I suffered a personal tragedy yesterday, so I am not blogging today. But I have some in-flight entertainment for you and it won’t cost you $5. Just your Freedom, Liberty, piece of mind, and your soul. 🙂
Nothing the Democrats wanted you to have anyhow….
The difference between a catfish and a lawyer. One is a bottom feeding, mudsucker and the other one is a fish.
What do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A good start. <rimshot>
There are a million of them, literally.
Like a swarm of Piranha, if they smell blood in the water boy will there be a feeding frenzy.
Is it any wonder that a large segment, possibly even a majority, of Congress is made up of lawyers.
Really.
No, Not really.
Ever tried to read the Health Care Bill?
I know I did, which is more than Congress, especially the Senate Chairman Max Baucus did.
At Over 2000 pages it would turn any mind to mush to try. Which is why Speaker Pelosi wanted you to pass it first and read it later.
You don’t need to know all the details. Trust us. We have your best interests at heart. 🙂
We are the Insufferably Morally and Intellectually Superior.
I just saw a segment on this website: http://facesoflawsuitabuse.org/
Fascinating stuff. You have all the makings of a good horror movie, except for the bikini clad teenage virgin. But give them time, I’m sure there’s a lawsuit involving that somehow.
I would also recommend my blog from Sept 3rd this year: https://indyfromaz.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/the-lawsuit-lottery/
Trial Lawyers and their lawsuits that have driven up the cost of everything, including Health Care, was specifically and deliberately (with extreme prejudice) left out of the Health Care Bill because they are a important component of the Democratic Party base. They are also Congressman to begin with as well.
Jon “Baby Man” Edwards was Trial Lawyer.
Three-quarters of all small business owners in America are concerned they might be the target of a frivolous or unfair lawsuit. Of those who are most concerned, six in ten say the fear of lawsuits makes them feel more constrained in making business decisions generally, and 54 percent say lawsuits or the threat of lawsuits forced them to make decisions they otherwise would not have made.
Small businesses paid $105.4 billion in tort liability costs in 2008.
Tort, fancy word for lawsuit, BTW.
Small businesses are responsible for 64 percent of all new jobs created in the U.S economy. (facesoflawsuitabuse.org)
But faced with massive lawsuits, a massive tax increase on 1/1/11 that Democrats are too cowardly to address, Health care Mandates and fines, financial regulation that choke off productivity, is it any wonder that job creation is in the tank?
Yes, the President did pass what he called a “Small Business” jobs bill, aka yet another Stimulus, but it will be ineffective and is there largely as a PR tool as he is now in 100% campaign mode and nothing else matters.
And banks aren’t really lending the money to begin with. So if you can’t get the loan how can you expand??
America’s civil justice system is the world’s most expensive, with a direct cost in 2008 of $254.7 billion, or 1.79 percent of the U.S. GDP.
The cost of the U.S. tort liability system as a percentage of GDP is more than double the average cost of any other industrialized nation.
Tort costs were $838 per U.S. citizen in 2008, meaning a family of four paid a “litigation tax” of $3,352 for the U.S. civil justice system, a cost driven up due to increased costs from lawsuits and other liability expenses that force businesses to raise the price of products and services.
But Congress won’t do anything about it, especially not Democrats, as they as incestuously parasitic of each other and the Piranhas in Pinstripes in Congress wouldn’t want to reign in their brethren after all, they might be them again some day.
You wouldn’t wont want be nice to evil Corporate America that just rapes and pillages itself across the land unchecked now would you? 🙂
One of my favorites from the website Face of Lawsuit Abuse (run by The US Chamber of Commerce that was barred and banned from Health Care debate because they dared to disagree with the Almighty Ones) was the landlord who was sued because a tenant claimed that the legally required notices of entry for repair and the like were harassment and caused emotional distress.
Vytas Juskys and his small business manage apartment buildings and are committed to constantly upgrading and making repairs to the homes of the tenants. He thought that improving their apartments and the common areas would help his residents love where they lived; he never expected that one of them would thank him with a lawsuit.
Juskys was in the process of improving an apartment complex he had just acquired when he learned he was being sued. He had been making a variety of repairs to the building and the surrounding facilities, and he was posting regular repair notices on the tenants’ doors, as is required by law.
But one tenant claimed that these notices caused her emotional distress, and she sued Juskys for $500,000. The irony, Juskys says, is that the plaintiff had personally been requesting improvements and then sued him for notifying her that he was planning to make them.
“There’s no way to avoid it,” Juskys says. “At some point, if you’re into real estate, you’re going to get sued. We’re easy prey.” The lawsuit not only took away from Juskys’ ability to focus on his tenants and the properties he manages, it also prevented him from initiating new projects, hiring extra employees and creating jobs.
On the day of the trial, Juskys’ insurance company decided to settle the case, and he was required to pay thousands of dollars out of his own pocket.
Juskys now understands why businesses settle even the most frivolous of lawsuits. Small businesses like his can’t win, he says. Even if he had gone to trial and the jury had ruled in his favor, his only winnings would have been a legal bill, higher insurance rates, and lost time.
“You try to do everything right,” Juskys says, “and it’s just not good enough.”
So his costs go up, your costs go up, the lawyers profits go up.
Why would Congress, full of lawyers, ever want to put a stop to such a thing? 🙂
OR
KALISPELL – A Kalispell girl charged with two counts of deliberate homicide after police say she attempted suicide by driving her car into oncoming traffic has filed a lawsuit against the estate of the woman who died.
The lawsuit filed in Flathead County District Court names the estate of 35-year-old Erin Thompson of Columbia Falls as well as the construction company that built the U.S. 93 overpass at Church Drive where the collision took place near Kalispell on March 19, 2009. The girl is seeking unspecified damages.
The girl and her father filed the lawsuit on July 15 contending Thompson, four months pregnant, caused the crash. Her 13-year-old son, Caden Odell, also died.
Thompson’s husband, Jason Thompson, is listed in the lawsuit as the representative of the estate.
Also named in the lawsuit are Knife River Corp., Western Traffic Control Inc. and Mountain West Holding Co.
Police say the girl was traveling southbound when she crossed the centerline at a speed of 85 mph.
Investigators believe the girl was trying to commit suicide after arguing with her boyfriend earlier in the day. Shortly before the crash, authorities say, she sent him several text messages, including one that said, “Good bye … My last words …” and one that said, “If I won. I would have you. And I wouldn’t crash my car.”
IBD: Medicare dictates the prices it pays clinicians, facilities, medical suppliers and private health plans through more than a dozen different price-control schemes. Efforts to reduce those prices typically fail because of what Tom Daschle calls the “patient-provider pincer movement”: Medicare enrollees and health care providers join forces to undo those cuts.
Each producer that depends on Medicare for its income faces an enormous incentive to lobby for higher prices. The prices for, say, hospital services could make or break a lot of hospitals. And if the hospitals don’t lobby to increase those prices, who will? Enrollees like the easy access to medical care that comes with higher Medicare spending.
So when the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 reduces the prices Medicare pays physicians (through the “sustainable growth rate” formula), or ObamaCare reduces the prices for hospital services, home health care and Medicare Advantage plans, we can predict — and experience has shown — that intense lobbying by enrollees and the affected producers will thwart these measures.
Now if that isn’t incestuous narcissism what is? Deliberately raising the prices to what you know will be unsustainable levels just because the alternative doesn’t doesn’t benefit you personally.
And if you object you’ll get the “grandma using a dead person’s teeth” story like you did during the Health Care debacle.
And as was mentioned numerous times in this blog the cuts that the Health Care law proposed were to Medicare Advantage, a program that was showing some promise.
And without those cuts, half of the projected “savings” for the Health Care monster evaporate.
So, given the track record of narcissism what do think will happen?
And if they do try and cut them don’t you expect there will be a veritable plague of locusts…I mean Lawyers…all over it and it will be litigated until you’re already dead. But the Lawyers will make millions of it.
In the end the Lawyers win.
And if that isn’t incest at it’s best, what is?
Lawyers are necessary to a point, but the over lawyering lawsuit lottery job killing psycho need for the quick buck frivolous drop of any hat lawsuit is not.
But don’t expect Congress, especially this one, or even a Republican one, to do much about it because that’s asking the wolf to stop playing with the chickens.
And the chickens are going to sue you for emotional distress for not protecting them from the wolves. And hire a wolf to do it!
Isn’t that just peachy. 🙂
And these days not only do people get fish, they demand that you catch it for them and/or “the rich” give them their fish because it’s only “fair”.
And if that fish isn’t good enough for them they will throw it back until they get a bigger, better fish that THEY like!
Unemployment insurance prior to the Age of Obama was for 26 weeks. 6 months and was only meant to help you out in between jobs. Not be de-facto welfare.
Or a stimulus, if you remember what Speaker Pelosi said in July 2010:
“Let me say that unemployment insurance… is one of the biggest stimuluses (sic) to our economy. Economists will tell you, this money is spent quickly. It injects demand into the economy, and it’s job creating. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.”
So unemployment is good for everyone! So nearly 10% unemployment is great!
Aren’t you happy? Don’t you have lots of Hope!? 🙂
Now it stretch to 2 YEARS or more. Because Democrats have made finding a job so hard they have to cover their own buts by bribing people.
They call it “compassion”. I call it a bribe. Democrats are very good at paternalistic bribes.
The government pays you not to work. You in turn don’t bother looking. And if you aren’t looking you aren’t one of the statistics on Unemployment numbers because you aren’t looking.
Thus, the government can keep it artificially lower than it already is. Which is very high indeed.
So the Unemployment rate is just another political game to be manipulated.
Meanwhile, you have people just sitting around eating Doritos and hanging out doing nothing and getting paid for it!
And the government doesn’t make it easy to get off the dole either. Whether on purpose or not.
In the first year of unemployment, the size of the benefit check is based on your old salary. You can go right back on unemployment after a temp job, and nothing changes. But federal law requires states to recalculate benefits for the second year. If you worked a few days or a few months, the second year’s checks will be based on that lower earnings total. (Hartford Courant)
So you’re on unemployment, you get a temp job, your benefits get cut. So the obvious answer is to not take the temp job, right?
The government makes you want to stay.
But now Ms. Hanson rues the day she took that work. Why? The Connecticut Department of Labor used her negligible earnings in her part-time job as the new baseline for Hanson’s unemployment benefits. She went from receiving $483 a week to getting nothing.
“Afterwards, unofficially, they said I shouldn’t have taken the job,” Hanson says. (CSM)
Incentives to stay unemployed. Incestuous you might ask? At least I would.
Employers and economists point to several explanations. Extending jobless benefits to 99 weeks gives the unemployed less incentive to search out new work. Millions of homeowners are unable to move for a job because the real-estate collapse leaves them owing more on their homes than they are worth.
The job market itself also has changed. During the crisis, companies slashed millions of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs. That has created a glut of people who can’t qualify for highly skilled jobs but have a hard time adjusting to low-pay, unskilled work…
Many of the applicants he (Mark Sperry of Catepillar) saw at job fairs, he says, were just going through the motions so they could collect their unemployment checks. Some workers agree that unemployment benefits make them less likely to take whatever job comes along, particularly when those jobs don’t pay much. Michael Hatchell, a 52-year-old mechanic in Lumberton, N.C., says he turned down more than a dozen offers during the 59 weeks he was unemployed, because they didn’t pay more than the $450 a week he was collecting in benefits.
It is particularly troubling at a time when 4.3% of the labor force has been out of work for more than six months—a level much higher than after any other recession since 1948. (WSJ)
So what are you to do if Unemployment pays better than the job?
Just game the system.
And the system shall provide.
The disconnect between workers and jobs could constrain the economy for some time. It makes it hard for even small firms, which as a group typically account for an outsize share of job growth in a rebound. (WSJ)
So if you have 99 weeks of unemployment, you go out “looking” for a job but not really, then when it gets to about 95 weeks you get serious about it. But that’s nearly 2 years later!
There was a Swedish study that when they cut the benefit time, the amount of time people kept “looking” decreased in proportion.
Alan Krueger, the current Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and a highly respected labor economist has said in his academic writing exactly that: unemployment insurance causes the unemployed to stay unemployed longer.
In his academic studies Dr. Krueger wrote that “more generous unemployment insurance (UI) benefits have been found to be associated with longer spells of unemployment,” and further finds that “the job finding rate jumps up around the time benefits are exhausted. Most importantly, we find that job search intensity is inversely related to UI benefit generosity for those who are eligible for UI.” In other words, a senior Obama administration official finds that less generous UI benefits cause the unemployed to search harder for new work.
Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House’s National Economic Council has said the same:
“government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a ‘reservation wage’—the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase [the] reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer.”
“Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job.”-Liberal Economist Paul Krugman’s Macroeconomics textbook.
The Same Paul Krugman recently described Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) statement that unemployment insurance causes individuals to stay out of work longer “a bizarre point of view.”(Heritage.org)
More specifically, In the NY Times: In Mr. Kyl’s view, then, what we really need to worry about right now — with more than five unemployed workers for every job opening, and long-term unemployment at its highest level since the Great Depression — is whether we’re reducing the incentive of the unemployed to find jobs. To me, that’s a bizarre point of view — but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.
So, like everything with Liberals, it’s all politics.
We, The Democrats, who have the patent on “compassion” will kiss your behind and let you sit on your ass for 2 years. As long as those evil Republicans don’t come in and demand you have some self-respect that is. 🙂
Even if they do, the Democrats will trot out their “grandma eating dog food” “they want to cut you off” “they’re heartless” “mean” “Cruel” class warfare hoaries anyhow.
Or as Mr. Krugman put it, “How can the parties agree on policy when they have utterly different visions of how the economy works, when one party feels for the unemployed, while the other weeps over affluent victims of the “death tax”?
Democrats feel your pain (good,sense they are the cause of most of it!). And Republicans are heartless, greedy and obsessed with the kiss up to “the rich”.
Meanwhile, you sit on your behind for up to 2 years eating Doritos and watching Judge Judy.
Who are you going to vote for, the pimp or Mom who says get you lazy ass off the couch? 🙂
Unemployment has become a political weapon and a tool, akin to welfare.
You don’t work, we pay you. You vote for us, we keep paying you.
Regardless of the economic and social cost.
Unemployment insurance exists for good reason, and no-one has suggested abolishing it. However, the good that it does also comes with a cost in delaying the return of the unemployed to work. Economists from right to left and in the Obama administration agree about this. Wishing it were not so does not make it true. Congress should consider both the costs and benefits of extended UI benefits when weighing how many years of benefits to provide unemployed workers. (Heritage).
But what we have now is incest at it’s best.
For about 15 years if someone asked me to sum up my philosophy about the people I ranted about I would say “Unenlightened Narcissism” but now I have revised that.
It’s now “Incestuous Narcissism”. Where both parties are consensual in the narcissism and incestuous need for the other, to the exclusion of “the extremists” who don’t buy into their relationship or try to break it up.
Intervention in their incest is not best. It is to be fought to the bitter end.
Part I: Unions
Unions, especially public sector unions, are the perfect example of this relationship.
As a matter of disclosure I have never like Unions, ever. I grew up in a “union town” but was never in a union.
I used to watch them play their games with GM, this being the UAW- United Auto Workers.
They would go on strike because $28/hr in 1975 was too little. And then GM would fire them and then re-hire them. It was game.
But now, it’s just incest.
The recent booze and pot mess at a Chrysler plant is merely the tip of iceberg. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVmKyJXHXRE)
What you have is simple. (This is a California graphic, but it applies nationally)
Albany Police Officers Union President Chris Mesley says that, regardless of the faltering economy, a no-raise new contract is unacceptable.
And to hell with the public.
“I’m not running a popularity contest here,” Mesley said. “If I’m the bad guy to the average citizen . . . and their taxes have go up to cover my raise, I’m very sorry about that, but I have to look out for myself and my membership.”
Mesley added: “As the president of the local, I will not accept ‘zeroes.’ If that means . . . ticking off some taxpayers, then so be it.”
Here are some of the facts;
Public pensions have unfunded liability of $1 trillion to $3.5 trillion
Federal workers take home twice pay and benefits as private workers. Local and state workers also make more.
Total Pay Benefits
Private $59,909 $50,028 $9,881
Local/state $67,812 $52,051 $15,761
Federal $119,982 $79,197 $40,785
— Average TWU (NY Transit Workers) union worker makes $60K without overtime or benefits.
— 25% took 15 or more sick days. Average was 8 sick days.
— Fox average 3 sick days (same for men and women)
— No FOX employee took 15 days
Relative Danger of Jobs (Deaths per 100,000 workers)
— Fishing 128.9
–Logging 115.7
–Iron workers 46.4
–Farmers 39.5
–Firemen 3.8
–Transit workers 1.4
(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, except Transit worker death, that is from interview with TWU Local100 President)
Some people argue that there’s no alternative to the government monopoly on municipal work, but Sandy Springs, Georgia, privatized most of it’s jobs in 2005. Now the city pays about ½ of what it used to pay. It enjoys a $14 million surplus, in addition to funding a $20 million reserve. (John Stossel)
And the Union bosses defense: They have a dirty job. People Spit on them! Boo Hoo! Women get Pregnant! (really, he said it repeatedly).
Though Statistics show that the deadliest profession is Deep Water Fishing (aka Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch”).
But you don’t seem getting these kinds of perks. They aren’t pimping or whoring for the government and vice versa like Union are.
That mean nothing to our Union Narcissist. He doesn’t care about fishing. It’s all about him and his own.
He’s entitled to retire at 50 with a pension you will never even dream of.
| Compensation | A. State and Local | B. Private Sector | Ratio A/B |
| Total Compensation | $39.66 | $27.42 | 1.45 |
| Wages and salaries | $26.01 | $19.39 | 1.34 |
| Benefits | $13.65 | $8.02 | 1.7 |
| Paid Leave | $3.27 | $1.85 | 1.77 |
| Supplemental Pay | $0.34 | $0.83 | 0.41 |
| Health insurance | $4.34 | $1.99 | 2.18 |
| Defined benefit pension | $2.85 | $0.41 | 6.95 |
| Defined contribution pension | $0.31 | $0.53 | 0.58 |
| Other benefits | $2.53 | $2.40 | 1.05 |
(redstate.com)
http://www.foxnewsinsider.com/2010/09/24/john-stossel-hosts-the-battle-for-the-future/
Whole Program John Stossel “Battle for the Future” in Six parts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7PGbZSs4xM
Then there’s The NEA, the National Teachers Association, a government union.
They are also incestuous.
John Stossel again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXFVeATlCDo
Like the fact that, despite pouring ever more money into the schools these past 40 years, America has fallen behind dozens of industrialized countries in math and science.
And the fact that every day in this country, 7,000 kids drop out of high school.
And that at this rate, by the year 2020, there will be 123 million American jobs for highly skilled and highly paid workers, but only 50 million Americans will be qualified to fill them.
Isn’t the NEA’s only recourse to say they need more money?
According to NEA-NH Insider the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (The Stimulus)…
…represents a huge win for education thanks to unprecedented funding increases targeted to local districts. ARRA also included increases for Title I, stabilization funding, and school construction bonds. This adds up. The US Dept. of Education saw funding increase $159.4 billion – an increase of 169%.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has saved approximately 325,000 education related jobs nationwide. Dr. Christina Romer, head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), stated that state stabilization funding to states has been “one of the triumphs” and has had “more bite than we would have thought.” Dr. Romer’s observation affirms the economic value to the nation of what was one of NEA’s major priorities in the stimulus package, and reinforces our argument in favor of continuing such aid through an Education Jobs Fund.
That’s “saved or created” for you… 🙂
And given the Incestuous circle of Taypayer-Government-Union-Lobbyist Contribution is it any wonder that pouring more money down this rathole isn’t working? 😦
The National Education Association, the larger of the two national teachers unions, considered spending $3.5 million to create an ad campaign to counter “the media propaganda of this summer’s series of anti-teacher union documentaries,” according to an agenda from its July meeting.
In the end, union officials decided it wasn’t worth it, said John Wilson, executive director.
“I think the films are a blip. They will come and go, but the union will still be there, our members will still be in these schools,” he said. “We don’t see any advantage of going to war with documentarians.” (Sacramento Bee)
Well, when you’re f*cking the boss (aka government) and creating the next generation of people who will view themselves as entitled to the fruits of others and that government must save them from themselves it’s Orwellian incestual indoctrination at it’s best.
Is it any wonder that the Democrats #1 base supporters are their own whores, The Unions, and that they care more about them than you.
And if you want to intervene in their mutual incest-fest you’re an “extremist”, a “kook” a “loon” and have to be stomped on.
Narcissistic personality disorder symptoms may include:
Although some features of narcissistic personality disorder may seem like having confidence or strong self-esteem, it’s not the same. Narcissistic personality disorder crosses the border of healthy confidence and self-esteem into thinking so highly of yourself that you put yourself on a pedestal. In contrast, people who have healthy confidence and self-esteem don’t value themselves more than they value others.
When you have narcissistic personality disorder, you may come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious. You often monopolize conversations. You may belittle or look down on people you perceive as inferior. You may have a sense of entitlement. And when you don’t receive the special treatment to which you feel entitled, you may become very impatient or angry. You may insist on having “the best” of everything — the best car, athletic club, medical care or social circles, for instance.
But underneath all this behavior often lies a fragile self-esteem. You have trouble handling anything that may be perceived as criticism. You may have a sense of secret shame and humiliation. And in order to make yourself feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and efforts to belittle the other person to make yourself appear better. (Mayo Clinic)
Tell Me that doesn’t sound like your garden variety Liberal?
Go on…I dare you…
Part 2: The People and Unemployment
The Largest Job-killing, family killing, economy-killing Tax increases are looming.
1/1/11.
But the Democrats are frozen with fear. If they vote to keep the tax cuts they can’t play their Class Warfare envy card,It’s worked for them for decades and gotten them a lot of power, and their base of mindless sheep will sheer them if they do.
They have whole generations of people that are slaves to to their will.
They like that. They want more of that.
But they know it will hurt them politically if they let them them expire.
They know, intrinsically, how much damage it will do.
So they try to mitigate it by trying to have their cake and eat it too.
We’ll only raise them on “the rich”. After all, the class envy weapon is one of their favourites.
Fear, jealousy, envy,greed, dependence. They love them all.
Problem is, that isn’t working either.
So, let’s do absolutely nothing before the election. Then we can give everyone Lame Duck Poisoning.
And it won’t matter. At least to them.
Now, that’s REAL Leadership!
YES WE CAN! DO NOTHING!
FEAR IS HOPE
With just weeks to go before the midterm elections, Americans have made it clear they don’t want their taxes raised. So what do congressional Democrats do? Nothing — at least until the elections are over.
For months, Democrats have hammered Republicans for trying to keep President Bush’s tax cuts in place for everyone, not just the middle class and those who no longer pay taxes. That would be a “giveaway to the rich,” they contend. But guess what? Most Americans don’t see it that way.
In a recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll, 63% want the Bush-era tax cuts — now set to expire at year-end — to remain in place. In the latest IBD/TIPP Poll, 48% favor making the cuts permanent vs. 30% opposed. And as for taxes on the rich, an AP-GfK Poll found that 39% support letting taxes go up only on those earning over $250,000, but 44% oppose the idea.
Hence, the Democrats’ dilemma: Either way they vote, they’ll anger a large chunk of the electorate — at a time when they need all the votes they can get to keep from being swept out of power.
So rather than hold an up-or-down vote on a tax bill that reflects their true beliefs, Democrats are postponing any action until after the elections. Obviously they know that what they really want to do will be wildly unpopular, and perhaps cost them seats.
But Americans know what they want, too, and they’ll see through the politics Democrats are playing with the economy at a time we can least afford it.
If they’ve decided to hike taxes during a lame-duck session of Congress after the election, they sure shouldn’t keep it secret. If people feel lied to during the election, they won’t be very happy. Democrats need to let their intentions be known — or face the wrath of the voters later.
If they think they can raise taxes on everyone or slap the “rich” with higher taxes and get away with it, they might be surprised. Ultimately, this will be a politically self-defeating strategy, making their far-left voter base happy but sacrificing middle-of-the-road Democrats who want to see the economy create jobs again.
Taxing the rich sounds good on paper or as a sound-bite in the left-dominated mainstream media, but it’s the rich who create businesses and do most of the hiring in this country. Tax these entrepreneurs and you tax jobs — the last thing we need after losing 8 million in three years.
As economist Curtis Dubay of the Heritage Foundation has noted, tax hikes on the rich “will slow down economic growth and job creation while the economy struggles to recover from a steep recession . .. (and) will hurt Americans at all income levels.”
Running a standard econometric model, Dubay estimates that letting taxes rise just on the rich, as President Obama and Senate Democrats propose, will cost the economy 7 million jobs over the next decade — and nearly $720 billion, or $6,000 per household, in income.
That’s an awful price to pay for envy. Before voting this fall, Americans should pin down their representatives on where they stand on tax cuts. Republicans have put out their Pledge to America, so you know what they stand for. What about the Democrats? (IBD)
And As if that wasn’t enough, The Democrats have decided on an Armageddon strategy as well, poisoning the well.
Leave nothing behind.
Unleash The Democrat A-Bomb.
The Ad-Hominem Bomb.
NewYork Times- WASHINGTON — Democratic candidates across the country are opening a fierce offensive of negative advertisements against Republicans, using lawsuits, tax filings, reports from the Better Business Bureau and even divorce proceedings to try to discredit their opponents and save their congressional majority.
Opposition research and attack advertising are deployed in almost every election, but these biting ads are coming far earlier than ever before, according to party strategists. The campaign has intensified in the past two weeks as early voting begins in several states and as vulnerable incumbents try to fight off an onslaught of influences by outside groups.
Metaphorically and politically, KILL EVERYONE!
If we can’t rule, no one can!
Say Anything, but do nothing.
Now’s that’s real leadership!
And when that doesn’t work, just LIE.
LAS VEGAS – Rep. Dina Titus has been a loyal soldier in pushing the Democrats’ ambitious agenda, voting for health care legislation, extended unemployment benefits, new energy taxes and a repeal of the military’s ban on gays serving openly.
Her campaign signs, however, proclaim Titus an “independent voice” for Nevadans.
Aware that their stock has taken the same tumble as home values, Congress’ most vulnerable Democrats are declaring their independence from their party’s agenda in Facebook profiles, television advertisements, news interviews and campaign websites leading up to the Nov. 2 election. That’s when Republicans hope to retake control of the House they lost four years ago.
Titus and others have raised eyebrows for carrying water for Obama in vote after vote, only to pivot and say they are not beholden to a party.
“I’m an independent”. I voted for every single piece of the radical leftist socialism, but I’m an “independent”.
As an actual, independent I should sue them for defamation of character. The grand fraud they hope to perpetrate with the help of the Ministry of Truth is truly mind-blowing.
So, now, you’re now too stupid to recognize the fraud, and the lies.
So what was the President’s response to the Republican’s Ideas (remembering that they are the “party of no” and “have no ideas” according to The President, The Liberal Media, and The Democrats) about cutting spending and less government?
“It is grounded in the same worn-out philosophy: cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; cut the rules for Wall Street and the special interests; and cut the middle class loose to fend for itself,” Obama said.
I could have written it myself and it would have sounded the same. It’s the same old hackneyed class warfare talking points. Bush’s fault. Nothing of substance.
Yadda Yadda Yadda….
What we can’t afford to relive Mr. President is your last 20 months!
Want to know how serious the Democrats are about border security and immigration?
Well, let’s invite a comedian to do his testimony in front of a live Congressional Committee (estimated to cost $125,000 taxpayers) to mock the whole idea of immigrant labor on farms.
This ain’t no Elmo moment, this was a serious mockery of Congress and immigration.
With joblessness near double digits, federal spending hurtling us toward national bankruptcy and an Islamic terror regime seeking nukes, what is Congress doing? Taking testimony from comedians.
What was Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., thinking when she invited Comedy Central’s faux right-wing pundit Stephen Colbert to appear — “in character”! — before her House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration?
But what does she care? She’s a 15-year incumbent whose San Jose district is so far to the left that she routinely gets re-elected with over 70% of the vote.
WASHINGTON – Taking his blowhard comedy act to Congress, Stephen Colbert told lawmakers that a day picking beans alongside illegal immigrants convinced him that farm work is “really, really hard.”
“It turns out — and I did not know this — most soil is at ground level,” Colbert testified Friday. Also, “It was hotter than I like to be.”
Still, Colbert expressed befuddlement that more Americans aren’t clamoring to “begin an exciting career” in the fields and instead are leaving the low-paid work to illegal immigrants.
Staying in character as a Comedy Central news commentator, Colbert offered a House hearing his “vast” knowledge, drawn from spending a single day on a New York farm as a guest of the United Farm Workers.
The union launched its “Take Our Jobs” campaign to back up its claim that few Americans would do the work of farm laborers, the vast majority of whom are in the U.S. illegally. Only seven people accepted the jobs, the union said.
Colbert pleaded with lawmakers to do something about the farm labor issue because “I am not going back out there.”
A House bill that creates a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants has been filed and another is being drafted in the Senate but Congress is due to recess soon to focus on fall elections. The bills, or pieces of them, could come up in a lame-duck session after the November balloting.
As the immigration subcommittee hearing began, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers praised Colbert for drawing a roomful of onlookers and photographers. Then he asked the comedian to leave the room — and to leave the job of testifying to the expert witnesses, including Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez.
“You run your show, we run the committee,” said Conyers, D-Mich.
Congressional committees frequently invite entertainment or sports personalities to testify on specific issues in an attempt to draw media attention. Colbert has no background or expertise in either farm labor issues or immigration policy.
Colbert said he was there at the invitation of subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. And Conyers later gave him the go-ahead, apparently hoping Colbert’s performance would counter the testimony of a political science professor who said illegal immigrants were competing with black and Hispanic citizens for jobs.
Colbert wiped his brow and launched into his mock right-wing schtick, demanding that lawmakers do something about the agriculture industry’s dependence on immigrant labor.
“I’m not a fan of the government doing anything,” Colbert insisted. “But I’ve got to ask, Why isn’t the government doing anything?”
Colbert’s humor drew guffaws from the audience and several Democrats on the subcommittee. But most of the Republicans sat stone-faced.
“Maybe we should be spending less time watching Comedy Central and more time considering all the real jobs that are out there,” said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.
At the close of the hearing, Colbert dropped his TV persona and turned serious, saying he was using his celebrity to bring attention to farm labor because “these seem to be the least of my brothers.”
“Right now migrant workers suffer and have no rights,” Colbert said.
The Insufferably Morally and Intellectual Left was taking the mickey out of you. They were mocking you. They are so far above you that you can’t even comprehend how brilliant this was… 😦
Lofgren is also chairwoman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on border, maritime and global counterterrorism. So maybe we’ll soon hear Robin Williams’ take on countering terrorists sneaking in from Mexico.
The big question, presumably, is whether Lofgren will ask Williams and Carrey to appear as themselves, or as Mork the space alien and Carrey’s dopey character from “Dumb and Dumber.”
Big automatic tax increases loom. Afghanistan’s not going too well. Iran may soon have atomic weapons. You’d think Democrats holding such high positions of responsibility had more pressing things to do than listen to jokesters.
Oh, and the vote to stop the LARGEST TAX INCREASE IN AMERICA HISTORY on 1/1/11, The Democrats don’t really care enough.
Comedians doing faux testimony and ad hominem attack ads are far more compelling.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – U.S. House Republican leader John Boehner is criticizing Democratic leaders in Congress for postponing a vote on extending Bush-era tax cuts until after the Nov. 2 election.
But they are way smarter than you. That’s why they are going to be trotting out the “grandma eating dog food” and “starving your kids” and “killing grandma” and “stealing your check” class warfare BS, et al.
FEAR IS HOPE
“Sire, The Peasants are Revolting.”
“You’re telling me, they stink on ice” (Mel Brook’s History of the World Part 1)
And from one of the best films ever, Monty Python & The Holy Grail.
ARTHUR: I am your king! (Think Obama, The Ivy Tower Harvard Educated Community Organizer and Academic Professor )
OLD WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings.
OLD WOMAN: Well, how did you become king, then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held Excalibur aloft from the bosom of the water to signify by Divine Providence … that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur … That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Look, strange women lying on their backs in ponds handing out swords … that’s no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. ( and ours ignores that in favor of Socialist Keynesian Liberal Academic Fantasies and “democratic” cramdowns for your own good because we are so morally and intellectually superior)
ARTHUR: Be quiet! (HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to the Insurance Industry)
DENNIS: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around saying I was an Emperor because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, people would put me away!
ARTHUR: (Grabbing him by the collar) Shut up, will you. Shut up!
DENNIS: Ah! NOW … we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up! (DAMN TEA PARTIERS!)
PEOPLE (i.e. other PEASANTS) are appearing and watching.
DENNIS: (calling) Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help, help, I’m being repressed!
ARTHUR: (aware that people are now coming out and watching) Bloody peasant! (pushes DENNIS over into mud and prepares to ride off) (Bloody Teabagger!)
DENNIS: Oh, Did you hear that! What a give-away.
ARTHUR: Come on, patsy.
They ride off.
DENNIS: (in the background as we PULL OUT) did you see him repressing me, then? That’s what I’ve been on about …
Call the NAACP!!, LA Raza, or MSDNC… 🙂
But now to the more serious point. This amazing article by Victor David Hanson.
Traditional peasant societies believe in only a limited good. The more your neighbor earns, the less someone else gets. Profits are seen as a sort of theft. They must be either hidden or redistributed. Envy rather than admiration of success reigns.
In contrast, Western civilization began with a very different ancient Greek idea of an autonomous citizen, not an indentured serf or subsistence peasant. The small, independent landowner — if left to his own talents and if his success was protected by, and from, government — would create new sources of wealth for everyone. The resulting greater bounty for the poor soon trumped their old jealousy of the better off.
Citizens of ancient Greece and Italy soon proved more prosperous and free than either the tribal folk to the north and west, or the imperial subjects to the south and east. The success of later Western civilization in general, and America in particular, is testament to this legacy of the freedom of the individual in the widest political and economic sense
We seem to be forgetting that lately — though Mao Zedong’s redistributive failures in China, or present-day bankrupt Greece, should warn us about what happens when government tries to enforce an equality of result rather than of opportunity.
Even after the failure of statism at the end of the Cold War, the disasters of socialism in Venezuela and Cuba, and the recent financial meltdowns in the European Union, for some reason America is returning to a peasant mentality of a limited good that redistributes wealth rather than creates it. Candidate Obama’s “spread the wealth” slip to Joe the Plumber simply was upgraded to President Obama’s “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
The more his administration castigates insurers, businesses and doctors; raises taxes on the upper income brackets; and creates more regulations, the more those who create wealth are sitting out, neither hiring nor lending. The result is that traditional self-interested profit-makers are locking up trillions of dollars in unspent cash rather than using it to take risks and either lose money due to new red tape or see much of their profit largely confiscated through higher taxes.
No wonder that in such a climate of fear and suspicion, unemployment remains near 10 percent. Deficits chronically exceed $1 trillion per annum. And now the poverty rate has hit a historic high. We are all getting poorer in hopes that a few don’t get richer.
The public is seldom told that 1 percent of taxpayers already pay 40 percent of the income taxes collected, while 40 percent of income earners are exempt from federal income tax — or that present entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are financially unsustainable. Instead, they hear more often that those who managed to scheme to make above $250,000 per year have obligations to the rest of us to give back about 60 percent of what they earn in higher health care and income taxes — together with payroll and rising state income taxes, and along with increased capital gains and inheritance taxes.
That limited-good mind-set expects that businesses will agree that they now make enough money and so have no need to pursue any more profits at the expense of others. Therefore, they will gladly still hire the unemployed and buy new equipment — as they pay higher health care or income taxes to a government that knows far better how to redistribute their income to the more needy or deserving.
This peasant approach to commerce also assumes that businesses either cannot understand administration signals or can do nothing about them. So who cares that in the Chrysler bankruptcy settlement, quite arbitrarily the government put the unions in front of the legally entitled lenders?
Health insurers should not mind that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just warned them to keep their profits down and their mouths shut — or face exclusion from health care markets.
I suppose that no corporation should worry that the government arbitrarily announced — without benefit a law or court ruling — that it wanted BP to put up $20 billion in cleanup costs for the Gulf spill.
What optimistic Americans used to call a rising tide that lifts all boats is now once again derided as trickle-down economics.
The present economy suggests that it is surely getting its wish. (Townhall.com)
But damn it will feel good, at least for liberals, to stick to the rich bastards.
Class warfare is like the fire they set at night to keep them warm and to warn off the predators lurking in the dark. It warms the cuckolds of their hearts and give them sustenance.
Envy, and Fear. Fear and Envy.
FEAR IS HOPE
Mind you, Everyone in Congress and the President are “rich”, millionaires in fact. But they aren’t evil because they are Liberals. And they are in “Public Service” so they are the Insufferably Morally and Intellectually Superior Left and not evil “rich” millionaires.
And big companies run by Millionaire CEOs (hello, GM,Chrysler etc) or Unions are not evil capitalist bastards out to destroy everyone in their path, because they are Liberals.
Evil “rich” people are only Republicans and Conservatives, you notice. Funny how that works out. 🙂
No partisan politics involved there. <wink>
Orwell was piker compared to these guys.
Did you see him (the evil “rich” and/or republican) repressing me? 🙂
Happy Birthday, ObamaCare. Six months old today and raising the cost of medical care, restricting patient options and causing employers to drop workers three years before even being fully implemented.
Congratulations!!
Steve KellyTake Minnesotan Gail C., who hoped to offset a monthly premium increase by raising her deductible. Instead, her insurer advised that such a change would not comply with ObamaCare provisions. She could make the adjustment but would no longer have guaranteed rates and could face penalties for exercising what used to be her freedom of choice.
When Conservatives for Patients’ Rights launched in February 2009, we called for patient-centered, free-market health care reform based on Four Pillars — choice, competition, accountability and personal responsibility. Instead, ObamaCare removes choice from patients and doctors, strangles market competition, provides no accountability from government and relegates personal responsibility — and control — to the ash heap of history.
Worse, it includes purchase mandates forcing individuals to buy health care — and employers to provide it — or face stiff fines.
Citing constitutional and statutory grounds, 43 states have now either joined Florida’s lawsuit to oppose ObamaCare, instituted their own legal challenges, filed legislation against coverage mandates or have citizen initiatives in play.
As far back as June 2009, national polls showed that Americans opposed key provisions by more than 55%. A poll taken by CNN hours before the March 2010 vote found that the majority of Americans did not support the bill. Sixty-two percent felt it would increase health care costs, and 70% thought it would swell the deficit. They were right.
The will of the people remains clear. An August poll by the liberal-leaning Kaiser Family Foundation found that 48% of independent voters held unfavorable views, and a recent Rasmussen poll shows that 61% of likely voters and 74% of “mainstream” voters openly favor repeal. With $500 billion in Medicare cuts heading to states and $600 billion in taxes and penalties aimed at consumers and businesses, Americans know that ObamaCare is a train wreck.
Government actuaries are predicting that health care costs could soon rise 20%, faster than if government had done nothing. A Congressional Budget Office analysis released just before the March vote indicated that premiums could double in six years.
Americans don’t need a 14-digit calculator to predict what happens when insurers must immediately take all comers to coverage — even those who got sick yesterday — without higher premiums. Restrictions make private coverage unsustainable. Which, of course, was always the endgame of ObamaCare.
As midterm elections approach, voters’ aversion to ObamaCare is apparent. Many House and Senate Members who voted for the plan are preparing for pink slips. In Arkansas, 64% opposed the “yea” vote of incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln, and 61% approved the “nea” of GOP Rep. John Boozman, who is challenging her. Boozman leads Lincoln by 17 points.
While many incumbents lost to primary challengers, the 34 House Democrats who voted against ObamaCare survived. And it’s impossible to find pro-ObamaCare references in any campaign advertising.
More significant than actual election results, these prevailing political trends demonstrate the resurgent will of the American people. All is not lost; that which has been done can be undone.
In early 2009, CPR met with the editorial board of a major national newspaper. After hearing our Four Pillars and mission to oppose government control of health care and the public option in particular, board members said we were wasting time and money as the debate would be over and government health care passed within 90 days.
Fifteen months later, ObamaCare barely passed, and only when conservative Democrats caved to leadership pressure and the offer of tantalizing political goodies. And it passed without the public option, previously considered a given. Such miscalculations show political elites to be fundamentally at odds with values like choice, competition, accountability and personal responsibility.
The people were right last March and are still right today. Because groups like Conservatives for Patients’ Rights embraced real, constructive reform, ObamaCare was passed over the objections of a public educated on its details and the consequences for American health care. Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have needed to pass it to know what was in it, but America didn’t.
The people didn’t want it then, don’t want it now and have always had the power to go back. They want patient-centered reforms that lower cost and expand choice without government control. And they want Obama-Care repealed. Americans will not cease efforts to that end, and no elected official is safe until it’s done. In this republic, the will of the people ultimately prevails. (IBD)
There is ample evidence to show that ObamaCare will cost jobs, raise health care costs and saddle future generations with crippling debt.
But don’t you dare blame the increases in premiums and costs on Obamacare!
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth, or in this case a Jackass (Donkey).
HHS Secretary Sebelius has already threatened them, but now Sen. Max “I never read the bill” Baucus (and Senate Health Care Bill author) is threatening them.
NEW YORK, Sept 20 (Reuters) – Two Democratic U.S. senators are demanding more transparency about premium increases from health insurers and warning them against blaming higher rates on a newly passed reform law. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana and Commerce Committee Chairman John Rockefeller of West Virginia said they sent a letter to the five largest health insurers by enrollment registering their concerns over increases for next year.
“I want health insurance companies to be transparent and honest when increasing premiums (You First. :))— and health care reform is simply not to blame,” Rockefeller said in a statement.
“Health plans will continue to do everything they can to implement the new law in a way that minimizes disruption and keeps coverage as affordable as possible for individuals, families and employers,” Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans organization, said in a statement. “Political attacks won’t do anything to make coverage more affordable for working families and small businesses that are struggling in a slow economy,” Zirkelbach said.
But Politicial attacks is all the Democrats now how to do. Especially 40 days from an election it’s all they know how to do.
“Health insurers should be transparent about the assumptions they use to arrive at their premium increases,” the senators wrote. “If an insurer thinks it can blame the enactment of the Affordable Care Act for its rising premiums, it is surely mistaken.”
Don’t blame the actual cause, because that’s not politically advantageous to us. So we want you to lie, just like we do and sugar coat it, suck it up, and give them the Orwellian Bovine Fecal Matter that we have been shoveling in their direction for 2 years.
Or at the very least shut up and do as you are told.
Health Czarina and Grand Vizier, the Great and Powerful OZ Says so or else we will bring about our terrible wrath upon you! 🙂
You wouldn’t want to be on their Enemies List now would you? 🙂
ObamaCare gives Ms. Sebelius’s regulators the power to define “unreasonable” premium hikes, which will mean whatever they decide it will mean later this fall. She promised to keep a list of insurers “with a record of unjustified rate increases” and then to bar them from ObamaCare’s subsidized “exchanges” when they come on line in 2014. In other words, insurers must accept price controls now or face the retribution of a de facto ban on selling their products to consumers four years from now.
This is nasty stuff and an obvious attempt to shift political blame for rising insurance costs before the election. It’s also an early sign of life under ObamaCare, when all health-care decisions are political and the bureaucrats decide who can charge how much for a service or product.
Democrats built this system and they now own it politically. The least they could do is take credit for its consequences. (WSJ)
Senator Max Baucus recently admitted that he never read the Obamacare legislation. But that hasn’t stopped him from trying to re-write it after the fact, asserting that Congress intended to give people even less choice of private health plans than described in the bill!
This overreach should encourage states that are trying to block Obamacare: It’s going to be even worse than we initially thought.
Obamacare reduces choice of health plans by giving government the power to control the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) – the amount of dollars an insurer spends on medical care divided by the total premiums. Under Obamacare, policies that cover large businesses will have to achieve an MLR of 85 percent, while those for small businesses and individuals will have to achieve an MLR of 80 percent. This sounds simple but leaves many issues unresolved.
An important one is the treatment of taxes: Taxes are not medical care, but nor are they under health plans’ control. So, Obamacare excludes taxes from total costs used to calculate the MLR. Senator Baucus leads a group of senators who now assert that what they meant to pass was a bill that exempted some taxes from health plans’ MLR calculations, but not corporate income taxes.
If it prevails, Baucus’ flawed notion will lead to an immediate reduction of choice of health plans. Suppose two insurers of the same size compete in a region’s large-group market. They earn premiums of $1 million each. They each spend $850,000 on medical claims, thereby achieving an MLR of 85 percent. One insurer is for-profit, earning a profit of 4 percent ($40,000), and pays combined federal and state corporate income tax of 45 percent ($18,000). Its MLR automatically shrinks to 83.5 percent and Obamacare shuts it down.
Even without Baucus’ newly invented interpretation, the MLR is deadly for increasingly popular consumer-directed plans. Suppose a traditional policy costs $4,000 and spends $3,400 on patient care, for an MLR of 85.00. With the consumer-directed policy, the patient controls $800 more of the medical spending than with the traditional policy, through a higher deductible, and his premium goes down by $800. In this case the MLR goes down to 81.25 ($2,600/$3,200). There is no real difference, but the accounting looks worse, and Obamacare shuts it down. (In fact, consumer-driven plans have lower total costs than in this simple example, because cutting out the middleman and giving more health dollars to patients to control themselves motivates them to get better value for money.)
MLRs are also irrelevant because the insured and their employers tend to choose health plans based on other criteria—likely invisible to politicians and bureaucrats. Plans with relatively low MLRs have increased market share in the last few years.
There is no doubt: Obamacare will severely reduce Americans’ choice of health plans. Fortunately, states are using a number of tools to resist Obamacare, until it is repealed. To impose its anti-choice regulations, the federal law relies on state-based “exchanges” that would choose health insurance for their citizens.
Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, has signed an executive order forbidding state bureaucrats from even applying for federal grants to set up an “exchange” to limit people’s choice of health plan. As Obamacare deploys its regulatory regime, other governors are likely to follow his lead.
So Happy Birthday to the worst political stink bomb in American History.
The leftists are all in a tizzy. A tizzy of their own making mind you.
But they’ll never see it that way. Because it was done “for the children” and the Insufferably Morally Superior Left doesn’t care about reality in their fantasies and delusions of “fairness” and “equality” in their own minds.
It makes them “feel good”.
Here’s a little lesson the Left refuses to hear about reality:
People who buy insurance often have a better idea of the risks they face than do the sellers of insurance. People who know that they face large risks are more likely to buy insurance than people who face small risks. Insurance companies try to minimize the problem that only the people with big risks will buy their product, which is the problem of adverse selection, by trying to measure risk and to adjust prices they charge for this risk. Thus, life insurance companies require medical examinations and will refuse policies to people who have terminal illnesses, and automobile insurance companies charge much more to people with a conviction for drunk driving or if you get into an accident (or if your neighbors are idiots you’re going to pay more because of a more adverse selection–that’s why “my rates keep going up but I haven’t caused any accidents”).
It describes a situation where an individual’s demand for insurance (either the propensity to buy insurance, or the quantity purchased, or both) is positively correlated with the individual’s risk of loss (e.g. higher risks buy more insurance), and the insurer is unable to allow for this correlation in the price of insurance. This may be because of private information known only to the individual (information asymmetry), or because of regulations or social norms which prevent the insurer from using certain categories of known information to set prices (e.g. the insurer may be prohibited from using information such as gender or ethnic origin or genetic test results). The latter scenario is sometimes referred to as ‘regulatory adverse selection’.
And regulatory adverse selection is what we have in droves in the Insufferably Morally Superior Left Health Care Cramdown.
And the little superior moralists are shocked and applauded that the insurance industry would actually follow these principle laid out above and not just roll over and kiss their morally superior asses and do “the right thing for the children” and as they are told like a good little doggie.
Health plans in at least four states have announced they’re dropping children’s coverage just days ahead of new rules created by the healthcare reform law, according to the liberal grassroots group Health Care for America Now (HCAN).
The new healthcare law forbids insurers from turning down children with pre-existing conditions starting Thursday, one of several reforms Democrats are eager to highlight this week as they try to build support for the law ahead of the mid-term elections. But news of insurers dropping their plans as a result of the new law has thrown a damper on that strategy and prompted fierce push-back from the administration’s allies at HCAN.
The announcement could lead to higher costs for some parents who are buying separate coverage for themselves and their children at lower cost than the family coverage that’s available to them.
“We’re just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds and decided to refuse to sell child-only coverage,” HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome said in a statement. “The latest announcement by the insurance companies that they won’t cover kids is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest.
“Instead, they should reverse their actions immediately and simply follow the law. If the insurance companies can casually turn their backs on sick children now, who will they abandon next? This offensive behavior by the insurance companies is yet another reminder of why the new law is so important and why the Republicans’ call for repeal is so misguided.”
Health plans and state insurance commissioners in July raised concerns that the new rules could lead some insurers to stop children-only coverage because families could wait until their children get sick to buy coverage.
Days later, the Obama administration issued regulations clarifying that insurers would still be able to establish enrollment periods in accordance with state law.
“To address concerns over adverse selection, issuers in the individual market may restrict enrollment of children under 19, whether in family or individual coverage, to specific open enrollment periods if allowed under state law,” the Department of Health and Human Services clarified.
The issue had largely dropped out of sight since then, but insurers including WellPoint and CoventryOne have announced in recent days that they’re dropping children’s coverage in California, Colorado, Ohio and Missouri, according to HCAN. (The Hill)
I guarantee this is only the beginning. Trust me.
But the Insufferably Morally Superior Left will just sit there and be “appalled” and kick and scream and whine and moan “they aren’t doing what we told them to do whaaaahh!!!”
Then go to their government buddies and pass more regulations to have their way.
I say a new term in a headline recently that fit, LAWFARE. Waging a war by lawsuits and REGFARE, waging war by regulation.
That’s the Insufferably Morally Superior Left in a nutshell.
As I said repeatedly and often during the Health Care debate, it’s about the government and leftists wanting total control of who lives and who dies and you dependent on them for everything. Period. End of Story.
They want private insurance gone. But private insurance is not going quietly.
That would be a moral hazard.
In insurance markets, moral hazard occurs when the behavior of the insured party changes in a way that raises costs for the insurer, since the insured party no longer bears the full costs of that behavior. Because individuals no longer bear the cost of medical services, they have an added incentive to ask for pricier and more elaborate medical service—which would otherwise not be necessary. In these instances, individuals have an incentive to over consume, simply because they no longer bear the full cost of medical services.
And does this not sound like ObamaCare to you?? 🙂
In the “WHOOPS! Did I say that?” Department:
As reported a few days ago about Colin Powell’s comments about illegal Aliens. Well, he’s gone into full reverse mode!
In the interview , Powell said a path to legal status should be offered to illegal immigrants in the U.S. because they “are doing things we need done in this country.”
He added: “They’re all over my house, doing things whenever I call for repairs, and I’m sure you’ve seen them at your house. We’ve got to find a way to bring these people out of the darkness and give them some kind of status.”
This morning, however, comes word from Powell’s office that he “misspoke.”
Political Speak for I told you the truth of what I believe, but now it’s been pointed out that it’s bad politically to say it, so I am backpedaling like a maniac and a liar.
At least he didn’t say “misquoted” or “taken out of context”. 🙂
“I don’t hire illegal immigrants,” Powell says in a statement today. “On Meet the Press yesterday, I referred to illegal immigrants working around my house. I was referring to the many service contractors who work in my neighborhood, using mostly immigrant workers, who do good work. Some may well be ‘illegal.’ There are 11 million illegal immigrants in this country and most are working somewhere in our economy.”
An order of Foot (Foot in Mouth) with side order of Crow for the General 🙂
*********************************************
Since the Media is now obsessed with politicians lives before their national prominence (cue Christine O’Donnell) here’s this ditty from The Washington Post January 3,2007:
Long before the national media spotlight began to shine on every twist and turn of his life’s journey, Barack Obama had this to say about himself: “Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. . . . I got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind.”
The Democratic senator from Illinois and likely presidential candidate offered the confession in a memoir written 11 years ago, not long after he graduated from law school and well before he contemplated life on the national stage. At the time, 20,000 copies were printed and the book seemed destined for the remainders stacks.
As a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton thought marijuana use could be enough of a liability in 1992 that he felt compelled to say he had not inhaled. And President Bush has managed to deflect endless gossip about his past by acknowledging that he had an “irresponsible” youth but offering no details.
Through his book, Obama has become the first potential presidential contender to admit trying cocaine.
Do you think the media will be obsessed with this, or with what a teenager said once 12 years ago??
Depends on the party affliation.
Liberal Democrat: No
Republican and/Or Tea Party: 24/7 obsession.
But don’t worry, it’s “fair” and “balanced”. 🙂
And that matters to the Liberals. 🙂
Last Friday, comedian Bill Maher, whose cable show “Real Time” is considered by liberals as a real news source (unlike, say, Fox News), dug up and showed an 11-year-old interview from 1999 in which O’Donnell, then 30 years old, said she “dabbled in witchcraft” because she “hung around people who were doing these things” in high school.
O’Donnell graduated from Moorestown (N.J.) High School in 1987, a dozen years before the Maher appearance. If political candidates are to be judged by what they did or hung with in high school, we are taking the vetting process to extremes.
Two days later, pundit Karl Rove, whose primary night critique of O’Donnell caused a stir, was on “Fox News Sunday” saying: “In Delaware, where there are a lot of churchgoing people, they’re going to want to know what this is all about.”
Perhaps, but they also want to know about her position on the repeal of ObamaCare and extending the Bush tax cuts.
Delaware voters, many of whom probably check their horoscope before they go to church, might indeed want to know what a Delaware teenager was up to back then. She might even have dabbled in marijuana without inhaling.
But we suspect they might also want to know about her opponent, Chris Coons, dabbling in Marxism in college, writing a paper about his transformation to a “bearded Marxist.”
“There’s been no witchcraft since. If there was, Karl Rove would be a supporter now,” O’Donnell jokingly told a GOP picnic in southern Delaware on Sunday. To be fair, two groups started by Rove, Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads, have contributed mightily to Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Tea Party opponent, Sharron Angle. This makes Rove’s continued criticism curious.
Voters, we would think, would be more interested in Democrat Coons’ disastrous record as Newcastle County chief executive. During his tenure, spending increased 10% and he shifted the burden for his irresponsibility to taxpayers with property tax hikes of 5%, 17.5% and 25%. In 2008, Fitch Ratings downgraded the county’s “rating outlook” from stable to negative because the county’s cash balances were decreasing under Coons’ stewardship.
Republican voters have already decided that O’Donnell was a better choice to represent them than establishment Congressman and two-term former Delaware Gov. Mike Castle. If O’Donnell starts out behind in the polls, well, that’s why we have campaigns.
West Virginia voters tolerated Sen. Robert Byrd, who in his relative youth dabbled in racism and bigotry as a grand kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan. Byrd’s association wasn’t a high school fad. He joined the KKK in 1942, when he was 25; four years later, he was still talking about his hope for a KKK renaissance in West Virginia. And 18 years after that, he famously filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“He once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan,” President Bill Clinton said of Sen. Byrd. “What does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollows from West Virginia. He was trying to get elected.” At least he didn’t dabble in Wicca.
Hillary Clinton, during her time as first lady, participated in seance-type sessions that included strange moments of imaginary conversation with a deceased Eleanor Roosevelt from the solarium atop the White House, according to Grove City College professor Paul Kengor’s biography, “God and Hillary Clinton.”
Keep rocking the establishment, Christine. Continue to do that voodoo that you do so well. (IBD)
Leftist Richard Cohen on “Witchcraft” : The unseen effects of witchcraft are clearly the reason about one-fifth of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. In fact, as time goes by, more and more people subscribe to this belief — a phenomenon so at odds with logic or rational thinking that the explanation has to lie in the darkest of arts — witchcraft and voodoo.
This fatuous infatuation with the Constitution, particularly the 10th amendment, is clearly the work of witches, wiccans and wackos. It has nothing to do with America’s real problems and, if taken too seriously, would cause an economic and political calamity.
O’Donnell is where the GOP has been heading for some time. The party’s leaders have steadfastly refused to take a stand against any idiocy, even suggesting they agree that Obama might not be a Christian. Their intellectuals have supported and advanced the know-nothingness of Sarah Palin. Nothing to them is beyond the pale. This party is not fit to govern. It would support the Joker but not Batman, who hangs too much with Robin.
So now it has a candidate in Delaware who truly is a career politician. She seems to have no means of support except campaign funds. She supposedly lives in her headquarters, although this is somewhat in dispute. Whatever the case, she has no job and no views worth a moment’s consideration. (She even appalls Karl Rove.)
She’s not likely to win, but the way things are going this year, she just might. People are angry. People are mad. The night is dark. Witch way out of here?
Isn’t the dripping condescension and the ad hominems just glorious arrogant?
And it’s perfectly liberal.
You aren’t smart enough to see the hypocrites on the left for what they are.
And if the people voted for her, she now has to stand on her own against thre liberal attack machine, or just go quietly.
We’ll see.
But one things for sure, The Ministry of Truth will be digging through her birth records and interviewing every person (including the waiter at restaurant when she 2 that she spit up on 🙂 ) she ever met in her entire life because they care about the facts and nothing but the facts, it’s not personal. 🙂
Sorry…Have to stop…. now…Hell… froze… over…
Remember this beauty, it’s 80 Miles from the Border.
The Democrats, and specifically Harry Reid have decided to bring the issue back up, but in an underhanded manner that is a cynical political ploy.
Put simply, Harry Reid has attached the DREAM Act (Amnesty) to a Defense Bill so you can vote against the troops or vote for Amnesty. The so-called “Blue dog” Democrats won’t vote for it. The Republicans certainly won’t. So it’s just red meat thrown to the troops as “Hope”.
HOPE IS FEAR
And the cynical ply doesn’t stop there.
Oh no, why would it.
No, this is a blatant attempt to energize a demoralized base to turn out at the polls to save themselves from a taxpayer revolt.
It’s all about them.
“We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks.
Late Sunday night, White House advisers denied that a national ad campaign was being planned. “There’s been no discussion of such a thing at the White House” or the Democratic National Committee, said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser.(NYT)
Which means they are have produced the ads and are just waiting for that last minute all-out Nuclear Armageddon strike. 🙂
The more people they can get out to the polls to vote against the anger wave headed their way, the better.
So let’s throw a “hope” out. A “hope” that has no real hope of actually passing. But we can stir up the Hornet’s nest and try obscure what we’ve done to destroy this country.
And besides, if you disagree, you’re a racist! 🙂
After all, the Democrats main strategy seems to be, Want More Bush? or Want these kooks and extremists (aka Tea Party) to takeover??
They can’t and won’t run on their own “accomplishments” because none of them are positive.
Heath Care: The Majority still favors repeal. Despite the campaigns to “explain it better” so you’ll love have the government deciding whether you live or die.
Debt: It was George Bush’s Fault that the 10 Trillion Deficit is now over 14.
Financial reform: It was Bush’s Fault that they’ve stiffeled business and burdened them with choking regulations and made uncertainty the only certainty.
It was the Democrats fault for the Subprime-Meltdown because they got the ball rolling that eventually turned into the mountain. But you won’t hear that from them either.
And does anyone seriously think that the sequel to the 1980’s Anti-Reagan movie “Wall Street” is anything other propaganda?? I mean really…
Stimulus: A miserable failure. A Trillion dollars that “saved or created” jobs that either didn’t need saving (because they were saving Union Pensions instead) or they cost $2 million per jobs (as in LA).
Vice President Joe Biden on Friday cited one in which the New York City Department of Transportation is spending $175 million to renovate bridges and a parking lot, putting all of 120 people to work. That’s $1.46 million per job. Another job on Biden’s list, a highway project in Ohio, has created 300 jobs and costs $138 million — $460,000 per worker.
When the Democrats are in charge, the rich just get richer. Wait — isn’t that what we’re supposed to say about Republicans?
Not so when federal stimulus funds are being spent.
Washington has taken trickle-down economics to a whole new level of inefficiency. Those closest — literally — to the seat of federal power get the most. By the time the funds make their long journey to paychecks for people doing productive work, there’s not a whole lot left. (IBD)
But don’t worry, there’s always hope. 🙂
Taxes: they are going up on 1/1/11 and The Democrats are ideologically incapable of stopping it. It’s like staring into mouth of hell for Democrats to raise taxes on anyone but “the rich” which the Bush tax Cuts WILL do and they are hypnotized by it. So they just conveniently forget about it and go for class warfare instead.
Then there are all the taxes associated with their “Reforms”, Aka health Care and Financial that they won’t talk about.
Jobs: Well, the President’s “focus” has been a bit lazy. And when his economic team promised if you spend a Trillion dollars on the stimulus the maximum unemployment will be is 8% (That person has now left the team).
It’s nearly 10% and has been for the better part of a year and now many pundits and economists are talking about a permanent underclass and permanent structural unemployment.
So Mission accomplished there! 🙂
You have plenty of people completely dependent on your largess and will do whatever you want them to do and think whatever you want them to.
And that were the illegals come in again.
They are apart of that underclass. And they have to stay there to be manipulated. So keep dangling the carrot!
And just like the NAACP, Hispanics have plenty of organizations that “speak form them” that are only interested in their own self-interest of self-perpetuation of their own power and self-importance.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says illegal immigrants do essential work in the U.S. and he has firsthand knowledge of that — because they fix his house.
Powell, a moderate Republican, urged his party Sunday to support immigration generally because it is “what’s keeping this country’s lifeblood moving forward.”
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said a path to legal status should be offered to illegal immigrants because they “are doing things we need done in this country.”
He added: “They’re all over my house, doing things whenever I call for repairs, and I’m sure you’ve seen them at your house. We’ve got to find a way to bring these people out of the darkness and give them some kind of status.”
Powell did not say whether he has hired illegal immigrants directly or they showed up with contractors.
They do Gen. Powell’s house so they must be ok! Let’s just give them all Amnesty! 🙂
So what about the Legal American Construction Worker?
Oh, he’s on the unemployment line looking for a job ,for the past 2 years.
The unemployment rate for the construction industry edged down to 17 percent in August.
Who cares about him. Because if you’re against illegal aliens taking his job, you’re a racist! 🙂
“While we may have a handful of nominees out of the mainstream, the American people have come to the conclusion this administration and this Congress are out of the mainstream,” said John Weaver, a Republican consultant.(NYT)
The elites are better than you, remember. You should trust people who are smarter,better educated, slicker than oil itself, after all. 🙂
And besides, if you disagree you’re a racist and/or a bigot! 🙂
Or even better, An EXTREMIST! (not that they aren’t, by the way-just ignore the socialist behind the curtain).
So Press 1 for Elitism
Press 2 for Pandering
Press 3 for Creative Lying
Press 4 for Out-and-Out Bold faced Lies
Press 5 For Class Warfare
Press 6 For Ministry Truth/mainstream Media Spin
Press 7 to VOTE THE BUMS OUT!
7 has always been a lucky number. 🙂
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, seeking to fire up an important part of his support base ahead of November’s elections, told black leaders on Saturday he wanted their support to “guard the change” he was delivering.
“I need everybody here to go back to your neighborhoods, and your workplaces, to your churches, and barbershops, and beauty shops. Tell them we have more work to do. Tell them we can’t wait to organize. Tell them that the time for action is now,” he told the Congressional Black Caucus.
The time for action is now, that’s true. But it’s to stop “the change”.
Bob Moffit of the Heritage Foundation believes that “the exodus from job-based insurance will only escalate under ObamaCare.” He notes that “under the president’s system, approximately 14 million Americans will lose or be moved out of their existing job-based coverage.”
And into the government system, which, of course, is where the Democrats want every American to be, whether they like it or not.
The absurdity of race continues to rear its ugly head and once again, the succubus appears in Mississippi. The folks in the Magnolia State can’t seem to get it right on race even when they use the liberal racialist play book.
A few weeks ago the Nettleton Middle school in Nettleton, Miss., came under fire when it was discovered that the school was dividing offices on its student council by race. The offices open only to black or white students rotated each year. In addition, the school maintained separate racial titles for its prom and homecoming kings and queens.
The unfortunate information came to light when a young sixth-grade girl decided she wanted to run for class reporter. She was told that the office of reporter was only open to black students, but that she could run for class president, as that office was open to white students. The student in question is of Italian and Native-American parentage, so you can imagine her confusion. In an attempt to gain clarity, the girl’s mother wrote a letter to the school board. According to the mother, she was told that for the purposes of classification, the school goes by the mother’s race because “with minorities the father isn’t generally in the home.”
When the story hit the Internet, the consternation was palpable! The school’s principal, (who, by the way, is black, as is the vice-principal), and the school board office were inundated with phone calls. Within a day, Nettleton’s superintendant of schools, Russell Taylor, had issued a statement, which read in part, “beginning immediately, student elections at Nettleton School District will no longer have a classification of ethnicity. It is our intent that each student has equal opportunity to seek election for any student office.”
This was, as the old saying goes, “much too little, much too late.” The damage was already done.
For many, this was simply the people of Mississippi allowing the red on their necks to show. Here, for the world to see was the true state of race in America! Dumb racists in Mississippi were just the tip of the iceberg! Or so the blogosphere declared.
Of course, what is most distressing about this episode is that the racialists on the left are too busy preening in their righteous indignation to see their own reflection in the Nettleton policy.
As Taylor explains in his statement: “These procedures were implemented to help ensure minority representation and involvement in the student body…” And so they were.
The student enrollment in the Nettleton schools is about 70 percent white. Thirty years ago, the school’s administrators reasoned that black students would never be elected to serve on the student council and would never serve as homecoming or prom royalty because white students would never vote for them, at least not every year. To ensure that blacks would have the opportunity to fully participate in the school’s student government and social life, they instituted a policy of rotating student council offices and separate prom and homecoming kings and queens based on race. The policy implemented by the school was not a segregationist policy; it was an affirmative action policy meant to ensure diversity!
And here is the absurdity racialism has wrought: Racialists point the finger at red-necks in Mississippi for separating student council seats and homecoming royalty by race, while at the same time demanding seats on corporate boards be divvied up by gender and race; screaming bloody murder if state assembly and congressional seats are not divvied up by race (because, of course, they hold it as a matter of fact that white people will never vote for black candidates); and insisting that acceptances to a college or university be divvied up by race and gender. It remains unclear why folks that demand separate dormitories for black students, hold separate college graduation ceremonies for black students, and who become apoplectic at the very mention of rolling back racial preferences feel they are qualified to lecture the people of Mississippi (or anyone else) on race relations.
Did the school administrators abandon the policy because they now believe white students will vote for black students and vice versa and that the racial make-up of the student council does not matter? Let us hope. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that they were motivated primarily by a bit of bad publicity. I further suspect that they will find another means to the same end.
This past June, Judge Stephen Robinson, along with the Obama Justice Department, decided that the people of Port Chester, New York were racists because they had not yet elected a Hispanic member to its board of trustees. Justice Robinson therefore ordered the city to institute a system of cumulative voting, wherein each voter is allowed to vote six times. Perhaps the Nettleton school district will borrow a page from the book of Justice Robinson.
Sadly, the people of Mississippi will continue to get it wrong on race because they have not learned that when the racial wildcard is played, the fix is in. As the writer John Edger Wideman wrote, the inventor of race always “holds the winning cards because he can choose when he plays them and names their value.” None of us will move beyond race until we realize that the racialists are simply making up the rules as they go along.(Joseph Phillips)
But like most liberal ideas, it “feels good” I’m sure to be so diverse and to promote it. 🙂
Anything else would just be racist. 🙂
Did you hear the one about the 55 jobs that were saved or created by using $111,000,000?
No? Just ask Los Angeles.
More than a year after Congress approved $800 billion in stimulus funds, the Los Angeles city controller has released a 40-page report on how the city spent its share, and the results are not living up to expectations.
“I’m disappointed that we’ve only created or retained 55 jobs after receiving $111 million,” said Wendy Greuel, the city’s controller. “With our local unemployment rate over 12 percent we need to do a better job cutting red tape and putting Angelenos back to work.”
According to the audit, the Los Angeles Department of Public Works spent $70 million in stimulus funds — in return, it created seven private sector jobs and saved seven workers from layoffs. Taxpayer cost per job: $1.5 million.
The Los Angeles Department of Transportation created even fewer jobs per dollar, spending $40 million but netting just nine jobs. Taxpayer cost per job: $4.4 million.
Greuel blamed the dismal numbers on several factors:
1. Bureaucratic red tape: Four highway projects did not even go out to bid until seven months after they were authorized.
2. Projects that were supposed to be competitively bid in the private sector went instead went to city workers.
3. Stimulus money was not properly tracked within departments
4. Both departments could not report the jobs created and retained in a timely fashion..
And this bureaucrat went on to give themself a B- grade for their performance!!
And these are the bureaucrat types who are going to be in charge of your Health Care and whether you live or die?
God Help us All!!
But the Stimulus is a compete and glorious success. Just ask the Mainstream Media and Press…
And Now the Ministry Of Truth Cheerleading of The Week Story:
Diane Sawyer (Anchor, ABC News Tonight) announced the “President’s stimulus program” of $818 billion was “designated to create or save millions of jobs” and though “Republicans say it’s been largely unsuccessful,” the “White House is firing back, and our Jon Karl has a look at the top of the list, the ones that have worked the best.” Previewing a report to be released Friday by the Vice President’s office, “100 Recovery Act Projects that Are Changing America” (AP dispatch), Karl trumpeted how “the White House will detail the top 100 stimulus programs in the country. We have an exclusive list at what they considered the greatest hits of the stimulus program.”
Karl began with a project in New Jersey “where a toxic area contaminated by an old electronics plant is being transformed into a new industrial park, thanks to $30 million stimulus dollars” and, he raved, “the project has already created 68 jobs.”
Showing the effort to which ABC went to produce the advertisement for President Obama, the Washington DC-based Karl showed himself at the site of his second example in New York City, to which he credited 120 jobs: “The White House is also touting the $175 million in stimulus funds being spent here at New York’s Staten Island ferry terminal, replacing nine bridges like this one that are in a dangerous state of disrepair.”
Next, after noting Senator John McCain’s claim the spending has been a waste, Karl cited “230 jobs created” by “$51 million for a new facility for injured veterans at Fort Bliss, Texas” and, finally, without any job creation claim, “$25 million in tax credits for GE to build a new plant for energy efficient appliances in Louisville, Kentucky.” That would be a little corporate welfare for MSNBC’s owner.
Karl concluded that adding up all the jobs in the 100 projects in the White House list, though he did not cite a total claimed number, “comes to $250,000 per job, but the White House says the actual cost per job is much lower, because each of these projects will have ripple effects, creating many more jobs in the future.”
Sawyer then reiterated the White House line: “So they say these are facts, too, and these are the facts that show it’s been working.”
And these are the facts that show there is no Journalism anymore in the Mainstream media, just Propaganda for Big Brother.
“I’m sad to report today a death of a good friend to all of us…..Journalism, the once esteemed 4th estate of our nation and the protector of our freedoms and a watchdog of our rights has passed away after a long struggle with a crippling and debilitating disease of acute dishonesty aggravated by advanced laziness and the loss of brain function.”–Former Gov. Mick Hucakbee (2009).
Just the Facts, Ma’am! 🙂
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Our New Orwellian Phrase of the Week:
From the administration that brought you “man-caused disaster” (terrorist attack) and “overseas contingency operation,” (war) another terminology change is in the pipeline.
The White House wants the public to start using the term “global climate disruption” in place of “global warming” — fearing the latter term oversimplifies the problem and makes it sound less dangerous than it really is. (FOX)
So from Global Cooling…”inadvertent climate modification.”….to Global Warming…To Global Climate Change… to Climate Change…to Global Climate Disruption?….. 🙂
And when that fails to dull the minds of everyone to their fake threat then what?
But Republicans predicted that re-branding the issue would have limited effect on the legislative effort. GOP strategist Pete Snyder said he doubts the term is going to change hearts and minds. “Are they going to change the name of weathermen to disruption analysts?”
Especially, after Climate Gate it was very apparent that science was taking a back seat to Progressive Liberal Politics.
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I guess her Ego just couldn’t handle losing to an insignificant little dweeb in the Tea Party.
“We cannot accept the extremist views of Joe Miller,” she said, admitting that she did not “swing back” when under attack in the primary, but promising to do so with relish now.
“The gloves are off,” she said.
Her Ego must have really been bruised. Now she sounds like MSDNC, or the NAACP or Huffington Post.
The ruling class has been hurt by the little people.
“The Peasants are revolting, sire”
“Yeah, I know, they stink on ice” (Mel Brooks History of the World Part 1) 🙂
Then there’s Chrisitine O’Donnell, the “kooky” candidate Tea party nominee in Delaware that upset the apple cart by taking out a RINO (Republican in Name Only) who was well loved by the ruling class because he had an (R) next to his name but was in fact a Liberal. But he was one of “them”.
Karl Rove attacks her savagely, sounding like Chris Matthews or Rachael “Madcow” Maddow on MSDNC.
Charles Krauthammer, who anyone who reads this blog will know I have great respect for, attacks her.
Why?
Because it’s a numbers game to them. Winning at any cost is just politics.
And that’s all that matters. The Power. Not the principles.
But if we happen to get conservatives in at the same time, that’s a bonus. Not the actual benefit.
And isn’t that ass backwards??
Thomas Sowell: Words are supposed to convey thoughts, but they can also obliterate thoughts and shut down thinking. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, a catchword can “delay further analysis for fifty years.” Holmes also said, “think things, not words.”
When you are satisfied to accept words, without thinking beyond those words to the things — the tangible realities of the world — you are confirming what philosopher Thomas Hobbes said in the 17th century, that words are wise men’s counters but they are the money of fools.
Even in matters of life and death, too many people accept words instead of thinking, leaving themselves wide open to people who are clever at spinning words. The whole controversy about “health care reform” is a classic example.
“Health care” and medical care are not the same thing. The confusion between the two spreads more confusion, when advocates of government-run medical care point to longer life expectancies in some other countries where government runs the medical system.
Health care affects longevity, but health care includes far more than medical care. Health care includes such things as diet, exercise and avoiding things that can shorten your life, such as drug addiction, reckless driving and homicide.
If you stop and think — which catchwords can deflect us from doing — it is clear that homicide and car crashes are not things that doctors can prevent. Moreover, if you compare longevity among countries, leaving out homicide and car crashes, Americans have the longest life span in the Western world.
Why then are people talking about gross statistics on longevity, as a reason to change our medical care system? Since this is a life and death issue, we need to think about the realities of the world, not the clever words of spinmeisters trying to justify a government takeover of medical care.
American medical care leads the world in things like cancer survival rates, which medical care affects far more than it affects people’s behavior that leads to obesity and narcotics addiction, as well as such other things as homicide and reckless driving. But none of this is even thought about, when people simply go with the flow of catchwords, accepting those words as the money of fools.
Closing Down Thought
Among the many other catchwords that shut down thinking are “the rich” and “the poor.” When is somebody rich? When they have a lot of wealth. But, when politicians talk about taxing “the rich,” they are not even talking about people’s wealth, and what they are planning to tax are people’s incomes, not their wealth.
If we stop and think, instead of going with the flow of catchwords, it is clear than income and wealth are different things. A billionaire can have zero income. Bill Gates lost $18 billion dollars in 2008 and Warren Buffett lost $25 billion. Their income might have been negative, for all I know. But, no matter how low their income was, they were not poor.
By the same token, people who have worked their way up, to the point where they have a substantial income in their later years, are not rich. In most cases, they never earned high incomes in their younger years, and they will not be earning high incomes when they retire.
A middle-aged or elderly couple making $125,000 each are not rich, even though politicians will tax away what they have earned at the end of decades of working their way up. Similarly, most of the people who are called “the poor” are not poor. Their low incomes are as transient as the higher incomes of “the rich.”
Most of the people in the bottom 20% in income end up in the top half of the income distribution in later years. Far more of them reach the top 20% than remain in the bottom 20% over the years.
The grand fallacy in most discussions of income statistics is the assumption that the various income brackets represent enduring classes of people, rather than transients who start at the bottom in entry-level jobs and move up as they acquire more experience and skills.
But if we are going to base major government policies on confusions between medical care and health care, or on calling people “rich” and “poor” who are neither, then we have truly accepted words as the money of fools.
Among the many words that don’t mean what they say, but which too many of us accept as if they did, are those staples of political discussion, “liberals” and “conservatives.” Most liberals are not liberal and most conservatives are not conservative. We might be better off just calling them X and Y, instead of imagining that we are really describing their philosophies. Moreover, like most confusion, it has consequences.
The late liberal Professor Tony Judt of New York University gave this definition of liberals: “A liberal is someone who opposes interference in the affairs of others: who is tolerant of dissenting attitudes and unconventional behavior.” According to Professor Judt, liberals favor “keeping other people out of our lives, leaving individuals the maximum space in which to live and flourish as they choose.”
‘Liberals’ Vs. ‘Conservatives’
That is certainly in keeping with the dictionary definition of liberalism and with most contemporary liberals’ vision of themselves. But, if we follow Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ admonition to “think things, not words” and look beyond the label to the tangible realities of the world, we find almost the exact opposite of what the word “liberal” is supposed to mean.
Most of us would probably regard the current administration in Washington — both the White House and the Congress — as “liberal,” even though the word “progressive” may be more in vogue.
Does the sweeping legislation empowering federal officials to tell doctors, patients, hospitals, and insurance companies what to do, when it comes to medical care, sound like leaving individuals the maximum space to live their lives as they choose?
Communities that have had overwhelmingly liberal elected officials for decades abound in nanny state regulations, micro-managing everything from home-building to garbage collection. San Francisco is a classic example. Among its innumerable micro-managing laws is one recently passed requiring that gas stations must remove the little levers that allow motorists to pump gas into their cars without having to hold the nozzle.
Liberals are usually willing to let people violate the traditional standards of the larger society but crack down on those who dare to violate liberals’ own notions and fetishes.
Our academic institutions are overwhelmingly dominated by liberals. They feature speech codes that punish politically incorrect statements. Even to apply to many colleges and universities, students must have spent time as “volunteers” for activities arbitrarily defined by admissions committees as “community service.”
As for conservatism, it has no specific political meaning, because everything depends on what you are trying to conserve. In the last days of the Soviet Union, those who were trying to maintain the Communist system were widely — and correctly — described as “conservatives,” though they had nothing in common with William F. Buckley or Milton Friedman.
Professor Friedman for years fought a losing battle against being labeled a conservative. He considered himself a liberal in the original sense of the word and wrote a book titled “The Tyranny of the Status Quo.” Friedman proposed radical changes in things ranging from the public schools to the Federal Reserve System.
But he is remembered today as one of the great conservatives of our time. Great, yes. But conservative? It depends on what you mean by conservative.
Distorted Definitions
Conservatism, in its original meaning, would require preserving the welfare state and widespread government intervention in the economy. Neither Milton Friedman nor most of the other people designated as conservatives today want that.
Liberals often flatter themselves with having the generosity that the word implies. Many of them might be shocked to discover that Ronald Reagan donated a higher percentage of his income to charity than either Ted Kennedy or Franklin D. Roosevelt. Nor was this unusual. Conservatives in general donate more of their income and their time to charitable endeavors and donate far more blood.
We are probably stuck with having to use words like liberal and conservative. But we can at least recognize them as nothing more than political flags of convenience. We need not accept these words literally, as the money of fools.
One of the many words that sound so attractive, to people who do not think beyond the word, is “disarmament.” Wouldn’t it be better to live in a world where countries were not armed to the teeth, especially when they are armed with nuclear weapons? Of course it would. But the only country we can disarm is our own. The only countries we might be able to persuade to disarm are countries that intend no harm in the first place. Those countries that do intend to harm others — and we know all too well that they exist — would be delighted to have all their victims disarmed.
What if we can just get nuclear disarmament? Again, we need to think beyond the word to the realities of the world, so that we do not simply accept words as given.
Had there been no nuclear weapons created during World War II, that would have given an overwhelming military advantage in the postwar world to countries with large and well equipped armies. Especially after the U.S. Army withdrew from Europe, following the end of World War II, there was nothing to stop Stalin’s army from marching right across the continent to the Atlantic Ocean.
The American troops that remained in Western Europe were not enough to stop the Soviet army. But they were enough that their slaughter by the Russians would have risked nuclear war with the United States. Western Europe has had one of its longest periods of peace under the protection of the American nuclear umbrella. Japan, one of the biggest and most cruel conquerors of the 20th century, has become a peaceful nation after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In the real world, the question of whether nuclear disarmament is desirable or undesirable is utterly irrelevant because it is simply not possible, except in words — and we would truly be fools to accept such words at the risk of our lives.
Nuclear ‘Disarmament’
Even if every nuclear weapon on the planet were destroyed — and how could we be sure that that had happened? — this would still not destroy the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons.
Those countries with aggressive intentions towards other countries need only choose the time when they would put their knowledge of nuclear weapons to use, and have the world at their mercy. Once they had nuclear weapons, they could threaten annihilation to any other nation that started to produce offsetting nuclear weapons.
Why then is President Barack Obama pursuing an international nuclear disarmament agreement? It cannot be because he thinks it will work. Even if he were foolish enough to believe that, virtually anybody in the Pentagon can tell him why it won’t.
His political advisors, however, can tell him how great that can be for him personally — if he doesn’t already know that. It would be “historic” and an “achievement,” just like ObamaCare. His political base — the young, the left and the thoughtless — would be thrilled and energized. That can translate into money donated to his campaign coffers and people willing to walk the precincts to get out the vote for him in the 2012 elections.
It is by no means an irrational thing to do, from Obama’s self-centered perspective. But what does it say about those who take his words literally, who accept those words as the money of fools?
First of all, there may be more of such people today than in the past, as a result of the dumbing down of education and the politicizing of education at all levels with anti-nuclear propaganda, along with other propaganda of the left.
International disarmament has long been a favorite crusade of the left, before as well as after the age of nuclear weapons. The period between the two World Wars were full of popular disarmament agreements and renunciations of war. In fact, such pious agreements contributed to the outbreak of war. Because some nations adhered to these agreements and others did not, the military advantage swung to the latter, who started the war — in which tens of millions of human beings died.
What a price to pay for accepting words as the money of fools.(IBD)
Think about it. Challenge yourself.
The wet dream of Liberals, just like their slobbering for government control of Health Care that they’d been dreaming of for 70 years, here comes Amnesty again!
But it’s not straightforward, oh no, never. That hasn’t worked. So now we have to be sneaky again.
The Wolf is trying to sneak in the back door under a false guise. And it’s not even Halloween yet!
As if the Justice Department and ICE office simply not prosecuting illegals for any reason was bad enough, now in a highly cynical and political way, Senate Majority Harry Reid has re-proposed the DREAM ACT (aka Amnesty) but not in the way anyone should think.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has hit a new low by slipping an amnesty plan for illegal immigrants into a defense funding bill. In effect, he’s holding U.S. troops hostage to advance his own political career.
Longtime members of the Senate Armed Services Committee are shuddering at the way the defense budget has become a Christmas tree for political ornaments. Since last year, Democrats have used appropriations for U.S. troops in Afghanistan to attach riders that couldn’t otherwise pass muster.
Now Reid has hung the ugliest ornament of them all — the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act — and has scheduled a vote on it next week.
“This is an all-time low for me being in the Senate, and that’s saying something,” committee member Lindsay Graham told Foreign Policy magazine. “The one area that’s been kept off limits from partisan politics has been the defense of our nation. To say that you’re going to bring up a defense bill and put the DREAM Act on it … to me is very offensive.”
But Reid, D-Nev., apparently couldn’t care less. He sees a political payoff — for himself — by offering amnesty to the children of illegal immigrants via the DREAM Act in a bid to energize the Latino vote.
As representative of the state with the highest number of illegal immigrants (as well as the highest unemployment rate at 14.2%), Reid is hoping he can break away from Republican challenger Sharron Angle in his own dead-heat reelection race by delivering amnesty to that constituency.
He’s also betting that Republicans will be forced to go along because of their strong support of the military. Reid has also slipped in a second rider, this one for ending the Pentagon’s “don’t ask-don’t tell” policy on gay servicemen without waiting for the military’s input.
Both riders stand to wreak havoc in the U.S. if this bill passes. The act is outright amnesty for the children of illegal immigrants, and offers a no-penalty path to citizenship for anyone connected with them.
It says that any child of an illegal who arrives in the U.S. before age 16, spends five years here and completes two years of college or military service in a six-year span without felonies gets a green card ahead of others who have waited patiently for their papers.
They will have access to taxpayer-funded loans and grants, and may crowd out children of U.S. citizens at state and community colleges. They are not required to pay back the loans, learn English or maintain a decent GPA. They can start the process up to age 35, and get six years to finish a mere two years of college or military service.
And once they’ve been granted citizenship, they can bring all their relatives to the U.S. in what will be the mother of chain migrations.
Even worse, there’s no cutoff date on when an illegal immigrant can begin the process, so the bill becomes a dinner triangle to would-be immigrants everywhere to ship their teenagers to the states before they turn 16. Mexican cartels that smuggle illegals for $10,000 a pop must be slavering at the possible new business.
Thanks to an effective propaganda campaign based on sob stories from immigrant lobbies, most of these facts about the DREAM Act aren’t well-known. But make no mistake: The legislation as written amounts to amnesty for almost everyone.
This may be why, despite the measure being around the Senate for seven years, it has never garnered enough votes for passage. It has come close, but public opposition has stopped it when the facts are made known. That should be the result when Reid selfishly tries to get away with it again next week.
But you don’t want to say no to troops, now do you? 🙂
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama assured Hispanics on Wednesday he was not walking away from immigration reform while expressing disappointment that he had not delivered on a 2008 promise to overhaul U.S. policy.
Aka Amnesty.
He blamed Republicans for backing away from reform and urged Hispanics — an important and growing voting bloc — to continue giving him the support they gave during his presidential campaign.
“Now, I know that many of you campaigned hard for me, and understandably you’re frustrated that we have not been able to move this over the finish line yet. I am too,” he told a gala dinner for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, referring to immigration reform.
“But let me be clear: I will not walk away from this fight. My commitment is getting this done as soon as we can. We can’t keep kicking this challenge down the road.”
Be we can utterly cynical and manipulative to benefit ourself and our party, isn’t that right, Mr President?
The Democrats want poor, hispanic voters as a bloc to fight over the rest of you “racists” who don’t want to recognize the magnificence, grandeur, and magnanimity of THE ONE.
In other words, they want SUCKERS!
“But don’t forget who is standing with you, and who is standing against you. Don’t ever believe that this election coming up doesn’t matter. … Don’t forget who your friends are.”
Anyone with a (D) next to their name is not your friend. And many with “incumbent” aren’t either.
Be Involved. Be Informed. Vote.
I took up cooking, one, because I found I really enjoy it, but also because it’s better for me to control my own food rather than trust it to a heart attack in a box (have you read the fat & sodium contents on some of those pre-prepared meals!).
But the difference between my approach and the First Lady’s Food Police cudgel approach is I’m not preaching and I’m not trying to control other people.
She is. Just like her husband.
I often wonder who’s the more elitist, her or her husband.
“Even if we give parents all the information they need and improve school meals and build brand new supermarkets on every corner, none of that matters if when families step into a restaurant, they can’t make a healthy choice,” Mrs. Obama told them.
So we have to control you at every turn so you won’t be tempted! 😦
So, instead of speaking to parents about moderation, the first lady wants to micromanage menus, making french fries a special order item at fast-food outlets and apples the default side order of choice for kids. Butter and cream must be cut, and whole wheat pasta must replace white.
Harmless advocacy? Perhaps. But Mrs. Obama’s speeches at political rallies and conventions suggests it’s probably more. The gears of government seem to be turning to her cause.
The Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday announced a $31 million program to combat obesity (and smoking) in eight states. It comes with a plan to go coercive: “Use price to discourage consumption of tobacco and to benefit consumption of healthy food/drinks,” the press release reads. As in price controls?
The coincidences pile up as community organizers tied quite closely to the Obama campaign, including the National Council of La Raza and the NAACP, joined the cause. To aid the effort, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation chipped in a $2 million grant.
Fascinating associates don’t you think? La Raza, a racist hispanic group and the NAACP who calls Tea Partiers racists. Fascinating…
Then there’s the anti-McDonald’s TV ad campaign just launched by the Physicians Committee for Responsibility, another pressure group with a vegetarian and animal-rights agenda. In true Alinsky style, they’ve picked a target, personalized it and laid all the problems of obesity on one fast-food operator.
The advert shows a woman weeping over the body of a man in a morgue, with the man still holding a half-eaten hamburger. Toward the end of the advert, the McDonald’s logo appears along with the tag-line “I was lovin’ it”. The commercial then urges watchers to ““High cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attacks. Tonight, make it vegetarian”.
Then you get Michael Moore who hadn’t been getting any attention lately spouting off that McDonald’s has killed more people than terrorists have.
What’s galling about all this is that Mrs. Obama’s anti-obesity campaign — like the policies pushed by her husband — presumes government has all the answers. In reality, it doesn’t.
Bu they think it does, as long as they are in control of it, that is. The Insufferably Superior Left strikes again!
Diets are a personal choice with different impacts on different people. Some children stay fit eating all the fast food they like; others can’t handle a donut. Some effective low-carbohydrate diets don’t restrict cream and butter at all, but minimize fruit. Go figure.
Micromanaging restaurant menus will only drive consumers to the junk food section at the grocery to get the goodies they crave. It won’t end childhood obesity, the causes of which are far more complex and numerous than trips to the Golden Arches.
But then you just drive the junk food purveyors out of business then and TA DA! Instant Health! And you have Big Brother and Big Mommy to thank for it! 🙂
Like any solution imposed by big government, Mrs. Obama’s will harm business, limit choice and politicize the personal — a recipe for failure. (IBD)
You have to assume the Insufferably Superior Left actually cares. I know I don’t.
After all, her husband is frequent photographed (to look less like the elite he is) eating very unhealthy foods and he admits to being…a SMOKER!
Don’t do as I do, do as I say!
But Michelle can’t clean up her husband, oh no, she has to crusade against evil fat and salt to save you all from yourselves!
The Empress has no clothes.
She said it’s also important to change these national eating habits because they end up costing billions in additional healthcare costs.
And they want to take over your Health Care from birth to death. Hmmmm…Fascinating… 🙂
“I’m not asking any of you to make drastic changes to every single one of your recipes or to totally change the way you do business,” she said.
Not Yet, at least. 🙂
After all, when Liberals start preaching about it “being for the children” watch out!! (since they consider anyone who disagrees with them as “children” anyhow).
So how long before we “recommend” to a private business what they can serve and just force them to serve what we think is best for you?
After all, restaurants that serve crap, close. That’s business. But what if that’s all they are allowed to serve??
While suggestions that eateries serve a side of apples instead of French fries as the default side dish likely won’t go anywhere, there is another way to serve kids fewer calories. Just make the portions smaller.
* Marion Nestle, queen of the food scolds, thinks that “balance, moderation and exercise” have no practical importance. “I don’t support that,” she says.
* Discussing “The Politics of Food,” Skip Spitzer of the radical Pesticide Action Network maintains that “the idea of personal responsibility is a cultural construct.”
* PETA medical “expert” Neal Barnard tells tales of food addiction, arguing that “it’s high time we stopped blaming ourselves for over-eating.”
* Kelly “Big Brother” Brownell advocates “a more militant attitude about the toxic food environment, like we have about tobacco… [smoking] became so serious that society overlooked the intrusion on individual rights for the greater social good.” He also suggests that human beings have no more control over their food choices than animals in a cage.
* Margo Wootan, one of the top killjoys at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), implores: “We have got to move beyond personal responsibility.” And when the World Health Organization added a single, understated sentence referencing the “exercise of individual responsibility” to its anti-obesity strategy, CSPI raged: “Obesity is not merely a matter of individual responsibility. Such suggestions are naive and simplistic.”
John Stossel: For what it’s worth, here is some of the research we dug up to prepare my Michelle Obama discussion:
In his article “Egg on their Faces,” Steve Malanga points out that “Government dietary advice often proves disastrous.”
Starting in the 1970s… the American Heart Association advised people to reduce drastically their consumption of eggs as part of a goal to limit total cholesterol intake to 300 milligrams a day (a single egg can have 250 milligrams). The recommendation, seconded by government and other public-health groups, prompted a sharp drop in the consumption of eggs, a food that nutritionists praise as low in calories and high in nutrients. In 2000, the AHA revised its restrictions on eggs to one a day (from a onetime low of three a week)… To what purpose? A 2004 article in The Journal of Nutrition that looked at worldwide studies of egg consumption noted that the current restrictions on eating eggs are “unwarranted for the majority of people and are not supported by scientific data.”
Furthermore:
As a recent review of the latest research in Scientific American pointed out, ever since the first set of federal guidelines appeared in 1980, Americans heard that they had to reduce their intake of saturated fat by cutting back on meat and dairy products and replacing them with carbohydrates. Americans dutifully complied. Since then, obesity has increased sharply, and the progress that the country has made against heart disease has largely come from medical breakthroughs like statin drugs, which lower cholesterol, and more effective medications to control blood pressure.
Malanga also notes that new FDA guidelines recommend a maximum of 1500 milligrams of salt daily (down from 2300). One hypertension expert observed that the government’s salt war is a giant uncontrolled experiment with the public’s health.
Here are a few more reasons why government shouldn’t tell us what to eat:
We’re living longer than ever! 80 yrs today vs. 57 yrs 80 yrs ago
A CDC study found that more people die every year from being underweight than overweight! And that moderately overweight people live longer than those at normal weight.
Government was once excited about BMI index. (body-mass index) Gov Mike Huckabee had all Arkansas kids tested! But BMI is a lousy measure of health. According to BMI: Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger are obese; GWBush and George Clooney are “overweight”
Calorie counts on menu boards don’t work: people STILL don’t take in fewer calories! A study at McDonald’s , Burger King, Wendy’s, and Kentucky Fried Chicken found that people ordered MORE calories after the labeling law went into effect.
What’s junk food? Chicago’s new candy tax defines sweets that contain flour as “food” – w/o flour as “candy.” (Hershey bar? Candy. But Kit Kats, Twix, Twizzlers –are “food”) O.j. and apple juice? More calories than Coke! (97 v 120/cup)
“Protect the children?” Children are the responsibility of their parents. When the state assumes the role of parent, it makes children of all of us.
It’s a good sign that America has food nannies – means were so rich that these are the things we’re worried about!
The food police haven’t jailed anyone yet, but who knows 20 years down the road? MeMe Roth suggests annual obesity screenings at school; serving soft drinks to only those over 18; child abuse laws for parents with obese kids; taxes on soda and sweetened drinks.
If the government is allowed to dictate our diet, what’s next? Do they start deciding who we’ll marry, where we’ll work?
A Must See: New Ray Stevens Song- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWpOcZVnBrc
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TIME FOR SOME LEG-BREAKING!
Katherine Sebelius, Health Czar (Health and Human Services Secretary) is going all Chicago Style:
“Health insurers say they plan to raise premiums for some Americans as a direct result of the health overhaul in coming weeks, complicating Democrats’ efforts to trumpet their signature achievement before the midterm elections. Aetna Inc., some BlueCross BlueShield plans and other smaller carriers have asked for premium increases of between 1 percent and 9 percent to pay for extra benefits required under the law, according to filings with state regulators,” reported by the Wall Street Journal.
In addition, a Mercer survey of employers found that 79 percent expect they will lose their “grandfathered” status by 2014, and therefore will become subject to many more of Obamacare’s new mandates – a much higher figure than the administration had estimated. Employers expect those additional mandates will increase premiums by 2.3 percent, on average, and boost the overall growth of premiums from 3.6 percent to 5.9 percent in 2011.
In response to the health insurers’ claims, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius fired off a letter to the head of the health insurance lobby. The news release on the HHS website makes her purpose plain:
“U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the national association of health insurers, calling on their members to stop using scare tactics and misinformation to falsely blame premium increases for 2011 on the patient protections in the Affordable Care Act. Sebelius noted that the consumer protections and out-of-pocket savings provided for in the Affordable Care Act should result in a minimal impact on premiums for most Americans. Further, she reminded health plans that states have new resources under the Affordable Care Act to crack down on unjustified premium increases.”
In the letter, Mrs. Sebelius cites HHS’ internal analyses and those of Mercer and other groups to support her claim that Obamacare’s effect on premiums “will be minimal” – somewhere in the range of 1 percent to 2.3 percent, on average. Mrs. Sebelius tells insurers that she will show “zero tolerance” for insurers who “falsely” blame premium increases on Obamacare, and promises aggressive action against those who do:
“[We] will require state or federal review of all potentially unreasonable rate increases filed by health insurers. … We will also keep track of insurers with a record of unjustified rate increases: those plans may be excluded from health insurance Exchanges in 2014. Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections.”
There’s word for this: It’s called extortion, folks. 😦
As defined: the crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one’s office or authority.
You either do it our way and do as we say and only do it our way and what we want you to do, regardless, or else we’ll boot you out of the market and you’ll go out business.
Which, by the way, was the plan all along. Leaving Big Brother and Mama Government as the sole choice.
But now you have the Chicago-Style Leg breakers threatening companies to play their game or else!
But don’t worry, We are from the Government and we are here to protect you!! 🙂
Here’s something elseto consider: Mrs. Sebelius threatened insurers for claiming Obamacare will increase premiums by as much as 9 percent. Yet there were no threats issued against the Rand Corporation when itestimated Obamacare will increase premiums for young adults by an average of 17 percent beginning in 2014, or against Milliman Inc. when itlikewise estimated premium increases of 10 percent to 30 percent for young adults. The reasons for the disparate treatment are fairly obvious. Mrs. Sebelius has less power over Rand or Milliman, and bullies always find it easier to pick on the unpopular kid. But an equally important implication is that Mrs. Sebelius knows that Obamacare’s largest premium increases are yet to come. Mrs. Sebelius may be intimidating insurers now to prevent them from blaming those much larger premium increases on Obamacare. (Washington Times)
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GROUND ZERO MOSQUE IMAM’s CLOSE ASSOCIATE IS A “TRUTHER”
Imam Feisal Abdul Raif has stepped in it again. But don’t expect the Ministry of Truth to tell you. They will vigorous ignore or try to discredit the following from the NY York Post.
A “Truther” by the way is an individual who has the utter irrational view that 19 High-jackers mostly from Saudi Arabia did not murder 3000 people on 9/11/01, the US Government- more specifically the newly elected George W Bush and CIA were behind it or it was Corporate America or some conspiracy of all of them. Name whatever the Left hates, they did it.
Not Islamic Terrorists.
I may be cynical, but not a complete nutjob. 🙂
Still, that didn’t stop Rauf from telling his high-brow audience that he wants to build a coalition of religious moderates, who he said must retake the debate from extremists of all religions.
Presumably, such a coalition would not include Rauf’s longtime associate, Faiz Khan — who touts “the inescapable fact that 9/11 was an inside job.”
By which, he told The Post’s Jennifer Gould Keil, he means he’s “certain” that “the towers of WTC 7 could not have collapsed without controlled demolition placed from the ‘inside.’ “
Now, Khan is not the only crackpot out there who’s convinced that “the quarter known as ‘militant Islam’ ” had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. (He maintains the World Trade Center was actually brought down by “corporate America” and “the heroin trade.”)
But he is the only one, that we’re aware of, who was a founding director of Imam Rauf’s American Society for the Advancement of Muslims — which, along with the Cordoba Institute, is spearheading the Ground Zero mosque.
Khan claims he severed his connection to ASMA in “2002 and 2003” — though he spoke at the group’s 2006 conference in Copenhagen, where he was described as a board member.
All of which raises yet more questions about the so-called moderate imam and the people around him.
If Rauf truly wants “the best possible outcome for all,” there’s only one solution — move the mosque.
But don’t worry, Just like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, where Obama was a parishioner for 20 years and never heard any of the Reverend fiery anti-american, anti-white rants this too will come to pass with the Imam’s friend. Despite him actually preaching at the Burlington Coat Factory mini-mosque that already exists on the site of the Ground Zero Mosque and they were board members together.
He’ll use the Sargent Schultz defense, “I know nothing!” and the liberal media will defend that to your death. 🙂
Media Matters, one of the co-founders of the Hunt down Tea Party Racism site has an exhaustive and vitriolic denial. That right there proves something to me. 🙂
So just get out a high-speed fan as the Liberals and their apparatchiks in the Liberal Media once again try and blow smoke up your ass! 🙂
Remember this when you hear liberals screaming and yelling about “fat Cat” CEO’s and their bonuses and how evil they are:
DETROIT – New General Motors Co. CEO Daniel Akerson will get the same $9 million pay package as the man he replaced, Ed Whitacre.
The automaker, which is 60.8 percent owned by the U.S. government, disclosed the pay package in a filing on Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is identical to what the company disclosed for Whitacre in February.
So don’t do as they do, do as they say and hate the “the rich” because they are evil incarnate. 🙂
Contrary to press reports that he would not be compensated, uncovered Treasury Department documents reveal President Obama’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, received a $120,830 annual salary.(WT)
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WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department plans to test futuristic iris scan technology that stores digital images of people’s eyes in a database and is considered a quicker alternative to fingerprints.
ACLU lawyer Christopher Calabrese fears that the cameras could be used covertly. “If you can identify any individual at a distance and without their knowledge, you literally allow the physical tracking of a person anywhere there’s a camera and access to the Internet,” he said.
Iris scans can be quicker than fingerprints. “You can walk up to a wall-mounted box, look at the camera, and that’s it,” Grother said.
Homeland Security will test cameras that take photos from 3 or 4 feet away, including one that works on people as they walk by, Vemury said.
If I agree with the American Communist Liberals Union (ACLU) you know the universe is endanger! 🙂
But don’t worry, Big Brother and Big Sis are not trying to track your every move and know and control everything about you. No, not at all… 🙂
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The number of people in the United States who are living in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.
Census figures for 2009 – the recession-ravaged first year of Obama’s presidency – are to be released this week, and demographers expect grim findings.
The expected poverty-rate increase – from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent – would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power. Midterm congressional elections are only weeks away.(WP)
But don’t worry,this too is also totally Bush’s Fault! 🙂
He claims that “the policies of the previous decade … that cut taxes, especially for millionaires and billionaires … ultimately culminated in a financial crisis and a terrible recession that we’re still digging out of today.”--President Obama
The president falsified the record. The Democrats’ politicization of mortgages — not Bush’s tax cuts — caused the financial crisis.
But don’t expect the Ministry of Truth to tell you that either.
If the tax cuts are to blame, why did Obama’s just-resigned Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer — whom Obama on Friday said “helped save this country from a depression” — recently co-author an article in the American Economic Review “contrary to the White House’s plan to reverse the Bush tax cuts,” as columnist Donald Lambro noted? (IBD)
And then there’s former Budget Director Pete Orszag who said the tax cuts should be kept.
So if tax cuts are so evil and wrecked the nation, then why were two of Obama’s biggest Financial Guru’s for them??
Mind you, it was only AFTER they left. 🙂
President Barack Obama talked a lot about economic recovery during his State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010, including the benefits of the economic stimulus bill passed last year.
The stimulus, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, included tax cuts for many Americans, Obama said.
“We cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses,” Obama said. “We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college.”
So when he says he cut taxes (and doesn’t really or does and then raises in other ways-like Obama Care) it’s good. But if someone else proposes it, it’s just cuts for “the rich” and wrecks the country.
Say what??
“We’re going to take the next 50-some days to convince the public that’s exactly what the Republicans would do – back to the Bush policies,” White House Spokesman Gibbs said.
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FEAR IS HOPE
Ad Hominem: attacking the person instead of attacking his argument.
Democrats desperate to convince their base to show up at the polls in November have begun talking less about issues and more about the possibility of a “Tea Party Congress” next year.
The passage of landmark bills such as healthcare and financial regulatory reform has not triggered as much grassroots enthusiasm as initially envisioned, Democratic strategists say. And while the right is engaged this cycle, the left is deflated.
“This is a big problem,” said Democratic targeting and turnout guru Hal Malchow.
So Democrats have turned to a strategy that may be their next best bet: demonization of the “insurgent” Tea Party.
“These are not your run-of-the-mill Republicans we’re talking about here,” said one Democratic organizer working in a state with a contested Senate race this fall. “When you actually start telling voters what these candidates are about, it scares the hell out of them.”
In the past several weeks, when Democratic activists cite the ramifications of a “Tea Party Congress,” they say, more volunteers have signed up to knock on doors to preserve a Democratic-led House and Senate.
President Obama does not fire up the left as much as he did in 2008, and polls indicate independents are turning on him.
A recent Gallup survey shows that Republicans are far more enthusiastic about voting than Democrats, leading by a 50 percent to 25 percent count.
Many liberals have expressed frustration with the White House on issues ranging from the war in Afghanistan to the military prison in Guantanamo Bay — which Obama pledged to close by last January — to the lack of a public option in healthcare reform.
Uniting the party, and making sure their voters don’t stay home this fall, has become the No. 1 issue for the Democratic Party.
“The argument that we’ve made is that the Republican Party has been taken over by the Tea Party,” Democratic National Committee (DNC) spokeswoman Hari Sevugan said. “It not only energizes Democrats, but it’s the fundamental choice that independents and moderates face in the fall, too.”
Some in Democratic circles are unsure whether they can convince voters that this election is a choice instead of a referendum on Obama and the Democratic Congress. Still, there is a consensus that it’s the best game plan they have.
While then-President George W. Bush was an effective bogeyman for Democrats in 2006 and 2008, blaming him now for the nation’s economic woes has not resonated nearly as much.
University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato pointed the finger at “the failure of the Obama economic agenda” for depressing the Democratic base, but is skeptical that shifting away from issues on the campaign trail will solve the party’s turnout dilemma.
“I’m not sure trotting out a bunch of devil figures — the Tea Party congressional nominees, George Bush, [former Alaska Gov.] Sarah Palin, etc., is going to make much difference. Democrats know Obama is in power for at least two more years and can stymie a GOP Congress,” Sabato said. “But in the absence of good news on the economy, it’s worth a try to point out to Democrats who’ll be running things at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue if Democrats don’t show up to vote.”
Many Democrats, including Obama, predicted six months ago that voters would embrace the healthcare reform law when they learned more about it.
But polls show that the public is deeply divided on it. And it’s not moving many people off their couches, according to Democrats at the state and local level.
“Healthcare is largely unpopular in most places,” Malchow said. “That’s why Democrats aren’t talking about it.” (Fifty-three percent (53%) of U.S. voters now say they at least somewhat favor repeal of the new national health care law, matching the lowest level of opposition since the bill was passed by Congress in March. That includes 42% who Strongly Favor repeal.A majority has favored repeal of the legislation every single week since late March, and the bill is playing a major role in a number of congressional races across the country. Support for repeal has ranged from a low of 53%, reached once before in July, to a high of 63%.-Rasmussen)
Financial reform, and other items enacted in the 111th Congress, are likewise not lighting a fire under the Democratic base.
What is working, turnout specialists say, is talking about the “insurgent” Tea Party and how the “rising red” movement could affect the agenda in Washington in 2011.
The success of Tea Party candidates in primaries, especially candidates backed by Palin, has given Democratic operatives a key talking point. These officials have also used the Aug. 28 rally in Washington, D.C., led by Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, as a volunteer recruitment tool.
Malchow said that Tea Party-backed candidates who are further to the right than centrist and independent voters will, in the end, help the Democrats’ cause: “That’s a major motivating factor for Democrats, but I think it also depends on where you are.”
In Nevada, with a Republican nominee for Senate like Sharron Angle, Malchow said, it’s likely to be more of a motivator for Democrats than in a state like Illinois, where the party has nominated a more centrist Senate candidate in Rep. Mark Kirk.
“Base voters understand what’s at stake in this election,” said the DNC’s Sevugan. “The message that’s resonating is, do we continue to move forward or do we allow the Republicans to take us back? A slate of Republican candidates who hold very extreme positions make that choice crystal clear.”
Earlier this summer, Democrats launched an effort to cast the Republican Party and the Tea Party as one and the same.
“You don’t know where the Republican Party ends and the Tea Party begins, and they have to own that,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in July.
In an interview on MSNBC late last month, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said he expects voters to wake up to what Tea Party-backed candidates are actually running on before November.
“I think we’ve got some folk — Tea Party folk, Republicans — who are out of sync with the average American. And most Americans are in the middle,” said Cummings.
That’s a much sharper tone than Democrats were employing six months ago. In late February, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) went so far as to say that she and Tea Partiers share some of the same views. Since then, however, Democrats have identified the Tea Party as their clear adversary.
For example, Vice President Joe Biden lashed out at the “Republican Tea Party” a couple of weeks ago, predicting Democrats will retain control of both houses of Congress.
“It’s a race between Democrats and the Republican Tea Party,” Biden said.(The Hill)
Washington is today a human and systemic failure that is destroying us from within. Its profligate spending is undermining the dollar — and, according to the International Monetary Fund, it is risking a U.S. sovereign debt crisis. According to Lenin, “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than debauching the currency.”
The eminent Samuel Huntington observed that Washington is — through the Third World orientation of its immigration policies — deliberately destroying the linguistic, cultural and creedal glue that defines and holds the nation together. Research by Harvard professor Robert Putnam associates high levels of government-created “diversity” with civic dissonance and decline.
Washington makes tax slaves out of one in four Americans, forcing them to pay nearly all the income tax while others pay little or none. It taxes too heavily in the dumbest way possible that does the maximum economic damage (about $3 for every $1 of tax collected), costing everyone jobs and incomes. Taxation is an economic poison that spreads quickly.
And when government spends a dollar, the economic benefit is typically between zero and 60 cents, thereby digging the hole still deeper with a loss on each transaction. No wonder “stimulus” doesn’t work.
Washington discriminates among us according to race and gender, takes our money and property and gives it to union bosses and other friends on its political Facebook, and by forcing us to fill out millions of government forms, annually confiscates 10 billion hours of our time.
It invades our schools, raises costs, messes with students’ minds and morals, and lowers educational quality. It scorns and interferes with traditional Americans in the exercise of their religion — and it forces everyone to fight through a jungle of federal regulations just to live our daily lives.
Washington has by fiat reduced the earnings on our savings accounts to near zero and given the differential to banks and speculators. It has taken $2.5 trillion out of our Social Security Trust Fund and “replaced” the money with federal IOUs that it can pay only by imposing additional taxes on us. What a cruel hoax.
A soon-to-be-published analysis of historical data (by Gary and Aldona Robbins) shows how government ineptitude has for decades been increasing the price of health care. ObamaCare is the final atrocity. It will not be tolerated.
Washington constantly intervenes in our free-market economy, cannibalizing vital parts and impairing its ability to provide jobs and raise living standards. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of commerce and trade may soon stop altogether. Absent that productive genius, what will we do then? Rely on government? What a hoot. Washington is broke and produces nothing.
The Great Recession tells us that government is better at creating problems (such as deficits, debt, unemployment and the housing bubble) than it is at providing solutions. And President Obama proves daily that profligate spending really is a sin: It kills jobs.
Instead of apologizing to the world for America, Obama should apologize to us. His administration seems unfortunately to have lost both its economic mind and its moral compass. (IBD)
But instead, you get it’s Bush’s Fault, fear the “tea party” as radicals and nutjobs, and spending EVEN MORE money than we have will solve everything! 😦
I’ll give Gov. Deval Patrick (MA) the last word: “It’s a free country. I wish it weren’t, but . . . it’s a free country,” Patrick said on the “Jim & Margery Show” on WTKK-FM. “You know, you got to, you got to respect that freedom.”
🙂
The light at the end of the socialist environmentalist tunnel is a train, by the way.
But it will make you “feel” good as you get run over by it and your freedom denied.
But you’ll be saving the planet! Isn’t that peachy.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
FEAR IS HOPE
Beginning today (Sept 1), it is a crime to manufacture or ship for sale a traditional 75-watt incandescent light bulb in the European Union. Autocrats in Brussels last year declared war on Edison’s greatest invention with a ban on 100-watt lamps. Homes throughout the Old World will continue to dim until incandescent lighting of all types is snuffed out in 2012 – the same year the United States is scheduled to begin a phaseout schedule mirroring the European plan.
The EU’s final solution to the incandescent problem was sparked by bureaucratic irritation at a public that refused to accept the pale, flickering, cold light emanating from government-approved, expensive compact fluorescent bulbs. “Although energy-saving bulbs have been clearly labeled since 1998 as the most cost-effective bulbs, their relatively high purchase price has inhibited take-up,” the European Commission website explains. “To remedy this, EUEuropean Parliament asked the Commission to adopt minimum requirements phasing out the least-efficient bulbs.” governments and the
Consumers realize the warm glow of a cheap incandescent is superior in every way to the deadly, mercury-filled substitute being foisted upon them. In Finland, Helsingin Sanomat reported that the new ban has not resulted in a surge of sales for the new bulbs that the bureaucrats expected. Instead, 75-watt packages have been flying off the shelves as customers filled their closets, garages and attics with lighting supplies for the long term. Such hoarding has been the rule for more than a year. London’s Daily Mail gave away 25,000 of the 100-watt bulbs as a prize in a January 2009 contest. Der Spiegel reported that German customers left hardware stores with carts jammed with enough incandescent bulbs to last 20 years.
We can look forward to a similar reaction on these shores as our own Jan. 1, 2012, deadline approaches. President George W. Bush’s signature on the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 condemned the traditional bulb in favor of the fluorescent lights rejected by the free market. Only eight senators and 100 House members opposed the bill.
Yes, George W Bush, the Left’s Anti-Christ!
There is still hope that sanity could return before the U.S. ban on normal light bulbs takes effect. Two years ago, New Zealanders faced an imminent ban. The National Party, at the time in the minority, made overturning the light-bulb scheme a priority in its campaign against the ruling Labor government. The public responded favorably to the party that proclaimed that it “stands for freedom, choice, independence and ambition.” In December 2008, the National Party government overturned the light-bulb ban. Republican challengers seeking an edge over Democrats in November could learn a few things from the Kiwis. (Washington Times)
A light bulb factory closes in Virginia as mandated fluorescents are made in China. It’s now a crime to make or ship for sale 75-watt incandescent bulbs in the European Union. Welcome to green hell.
(I bet if they’d had a Union…)
Thomas Alva Edison was a genius credited with the invention of many things — the phonograph, the motion picture, the incandescent light bulb, global warming. That last credit was given by those who rank light bulbs right up there with the internal combustion engine as ravagers of the planet.
The General Electric light bulb factory in Winchester, Va., closed this month, a victim, along with its 200 employees, of a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014.
Just as they are by fuel-economy standards, consumers are denied choice and the freedom to evaluate any possible benefits on their own by the nanny state. Washington’s force and coercion are necessary because it seems the great unwashed can’t seem to see the benefits or ignore the risks of compact fluorescents, or CFLs.
In Europe, light bulbs are already a controlled substance. The 100-watt bulb was banned last year and the 75-watt became illegal as of Sept. 1.
Not surprisingly, incandescent light bulbs there quickly became a hot item, flying off the shelves while they were still available. Der Spiegel reported that German customers leave hardware stores with carts piled high with enough incandescent bulbs to last 20 years. Garages and attics throughout the Old World are full of them.
It’s said that CFL bulbs are more economical in the long run because they supposedly use up to 80% less energy than old-style bulbs and don’t burn out as quickly. Though we’re not fully convinced of these claims, we do know that CFL bulbs are more expensive, costing up to six times as much as equivalent incandescent bulbs. Because they are made of glass tubes twisted into a spiral, they also require more hand labor and therefore cost more.
Due to the expense, CFLs are made largely in China, where labor is cheaper and environmental regulations not so strict. As with wind turbine blades, we are creating plenty of green jobs — in the People’s Republic.
Despite governments’ effort to market them, CFLs are not necessarily better. Tests conducted by the London Telegraph found that using a single lamp to illuminate a room, an 11-watt CFL produced only 58% of the illumination of an equivalent 60-watt incandescent — even after a 10-minute warm-up that consumers have found necessary for CFLs to reach their full brightness.
Lack of light isn’t the only drawback. CFLs apparently are so dangerous, the European Commission has to warn consumers of the environmental hazards they pose. If one breaks, consumers are advised to air out rooms and avoid using vacuum cleaners to prevent exposure to the mercury in the bulbs.
You can’t just throw an old bulb out, either. It must be properly disposed of lest your bedroom or family room become a Superfund toxic waste site.
Mercury is considered by environmentalists to be among the most toxic of toxic substances and, yes, it is dangerous if ingested or handled over time. We’ve been warned that high concentrations in fish are dangerous to pregnant women. We’ve been told mercury in vaccines causes autism. So it’s safe in light bulbs?
As we’ve found out here with energy regulation and taxes, and the push for cap-and-trade, governments don’t care what people want. Nor do they weigh the costs, the benefits and the risks of this or that. Government must mandate what’s good for us under penalty of law. (IBD)
And if this is the humble Light Bulb, imagine what Health Care will be like. 🙂
And then there’s the Chevy Volt, built, subsidized and marketed by the US Government (GM-Government Motors).
Texas Instruments, for example, has a page on its web site devoted entirely to the wonders of using RFID chips to monitor municipal trash collection in order to determine whether people are properly recycling.
The city council in Cleveland, Ohio, on the other hand, is far less concerned with even the appearance of benevolence in its RFID-based trash monitoring program, than is Texas Instruments. The council recently voted to expand its RFID trash program by mandating the installation of the devices in order to determine and hand out fines for failure to participate. In yet another example of the unholy alliance between business and government in expanding the reach of Big Brother, Cleveland has retained a private company to handle its high-tech recycling program. It’s a win-win — the company makes money by collecting the recycled trash, and the city reaps at least a short-term windfall by receiving payments from the company for a task it formerly had to carry out. The loser, of course, is the consumer who is paying the taxes and fees for such activities; and surrendering to the company and the city council any privacy in their accumulation or disposal of garbage.
In California, schools are finding that students – like municipal citizens — constitute another captive audience on which to experiment with RFID chips. One school district in Contra Costa County, for example, now requires all its students to wear jerseys embedded with RFID tags, so their whereabouts can be monitored all the while they are at the schools, and then data-based. The tags also reportedly will alert school officials if a student has not eaten; though what punishment will befall dieting students is unclear.
Where is the Contra Costa County school system getting the money to implement such a school-based Big Brother program? They get the money from same place most of these and other privacy-invasive programs come from — you, the American taxpayer; genereously given away as federal “grants.” (AJC)
The government wants to know everything about you. Because, you want to misbehave and act outside society’s interest (aka their control) you individual freedom-ist. You selfish bastard.
We, The Government, just want you to be safe, save energy, and save the planet all at the same time.
Is that so wrong? 🙂
We cannot afford to forget what today really means.
“Have you forgotten when those towers fell?”
3000 men, women, and children were slaughtered by terrorist in the most brutal and shocking way possible.
That memory should be burned into any mind that was alive and aware enough on that day.
Period.
Tolerance of those who committed this act, Radical Muslims, is not required or desired.
They would kill you in a heart beat. Infidel!
9/11 was pre-meditated murder. They had been planning this for months.
The 1993 bombing was a test run.
The USS Cole was a warm up (which now the Obama Justice Dept refuses to prosecute!)
The Embassy Bombings.
All were tests.
They continue to test.
The shoe bomber. The underwear bomber. et al.
That is not fear-mongering or hate-speech. It is simply the truth.
You don’t have to like it. No one said you had to. It just is.
Deal with it.
As Americans jumped to their deaths from burning skyscrapers, the academics, like Reverend Jeremiah Wright (Obama’s pastor for 20 years) and other Ivory Tower Liberals began penning sermons and papers on how the “chickens coming home to roost.”
And to all the sickos on The Left who say we deserved it, we asked for it or George Bush (who had only been in office since January) and Co planned it…
Get some professional help. Your mental disorder is a danger to the country at large. Period.
Can you even imagine in your worst nightmares being in an office in The World Trade Center and seeing a plane coming right at you!??
Or on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania knowing your going to die in the next few minutes??
Or walking down the corridors of the Pentagon and have a Plane suddenly hit you. You’re dead!
So to the kooks on The Left and the “tolerance” crowd I say… F U!
New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan spoke out Friday against Saturday’s planned New York protests, saying Sept. 11 “has become a holy day in our community and our nation.”
“We must never allow Sept. 11th to become a time for protest and division,” he added. “Instead, this day must remain a time for promoting peace and mutual respect.”
There may not be any hope for that as the Left’s “tolerance” and appeasement crowd call anyone who disagrees with them intolerant and hateful. Ironic isn’t it? 🙂
“This is a time of difficulty for our country,” the president said. “And it is often in such moments that some try to stoke bitterness — to divide us based on our differences, to blind us to what we have in common.
“But on this day, we are reminded that at our best, we do not give in to this temptation,” Obama said. “We stand with one another. We fight alongside one another. We do not allow ourselves to be defined by fear, but by the hopes we have for our families, for our nation, and for a brighter future.”
Says the Snake Oil president who has done nothing but divide people for 20 months!
FEAR IS HOPE!
Nine years and it still seems like we just woke from a nightmare. September 11, 2001, is seared into the national consciousness like Pearl Harbor 60 years before – only worse because we watched it on television as it happened. A nation was transfixed while 3,000 of our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers, our classmates and our family members perished in violence and fire.
They were killed in the Twin Towers, in a field in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon itself. Police officers and fire fighters fell by the hundreds trying to save as many as they could. All were victims of the kind of terror Americans had grown used to hearing about elsewhere. But not here.
A grieving America turned to images of the Statue of Liberty to find solace. Artists from around the world depicted the statue as sad or proud or a mother defending her child. Our nation rallied under the motto: “United We Stand.”
Now we know we were never all that united. Soon after fire fighters raised a flag in the ruins of New York, the fingerpointing began. George Bush was to blame, though he only recently had taken office. America was to blame because of its longstanding friendship with Israel. Everyone was to blame it seemed, except the monsters driven by hate to harm the innocent.
Not long after the Twin Towers fell, the crazy conspiracies rose in their place. The attack was an inside job we were told as the 9/11 truther industry spread like the plague it is. By 2004, “half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that some of our leaders ‘knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act,’” according to a Zogby International poll.
Nearly a decade after these attacks, many crazies still believe America was involved or knew they were going to happen. A poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion from March 2010 claims 15 percent “think claims that the collapse of the World Trade Center was the result of a controlled demolition are credible.” Millions around the globe believe this garbage – blaming the U.S. or even Israel for the attacks.
Journalism, the supposed “first draft of history,” has failed in one of the most important events in recent memory. It’s no wonder. Many of today’s talking heads have pushed this hurtful nonsense as a way to bash Bush.
Hollywood’s own Rosie O’Donnell told “The View” that, while she didn’t blame government for the World Trade Center attack, one of the buildings fell in a way that “defies physics.” O’Donnell went on to say “it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved.” The same show also devoted some of its airtime to the equally despicable truther fantasies of former Minnesota Gov. and pro wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura.
It wasn’t just the news. The FX show “Rescue Me” even included claims that a 9/11 conspiracy was part of of “a massive neo-conservative government effort.” Whether it’s former green jobs czar Van Jones signing a truther petition or loose cannon Florida Rep. Alan Grayson who said Bush “let it happen,” too many fringe elements have capitalized on our national misery.
Just scant days before this year’s 9/11 anniversary, ABC’s “Nightline” profiled a talk radio truther who said the attacks were “an inside job” and “a staged event to launch the Iraq war.”
Some crazies are laughing all the way to the bank. Search Amazon.com for “9/11 truth” and there are more than 200 items from books and DVDs to T-shirts with the slogan “9/11 was an inside job!” and a picture of the buildings burning with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld laughing nearby.
Far too many on the left and right believe such insanity. Their theories have thousands of their fellow Americans complicit in the evil scheme, because it would have taken a cast of thousands to accomplish such evil. They believe nonetheless.
Others chastise us for responding at all. Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria recently blasted America’s response to the attacks. According to Zakaria, who will soon be moving his tripe to Time magazine, “September 11 was a shock to the American psyche and the American system. As a result, we overreacted.”
Somehow I doubt Zakaria overreacted. It’s also unclear what would have satisfied him. Did Minute Men overreact after Lexington and Concord? We certainly could have tried harder to find peace with Britain rather than fight. Should we have forgiven Santa Anna his attack on the Alamo? I doubt those who died there would have wanted that. Did we overreact after Pearl Harbor? Perhaps America should have tried to find peace with Imperial Japan instead of fighting for freedom.
That’s the kind of 20/20 hindsight easy for those in the media who think themselves so above the pain and anguish that they remove flags and patriotism from their broadcasts. This year, journalists will once again try to understand the lingering wound that is 9/11. And once again they will fail.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans want more. Nine years later and we are still seeking justice. Perhaps Bin Laden is already dead or we might never find him. One day he will answer for his crimes. The Bible tells us: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.” This 9/11, perhaps that’s all is the comfort we can find.(Dan Gainor)
Anything else is just bigotry 😦
And we won’t get to keep our country if we wilt under domestic media manipulation by Time Magazine and others that suggest citizen opposition to what some have described as a “victory mosque” is a symptom of Islamophobia.
And we won’t get to keep our country … by sending mosque promoter Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf on a taxpayer-funded trip through the Middle East to bolster support for the Ground Zero mosque’s construction.
And we won’t get to keep our country if we permit the construction of a 1,056-foot tall “middle finger” just a couple of blocks from where 19 Muslim terrorists murdered almost 3,000 Americans during the most deadly attack on the U.S. mainland in history.
“Have you forgotten all the people killed?
Yeah, some went down like heroes, in that Pennsylvania field
Have you forgotten about our Pentagon?
All the loved ones that we lost and those left to … carry on.”
Regardless of one’s views on Islam, building a mosque near Ground Zero is deliberately provocative and unacceptable. This is not an example of Islamophobia, it’s just common sense to “…those left to… carry on.”
Carry on?
Yes — that’s US!
Every single one of U.S.! (IBD)
There’s tolerance and then their’s just blind,naive,rose-colored 60’s hippie denial of reality.
A reality that could get you killed. Period.
End of Story.
It already got thousands of husbands,wives,friends killed in the most brutal way.
So have you forgotten that??
Indyfromaz's Blog: The Thoughts of An Independent Arizonan 