvenient FACTS

OCRegister.com: "Then there was this report that followed not long after from Dr. Nils-Axel Moerner, author of 520 peer-reviewed papers on sea level during his 35-year career, which has been devoted entirely to studying the issue. Dr. Moerner concludes sea levels will rise in the 21st century by about 8 inches.

What’s that? Less than an inch per decade? Not exactly reason to abandon the beach-front home, hm?

Since 1993, Dr. Moerner says, when satellites first began to measure sea-level changes, the rate of increase has been a measley 1 foot per century. But - another oops coming here - there has been no statistically-significant sea-level rise during the past three years."

But don't let this get in the way of your cap and trade massive-tax-increase/power-grab-masquerading-as-environmental-salvation schtick, Democrats.

Pithy Take On Iran

Mark Steyn: Iran neutrality not an option for Obama | obama, president, leader, world, supreme - Opinion - OCRegister.com: "The polite explanation for Barack Obama's diffidence on Iran is that he doesn't want to give the mullahs the excuse to say the Great Satan is meddling in Tehran's affairs. So the president's official position is that he's modestly encouraged by the regime's supposed interest in investigating some of the allegations of fraud. Also, he's heartened to hear that O.J. is looking for the real killers."

Mark Steyn, again, naturally. Do read the whole column via the link above.

Pithy Take On North Korea Nukes

Transcript: "we have the Secretary of Defense of the United States making a serious, sober statement about protecting Hawaii from a nuclear attack by a state that has a lower GDP per capita than Zimbabwe. This is deeply damaging to American credibility in the world today."

Mark Steyn on Hugh Hewitt Show.

Chinese Students Know the Score Even if Mainstream Media Doesn't

UPDATE 3-Geithner tells China its dollar assets are safe | Reuters: "Chinese assets are very safe,' Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home." [italics mine]

First of all - I only learned of this startling event by reference made to it in a blog at NRO. Did anybody see this on the news or read about it in their newspapers? Had Geithner been a Bush cabinet member it certainly would have been all over the front pages.

Secondly, congratulations to Reuters for reporting it, but notice the words in italics. This is not an opinion piece, but supposedly a news report. Yet the reporter claims to know the motivation for the audience's laughter, and, what's more, his theory is ludicrous. Had Geithner just said, "China is wise to practice thrift, and invest in foreign bonds," perhaps this theory might have some credibility. But Geithner wasn't commenting on the wisdom of China stockpiling foreign reserves, he was commenting on the safety of the assets that had already been stockpiled (primarily in US Treasuries). It was the assertion that the already stockpiled debt was safe which prompted the loud laughter from the audience.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words, or A Picture Can SAVE A Thousand Words...

This YouTube video is awesome. It's true, the President inherited a mess. But he loves to throw around numbers and plans and agencies and trillions of dollars in tax money based on bogus economic models and projections like the ones lampooned in this video. We all knew the stimulus wouldn't work as advertised by the President. In fact, we knew that the stimulus wasn't a stimulus at all, just long litany of pay-offs to Democratic sacred cows, approved in a frenzy, under the cover of an economic crisis.

Doctors Boo Obama's Obeisance To The Trial Lawyers

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Why He Was Booed: "HHS has further said that reasonable limits placed on noneconomic damages in malpractice cases would save $60 billion to $108 billion a year...'These savings would lower the cost of health insurance and permit an additional 2.4 million to 4.3 million Americans to obtain insurance,' the department said.

Nearly 10% of the cost of health care services, figures PricewaterhouseCoopers, is attributable to medical malpractice lawsuits. Roughly 2% is caused by direct costs of the lawsuits while an additional 5% to 9% is due to expenses run up by defensive medicine...PricewaterhouseCoopers also found that half of health care costs are due to wasteful spending and said that defensive medicine is the biggest producer of waste.

It would make sense to anyone who wants to bring down health care costs that caps on medical malpractice awards should be on the table — unless that person was beholden to the trial bar that is filled with members who make fortunes suing doctors."

Like the UAW, the trial lawyers are a Democrat sacred cow. And they are being paid off by this President with YOUR tax dollars.

Pravda (aka ABC News) Special Report - Greetings, Comrades, and Glorious News From White House on Five Year Plan for Health!!!

DRUDGE REPORT: ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA 2009®: "ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA; NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE
Tue Jun 16 2009 08:45:10 ET

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care -- a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!

Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special -- 'Prescription for America' -- originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate."

This is going to backfire on the President.

Where's the EMPATHY for Thrifty Middle Americans Who Play By The Rules?...

GM's deal erased many average Americans' savings - Washington Times: "When people think of 'bondholders,' they imagine tycoons. J.P. Morgan. Warren Buffett. Even the fictional Gordon Gekko of 'Wall Street' fame.

In fact, tens of thousands of the bondholders of General Motors Corp. are not rich at all — and never were, even before the value of their bonds collapsed in the months leading up to the giant automaker's bankruptcy filing."

...It is trumped by the need to pay off the UAW for its millions in political pay-offs to Democrat pols. Sorry Mr and Mrs John Q Public, you have to give up your legal rights in the auto bankruptcies, forget about that retirement nest egg. But just think how great you'll feel when Chrysler and GM emerge from this mess as dynamic, thriving global enterprises!

Right.

Don't Mess With Texas

Texas AG objects to GM dealer terms - Austin Business Journal:: "The Office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has filed an official objection with the bankruptcy judge handling General Motors Corp.’s Chapter 11 reorganization proceeding, claiming that the federally backed GM is trying to subvert state law by requiring local dealerships to sign agreements that eliminate some protections in Texas."

This is what I was talking about in the federalism post on Saturday. States need to stand up for their rights. If more did this, the juggernaut could be resisted.

Devastating - Krauthammer Nails the Obama Persona

Charles Krauthammer - Barack Obama Surveys the World - washingtonpost.com: "Not that Obama considers himself divine. (He sees himself as merely messianic, or, at worst, apostolic.) But he does position himself as hovering above mere mortals, mere country, to gaze benignly upon the darkling plain beneath him where ignorant armies clash by night, blind to the common humanity that only he can see. Traveling the world, he brings the gospel of understanding and godly forbearance. We have all sinned against each other. We must now look beyond that and walk together to the sunny uplands of comity and understanding. He shall guide you."...

That's the problem with Obama's transcultural evenhandedness. It gives the veneer of professorial sophistication to the most simple-minded observation: Of course there are rights and wrongs in all human affairs. Our species is a fallen one. But that doesn't mean that these rights and wrongs are of equal weight...

For all of his philosophy, the philosopher-king protests too much. Obama undoubtedly thinks he is demonstrating historical magnanimity with all these moral equivalencies and self-flagellating apologetics. On the contrary. He's showing cheap condescension, an unseemly hunger for applause and a willingness to distort history for political effect.

Distorting history is not truth-telling but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one's own country.

The President's preening and posturing dissected, analyzed, and nailed. A must read Krauthammer column.

George Will Slaps Down Media Glbal Warming Chearleaders

George F. Will - Going Green to Alleviate Guilt -- but Not Much Else - washingtonpost.com: "In the history of developed democracies with literate publics served by mass media, there is no precedent for today's media enlistment in the crusade to promote global warming 'awareness.' Concerning this, journalism, which fancies itself skeptical and nonconforming, is neither."

So much said in so few words - awesome.

George F. Will - GM and Chrysler: Good Cases for Judicial Activism - washingtonpost.com

George F. Will - GM and Chrysler: Good Cases for Judicial Activism - washingtonpost.com: "courts have no nobler function than that of actively defending property, contracts and other bulwarks of freedom against depredations by government, including by popularly elected, and popular, officials. Regarding Chrysler and GM, the executive branch is exercising powers it does not have under any statute or constitutional provision. At moments such as this, deference to the political branches constitutes dereliction of judicial duty.

'At present,' notes the Economist, 'there's enough capacity globally to make 90 million vehicles a year, but demand is little more than 60 million in good economic times' (emphasis added). Unfortunately, says Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum, America's president 'can imagine a world in which the internal combustion engine is obsolete but not one in which GM is.' So, doubling down on his predecessor's misbegotten policy, the president is acting strenuously to perpetuate some of America's portion of the excess capacity."...

This would not be happening were Congress awake, or were the courts properly active. Constitutionalists are not amused.

OK, I was hoping there was some reasonable explanation, beside apathy or cowardice, that our Supreme Court didn't step in to defend the rule of law in the Chrysler bankruptcy. Sadly, as George Will so aptly lays is out in this piece, there isn't.

ObamaCare is Gonna P*ss You Off!

Transcript: "There’s a story in Le Journal de Montreal yesterday that said incontinent Quebecers, with serious incontinence problems, that’s people who have to get up to go to the bathroom 12 times per night, have to wait three years for treatment. That’s 12 times a night, 365 times a year, for three years for a routine half-hour procedure for which in the entire province of Quebec, only two urologists will perform it, can perform it."

Reminiscent of an earlier post, another cheery glimpse into the future of American healthcare. But wait, there's good news! The makers of Depends undergarments are coming out with men's and women's styles, promising a much more comfortable fit!

Steyn Eviscerates Letterman

Re: A Boor and a Coward - Mark Steyn - The Corner on National Review Online:

Re: A Boor and a Coward [Mark Steyn]

I agree with Victor on David Letterman's "explanation" of his joke.

It's very difficult to be a state ironist, which is the role America's establishment comedians have volunteered themselves for. If you're going to do jokes about statutory rape and to trash families of leading politicians, Jim Treacher points out that the president's brother, Samson Obama, has been banned from the United Kingdom because of attempted assault of a 13-year-old girl.

So now that the Tiffany network has opened up this promising new seam of comedy gold, wouldn't it be way cooler if Letterman had joked about Sarah Palin's daughter getting raped by Obama's brother? That'd be hilarious, right? Not just 'cause it's a bipartisan rape gag but because it would be — what's the word? — "edgy." You know, like they used to say about Dave three or four decades back . . .

POW!!!

NCR, Wacker, Volkswagen Clearly Didn't Take TARP Money

Southern States Poach Businesses Amid Downturn - WSJ.com: "When NCR Corp. started looking late last summer to move from its hometown of Dayton, Ohio, economic development agencies in the South pulled out all the stops in a bid to lure the 125-year-old company best known as a cash-register manufacturer."

After deciding to build a customer-services center near Atlanta last year, the company last week said it would relocate its 1,250-employee headquarters to the area and open an ATM factory in Columbus.

The Southeast has attracted an array of corporate facilities recently. In February, Asbury Automotive Group Inc., a major chain of national auto retailers, relocated to metro Atlanta from New York. In recent months, Tennessee announced three projects, all valued at more than $1 billion each, by units of Wacker Chemie AG, Volkswagen AG and Hemlock Semiconductor Group. North Carolina last week welcomed a new Apple Inc. data warehouse.

...If they had, President Obama could have simply gotten on the phone and nixed these deals, that move jobs from "blue states" to "red states," just as he did with General Motors a couple of weeks ago. Mark my words, this administration is committed to creating ever more ways to insinuate the federal government into private businesses, so that it may wield veto power over their economic decisions. Do you realize the amount of power we are centralizing in this White House? It makes the designation of any previous adminstration as an "imperial presidency" outright laughable.

Imagine Breaking Up The United States - WSJ.com

Imagine Breaking Up The United States - WSJ.com: "Picture an America that is run not, as now, by a top-heavy Washington autocracy but, in freewheeling style, by an assemblage of largely autonomous regional republics reflecting the eclectic economic and cultural character of the society."...

The anti-federalists lost their battle, but history, in certain respects, has redeemed their vision, for they anticipated how many Americans have come to feel about their nation’s seat of federal power. “This city, and the government of it, must indubitably take their tone from the character of the men, who from the nature of its situation and institution, must collect there,” the anti-federalist pamphleteer known only as the Federal Farmer wrote. “If we expect it will have any sincere attachments to simple and frugal republicanism, to that liberty and mild government, which is dear to the laborious part of a free people, we most assuredly deceive ourselves.”...

In a globalized economy transformed by technological innovations hatched by happily-unguided entrepreneurs, history seems to be driving one nail after another into the coffin of the big, which is why the Obama planners and their ilk, even if they now ride high, may be doomed to fail. No one anymore expects the best ideas to come from the biggest actors in the economy, so should anyone expect the best thinking to be done by the whales of the political world?...

So why not America as the global leader of a devolution? America’s return to its origins—to its type—could turn out to be an act of creative political destruction, with “we the people” the better for it...

I actually do not think it is necessary for the US to be broken up into multiple regional republics in reaction to the current frightening federal government power grab. We need only restore the rule of law and the rights of the states set forth quite clearly in our US Constitution. This could be achieved rather rapdily and peacefully if even a few states began to demand their Constitution rights and prerogatives be restored.

However, we are headed at breakneck speed down a road where the socialists and the big government accolytes in the Democrat party are expoiting their temporary ascendancy to try and emasculate the states and ensure a permanent federal leviathan. If they succeed in spreading the tentacles of federal power into states too deeply, a Consitutional option may elude us. In which case, a breakup is almost inevitable.

I cannot think of anything which will drive us there more rapidly than forcing fiscally responsible and productive states to fund the excesses and failed policies of failing states. The Democrats think they can do anything they want because they control the House the Senate and the White House. They should think twice before assuming that Americans are going to sit still for having their pockets picked by Washington to fund a transition to an America that our Framers would not recognize. In fact, to an America more like the sclerotic European Union than the United State of even fifteen years ago.

Rule of Law - Tales of the Undead

Judge Orders Auction in a Rebuke to Delphi Plan - WSJ.com: "A U.S. bankruptcy court Wednesday sided with a group of Delphi Corp. lenders who said a government-led plan to sell the auto-parts maker's operations to a private-equity fund trampled on their rights.

Judge Robert Drain ordered Delphi to hold an auction and allow bids to challenge the government-brokered sale to Platinum Equity. 'What's so special about Platinum?' asked Judge Drain. 'They're just guys in suits. Why can't the other guys in suits just pay more?'"

Bob Drain for Chief Justice! Common sense and respect for the rule of law - he could never be confirmed.

Flash Forward to US Healthcare's Future

The NHS is bleeding to death, and the time to operate is now - Telegraph: "Many people would have been rather confused yesterday when they switched on the Today programme and heard that the health service is basically bankrupt. Apparently, the NHS needs another £10 billion from the taxpayer to survive in three years' time (put another way, just less than the cost of paying for the entire police service).

Listeners would have been forgiven for thinking: hang on, hasn't the NHS had a lot of extra money already? And they would be right. After a decade of historic spending increases, the NHS budget has more than doubled, from around £45 billion to £105 billion. The service has 41,800 more doctors and 84,700 more nurses. To say the NHS has never had more resources is an understatement: it is in a wonderland of extra money, on a scale that its leaders never expected. Quite amazing, then, that it is coming back to the taxpayer cap in hand."

The only explanation for moving in the direction of Britain on health care is a lust for government power.

Another Big Step Down the Road To Banana Republic Status

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Judicial Error: "'There was a time when we would have called this a scandal,' wrote former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in an e-mail. He points out the UAW contributed $4 million dollars to Obama's campaign in 2008, and $24 million to Democratic candidates since 2000.

He's right. This is little more than a socialist wealth redistribution scheme that rewards political cronies at the expense of others.

More than robbing the rich to give to the poor, it takes from the politically unconnected to give to the politically connected.

Contrary to stereotype, most bondholders aren't millionaires like Thurston Howell III, clipping coupons and living the high life. No, they're cops and teachers with pensions in places like Indiana who must now subsidize autoworkers from their own pockets."

Welcome to the ObamaNation and crony capitalism.

More Americans Want to Cancel the Shamulus Than Want to Keep It

The Weekly Standard: "Forty-five percent (45%) of Americans say the rest of the new government spending authorized in the $787-billion economic stimulus plan should now be canceled. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 36% disagree and 20% are not sure."

Once again, despite media attempts to cover it up, there is brain activity in the American populace at large.

Shamulus

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Europe's Lesson: "Earlier this year, the White House predicted the jobless rate would top out at 8% if Congress passed the $787 billion stimulus package. Well, since then, 1.5 million jobs have been lost, and unemployment just hit a 26-year high of 9.4%. So, by the administration's own yardstick, it hasn't worked at all."

What a surprise. Of course, from the Obama administration point of view, this is not a failure. They get to expand government power and control over the economy, and they get to drag out the recession that is serving so well to justify their power grab.

Slow Learners - But Not Brain Dead

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Europe's Lesson: "last weekend, a Gallup Poll showed most Americans for the first time view President Obama unfavorably when it comes to 'controlling federal spending.'"

Duh!

Rule of Law Staging a Comeback?

High Court Stymies Quick Sale of Chrysler - WSJ.com:

The U.S. Supreme Court threw the sale of Chrysler LLC to Fiat SpA into uncertainty while it decides whether to hear an appeal of the deal.

..."The U.S.-brokered sale of Chrysler, by forcing senior secured lenders to write down their loans to the auto maker, broke with longstanding tradition concerning rights in a bankruptcy: Senior secured lenders usually are paid in full before lower-priority creditors receive anything. This time, a United Auto Workers retiree health-care trust got a 55% equity stake and $4.5 billion note for its about $10.5 billion unsecured claim while Fiat stands to get an initial 20% stake."

I am probably too giddy to think clearly, but I don't see how a review by the Supreme Court could allow this pernicious deal to stand. And if they ruled on the legality of using TARP funds for an auto bailout, that would be too wonderful to imagine.

Post-Racial Flim-Flam

Sotomayor and the Politics of Race - WSJ.com: "The Sotomayor nomination commits the cardinal sin of identity politics: It seeks to elevate people more for the political currency of their gender and ethnicity than for their individual merit. (Here, too, is the ugly faithlessness in minority merit that always underlies such maneuverings.) Mr. Obama is promising one thing and practicing another, using his interracial background to suggest an America delivered from racial corruption even as he practices a crude form of racial patronage. From America's first black president, and a man promising the 'new,' we get a Supreme Court nomination that is both unoriginal and hackneyed."

...the Sotomayor nomination shows that Mr. Obama has no idea what a post-racial society would look like. In selling himself as a candidate to the American public he is a gifted bargainer beautifully turned out in post-racial impressionism. But in the real world of Supreme Court nominations, where there is a chance to actually bring some of that idealism down to earth, he chooses a hardened, divisive and race-focused veteran of the culture wars he claims to transcend.

President Obama is not afraid to say one thing and do another on race matters - because he is sure he will not be called on it. Let's call his bluff. We may not stop Sotomayor, but we'll shine some light on his hypocrisy.

Obama's Voodoo Health Economics - WSJ.com

Obama's Voodoo Health Economics - WSJ.com: "Two-thirds of annual health spending increases are the result of the rapid development and use of new medications and devices, according to the CBO. But, as the CBO reminds us, these innovations 'permit the treatment of previously untreatable conditions.' If you had a heart attack in the 1980s and made it to the hospital you had only a 60% chance of living a year. Now your chance is over 90%. No one wants 1980s medicine at 1980s prices. And in 10 years, no one will want 2009 care."

Let Obama "reform" our healthcare, and in ten years we WILL have 1980's medicine, but at 2019 prices.

Latest Obama Apology Tour Already Bearing Fruit!

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Cairo Candy: "Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for instance, immediately called the Obama speech 'sweet and beautiful talks to the Muslim nation . . . that will not create a change,' adding that Israel is still a 'cancerous tumor in the heart' of the Muslim world."

Wait a minute, didn't anyone tell the Ayatollah that Obama's middle name is Hussein and that he lived for a while in a muslim country?

Mark Steyn - The Empathy Emperor Has No Clothes

What price our pseudo-empathy? - Mark Steyn Opinion - Macleans.ca: "Er, well, alright. But what does it boil down to in practice? Then-senator Obama voted against the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts because the nominee said he saw the judge’s role as that of “umpire.” The President wants someone less hung up on the rule book. He likes to cite the case of Lilly Ledbetter, who sued Goodyear Tire for discrimination but ran up against the pesky old statute of limitations. An “empathetic” judge would presumably say, “Screw the statute of limitations.” Strange to hear the same folks who complain that Bush disregarded the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution at Gitmo (both charges untrue, by the way) simultaneously hailing the ability to disregard inconvenient laws as the indispensable attribute of a Supreme Court justice."

Another great bit of writing that lays bare the vapidness of President Obama's criteria for Supreme Court justices.

Shameful - Posturing and Pandering Masquerading as Leadership

Charles Krauthammer - Barack Obama's Israeli Settlements Canard - washingtonpost.com: "Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: 'The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,' thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the fault of Israel and the settlements."

Let's hope that, as so often is the case, he doesn't really mean what he says.

How Can You Tell He's Playing Fast and Loose? Part 23

Obama Shifts on Coverage Mandate - WSJ.com: "President Barack Obama said he is open to requiring nearly all Americans to have health insurance, clearing one hurdle in Congress's effort to draft a health-care bill.

During his presidential campaign last year, Mr. Obama opposed then-Sen. Hillary Clinton's idea of a health-insurance mandate on individuals. He argued it would put too much burden on low-income families."

...his lips are moving. Mr. Obama is reportedly also leaning toward taxing employer provided health benefits - a position that was proffered by John McCain, over which Obama demagogued McCain repeatedly.

Obama Wants To Expand Program That Drove Americans' Grocery Bills Up By $5 - $8 BILLION in 2007

Ethanol's Grocery Bill - WSJ.com: "Ethanol raises food prices because millions of acres of farmland and three billion bushels of corn were diverted to ethanol from food production. Americans spend about $1.1 trillion a year on food, so in 2007 the ethanol subsidy cost families between $5.5 billion and $8.8 billion in higher grocery bills."

The beauty of being a leftist is that you never are called to task for the "unintended consequences" of your noble deeds. Ethanol is a completely discredited "alternative energy" strategy. It is strictly designed to buy votes in the corn belt and contributions from mega-agribusinesses. The linked article talks about both EPA and CBO reports on the folly of ethanol as a gasoline alternative.

On top of the cost to the taxpayers of all the subsidies, we are paying BILLIONS more in our grocery bills. Where's the empathy in the administration for Americans struggling to pay their rising food bills?

The WSJ sums it up well:

As public policy, ethanol is like the joke about the baseball prospect who is a poor hitter but a bad fielder. It doesn't reduce CO2 but it does cost more. Imagine how many subsidies the Beltway would throw at ethanol if the fuel actually had any benefits.

If the above is true, why do the Dems continue to push this policy? I think you know the answer - every interference in the economy is a chance for statists to use YOUR money to buy votes and influence, and to further regulate your behavior and circumscribe your freedoms.

Sad, Nowadays You Find More Truth in Pravda than in the NYT

American capitalism gone with a whimper - Pravda.Ru: "It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people."

A Russian perspective on the Obama administration. Read the whole column.

What's Good For The Dems Is "Good" for GM

Busy Not Running GM - WSJ.com: "President Obama announced the bankruptcy of General Motors yesterday before GM's CEO even spoke, and the feds will soon own 60% of the company. But whatever you do, please don't think the government is now running GM."

This post goes on to describe how Obama, just a day ago, was on the phone assuring Detroit's mayor that GM would remain in Detroit. A great example of the largess that can be doled out when a government is in control of a major corporation. Other examples already seen or soon to be seen:

Forcing the banks you control to accepts a cram-down bankruptcy settlement so you can transfer their financial interests to your union cronies

Doling out ownership interest in GM and Chrysler to the UAW in preference to creditors (including retirees, pension funds, thrifty individuals) who are contractually owed better treatment under the law.

Ordering GM not to import cars into the US from its foreign operations

Providing specific tax advantages to consumers for buying one specific car (the Volt) from one specific manufacturer (GM)

Locking in union wage agreements that are still not competitive with the rest of the world

Probably sweetening union wage agreements when they come up for renewal during the next election cycle

Passing laws and regulations to try and force US consumers to buy the cars that Obama motors builds, but that no one wants

Doling out $10's of Billions more year after year to try and keep these companies afloat

Forcing Obama Motors to buy American parts and materials, even when they are not competitive in the marketplace

I could go on almost forever...