Guess what's in the Healthcare Bill

Pelosi Health Care Bill Blows a Kiss to Trial Lawyers
by Capitol Confidential


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 malpractive 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.

Our Daily Krauthammer

October 30, 2009


Obama's Bush Blame Game

By Charles Krauthammer



WASHINGTON -- Old Soviet joke:



Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev.



Receive news alerts



Sign Up



Charles Krauthammer RealClearPolitics

Barack Obama foreign policy



Afghanistan



[+] More



"Niki, I'm dying. Don't have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble."



A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: "Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe."



A few years later, a really big crisis. Opens envelope 2: "Blame everything on me. Again. Good luck, Uncle Joe."



Third crisis. Opens envelope 3: "Prepare three envelopes."



In the Barack Obama version, there are 50 or so such blame-Bush free passes before the gig is up. By my calculation, Obama has already burned through a good 49. Is there anything he hasn't blamed George W. Bush for? The economy, global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad -- everything but swine flu.



It's as if Obama's presidency hasn't really started. He's still taking inventory of the Bush years. Just this Monday, he referred to "long years of drift" in Afghanistan in order to, I suppose, explain away his own, well, yearlong drift on Afghanistan.



This compulsion to attack his predecessor is as stale as it is unseemly. Obama was elected a year ago. He became commander in chief two months later. He then solemnly announced his own "comprehensive new strategy" for Afghanistan seven months ago. And it was not an off-the-cuff decision. "My administration has heard from our military commanders, as well as our diplomats," the president assured us. "We've consulted with the Afghan and Pakistani governments, with our partners and our NATO allies, and with other donors and international organizations" and "with members of Congress. "



Obama is obviously unhappy with the path he himself chose in March. Fine. He has every right -- indeed duty -- to reconsider. But what Obama is reacting to is the failure of his own strategy.



There is nothing new here. The history of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is a considered readjustment of policies that have failed. In each war, quick initial low-casualty campaigns toppled enemy governments. In the subsequent occupation stage, two policy choices presented themselves: the light or heavy "footprint."



In both Iraq and Afghanistan, we initially chose the light footprint. For obvious reasons: less risk and fewer losses for our troops, while reducing the intrusiveness of the occupation and thus the chances of creating an anti-foreigner backlash that would fan an insurgency.



This was the considered judgment of our commanders at the time, most especially Centcom commander (2003-2007) Gen. John Abizaid. And Abizaid was no stranger to the territory. He speaks Arabic and is a scholar of the region. The overriding idea was that the light footprint would minimize local opposition.



It was a perfectly reasonable assumption, but it proved wrong. The strategy failed. Not just because the enemy proved highly resilient but because the allegiance of the population turned out to hinge far less on resentment of foreign intrusiveness (in fact the locals came to hate the insurgents -- al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan -- far more than us) than on physical insecurity, which made them side with the insurgents out of sheer fear.



What they needed, argued Gen. David Petraeus against much Pentagon brass opposition, was population protection, i.e., a heavy footprint.



In Iraq, the heavy footprint -- also known as the surge -- dramatically reversed the fortunes of war. In Afghanistan, where it took longer for the Taliban to regroup, the failure of the light footprint did not become evident until more recently when an uneasy stalemate began to deteriorate into steady Taliban advances.



That's where we are now in Afghanistan. The logic of a true counterinsurgency strategy there is that whatever resentment a troop surge might occasion pales in comparison with the continued demoralization of any potential anti-Taliban elements unless they receive serious and immediate protection from U.S.-NATO forces.



In other words, Obama is facing the same decision on Afghanistan that Bush faced in late 2006 in deciding to surge in Iraq.



In both places, the deterioration of the military situation was not the result of "drift," but of considered policies that seemed reasonable, cautious and culturally sensitive at the time, but ultimately turned out to be wrong.



Which is evidently what Obama now thinks of the policy choice he made on March 27.



He is to be commended for reconsidering. But it is time he acted like a president and decided. Afghanistan is his. He's used up his envelopes.

Obama authorizes 40,000 troops

From AP Washington: Obama expands the war

Soldiers of the Great United States, a grateful nation salutes you.  Once again, it is up to you, the good men and women of our armed forces to protect America from its great enemies.

Sadly, I come to you today with news that our oldest enemy is attacking the State.  We MUST ACT NOW.  This enemy is relentless in its mission to destroy not only our Country, but my Presidency.  That enemy, old as time itself, is MATH.

As any 4th grader can tell you, the greatest enemy to mankind IS Math.

Why can't we have free healthcare for everyone? 

MATH!

Why can't everyone in the country buy a house they cannot afford?

MATH!

Why can't Harry Reid get my Socialist (ahem) I mean Public Option Healthcare Program through the Senate?

MATH AGAIN!

How long ladies and gentlemen do we stand by and let the evil forces of math destroy our country and my agenda?  NO MORE I say!  This will NOT STAND!

As of Today I am declaring all out full scale war on MATH!

Just think of the world we can create without Math!  Everyone gets a house!  Free Healthcare for EVERYONE!  No more poverty and injustice!  ALL WITHOUT MATH!

I ran as a multiplier not a divider!

I ran for addition NOT subtraction!

We cannot allow this tyranny of math go unchecked.  We must stop it.  Math, Man's oldest enemy, must be stopped and STOP IT WE WILL!

As of today, I am authorizing 40,000 troops to be immediately deployed in the REAL war on Terror, the war as old as mankind itself.  The WAR ON MATH.

Soon my friends, we will live in a world where math will no longer keep us enslaved to its cold relentless logic.  Join me in my fight and we can destroy Math forever!  We are the change we were waiting for.

Thank you, and God Bless America.

Our Daily Krauthammer

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,656501,00.html

An Evening with Rudy!

Last night, my wife and I were privileged enough to be invited to a fund raiser for Bob McDonnell for Govenor of Virginia, and also to attend a special reception with the honorable Rudy Giuliani.  Rudy in person was even better than he is on TV.  Rudy says that the first step in taking back America, and resetting the agenda that has gone so far off the rails, is to get Bob McDonnell elected in Virginia and hopefully Chris Christie in New Jersey.

I agree!  Everyone should go out next Tuesday and pull that lever for Bob McDonnell and send a chilling message to every leftist in the country that their days are numbered!  For those in New Jersey, send a message by voting for Chris Christie and for those in the 23rd congressional district of New York, send a message not only to democrats but also republicans by voting for Doug Hoffman!

Rudy also answered questions from the crowd, and I asked him if he was going to run in 2012.  He gave a vague answer and said it would depend on what was happening at the time but did not rule it out!  RUDY 2012!!!!!

It was a great evening of Rudiliciousness!

The debate we SHOULD be having about Global Warming

The SuperFreakonomics Global-Warming Fact Quiz

By Steven D. Levitt

By the time you finish this blog post, you will understand why we differ from our critics in our conclusions.

As we write in SuperFreakonomics, there are many misconceptions about the facts surrounding global warming. Take the following true/false quiz to test your knowledge of the science, economics, and technology of global warming.



Global-warming science questions:

1. The Earth has gotten substantially warmer over the past 100 years.



TRUE / FALSE



2. Even if we were to immediately and permanently stabilize our carbon emissions at the current levels, or even cut these emissions substantially, climate models predict that Earth will continue to get warmer for decades.



TRUE / FALSE



3. When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it spewed millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Scientists believe that the haze generated by the eruption reflected some of the Sun’s light, causing the Earth’s temperature to temporarily drop as a consequence.



TRUE / FALSE



4. Because the half-life of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere is relatively short (on the order of one year), the cooling effects of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption faded within a few years.



TRUE / FALSE





5. Dark surfaces absorb more sunlight than light surfaces. Thus, all else equal, light surfaces cause less global warming because more of the sunlight that strikes these surfaces is reflected back into space.



TRUE / FALSE



6. Clouds, which are white or gray, are lighter in color than the oceans, which are blue.



TRUE / FALSE



The correct answer to all six of these questions, we believe, is “TRUE.” You can see our chapter on global warming (pp. 165-209) and particularly the endnotes (pp. 247-256) for citations and elaboration. It is our impression that none of the six scientific statements above is at all controversial among climate scientists. I do not believe that any of our global-warming critics would quibble with any of these facts.



And just to be perfectly clear, despite all the bluster that has surrounded our chapter on global warming, these are the six scientific facts that are critical to our analysis of geo-engineering in that chapter, a point I will expand upon below. We document many other interesting facts in the chapter, but these are the only ones that are central to our argument.



It is simply not the case that criticisms of the geo-engineering solutions that we highlight in the chapter arise because we get the scientific facts wrong, unless the critics think that any of the six statements above are false.



So let’s move on to the economic issues surrounding global warming, and let’s see if that is where we differ from the critics in our assumptions.



Global warming economics questions:

1. If the Earth’s warming leads to global catastrophe, that would be a really bad outcome.



TRUE / FALSE



2. Even when there is enormous uncertainty about the likelihood of future cataclysms, it makes sense to invest now in finding ways to avoid such cataclysms.



TRUE / FALSE



3. Economists estimate that the costs of reducing carbon emissions are likely to be upwards of $1 trillion per year.



TRUE / FALSE



The correct answer to all three of these economic questions is “TRUE.” These are the three key economic facts that are critical to the arguments in our chapter. The first question doesn’t require any further explanation. The answer to the second question has been hammered home by Martin Weitzman’s work in the area, which we cite in SuperFreakonomics, as well as a newer paper that Weitzman has written. The third fact is based on the analysis of Nicholas Stern. These cost estimates are obviously highly speculative, but the true cost of reducing carbon emissions is likely to be within two orders of magnitude of this number.



As far as I know, none of our critics would disagree with any of these three economic facts about global warming. Indeed, Paul Krugman’s attack of our chapter largely focuses on the misconception that we do not agree with fact No. 2, when clearly we do. Somehow Krugman has come to the conclusion that we are in favor of inaction, missing the main point of the chapter, which is that we think immediate and aggressive action is warranted, in the form of investment in (or implementation of) geoengineering solutions. Perhaps Krugman does not consider those steps taking action.



So if there is no disagreement on either the six key scientific facts or the three key economic facts, where is the disagreement coming from?

Perhaps it is coming from a lack of agreement over technological facts.



Global warming technological questions:

1. There exists an engineering design that provides a means of delivering enough sulfur dioxide to the stratosphere on a continuous basis to effectively cool the Earth. The estimated cost of building and implementing this technology is a few hundred million dollars.



TRUE / FALSE



2. There exists an engineering design that provides a means of increasing oceanic cloud cover by seeding such clouds with salt-water that is sprayed into the air by a fleet of solar powered dinghies. The estimated cost of building and implementing this technology is a few hundred million dollars.



TRUE / FALSE



The answer to these questions is once again “TRUE.” As we describe in SuperFreakonomics, the Seattle-based company Intellectual Ventures has designs for both a “stratoshield” (No. 1) and the cloud-seeding project (No. 2).



I don’t see how the critics could argue with the answers to those two questions. They might argue that the technology won’t work as Intellectual Ventures hopes it will, but there is no arguing with the fact that Intellectual Ventures has the blueprints to try to build these contraptions, and could have them up and working within a year or two.



With all of this as preamble, let’s get to the fundamental question we try to answer in the chapter:



If we need to cool the Earth in a hurry, what is the best way to do it?

Our answer to that question follows directly from the three sets of facts I presented above. Reducing carbon emissions is not a great way of cooling the Earth in a hurry for two key reasons: (1) even if we cut carbon emissions today, the Earth will continue warming for decades; and (2) reducing carbon emissions is expensive, with a price tag of at least $1 trillion per year. (There is a third problem with reducing carbon emissions, which is that it requires worldwide behavioral change, which will be hard to achieve. But even beyond that, carbon mitigation is not a great solution to the question posed above. There might be other significant benefits tor reducing carbon emissions — addressing ocean acidification, for instance.)



A much better approach, we conclude, is geoengineering. The scientific evidence suggests that either the stratoshield or increased oceanic clouds would have a large and immediate impact on cooling the Earth, unlike carbon-emission reductions. The cost of these solutions is trivial compared to the cost of lowering carbon emissions — literally thousands of times cheaper! Perhaps best of all, if something goes wrong and we decide we don’t like the results of the stratoshield or the oceanic clouds, we can stop the programs immediately and any effects will quickly disappear. These two geo-engineering solutions are completely reversible. Given the huge costs of global cataclysm and how cheap the solutions are, it would be crazy not to move forward with geoengineering research in order to have these solutions ready to go in case we decide we need to cool the Earth.



Why then, are our our conclusions so radically different from those of our critics? The answer:



We are answering a different question than our critics.

Our question, at noted above, is what is the cheapest, fastest way to quickly cool the Earth. Like every question we tackle in Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics, we approach the question like economists, using data and logic to conclude that the answer to that question is geo-engineering. Not coincidentally, almost every economist who has asked the same question has come to the same conclusion, including Martin Weitzman and the economists at the Copenhagen Consensus.



But that is not the question that Al Gore and the climate scientists are trying to answer. The sorts of questions they tend to ask are “What is the ‘right’ amount of carbon to emit?” or “Is it moral for this generation to put carbon into the air when future generations will pay the price?” or “What are the responsibilities of humankind to the planet?”



Unlike the question that we are asking — How can we most efficiently cool the Earth fast? — the types of questions that environmentalists are trying to answer mix together both scientific issues and moral/ethical issues. If you have any doubts about this, watch Al Gore’s movie, in which he says explicitly that reducing carbon emissions is not a political issue, but a moral issue.



That is why someone like Ken Caldeira can agree with the facts presented in our chapter, say that the chapter is written in good faith, but still disagree with the conclusion that geoengineering is the answer. It is because the question Ken Caldeira is trying to answer is not the question we are trying to answer. The same is true of our critics. But instead of just making this simple point — that we are asking different questions — the critics have either intentionally or unintentionally confused the issues by making all sorts of extraneous arguments.



I do not mean to imply that the question we answer in the book is the most important question. It may be that the questions that environmentalists are trying to ask are more important and more interesting, but that certainly does not mean that we don’t want to know the answer to our question, a question that the environmentalists don’t bother to ask very often because they are focused on their more philosophical questions.



So for all the blogosphere shouting against our chapter, I have to be honest and say that I just don’t get it. I can’t understand why any environmentalist who really cares about the Earth’s future could say with a straight face that geoengineering doesn’t deserve a seat at the table as the global-warming debate heats up.

Dismantling America - by Thomas Sowell

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?




Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers-- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?


Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?



Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?



Does any of this sound like America?



How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.



How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.



We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.



How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.



Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.



Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.



Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.



Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?



Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government-- people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.



Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.



Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation.

Green is the new Red - Part 1

Watch this video!  It is time to write your senator and oppose this treaty when and if it comes up for ratification.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug8dEhYm4yM

Looks like some Hopey Change is Coming!

Some times pictures say so much more than words.

Dick Cheney schools Obama Administration AGAIN

To summarize

Obama Administration is:

1.  Lying about the plan they were given on Afghanistan
2.  Dithering on the war
3.  Prosecuting American Heros who protected us from Terrorists
4.  Making America weaker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzLbTDvqOKA

Nixon 2 worse than Nixon 1

With President Obama's new Imperial attacks on his critics and the creation of an "Enemies List", many on both the left and the right are beginning to see comparisons between President Obama and President Nixon.

This theory should be tested, so let's compare and contrast.

Nixon:

Fairly liberal Big Government Domestic Agenda:

Revenue Sharing (vastly increasing the power of the Federal Government over the State Governments)
Wage and Price Controls (huge failure as well as being Socialistic)
Expanded Social Security through SSI which sped up the insolvency of the program
Firm Keynesian (We are all Keynesian's Now - direct quote from Richard Nixon)
Devalued Dollar
Loved Regulation and Federal Control over the economy (created EPA, OSHA, Clean Air Act, Consumer Product Safety Commission)
Proposed but failed to get HUGE Comprehensive Health Insurance
Hated Jews but employed them (Kissinger)


Obama

Dramatically increasing Federal Control of Economy (BIG double check)
Wage and Price Controls (price controls for Health Care, Salary Caps, Check)
Keynesian (BIG check again - see failed stimulus program, etc)
Devalued Dolar (check again)
Regulation (Big Big Check - cap & trade, Financial regulation, Car Czars etc)
Proposed Comprehensive Health Insurance (Check)
Hates Jews but employs them (Emmanuel - Check)

Nixon had a goofy, corrupt and embarrassing Vice President (Spiro Agnew)
Obama has Joe (Check)

Nixon had a ruthless criminal as his Chief of Staff (Haldeman) who led the President into darkness and a thwarting of the Constitution

Obama has Rahm (Check)

Now let's look at the differences:

Nixon

Knew what he was doing in foreign policy

Anti-Communist

Obama

Doesn't know what he is doing in foreign policy

Communist

Wow, Nixon 2 IS much worse than Nixon 1, who thought that was possible.  All of his bad qualities without any of his good ones.

I wonder how long it will be until Nixon 2 gives THIS speech?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNmHFCY9MI0&feature=related

Our Daily Krauthammer

White House Tactics Go Too Far


By Charles Krauthammer



WASHINGTON -- Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he's put a horse's head in Roger Ailes' bed.



Not very subtle. And not very smart. Ailes doesn't scare easily.




The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led (by) and following Fox."



Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration -- from exposing White House czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 "truther" to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health care legislation -- the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.



The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.



At first, there was little reaction from other media. Then on Thursday, the administration tried to make them complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House "pool" news organizations -- except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down.



This was an important defeat because there's a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they're engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.



There's nothing illegal about such search-and-destroy tactics. Nor unconstitutional. But our politics are defined not just by limits of legality or constitutionality. We have norms, Madisonian norms.



Madison argued that the safety of a great republic, its defense against tyranny, requires the contest between factions or interests. His insight was to understand "the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties." They would help guarantee liberty by checking and balancing and restraining each other -- and an otherwise imperious government.



Factions should compete, but also recognize the legitimacy of other factions and, indeed, their necessity for a vigorous self-regulating democracy. Seeking to deliberately undermine, delegitimize and destroy is not Madisonian. It is Nixonian.



But didn't Teddy Roosevelt try to destroy the trusts? Of course, but what he took down was monopoly power that was extinguishing smaller independent competing interests. Fox News is no monopoly. It is a singular minority in a sea of liberal media. ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC vs. Fox. The lineup is so unbalanced as to be comical -- and that doesn't even include the other commanding heights of the culture that are firmly, flagrantly liberal: Hollywood, the foundations, the universities, the elite newspapers.



Fox and its viewers (numbering more than CNN's and MSNBC's combined) need no defense. Defend Fox compared to whom? To CNN -- which recently unleashed its fact-checkers on a "Saturday Night Live" skit mildly critical of President Obama, but did no checking of a grotesquely racist remark CNN falsely attributed to Rush Limbaugh?



Defend Fox from whom? Fox's flagship 6 o'clock evening news out of Washington (hosted by Bret Baier, formerly by Brit Hume) is, to my mind, the best hour of news on television. (Definitive evidence: My mother watches it even on the odd night when I'm not on.) Defend Fox from the likes of Anita Dunn? She's been attacked for extolling Mao's political philosophy in a speech at a high school graduation. But the critics miss the surpassing stupidity of her larger point: She was invoking Mao as support and authority for her impassioned plea for individuality and trusting one's own choices. Mao as champion of individuality? Mao, the greatest imposer of mass uniformity in modern history, creator of a slave society of a near-billion worker bees wearing Mao suits and waving the Little Red Book?



The White House communications director cannot be trusted to address high schoolers without uttering inanities. She and her cohorts are now to instruct the country on truth and objectivity?

American Exceptionalism at Risk

Walter Williams: America’s ‘exceptionalism’ is increasingly at risk


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER

Posted Oct 21, 2009 @ 12:01 AM



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Americans are harder workers, more philanthropic, individualistic, self-reliant, anti-government than people in most other countries. We’ve turned what was an 18th-century Third World nation into the freest and most prosperous nation in mankind’s entire history. Throughout our history, United States has been a magnet for immigrants around the world. What accounts for what some have called American exceptionalism?



We Americans, as human beings, are no different from any other people, including Germans, Russians, Chinese, Africans and other people who have produced tyrannical regimes such as those of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Idi Amin. As such, we are just as capable of committing acts of gross evil that have been a part of mankind throughout his history. We’ve not been a perfect nation, but we’ve never approached the level of hideousness seen in other nations. That’s despite the fact that our population consists of people who have for centuries been trying to slaughter one another in their home countries, whether it’s between the French and Germans, English and Irish, Japanese and Chinese, or Palestinians and Jews, Igbos and the Hausa of Nigeria.



Thrown into the American mosaic are religions that have been in conflict for centuries such as Catholic and Protestant, and Christian and Muslim. The question is: Why is the United States an exception and will it remain so?



At the heart of the American idea is the deep distrust and suspicion the founders of our nation had for government, distrust and suspicion not shared as much by today’s Americans. Some of the founders’ distrust is seen in our Constitution’s language such as Congress shall not: abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, violate and deny. If the founders did not believe Congress would abuse our God-given rights, they would not have provided those protections.



After all, one would not expect to find a Bill of Rights in Heaven; it would be an affront to God. Other founder distrust for government is found in the Constitution’s separation of powers, checks and balances and the several anti-majoritarian provisions such as the Electoral College and the requirement that three-quarters of state legislatures ratify changes in the Constitution.



The three branches of our federal government are no longer bound by the Constitution as the framers envisioned and what is worse is American ignorance and acceptance of such rogue behavior. Look at the current debate over government involvement in health, business bailouts and stimulus packages. The debate centers around questions as whether such involvement is a good idea or a bad idea and whether one program is more costly than another. Those questions are entirely irrelevant to what should be debated, namely: Is such government involvement in our lives permissible under the U.S. Constitution?



That question is not part of the debate. The American people, along with our elected representatives, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, care less about what is and what is not permissible under our Constitution. They think Congress has the right to do anything upon which they can secure a majority vote, whether they have the constitutional or moral authority to do so or not. What Congress does have is the brute force to enforce compliance with their unconstitutional acts.



You say, “What do you mean, Williams?” Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to tax and spend for the enumerated activities therein. Every American is duty bound to pay his share. Congress has neither constitution nor moral authority to take the earnings of one American for the benefit of another American.



What do you think will happen to you if don’t comply, say with Congress’ demand that part of your earnings be taken to bail out a failing business? You’ll see all the brute force that you want to see and if you resist too much, death is not off the table.



We are losing what’s made our country great. Instead of moving toward greater liberty, we’re moving toward greater government control of our lives.



Walter Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University and a columnist for Creators Syndicate.


AMEN!

In their own words - The Truth about the Public Option

I know that the Obama administration misuse of language is now so rampant that words have no meaning anymore, but the "Public Option" is competition myth must be exposed as the big lie that it is.

The best way to expose the lies, is to listen to the actual words their biggest supporters have said about the Public Option over the years, starting with none other than President Obama himself.

Public Option

Barack Obama in his own words

Redistributive Change

Some Inside Baseball stuff, but a HUGE DEAL for the future of the Episcopal Church

Vatican invites Anglicans

All you need to know about the two parties

All you need to know about the 2 parties can be gathered by looking at whose vote they want to "suppress"


Republicans want to suppress the Felon Vote

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2008/08/obamas-felon-di.html





Democrats want to suppress the Military Vote

http://www.thenextright.com/soren-dayton/is-the-fairfax-county-va-registrar-suppressing-the-military-vote






Speaks volumes doesn't it?

More Czary Goodness - Ron Bloom (Manufacturing Czar)

Now with more Mao!

UNBELIEVABLE!!!!  This is getting ridiculous.

http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-czar-agrees-with-mao-too-and-thinks-free-market-is-nonsense/

Decline of the West

Watch this Video - Very Disturbing

Rush Bad, Mao Good

Great Op/Ed by Mark Steyn below:


Mark Steyn: Limbaugh bad, Mao good


Lies cost the talk-show host a shot at NFL ownership; a White House honcho praises a murderer of millions to schoolkids.

Mark Steyn

Syndicated columnist


Here is a tale of two sound bites. First:



"Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark."



Second:



"The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse Tung and Mother Teresa. Not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is: You're going to make choices. ... But here's the deal: These are your choices; they are no one else's. In 1947, when Mao Tse Tung was being challenged within his own party on his own plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army. … They had everything on their side. And people said 'How can you win? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?' And Mao Tse Tung says, 'You fight your war, and I'll fight mine.' You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things. … You fight your war, you let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path."



The first quotation was attributed to Rush Limbaugh. He never said it. There is no tape of him saying it. There is no transcript of him saying it. After all, if he had done so at any point in the past 20 years, someone would surely have mentioned it at the time.



Yet CNN, MSNBC, ABC and other networks and newspapers all around the country cheerfully repeated the pro-slavery quotation and attributed it, falsely, to Rush Limbaugh. And planting a flat-out lie in his mouth wound up getting Rush bounced from a consortium hoping to buy the St. Louis Rams. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the talk-show host was a "divisive" figure, and famously nondivisive figures like the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson expressed the hope that, with Mr. Divisive out of the picture, the NFL could now "unify."



The second quotation – hailing Mao – was uttered back in June to an audience of high school students by Anita Dunn, the White House communications director. I know she uttered it because I watched the words issuing from her mouth on "The Glenn Beck Show" on Fox News. But don't worry. Nobody else played it.



So if I understand correctly:



Rush Limbaugh is so "divisive" that to get him fired Leftie agitators have to invent racist sound bites to put in his mouth.



But the White House communications director is so undivisive that she can be invited along to recommend Chairman Mao as a role model for America's young.



From my unscientific survey, U.S. school students are all but entirely unaware of Mao Tse Tung, and the few that aren't know him mainly as a T-shirt graphic or "agrarian reformer." What else did he do? Here, from Jonathan Fenby's book "Modern China," is the great man in a nutshell:



"Mao's responsibility for the extinction of anywhere from 40 million to 70 million lives brands him as a mass killer greater than Hitler or Stalin."



Hey, that's pretty impressive when they can't get your big final-score death toll nailed down to within 30 million. Still, as President Barack Obama's communications director says, he lived his dream, and so can you, although if your dream involves killing, oh, 50-80 million Chinamen you may have your work cut out. But let's stick with the Fenby figure: He killed 40-70 million Chinamen. Whoops, can you say "Chinamen" or is that racist? Oh, and sexist. So hard keeping up with the Sensitivity Police in this pansified political culture, isn't it? But you can kill 40-70 million Chinamen, and that's fine and dandy: You'll be cited as an inspiration by the White House to an audience of high school students. You can be anything you want to be! Look at Mao: He wanted to be a mass murderer, and he lived his dream! You can, too!



The White House now says that Anita Dunn was "joking." Anyone tempted to buy that spin should look at the tape: If this is her Friars Club routine, she needs to work on her delivery. But, for the sake of argument, try a thought experiment:



Midway through Bush's second term, press secretary Tony Snow goes along to Chester A. Arthur High School to give a graduation speech. "I know it looks tough right now. You're young, you're full of zip, but the odds seem hopeless. Let me tell you about another young man facing tough choices 80 years ago. It's last orders at the Munich beer garden – gee, your principal won't thank me for mentioning that – and all the natural blonds are saying, 'But Adolf, see reason. The Weimar Republic's here to stay, and, besides, the international Jewry control everything.' And young Adolf Hitler puts down his foaming stein and stands on the table and sings a medley of 'I Gotta Be Me', '(Learning To Love Yourself Is) The Greatest Love Of All' and 'The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow.' And by the end of that night there wasn't a Jewish greengrocer's anywhere in town with glass in its windows. Don't play by the other side's rules; make your own kind of music. And always remember: You've gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?"



Anyone think he'd still have a job?



Well, so what? All those dead Chinese are no-name peasants a long way away. What's the big deal? If you say, "Chairman Mao? Wasn't he the wacko who offed 70 million Chinks?," you'll be hounded from public life for saying the word "Chinks." But, if you commend the murderer of those 70 million as a role model in almost any schoolroom in the country from kindergarten to the Ivy League, it's so entirely routine that only a crazy like Glenn Beck would be boorish enough to point it out.



Which is odd, don't you think? Because it suggests that our present age of politically correct hypersensitivity is not just morally unserious but profoundly decadent.



Twenty years ago this fall, the Iron Curtain was coming down in Europe. Across the Warsaw Pact, the jailers of the Communist prison states lost their nerve, and the cell walls crumbled. Matt Welch, the editor of Reason magazine, wonders why the anniversary is going all but unobserved: Why aren't we making more of the biggest mass liberation in history?



Well, because to celebrate it would involve recognizing it as a victory over Communism. And, after the Left's long march through the institutions of the West, most are not willing to do that. There's the bad totalitarianism (Nazism) and the good totalitarianism (Communism), whose apologists and, indeed, fetishists can still be found everywhere, even unto the White House.



Rush Limbaugh's remarks are "divisive"; Anita Dunn's are entirely normal. But don't worry, the new Fairness Doctrine will take care of the problem.

Where are the Prinicipled Liberals of Today?

http://reason.com/archives/2009/10/16/the-new-deal-made-them-right

Sadly, they don't exist anymore. 

Most Prolific Mass Murderers of all time: Rachel Carson, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao and Hitler

Chairman Mao - Number killed - 78 Million

Adolf Hitler - Number Killed - 12 Million

Joseph Stalin - Number killed - 23 Million

Pol Pot - Number killed - 1.7 Million

Rachel Carson - Junk Science leading to the banning of DDT and the explosion of Malaria deaths in the third world that resulted from her policy.

Number Killed - 90 Million and RISING
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html

http://newsbusters.org/node/13341


Pol Pot is a Piker compared to Rachel Carson.  Years from now, I wonder where Al Gore will be on this list?

This is a MUCH bigger story than is being reported.

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/10/16/how_turkey_was_lost_to_the_west_97269.html

Our Daily Krauthammer

All I can say is AMEN!

October 16, 2009


Debacle in Moscow

By Charles Krauthammer



WASHINGTON -- About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award "premature," as if the brilliance of Obama's foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged.



To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent (preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points. After all, this was precisely the spin on the president's various apology tours through Europe and the Middle East: National self-denigration -- excuse me, outreach and understanding -- is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign policy successes shall come.


Chauncey Gardiner could not have said it better. Well, at nine months, let's review.



What's come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its nuclear program.



What's come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking human rights off the table on a visit to China and from Obama's shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postponement, we are told). China hasn't moved an inch on North Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed it's pushing with Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world's reserve currency.



What's come from the new-respect-for-Muslims Cairo speech and the unprecedented pressure on Israel for a total settlement freeze? "The settlement push backfired," reports The Washington Post, and Arab-Israeli peace prospects have "arguably regressed."



And what's come from Obama's single most dramatic foreign policy stroke -- the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.



But maybe not gratuitous. Surely we got something in return for selling out our friends. Some brilliant secret trade-off to get strong Russian support for stopping Iran from going nuclear before it's too late? Just wait and see, said administration officials, who then gleefully played up an oblique statement by President Dmitry Medvedev a week later as vindication of the missile defense betrayal.



The Russian statement was so equivocal that such a claim seemed a ridiculous stretch at the time. Well, Clinton went to Moscow this week to nail down the deal. What did she get?



"Russia Not Budging On Iran Sanctions: Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart." Such was The Washington Post headline's succinct summary of the debacle.



Note how thoroughly Clinton was rebuffed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that "threats, sanctions and threats of pressure" are "counterproductive." Note: It's not just sanctions that are worse than useless, but even the threat of mere pressure.



It gets worse. Having failed to get any movement from the Russians, Clinton herself moved -- to accommodate the Russian position! Sanctions? What sanctions? "We are not at that point yet," she averred. "That is not a conclusion we have reached ... it is our preference that Iran work with the international community."



But wait a minute. Didn't Obama say in July that Iran had to show compliance by the G-20 summit in late September? And when that deadline passed, did he not then warn Iran that it would face "sanctions that have bite" and that it would have to take "a new course or face consequences"?



Gone with the wind. It's the U.S. that's now retreating from its already flimsy position of just three weeks ago. We're not doing sanctions now, you see. We're back to engagement. Just as the Russians suggest.



Henry Kissinger once said that the main job of Anatoly Dobrynin, the perennial Soviet ambassador to Washington, was to tell the Kremlin leadership that whenever they received a proposal from the United States that appeared disadvantageous to the United States, not to assume it was a trick.



No need for a Dobrynin today. The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and "reset" buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.

Anita Dunn is DONE! This is an AMAZING video of the White House Communications Director!!!

Anita Dunn - White House Communications Director

Hilarious Story on Multiple Levels - Clueless Carter, Communists and Kennedys

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28317.html

I now pronounce you Man and Trout

Language means something.  How we define things ultimately determines what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.  Marriage traditionally, for the last say 4 or 5 thousand years, has been defined as the union between a man and a woman.  Sometimes it has included multi-women or men in the past, but our modern sensibilities and morality have defined it pretty clearly as One Man and One Woman.

Now, in the endless quest for fairness and as the forces of  Political Correctness marches on in this country, a debate has opened on changing the definition of Marriage.  This isn't about discrimination, or even civil rights.  Most opponents of Gay Marriage (myself included) support full and equal rights for domestic partnerships and no legalized discrimination for traditional "rights" married couples have (taxes, visitation in the hospital, etc.).  However, once you start changing the definitions of things, you move beyond Civil Rights and towards an activist agenda of changing what is defined as "acceptable".

Now, in order for Gay Marriage to have the same status as Traditional Marriage, you have to make the argument that people who are gay are born that way, and thus cannot be denied the rights any heterosexual couple would have. 

In order for this argument to be true, you would have to somehow get around the cold logic of evolution.  If evolution is true (and ironically almost ALL supporters of Gay Marriage accept evolution as inarguable fact) then how do you reconcile natural selection with homosexuality?  If homosexuality were actually a genetic condition, that is therefore something you inherit, by its very NATURE homosexuality would be bred out of the species, since those with that tendency would obviously tend NOT to reproduce.

And if it is NOT an inherited trait, than it must be a lifestyle choice.



And if it is a choice, well, that opens up a can of worms on the marriage front.  For example, what would be the logical argument against allowing the following marriages all of which are lifestyle choices?

I now pronounce you Man and Wife and Wife

I now pronounce you Man and Horse

I now pronounce you Man and Duck

I now pronounce you "Sexy Red boots that go with the purse I bought at Stony Point Mall last weekend when I stopped into target to buy catfood with my best friend Julie who also bought a blouse that I think makes her look fat" and Wife

 

I now pronounce you Man and Trout

You say you are against Human/Trout marriages?  Why are you such a fishaphobe?  Why are you a hater?  Marriage is a Human (and fish) Right!

We should be very careful when dealing with language because  once you start down a road, it can lead to destinations you never envisioned.