Archive for 31. October 2009

October 31, 2009 Breaking News

31. October 2009 by Glenn.

 

Quote of the Day:

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

–Thomas Jefferson

This is the unvarnished truth, folks. Do not, under any circumstance, remain silent!

And never let a liberal tell you that Thomas Jefferson is the father of the liberal party. Jefferson would be rolling in his grave if he could hear that.

That used to be their claim to credibility until too many people started learning what Thomas Jefferson really stood for.

Quote of the Day, Part Deux:

“It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.”

Eric Hoffer, American Philosopher (1902-1983)

One has to assume that he is speaking of native born progressives as the American Indian does not hate the country.

Observations:

Can you believe the government in regard to what it is telling you the health care plan will cost? Here is something on which to ponder. When Medicare came about, the government told us how much it would cost. The reality today is that Medicare costs us 9 Times more today than they told us. And Medicare is a drop in the bucket compared to the dollars we are talking about with Obamacare.

You no doubt have heard the White House trumpeting the “unbelievable” success of the stimulus package as exhibited by the3rd quarter GDP coming in two tenths of a percent over prediction. Well, that is pretty much what it is; “unbelievable”.

The boost in the GDP was due solely to the “Cash for Clunkers” program. In fact, it contributed over half of the increase. When asked how the stimulus could be such a roaring success when the cash for clunkers was clearly responsible for over half of the increase, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs at first was stuck for an answer and then dismissed the questioner by saying, “Well, the GDP is up isn’t it? Next question”.

News sources are now telling us that most of those cars would have been bought soon, anyway and we will take the hit this quarter in car sales. So, in effect, they are saying that it is all business as usual; we just moved up the date a few months and concentrated it over a couple month period. Kind of a financial photo op and probably just as genuine.

As far as the much touted “stimulus package” which I have criticized from day one, appears now that it is more and more an abject failure; for a couple of reasons.

First, we are now finding that the number of jobs saved and created was wildly over exaggerated by the administration.

Secondly, only 15% of the stimulus money is out there. We are still sitting on the other 85% of the fund. Makes me wonder if Obama is sitting on it to use it as a slush fund. Remember how we had to pass this in a matter of hours because it was an emergency?

The one thing that is clear is that the stimulus package, due to the few dollars that have been disbursed, did squat for the economy. Over half of the money that was spent went to government jobs.

Another thing that is becoming clearer is that it really hasn’t done anything for jobs in the private sector. Some are now saying that upcoming reports on job losses could reveal the unemployment rate has been pushed above 10% and still rising.

A headline in our left wing rag yesterday proclaimed:

“Recession likely over, Recovery is uncertain”.

What the heck does that mean? Does it mean that they are really grasping at straws to put the administration in the best light without lying?

What it really means, as I pointed out the other day, is that the Bush recession is ending and there is a good chance that the Obama recession is beginning.

Folks, as long as Obama continues to ignore the job creation issue (he is only giving it lip service, so far) and continues to push his nation breaking spending plans, we will fall back into another recession and one that is deeper than the present one.

We now know, through a leak, that 5 democrats and 2 republicans are under investigation by the ethics committee in congress. Most, if not all, are in regard to securing earmarks for campaign contributions from a major lobbying firm and its clients.

I learn about this stuff and it just kind of rolls off of my back. If this is true, am I so damned jaded that theft of my and other’s money doesn’t faze me anymore? Something may be wrong with me!

CBO Tattles on Pelosi’s baby: (Much scarier than Rosemary’s)

WASHINGTON POST: The health package released Thursday by House leaders would increase federal spending on health care by nearly $600 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, a dramatic increase that dwarfs the expansion envisioned by the latest Senate bill.

So given the figures that I have seen, Pelosi’s little nightmare comes in at over $1 Trillion. We are soooo screwed.

The GOP has been after the dems on this but as the Washington Post put it: “A House leadership aide dismissed the charge as “GOP spin.” But, in this case, the spin is essentially true.

Where the real rub comes in is that this is the cost for essentially 5 years of the bill, not 10 years as the dems tell us! There is no health bill for 3 years and then it starts gradually phasing in over the next two years! So for a true 10 years the cost could easily be nearing $2,000,000,000,000.00, especially with cost increases.

I repeat; if this passes, we are soooo screwed!

Pelosi Health Care Bill Blows a Kiss to Trial Lawyers:

by Capitol Confidential

BREITBART: The health care bill recently unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over 1,900 pages for a reason. It is much easier to dispense goodies to favored interest groups if they are surrounded by a lot of legislative legalese. For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers (page 1431-1433 of the bill):

Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.

So, you can’t try to seek alternatives to lawsuits if you’ve actually done something to implement alternatives to lawsuits. Brilliant! The trial lawyers must be very happy today!

While there is debate over the details, it is clear that medical malpractice lawsuits have some impact on driving health care costs higher. There are likely a number of procedures that are done simply as a defense against future possible litigation. Recall this from the Washington Post:

“Lawmakers could save as much as $54 billion over the next decade by imposing an array of new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, congressional

budget analysts said today — a substantial sum that could help cover the cost of President Obama’s overhaul of the nation’s health system. New research shows that legal reforms would not only lower malpractice insurance premiums for medical providers, but would also spur providers to save money by ordering fewer tests and procedures aimed primarily at defending their decisions in court, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, wrote in a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).”

Stay tuned. There are certainly many more terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad provisions in this massive bill.

This has never been about health care for the poor. It is about locking in a huge portion of this nation to minute manipulation and the ability to give favors in return for favors. To control ever expanding groups of people. What is so hard about this that so many don’t get it?

Excerpt from the Left Wing Washington Post:

…But the tonal candidate also had a conventionally liberal policy agenda. And as that agenda has run into resistance — on spending, health care and climate legislation — the president’s tone has utterly changed.

The Obama administration has gone after both Rush Limbaugh and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — showing an inability to distinguish between the burning of heretics and the burning of bridges. It has courted insurance companies, then publicly demonized them for showing independence. Obama has tended to define all opposition, particularly on health care, as resulting from fear, cowardice and selfishness — instead of admitting genuine disagreement. At a recent fundraiser, he mocked Republicans as robots who “do what they’re told.” He has engaged in consistent, classless, self-excusing criticism of his predecessor. Other presidents have been known for a war on totalitarianism or a war on terrorism. Obama is known for a war on Fox News.

“The campaign,” Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen say in Politico, “underscores how deeply political the Obama White House is in its daily operations — with a strong focus on redrawing the electoral map and discrediting the personalities and ideas that have powered the conservative movement over the past 20 years.” Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander — a conservative, but not normally an angry one — describes these tactics as behavior “typical of street brawls and political campaign consultants.” It is also behavior typical of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who called town hall protesters “evil-mongers,” and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who labeled them as “simply un-American.”

Porker of the Month:

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has named Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) Porker of the Month for loading up her goodie bag just before Halloween as she prepares to leave the Senate to run for governor of Texas.

While claiming to be a fiscal conservative, the four-term senator requested 149 pork-barrel projects costing $1.6 billion in authorization and appropriations bills for fiscal year 2010. On September 28, 2009, she told the Austin American-Statesman, “I’m proud of being able to garner Texans’ fair share of their tax dollars.” “Sen. Hutchison is repeating the same old insidious quackery about the earmarking process: that it can be made accountable and that it somehow levels the spending playing field,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz. “The only fair way to distribute the taxpayers’ money is to eliminate the practice altogether and instead work to ensure that every dime of taxpayer money is spent using the budget laws and rules that [members of Congress] themselves established.”

For personifying the tiresome hypocrisy of some members of Congress who want to claim the badge of fiscal conservatism while continuing to abscond with billions of dollars in wasteful pork projects, CAGW names Sen. Hutchison the October Porker of the Month.

Pretty well says it all, folks.

Net Neutrality Rules are a Bad Solution in Search of a Non-Existent Problem:

(Washington, D.C.) - Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today once again reiterated its strong opposition to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) intention to embark on a regulatory goose chase. Starting tomorrow, (October 22,)the FCC begins its ill-conceived venture into drafting new rules and regulations to dictate how broadband companies must manage access to the internet.

In an October 20, 2009 Broadcasting & Cable article, John Eggerton reported that “[T]he key will be how the FCC ends up defining network management and what practices that definition allows or appears to foreclose. Some conservative Democrats have expressed their own concerns that the FCC not produce rules that discourage private investment and boost the price of broadband, thus widening the economic divide between Internet haves and have-nots.”

“Contrary to the lingo, ‘net neutrality’ is anything but neutral,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz. “Before the FCC has even gaveled the meeting to order, special, politically-driven carve-outs are reportedly being negotiated behind closed doors.” Today’s CongressDailyAM reported that “Democratic FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has been pushing to exempt online companies such as Google and Skype from the network neutrality regulations he wants in place to preserve the Internet’s openness…Instead, a set of proposed rules — which the agency’s five commissioners plan to vote on Thursday — would subject only broadband providers, such as AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon, to tighter regulation.”

“The Internet has flourished with a minimum of political intervention. There is no pressing need for government involvement and no good will come from the government’s creating a phony role for itself. The Internet has been a wide-open playing field for a whole host of fierce competitors and has flourished because of government’s benign indifference.

However, the new culture in Washington dictates that there is nothing anymore that is off-limits to the long arm of the feds and the FCC now wishes to meddle by setting up new rules dictating how private sector companies handle web content. Taxpayers will rue the day that government regulation choked off innovation on the Internet. Among other things, these new rules would prevent broadband providers from offering expedited delivery speeds at higher prices, creating onerous barriers to innovation, which is the life’s blood of the Internet,” continued Schatz.

“Net neutrality rules will not be neutral when it comes to taxpayers. Any new federal regulatory role will necessitate a giant and expensive bureaucracy, whose employees will serve as the Internet police,” concluded Schatz.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

There you have it folks. Besides fining or preventing internet carriers from carrying undesirable content (contrary to the government line) taxes on providers will drive costs to the consumer significantly higher.

Global Warming:

LONDON TIMES: Exaggerated and inaccurate claims about the threat from global warming risk undermining efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and contain climate change, senior scientists have told The Times.

Environmental lobbyists, politicians, researchers and journalists who distort climate science to support an agenda erode public understanding and play into the hands of skeptics, according to experts including a former government chief scientist.

Excessive statements about the decline of Arctic sea ice, severe weather events and the probability of extreme warming in the next century detract from the credibility of robust findings about climate change, they said.

Such claims can easily be rebutted by critics of global warming science to cast doubt on the whole field. They also confuse the public about what has been established as fact, and what is conjecture.

That’s what we are, folks; confused.

Definition for new readers: Yellow rat democrats, as opposed to Blue Dog Democrats, or just Democrats, are so named because they behave like yellow rats;

they are sneaky, they have no rules that they live by except to get what they want by any means necessary and they run for cover when someone shines a light on them. Yellow Rat Democrats draw primarily from the so-called “progressive” democrats.

Find your congress person: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt

The purpose of this newsletter is to provide information to the public regarding the political climate in America, which may not be available from the regular media, as well as to urge them to become politically active. While the writer tries to use only news sources that are deemed reliable, no guarantees can be made.

The normal font indicates hard news articles. The font in black italics indicates my paraphrasing hard news articles or my general writing, such as in the observations. The font in red italics is the (sometimes snarky) opinion of the author. The font in red bold italics is mad or making a point!

The author reserves the right to publish reader feedback, edit it for brevity or content and all reader comments will become the property of the author.

Until further notice, permission is herein given for readers to forward this newsletter to others and in fact, encouraged.

Copyright © 2009. All Rights reserved.

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