"Now, black Americans are prepared to protect their oppressors and fight all comers in their defense, tooth and nail, blissfully unaware that their friends are their enemies, and their enemies would be their friends."
In other words, they protect the white racists they love.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
A little secret about Obama's transparency
"The current administration, challenged by the president to be the most open, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than Bush did."
How To Brainwash A Nation
"This amazing interview was done back in 1985 with a former KGB agent who was trained in subversion techniques. He explains the 4 basic steps to socially engineering entire generations into thinking and behaving the way those in power want them to. It's shocking because our nation has been transformed in the exact same way, and followed the exact same steps."
Hitler was a Leftist Socialist
"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."
Adolph Hitler
Adolph Hitler
Obamacare's Chickens Coming Home To Roost Already
"Good post on the true cost of ObamaCare. But it gets better: the Dems are now shaking down CEOs who don't get with the program. In the attached letter, Henry Waxman not only orders the CEOs of AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co, and Verizon to testify before the Energy and Commerce Committee, but also to produce internal analyses and emails related to their statements. They don't expressly subpoena the CEOs, so we can hope that they tell the Dems to GFY, though somehow I doubt that will happen."
A Trip Down Memory Lane
"From Brain-Terminal.com: As the media casts Tea Party attendees as dangerous extremists voicing violent rhetoric, it's interesting to look back at some of the radicals the media spent years ignoring. The lesson of the media coverage: protests against President Bush were patriotic, while protests against President Obama are motivated purely by racism and bigotry."
Obama allies: Now we can stop pretending the insurers are the enemy
"Insurers were the first to propose the regulations combined with the individual mandate. And the insurers’ objection to the health-care bill that became law was primarily that it would not contain costs — an objection Volsky seems to concede in the blog post.
"So, yeah, now that bill has become law, there’s no need to pretend the insurers are the enemy."
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/obama-allies-now-we-can-stop-pretending-the-insurers-are-the-enemy-89598552.html#ixzz0jlkMJVmW
"So, yeah, now that bill has become law, there’s no need to pretend the insurers are the enemy."
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/obama-allies-now-we-can-stop-pretending-the-insurers-are-the-enemy-89598552.html#ixzz0jlkMJVmW
Exposed--White House visitors list shows unsavory characters Obama denied knowing
"Controversy ensued in the Obama campaign of 2008 when stories surfaced that Ayers and his wife were personal friends of the Obamas. Obama vehemently denied it on several occasions, claiming that he knew of Ayers only because of his work and his writings, but that since Ayers was significantly older than he, it was unlikely that he would have opportunity to become friends with him.
"Obama went further to say that as far as he knew Ayers was just 'somebody who lived in the neighborhood.'
"The problem with this explanation is that several witnesses and news reports say otherwise, that Ayers was, indeed, a personal friend of Barack and Michelle Obama and had even been a guest in their home in Chicago. Ayers and Dohrn also hosted a series of meetings in their home in the early 1990s to introduce their friends to a new up-and-coming politician--Barack Obama.
"Ayers also wrote an American communist manifesto called 'Prairie Fire' in which the steps are outlined for the Marxist takeover of the U.S. government."
Health Care Tyranny
"The new law was written in collaboration with major drug companies who traded control of their industry for corporate welfare and sweetheart protections (a path that they have already been on for many years now). These companies while not technically nationalized are now effectively controlled by the government under Obamacare.
"The government’s take over of health care is a big deal. It’s a big deal because of its size and scope but it is an even bigger deal because health care affects every one of us in the most intimate ways possible. Government bureaucrats will now literally decide who shall live and who shall die. In a few years individuals will no longer be in charge of their health care choices and therefore no longer fully in charge of their own bodies."
"The government’s take over of health care is a big deal. It’s a big deal because of its size and scope but it is an even bigger deal because health care affects every one of us in the most intimate ways possible. Government bureaucrats will now literally decide who shall live and who shall die. In a few years individuals will no longer be in charge of their health care choices and therefore no longer fully in charge of their own bodies."
Top Eco-Fascist Calls For End Of Freedom To Fight “Global Warming”
“'We need a more authoritative world.' Lovelock states."
Who owns you? The risk of ‘unlimited submission’
- “Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to their General Government; ... that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force...”
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
More White Supremacists running for Congress … oh, wait
"But, it shows that the loony left is … well, loony … when it comes to their portrayal of Republicans."
Saturday, March 27, 2010
London Telegraph: Ambulance service gets £38 for every patient they don't take to hospital
"The Ambulance service is being paid bonuses for not taking patients to hospital in a bid to help the NHS hit controversial targets."
So all Tea Party members are racists?
"I talked to a bunch of Tea Party activists – including a grandmother and a paediatric heart transplant surgeon – protesting outside President Barack Obama’s event in Iowa City on Thursday. Passionate? Yes. Angry? Yes. Irrational? Some of them. Paranoid? Perhaps in some cases. White? Well, yes. I spotted one black guy in about 150 protesters. Racist? No – or certainly not a hint of it from anyone that I talked to.
"The trouble with playing the racism card is that is an attempt to stifle dissent – what you are saying is illegitimate because your real rationale is that you hate blacks. Understandably, it drives people crazy. And just who is being racist by looking at a predominantly white crowd and leaping to the conclusion that they are all motivated by racial hatred?
"In the past week, I think the Left has seriously overplayed its hand. The accusations of a wave of dangerous violence against pro-health care Democrats have been wildly overblown, as James Taranto skillfully debunks here. Most will see it as a clumsy attempt to marinalise opposition.
"And Sarah Palin is inciting violence by putting out a map which has crosshairs on targeted Democratic districts? Give. Me. A. Break. Can anyone name a Democratic or Republican political operative who does not talk in martial metaphors? On his campaign plane, I recall Obama saying something at one point about Hillary Clinton trying to drive a stake through his heart. Was he accusing her of wanting to murder him? Nope, I don’t think so either."
"The trouble with playing the racism card is that is an attempt to stifle dissent – what you are saying is illegitimate because your real rationale is that you hate blacks. Understandably, it drives people crazy. And just who is being racist by looking at a predominantly white crowd and leaping to the conclusion that they are all motivated by racial hatred?
"In the past week, I think the Left has seriously overplayed its hand. The accusations of a wave of dangerous violence against pro-health care Democrats have been wildly overblown, as James Taranto skillfully debunks here. Most will see it as a clumsy attempt to marinalise opposition.
"And Sarah Palin is inciting violence by putting out a map which has crosshairs on targeted Democratic districts? Give. Me. A. Break. Can anyone name a Democratic or Republican political operative who does not talk in martial metaphors? On his campaign plane, I recall Obama saying something at one point about Hillary Clinton trying to drive a stake through his heart. Was he accusing her of wanting to murder him? Nope, I don’t think so either."
Are the Tea Parties Racist?
Think about it. Where there are Nazi and KKK rallies, blacks show up to protest them. How many blacks show up to protest Tea Parties?
How Bad Is The Democrat’s Health Care “Reform” Bill. Myths vs. FACTS
"1.) The bill expands entitlement spending by over $1 TRILLION in order to “cover” 30 Million more people.
2.) It adds $500 Billion in new tax increases.
3.) It ROBS Medicare and Social Security (AND THEY’RE BOTH ALREADY BROKE!) In fact, the bill CUTS Medicare by $500 BILLION to help FUND the new $1 Trillion entitlement.
4.) In order to keep the CBO score under $1 Trillion they count this TRANSFER from Medicare to the new $1 TRILLION entitlement “A Savings”.
5.) $468 BILLION in additional spending on subsidies to purchase government approved health insurance.
6.) $48 BILLION in additional spending for Medicaid. Did I mention Medicaid costs are increasing at 23% a year? That’s 23% a YEAR!
7.) A Huge new increase on Capital Gains tax of almost 4%. Who does that affect? Anyone with any SAVINGS, most especially those in the market. So not only do we have RECORD unemployment, we’re now going to lose EVEN MORE of whatever savings we have LEFT!
8.) The bill has a DECADE of Medicare Cuts a DECADE of Tax Increases, and only 6 yrs of supposed benefits!
9.) $70 Billion in long term care premiums will be collected under the “Class Act” also used to fund the $1 Trillion new entitlement!
10.) The bill includes $132 Billion in CUTS to the Medicare Advantage program.
11.) One of the MANY costs associated with this bill that were NOT included in the CBO score were the appropriations (money needed to fund the 159 new government agencies needed to implement “Obamacare”). $10 BILLION OF WHICH WILL BE SPENT HIRING ANOTHER 16,500 IRS Agents! Who will be “spot checking” your business for COMPLIANCE EVERY SINGLE MONTH and levying fees for NON COMPLIANCE!
12.) The bill mandates that employers pay 72.5% of all of their employee’s health insurance premiums and 65% of all of their employee’s families premiums! What harm will this do to our American Businesses? Caterpillar Incorporated shed some light on that in a letter written by their Vice President to Speaker Pelosi on March 21, 2010.
13.) Arguably the most troubling language in the bill is the new 85%/15% MLR (Medical Loss Ratio) Rule applied to all private Health Insurance companies. This new MLR ratio could very conceivably bring about the END of all private Health Insurance companies in a very short period of time. Robert A. Book PHD & Senior Fellow of Health Economics at the Heritage Foundation explains why.
14.) Besides the MASSIVE taxes that begin immediately, MANY CUTS begin as well and the bulk of them will hit Medicare recipients. Oh and remember when we were told by President Obama & Speaker Pelosi that children would be able to get coverage for pre-existing conditions 6 months after the new bill was signed? They FORGOT to include that in the bill! So now, NOT EVEN THAT “benefit” will begin until 2014!
It’s a good thing THAT IS ALREADY THE LAW IN MOST STATES! The dramatic expansion of SCHIP already ensures that most children have access to guaranteed issue health insurance already. Although States like Arizona have recently terminated their SCHIP program because it has rendered them BANKRUPT. So be sure to check with your State SCHIP administrator to make sure there’s entitlement money left for you!
In addition, many States like Illinois have already passed similar legislation that allows children with pre-existing conditions to be insured on a guaranteed issue basis and to stay on their parents policy until the age of 26. Side bar: Are they REALLY still children at age 26?
15.) The democrats also left the 21% reduction in medicare payments to physicians out of the bill and state they will tackle that in another bill. BUT by NOT counting it in the final CBO score, they consider it “a savings”. By the way, if any body REALLY believes their going to cut reimbursement to physicians by 21% they’ve got another thing coming. There’s NO WAY that will pass, but the Democrats still COUNT IT AS A SAVINGS!
The Medicare Trustees state that the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare grew by a stunning $10.4 trillion between the years 2004 & 2008. In the 2008 trustees’ report the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare total $42.9 trillion!
Let me break that down:
Compare the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare with the net worth of every household in America. According to the Federal Reserve flow-of-funds figures for year-end 2007, our collective net worth as consumers was $62.7 trillion. By the end of 2008, the same figure had fallen to $51.5 trillion! Another year of growth for Social Security and Medicare liabilities would bring total unfunded government promises to about $46 trillion. That’s nearly 90% of our net worth! In fact, if consumer net worth fell an additional $5 trillion — the same amount it fell in the last three months of 2008 — we’d be broke!
Guess when these statistics were gathered? January 2009 and we all KNOW who took the reigns as President in that year and thanks in LARGE part to him we are INDEED NOW BROKE! THIS IS TYRANNY!
16.) Speaking of the President, the bill also EXEMPTS HIM & SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL STAFF MEMBERS FROM THIS LEGISLATION!"
Don't believe it? Here are the sources:
- March 11, Letter from Doug Elmendorf to Harry Reid (PDF)
- The AHIP Plan in Context, Igor Volsky;Max Baucus WellPoint/Liz Fowler Plan" rel="bookmark" href="http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/09/08/liz-fowlers-plan/"> The Max Baucus WellPoint/Liz Fowler Plan, Marcy Wheeler
- CBO Score, 11-30-2009
- “Affordable” Health Care, Marcy Wheeler
- Gruber Doesn’t Reveal That 21% of Massachusetts Residents Can’t Afford Health Care, Marcy Wheeler; Massachusetts Survey (PDF)
- Health Care on the Road to Neo-Feudalism, Marcy Wheeler
- CMS: Excise Tax on Insurance Will Make Your Insurane Coverage Worse and Cause Almost No Reduction in NHE, Jon Walker
- Employer Health Costs Do Not Drive Wage Trends, Lawrence Mishel
- CBO Estimates Show Public Plan With Higher Savings Rate, Congress Daily; Drug Importation Amendment Likely This Week, Politico; Medicare Part D IAF; A Monopoloy on Biologics Will Drain Health Care Resources, Lancet Student
- MaxTax Is a Plan to Use Our Taxes to Reward Wal-Mart for Keeping Its Workers in Poverty, Marcy Wheeler
- Estimated Financial Effects of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009,” as Proposed by the Senate Majority Leader on November 18, 2009, CMS (PDF)
- Health insurance companies hang onto their antitrust exemption, Protect Consumer Justice.org
- What passage of health care reform would mean for the average American, DC Examiner
- How to get a State Single Payer Opt-Out as Part of Reconciliation, Jon Walker
- Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies, CNN.com; The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Section‐by‐Section Analysis (PDF)
Friday, March 26, 2010
The unedited Jean Schmidt voicemail
"“Yeah, I’m glad the president passed health care. Yeah. Funky-a..(the rest censored)."
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/25/the-unedited-jean-schmidt-voicemail/#ixzz0jLamBlKa
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/25/the-unedited-jean-schmidt-voicemail/#ixzz0jLamBlKa
Fan of Maddow and Olbermann Posts Death Threats to Palin’s Family on Twitter
"Alert the media! A lefty is tweeting death threats to Sarah Palin and her family. Here’s a screen shot in case he deletes it."
How the Left fakes the hate: A primer
"If you can’t stand the heat, manufacture a hate crime epidemic."
AP: Say, guess what we just found in ObamaCare!
"The health care overhaul will cost U.S. companies billions and make them more likely to drop prescription drug coverage for retirees because of a change in how the government subsidizes those benefits.
"In the first two days after the law was signed, three major companies — Deere & Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Valero Energy — said they expect to take a total hit of $265 million to account for smaller tax deductions in the future.
"With more than 3,500 companies now getting the tax break as an incentive to keep providing coverage, others are almost certain to announce similar cost increases in the weeks ahead as they sort out the impact of the change.
"Figuring out what it will mean for retirees will take longer, but analysts said as many as 2 million could lose the prescription drug coverage provided by their former employers, leaving them to enroll in Medicare’s program."
"In the first two days after the law was signed, three major companies — Deere & Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Valero Energy — said they expect to take a total hit of $265 million to account for smaller tax deductions in the future.
"With more than 3,500 companies now getting the tax break as an incentive to keep providing coverage, others are almost certain to announce similar cost increases in the weeks ahead as they sort out the impact of the change.
"Figuring out what it will mean for retirees will take longer, but analysts said as many as 2 million could lose the prescription drug coverage provided by their former employers, leaving them to enroll in Medicare’s program."
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Apr. 16, 1890: Democrats Future Was Already Known, Disastrous
"Through this inscription I wish to enter my dying protest against what is called the Democratic party I have watched it closely since the days of Jackson and know that all the misfortunes of our nation has come to it through this so called party therefore beware of this party of treason."
A Liberal View of Health Care Reform
"# About 23 million people will remain uninsured nine years out. That figure translates into an estimated 23,000 unnecessary deaths annually and an incalculable toll of suffering.
"# Millions of middle-income people will be pressured to buy commercial health insurance policies costing up to 9.5 percent of their income but covering an average of only 70 percent of their medical expenses, potentially leaving them vulnerable to financial ruin if they become seriously ill. Many will find such policies too expensive to afford or, if they do buy them, too expensive to use because of the high co-pays and deductibles.
"# Insurance firms will be handed at least $447 billion in taxpayer money to subsidize the purchase of their shoddy products. This money will enhance their financial and political power, and with it their ability to block future reform."
"# Millions of middle-income people will be pressured to buy commercial health insurance policies costing up to 9.5 percent of their income but covering an average of only 70 percent of their medical expenses, potentially leaving them vulnerable to financial ruin if they become seriously ill. Many will find such policies too expensive to afford or, if they do buy them, too expensive to use because of the high co-pays and deductibles.
"# Insurance firms will be handed at least $447 billion in taxpayer money to subsidize the purchase of their shoddy products. This money will enhance their financial and political power, and with it their ability to block future reform."
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Obama's Empty Health Care Victory
"It will get worse. The liberals have guaranteed as much with their shifty procedural methods along with such cute little schticks as delaying actual implementation until 2013 while beginning most new taxes after the November election. And the weight will fall on Obama himself. He owns the thing. It was his bill, it was his insistence that it go through, and it has his name on it. So the Messiah is going to be fighting this battle for the rest of his term. Nothing short of a massive attack on the United States is going to change that. First come the November elections. Then the Supreme Court case. Then the guerrilla war in Congress, with the new kids elected solely on the basis of rolling back Obama's attempt to hijack the economy entering office in January 2011. And throughout it all, the continuous, everyday acts of defiance and contempt by the little platoons, the people who actually make up this country.
"What does that leave Obama? Absolutely nothing. He will have no more opportunities. His hands will be full. He will be spending every last minute defending his major achievement, which he sees as his legacy. He will have time for nothing else. While he is otherwise involved, his crew of Chicago gangsters and career political hustlers will be roaming around cutting their own deals and making their own arrangements, further crippling his efforts and infuriating the public. Mark Steyn has suggested that the goal of ObamaCare is to institutionalize the left as America's base political culture. Instead, Obama appears to be bringing it to ruination."
"What does that leave Obama? Absolutely nothing. He will have no more opportunities. His hands will be full. He will be spending every last minute defending his major achievement, which he sees as his legacy. He will have time for nothing else. While he is otherwise involved, his crew of Chicago gangsters and career political hustlers will be roaming around cutting their own deals and making their own arrangements, further crippling his efforts and infuriating the public. Mark Steyn has suggested that the goal of ObamaCare is to institutionalize the left as America's base political culture. Instead, Obama appears to be bringing it to ruination."
Eyewitness to Tea Party Protest: Adding Insult to Insult
"Journalists have also contrived false accusations against protestors before–as in the case of a man who carried a rifle to one town hall meeting last year, whom MSNBC only showed from the shoulders down to hide the fact that he was black, while accusing the protestors of racism. There have also been racist attacks against black Tea Party protestors, such as Kenneth Gladney, who was assaulted outside a town hall in August.
"Then there is the scandal I have personally documented–the way in which groups of paid organizers told their followers outside a town hall meeting in my own community that they should drown out residents who asked questions about the health care bill. That video, which was filmed in August, led me to uncover the strategy written by felon and Democrat strategist Robert Creamer as a blueprint for the events of the past year.
"For the record, I have spent my life fighting against prejudice of any kind. I was the first white member of my high school’s Afro-American club. I interned for our nation’s first black female senator, Carol Moseley-Braun. I tutored children in one of the poorest black townships in South Africa, where many of my students lived in shacks without toilets or electricity. I lived in a Muslim community to learn more about the Islamic faith.
"I don’t have to take accusations of racism and homophobia. I have spoken out against prejudice before, and I do so again today. I am glad to see the Republicans and the Tea Party leaders do so as well. What is unacceptable is that these allegations have been used to trash a movement that is made up of ordinary, fair-minded people of every race and creed who are simply standing up for their rights. That is offensive to me as well."
"Then there is the scandal I have personally documented–the way in which groups of paid organizers told their followers outside a town hall meeting in my own community that they should drown out residents who asked questions about the health care bill. That video, which was filmed in August, led me to uncover the strategy written by felon and Democrat strategist Robert Creamer as a blueprint for the events of the past year.
"For the record, I have spent my life fighting against prejudice of any kind. I was the first white member of my high school’s Afro-American club. I interned for our nation’s first black female senator, Carol Moseley-Braun. I tutored children in one of the poorest black townships in South Africa, where many of my students lived in shacks without toilets or electricity. I lived in a Muslim community to learn more about the Islamic faith.
"I don’t have to take accusations of racism and homophobia. I have spoken out against prejudice before, and I do so again today. I am glad to see the Republicans and the Tea Party leaders do so as well. What is unacceptable is that these allegations have been used to trash a movement that is made up of ordinary, fair-minded people of every race and creed who are simply standing up for their rights. That is offensive to me as well."
20 Ways ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedoms
"1. You are young and don’t want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the 'privilege.' (Section 1501)
2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You’ll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That’s because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person’s health status. (Section 2701).
3. You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711).
4. Think you’d like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn’t cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that’s what the customer wants. (Section 2712).
5. You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn’t allow your employers’ slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).
6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care. You’re a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You’re a woman who can’t have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You’re a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).
7. Do you want a plan with lots of cost-sharing and low premiums? Well, the best you can do is a 'Bronze plan,' which has benefits that provide benefits that are actuarially equivalent to 60% of the full actuarial value of the benefits provided under the plan. Anything lower than that, tough. (Section 1302 (d)(1)(A))
8. You are an employer in the small-group insurance market and you’d like to offer policies with deductibles higher than $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families? Tough. (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A).
9. If you are a large employer (defined as at least 101 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes). Think you know how to better spend that money? Tough. (Section 1513).
10. You are an employer who offers health flexible spending arrangements and your employees want to deduct more than $2,500 from their salaries for it? Sorry, can’t do that. (Section 9005 (i)).
11. If you are a physician and you don’t want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It’s not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients’ care. Of course not. (Section 3003 (i))
12. If you are a physician and you want to own your own hospital, you must be an owner and have a 'Medicare provider agreement' by Feb. 1, 2010. (Dec. 31, 2010 in the reconciliation changes.) If you didn’t have those by then, you are out of luck. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A)).
13. If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can’t (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a country where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).
14. You are a health insurer and you want to raise premiums to meet costs? Well, if that increase is deemed 'unreasonable' by the Secretary of Health and Human Services it will be subject to review and can be denied. (Section 1003)
15. The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry. If you are a pharmaceutical company what you will pay depends on the ratio of the number of brand-name drugs you sell to the total number of brand-name drugs sold in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the brand-name drugs in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2.3 billion, or $230,000,000. (Under reconciliation, it starts at $2.55 billion, jumps to $3 billion in 2012, then to $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018, before settling at $2.8 billion in 2019 (Section 1404)). Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b)).
16. The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers. If you are a medical device maker what you will pay depends on your share of medical device sales in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the medical devices in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2 billion, or $200,000,000. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for R&D? Tough. (Section 9009 (b)). The reconciliation package turns that into a 2.9% excise tax for medical device makers. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 1405).
17. The government will extract a fee of $6.7 billion annually from insurance companies. If you are an insurer, what you will pay depends on your share of net premiums plus 200% of your administrative costs. So, if your net premiums and administrative costs are equal to 10% of the total, you will pay 10% of $6.7 billion, or $670,000,000. In the reconciliation bill, the fee will start at $8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015, $1.9 billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion in 2018 (Section 1406).Think you, as an insurance executive, know how to better spend that money? Tough.(Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B).)
18. If an insurance company board or its stockholders think the CEO is worth more than $500,000 in deferred compensation? Tough.(Section 9014).
19. You will have to pay an additional 0.5% payroll tax on any dollar you make over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. What? You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9015). That amount will rise to a 3.8% tax if reconciliation passes. It will also apply to investment income, estates, and trusts. You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Like you need to ask. (Section 1402).
20. If you go for cosmetic surgery, you will pay an additional 5% tax on the cost of the procedure. Think you know how to spend that money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9017)."
2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You’ll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That’s because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person’s health status. (Section 2701).
3. You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711).
4. Think you’d like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn’t cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that’s what the customer wants. (Section 2712).
5. You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn’t allow your employers’ slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).
6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care. You’re a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You’re a woman who can’t have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You’re a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).
7. Do you want a plan with lots of cost-sharing and low premiums? Well, the best you can do is a 'Bronze plan,' which has benefits that provide benefits that are actuarially equivalent to 60% of the full actuarial value of the benefits provided under the plan. Anything lower than that, tough. (Section 1302 (d)(1)(A))
8. You are an employer in the small-group insurance market and you’d like to offer policies with deductibles higher than $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families? Tough. (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A).
9. If you are a large employer (defined as at least 101 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes). Think you know how to better spend that money? Tough. (Section 1513).
10. You are an employer who offers health flexible spending arrangements and your employees want to deduct more than $2,500 from their salaries for it? Sorry, can’t do that. (Section 9005 (i)).
11. If you are a physician and you don’t want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It’s not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients’ care. Of course not. (Section 3003 (i))
12. If you are a physician and you want to own your own hospital, you must be an owner and have a 'Medicare provider agreement' by Feb. 1, 2010. (Dec. 31, 2010 in the reconciliation changes.) If you didn’t have those by then, you are out of luck. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A)).
13. If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can’t (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a country where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).
14. You are a health insurer and you want to raise premiums to meet costs? Well, if that increase is deemed 'unreasonable' by the Secretary of Health and Human Services it will be subject to review and can be denied. (Section 1003)
15. The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry. If you are a pharmaceutical company what you will pay depends on the ratio of the number of brand-name drugs you sell to the total number of brand-name drugs sold in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the brand-name drugs in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2.3 billion, or $230,000,000. (Under reconciliation, it starts at $2.55 billion, jumps to $3 billion in 2012, then to $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018, before settling at $2.8 billion in 2019 (Section 1404)). Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b)).
16. The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers. If you are a medical device maker what you will pay depends on your share of medical device sales in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the medical devices in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2 billion, or $200,000,000. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for R&D? Tough. (Section 9009 (b)). The reconciliation package turns that into a 2.9% excise tax for medical device makers. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 1405).
17. The government will extract a fee of $6.7 billion annually from insurance companies. If you are an insurer, what you will pay depends on your share of net premiums plus 200% of your administrative costs. So, if your net premiums and administrative costs are equal to 10% of the total, you will pay 10% of $6.7 billion, or $670,000,000. In the reconciliation bill, the fee will start at $8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015, $1.9 billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion in 2018 (Section 1406).Think you, as an insurance executive, know how to better spend that money? Tough.(Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B).)
18. If an insurance company board or its stockholders think the CEO is worth more than $500,000 in deferred compensation? Tough.(Section 9014).
19. You will have to pay an additional 0.5% payroll tax on any dollar you make over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. What? You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9015). That amount will rise to a 3.8% tax if reconciliation passes. It will also apply to investment income, estates, and trusts. You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Like you need to ask. (Section 1402).
20. If you go for cosmetic surgery, you will pay an additional 5% tax on the cost of the procedure. Think you know how to spend that money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9017)."
Milton Friedman's Free Market Solution to the Healthcare Problem
"We have become so accustomed to employer-provided medical care that we regard it as part of the natural order. Yet it is thoroughly illogical. Why single out medical care? Food is more essential to life than medical care. Why not exempt the cost of food from taxes if provided by the employer? Why not return to the much-reviled company store when workers were in effect paid in kind rather than in cash?"
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Ben Stein: My Thoughts on Watching the Dems Stab the Constitution on the Congressional Floor
"This is a 'bill' that is clearly not really a Constitutionally allowable legislative entity, eligible for signature into law. For it to be that, it would need to be identically passed in both houses. It was not. It was passed as a corned beef hash of vague promises in the Senate. Then a vote was taken in the House to eventually pass the same bill but with a few changes and a further vague promise to reconcile both versions. This is not how the Constitution defines a bill en route to becoming a law. This is just a demand by President Obama to submit to his authority, which the Democrats meekly passed. This is not Constitutional."
Al Sharpton, Socialism And Obama (Reserve Your Judgment)
“then the American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they voted for Barack Obama”
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Republican Party's Platform in 1908???
"The Republican party has been for
more than fifty years the consistent
friend of the American Negro. It gave
him freedom and citizenship. We demand
equal justice for all men without
regard to race or color; we declare
once more and without reservation for
the enforcement in letter and spirit of
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth
Amendments to the Constitution,
which were designed for the protection
and advancement of the Negro,
and we condemn all devices that
have for their real aim his disfranchisement
for reasons of color alone as unfair,
un-American, and repugnant to
the supreme law of the land."
more than fifty years the consistent
friend of the American Negro. It gave
him freedom and citizenship. We demand
equal justice for all men without
regard to race or color; we declare
once more and without reservation for
the enforcement in letter and spirit of
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth
Amendments to the Constitution,
which were designed for the protection
and advancement of the Negro,
and we condemn all devices that
have for their real aim his disfranchisement
for reasons of color alone as unfair,
un-American, and repugnant to
the supreme law of the land."
Health Problems Health Care Can't Fix
"The real problem, it turns out, is that Americans are accident-prone, health unconscious slobs. Until the mid-1980s, the U.S. had the highest per capita cigarette consumption in the developed world, and the U.S.'s obesity rate today is more than twice that of Canada and ten times that of Japan. These aren't problems of the health care system (i.e. in the diagnosis and treatment of disease). These are problems of behavior. Adjust that data for the higher U.S. incidence of homicide and obesity, and Americans actually have the highest life expectancy in the developed world."
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Obama pitch: My presidency’s sunk without ObamaCare
"Another caucus member, Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.), said, 'We went in there already knowing his presidency would be weakened if this thing went down, but the president clearly reinforced the impression the presidency would be damaged by a loss.'”
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Unable to Pay for Health Care Bill, Dems Look to Raise Excise Tax on Middle Class
"It seems they’ve been unable to do so, as Ben Smith now reports that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is on his way to the White House to discuss plans by Democrats to actually raise the tax on middle class health care plans in order to pay for the bill."
101 Freedoms and Rights the Progressive Left Doesn’t Want You to Have
- The Freedom to keep what you earn and spend it as you please.
- The Freedom to take risks, and live with the consequences.
- The Right to participate in the political process by donating money to causes you support (like Proposition 8 in California) without being harassed by radicals
- The Freedom to work in a shop without belonging to a union.
- The Freedom to use a secret ballot when voting to unionize.
- The Freedom to express conservative opinions on talk radio.
- The Freedom to express conservative opinions as an invited speaker on a college campus.
- The Freedom to express conservative opinion on the internet.
- The Freedom to debate whether disparities in achievement among races and sexes is a product of genetics.
- The Freedom to question whether Global Warming is really happening.
- The Freedom to earn a market salary in the Financial Services industry.
- The Freedom not to be pressed into involuntary service to the state.
- The Freedom to purchase and drive an SUV or any other vehicle you choose.
- The Freedom to own a pickup truck.
- The Freedom to wear fur, leather, or other material made of a formerly living creature.
- The Freedom to hire whoever you want to work for you.
- The Freedom to fire an employee for any reason, or for no reason at all.
- The Freedom to rent a property you own to the person or persons of your choice.
- The Freedom to use your own property in whatever way that you may choose.
- The Freedom to earn a living by logging, ranching, fishing, or any other activity they don’t approve of.
- The Freedom to take risks with your own investments.
- The Freedom to keep the profits of your investments.
- The Freedom to join with others to criticize a politician within 30 days of an election.
- The Right to own a firearm.
- The Right to own a firearm arbitrarily designated as an “assault weapon.”
- The Right to use a firearm in defense of your home and loved ones.
- The Right to carry a firearm in public for your own defense.
- The Right to purchase ammunition for your firearm.
- The Freedom to discuss a military career with a recruiter at a public school or university, as well as the right to participate in ROTC.
- The Freedom to eat food made with transfats.
- The Freedom to smoke tobacco (but not marijuana, explain that to me.)
- The Freedom of a business to decide for itself whether it wants to be smoke-free.
- The Freedom for adults between the ages of 18 to 21 to consume alcoholic beverages
- The Freedom to purchase health care in a free market.
- The Freedom to publicly celebrate a Christian holiday.
- The Freedom to lead others of your faith in voluntary public prayer.
- The Freedom to hold a Bible study group in a public school.
- The Freedom to discuss the relationship between terrorism and Islam.
- The Freedom to choose a school for your child.
- The Freedom to homeschool your child.
- The Freedom for your home-schooled child to use public school facilities paid for with your tax dollars.
- The Freedom for male athletes to compete in any sport they want, even if it means there are more male athletes than female athletes within a school system.
- The Freedom for private schools to compete on an equal footing with public schools.
- The Freedom to fire an incompetent public school teacher.
- The Right not to have your legitimate vote canceled out by a fraudulent ACORN voter.
- The Freedom not to have your property confiscated by the state and given to another entity for higher tax revenue.
- The Freedom to develop domestic sources of energy.
- The Freedom to use coal-powered electricity.
- The Freedom to use nuclear-powered electricty.
- The Freedom to set your thermostat at whatever temperature makes you comfortable.
- The Freedom to protect your homes, schools, and hospitals from a flood of unassimilated third-worlders through legislation, propositions, and denial of welfare benefits to non-citizens.
- The Freedom to travel wherever you please, by any means you choose.
- The Freedom to have a private club open only to a membership of your choosing.
- The Freedom to operate a business with minimal interference from the state.
- The Freedom to discuss whether certain communities are responsible for their own problems.
- The Freedom to refuse responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of others and its consequences.
- The Freedom to practice work as an obstetrician without the threat of junk-science lawsuits from the likes of John Edwards.
- The Freedom to consume as much red meat as you like.
- The Freedom to watch news on a network that is not ideologically leftist.
- The Freedom to decide for yourself what is news, without the interference of ideological “deciders” (i.e. the editors and producers of television and newspapers).
- The Right to protest in front of an abortion mill.
- The Right to know whether your minor daughter is seeking an abortion.
- The Right to know whether your minor child is getting birth control from the school nurse.
- The Freedom to let the public decide the definition of marriage.
- The Freedom to light your homes with incandescent lightbulbs.
- The Freedom to use toilets that work with a single flush.
- The Freedom to use washers, driers, dishwashers, and other appliances that get the job done.
- The Freedom to raise your Family with your values, not theirs.
- The Freedom to non-abusively discipline your children with corporal punishment.
- The Freedom to object to textbooks and library materials in public schools paid for by your tax dollars and made available to your children.
- The Freedom to express the opinion that homosexual acts are distasteful, immoral, or unholy.
- The Freedom to ban pornography from your community.
- The Freedom to raise your children in a porn-free environment.
- The Freedom for ranchers to exterminate predators that spread disease and kill livestock.
- The Right to protest against the Teleprompter-in-Chief’s Trillion dollar deficits.
- The Freedom to publish editorial cartoons with monkeys in them.
- The Freedom to teach Huck Finn, Othello or To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Silas Marner, Ivanhoe, or other works in a high school class over the objection of ignorant politically correct dumbasses.
- The Freedom not to feel guilt about things done to other people, by other people centuries in the past.
- The Freedom to pursue private sector alternatives to state-provided services.
- The Freedom for religious charities to compete for grants on an equal footing with community-based organizations (shakedown rackets, I mean).
- The Right to criticize minority individuals for inferior performance.
- The Right of an asthmatic to use an aerosol based inhaler to save his/her life.
- The Freedom/Right to hunt animals for food or sport.
- The Freedom to advertise junk food.
- The Freedom to advertise red meat or dairy products on television.
- The Freedom to eat fast food or operate a fast food restaurant.
- The Freedom to own a black car or a big screen TV
- The Freedom to idle your car.
- The Freedom to own certain dog breeds
- The Freedom of cowboys to hold rodeos.
- The Freedom to enjoy NASCAR races.
- The Freedom of blacks, gays, and other minorities to become conservatives or Republicans
- The Freedom to critcize Islam.
- The Freedom to tell jokes about people of different ethnicities.
- The Freedom to tell jokes about people of different sexual proclivities.
- The Freedom to tell jokes involving stereotypes of women and minorities. (Note: It’s perfectly OK for a leftist like Jon Stewart, Seth MacFarlane, or Hillary Clinton to do this.)
- The Freedom to own jet skis or powerboats.
- The Freedom to own a snowmobile or other off-road vehicle.
- The Freedom to discuss the possibility, in a public school, that life is not a random evolutionary accident, but designed by a purposeful Creator.
- Your Freedom to use or produce whatever amount of harmless carbon dioxide you choose.
- The Very Basic Freedom to see the world in a different way than a liberal, progressive, Democrat, fascist does.
- (New) Your freedom to keep the housepet of your choice.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Why Health Bill Makes No Sense
"But to review, here are just 15 reasons why a government takeover of the finest medical system in the world makes no sense at all..."
¡Obamanos! Hispanics, blacks bail on president
"Minorities disappointed as 'hope,' 'change' fail to deliver"
¡Obamanos! Hispanics, blacks bail on president
"Minorities disappointed as 'hope,' 'change' fail to deliver"
AP: Obama Administration Not So Open
"Federal agencies haven’t lived up to President Barack Obama’s promise of a more open government, increasing their use of legal exemptions to keep records secret during his first year in office.
"An Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the use of nearly every one of the law’s nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.
"Among the most frequently used exemptions: one that lets the government hide records that detail its internal decision-making. Obama specifically directed agencies to stop using that exemption so frequently, but that directive appears to have been widely ignored.
"Major agencies cited that exemption at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, up from 47,395 times during President George W. Bush’s final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies. Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.
"So Mr. Obama topped President Bush’s record for a full year in just nine months."
"An Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the use of nearly every one of the law’s nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.
"Among the most frequently used exemptions: one that lets the government hide records that detail its internal decision-making. Obama specifically directed agencies to stop using that exemption so frequently, but that directive appears to have been widely ignored.
"Major agencies cited that exemption at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, up from 47,395 times during President George W. Bush’s final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies. Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.
"So Mr. Obama topped President Bush’s record for a full year in just nine months."
Will "Obamacare" Create Two Americas?
"The dirty little secret of this plan-which wouldn’t be a secret if opponents of this legislative package weren’t distracted by a dozen other wrongheaded policies in it-is that it will bring a major and irreversible upheaval to America’s labor markets. In a time of economic tension, this plan will displace millions of workers and push more people into becoming contract employees, resulting in increased instability for working families.
"One of the many original stated goals of the White House’s health care reforms was the promise that you can keep your health plan if you like it. However, the White House wanted to give businesses much-needed relief from burdensome health costs. Like the desire to create a new entitlement while reducing the budget deficit, these aims are nearly impossible to reconcile, so Obama chose a path that accomplishes neither.
"The president’s plan penalizes an employer for not providing insurance, but the government will subsidize the health care of workers without employer-provided insurance. This effectively allows workers to receive the same compensation package they get today, but with government footing the health-benefits part of the bill, so employers have no need to make up the difference in cash.
"The economic benefits of that subsidy far outweigh the penalties-for low income workers, it can result in an enormous difference of over $17,000 per year.
"It’s obvious what will happen under this plan: it will not make economic sense for any small business which employs lower-income workers to offer health insurance. And any small business which does so will almost certainly fail, burdened by higher costs than their competitors.
"This dilemma could be solved by making the penalties more draconian, but that too would cause business failures, and as with the individual insurance mandate, too steep a penalty would make the plan even more coercive and unpopular."
"One of the many original stated goals of the White House’s health care reforms was the promise that you can keep your health plan if you like it. However, the White House wanted to give businesses much-needed relief from burdensome health costs. Like the desire to create a new entitlement while reducing the budget deficit, these aims are nearly impossible to reconcile, so Obama chose a path that accomplishes neither.
"The president’s plan penalizes an employer for not providing insurance, but the government will subsidize the health care of workers without employer-provided insurance. This effectively allows workers to receive the same compensation package they get today, but with government footing the health-benefits part of the bill, so employers have no need to make up the difference in cash.
"The economic benefits of that subsidy far outweigh the penalties-for low income workers, it can result in an enormous difference of over $17,000 per year.
"It’s obvious what will happen under this plan: it will not make economic sense for any small business which employs lower-income workers to offer health insurance. And any small business which does so will almost certainly fail, burdened by higher costs than their competitors.
"This dilemma could be solved by making the penalties more draconian, but that too would cause business failures, and as with the individual insurance mandate, too steep a penalty would make the plan even more coercive and unpopular."
Senate health-care bill would still leave millions uninsured
"Even as Democrats seek the biggest expansion of health coverage in decades, as many as 23 million people could still be without insurance by 2018, illustrating the complexity of achieving the long-held Democratic goal of universal health care."
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Demonizing heartless health insurers so that heartless big government can deny your claim instead
"This is not proof that a government-run health system cannot work. But it does demonstrate the fatuity of arguing from tear-jerking anecdotes about private insurers' rejection of treatments. What makes the liberals believe that a cost-cutting government will be any less heartless than a private insurer?
"After all, Medicare already denies far more claims than the largest private insurers."
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Demonizing-heartless-health-insurers-so-that-heartless-big-government-can-deny-your-claim-instead-87650012.html?utm_source=feedburner+BeltwayConfidential&utm_medium=feed+Beltway+Confidential&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BeltwayConfidential+%28Beltway+Confidential%29feed&utm_content=Twitterfeed&utm_term=Twitterfeed#ixzz0iG1NQADt
"After all, Medicare already denies far more claims than the largest private insurers."
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Demonizing-heartless-health-insurers-so-that-heartless-big-government-can-deny-your-claim-instead-87650012.html?utm_source=feedburner+BeltwayConfidential&utm_medium=feed+Beltway+Confidential&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BeltwayConfidential+%28Beltway+Confidential%29feed&utm_content=Twitterfeed&utm_term=Twitterfeed#ixzz0iG1NQADt
The Danger to America
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to an electorate willing to have such a man for their president.
"The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."- author Unknown
"The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."- author Unknown
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Leftists Defend The Right to Race-Based Abortions
"This is not hyperbole. Consider the depravity of this recent headline on Salon’s Broadsheet blog: Banning Race-Based Abortions is Wrong."
What Should Be Done? (Health Care)
"How to employ market reforms? Here are five simple steps.
"Make health insurance more like other types of insurance. Health savings accounts, which passed as part of the Medicare reforms of 2003, were an important first step, separating smaller expenses from high-deductible insurance, for catastrophic events. However, the legislation is overly rigid. Congress must expand and revise the structure of HSAs, and level the tax playing field for those not covered by an employer plan.
"Foster competition. American health care is the most regulated sector in the economy. The result? A health insurance policy for a 30-year old man costs four times more in New York than in neighboring Connecticut because of the multitude of regulations in the Empire State. Americans can shop out-of-state for a mortgage; they should be able to do so for health insurance. Likewise, many laws intended to promote fairness end up reducing competition and thus innovation. Congress should reconsider such laws, beginning with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).
"Reform Medicaid, using welfare reform as the template. Medicaid spending is spiraling up, now consuming more dollars at the state level than K-12 education. Like the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children, part of the problem stems from the fact that the program is shared between both the federal and state government -- and is thus owned by neither. Congress should fund Medicaid with block grants to the states, and let them innovate.
"Revisit Medicare. Back in the late 1990s, a bipartisan commission approved a reasonable starting point for Medicare -- junking the price controls, and using the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan as a model. Elderly Americans would then have a choice among competing private plans. Given that the unfunded liability of Medicare is four times greater than that of social security, the time is right to experiment with this idea.
"Address prescription drug prices by pruning the size and scope of the FDA. It costs nearly a billion dollars for a prescription drug to reach the market, and roughly 40%of that is due to safety requirements. This is effectively a massive tax on pharmaceuticals. With new technology and focus, it would be possible to update the FDA, drawing from President George H. W. Bush's experiments with contracting out certain approval steps to private organizations, which boasted lower costs and faster approval times.
"None of these steps would be dramatic but all are important. Congress also slowly needs to weigh bigger issues: how to shore up Medicare, create portability of health insurance, and foster a market for medical innovation."
"Make health insurance more like other types of insurance. Health savings accounts, which passed as part of the Medicare reforms of 2003, were an important first step, separating smaller expenses from high-deductible insurance, for catastrophic events. However, the legislation is overly rigid. Congress must expand and revise the structure of HSAs, and level the tax playing field for those not covered by an employer plan.
"Foster competition. American health care is the most regulated sector in the economy. The result? A health insurance policy for a 30-year old man costs four times more in New York than in neighboring Connecticut because of the multitude of regulations in the Empire State. Americans can shop out-of-state for a mortgage; they should be able to do so for health insurance. Likewise, many laws intended to promote fairness end up reducing competition and thus innovation. Congress should reconsider such laws, beginning with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).
"Reform Medicaid, using welfare reform as the template. Medicaid spending is spiraling up, now consuming more dollars at the state level than K-12 education. Like the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children, part of the problem stems from the fact that the program is shared between both the federal and state government -- and is thus owned by neither. Congress should fund Medicaid with block grants to the states, and let them innovate.
"Revisit Medicare. Back in the late 1990s, a bipartisan commission approved a reasonable starting point for Medicare -- junking the price controls, and using the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan as a model. Elderly Americans would then have a choice among competing private plans. Given that the unfunded liability of Medicare is four times greater than that of social security, the time is right to experiment with this idea.
"Address prescription drug prices by pruning the size and scope of the FDA. It costs nearly a billion dollars for a prescription drug to reach the market, and roughly 40%of that is due to safety requirements. This is effectively a massive tax on pharmaceuticals. With new technology and focus, it would be possible to update the FDA, drawing from President George H. W. Bush's experiments with contracting out certain approval steps to private organizations, which boasted lower costs and faster approval times.
"None of these steps would be dramatic but all are important. Congress also slowly needs to weigh bigger issues: how to shore up Medicare, create portability of health insurance, and foster a market for medical innovation."
Socialized Medicine is Sicko
"According to one observer, Michael Moore has created a love letter to the Canadian system. However, Americans should know that Canada rations health care and that many Canadians wait inordinately long periods of time for urgent medical treatment. The Fraser Institute's annual report 'Waiting Your Turn' estimates that Canadians are waiting for nearly 800,000 medical procedures. If the Canadian system was adopted in the U.S. - and you assume one person per treatment - that would translate to nearly 7.3 million Americans. Not 7.3 million Americans theoretically without health care due to a lack of insurance - but 7.3 million Americans who need medical treatment but cannot get it without being on long waiting lists.
"How long? In Canada, it depends on the province and the type of treatment. The median wait time for medical treatment in Canada in 2006 was 17.8 weeks. However, this doesn't tell the whole story. It's not hard to find Canadians who have waited months to get an MRI, and years for some types of treatments. There are multiple kinds of waits in the Canadian system: the wait to see a specialist, the wait to get a diagnostic test, the wait to get surgery - and then the wait for rescheduled surgery after one's initial surgical appointment has been cancelled - sometimes multiple times - a routine phenomenon. Waits for orthopedic surgery can be multiple years - and in the case of some elderly Canadians - forever. Waits for things like gastric bypass and sleep apnea treatment are routinely 4-5 years."
"How long? In Canada, it depends on the province and the type of treatment. The median wait time for medical treatment in Canada in 2006 was 17.8 weeks. However, this doesn't tell the whole story. It's not hard to find Canadians who have waited months to get an MRI, and years for some types of treatments. There are multiple kinds of waits in the Canadian system: the wait to see a specialist, the wait to get a diagnostic test, the wait to get surgery - and then the wait for rescheduled surgery after one's initial surgical appointment has been cancelled - sometimes multiple times - a routine phenomenon. Waits for orthopedic surgery can be multiple years - and in the case of some elderly Canadians - forever. Waits for things like gastric bypass and sleep apnea treatment are routinely 4-5 years."
A Short Course in Brain Surgery
"A Short Course in Brain Surgery highlights the plight of an Ontario man with a cancerous brain tumor who crossed the border to the U.S. to get the medical care that is rationed in his home country."
OLD NEWS: Sandra Bernhard issues 'gang rape' warning to Sarah Palin
If a female KKK member had said the same thing, all hell would have broken loose.
Chicago Law School faculty hated Obama "because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings, and it was clear that the positi
"The other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings, and it was clear that the position was nothing more than a political stepping stool. According to my professor friend, he had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building. He also doubted whether he was legitimately an editor on the Harvard Law Review, because if he was, he would be the first and only editor of an Ivy League law review to never be published while in school (publication is or was a requirement)."
The Enduring Mommy-Daddy Political Divide
"Democrats compounded their problems by ignoring the lesson of the last liberal era. Obama practiced LBJ's liberalism instead of FDR's. The jobs portion of Democrats stimulus bill focused on securing welfare state employees instead of blue-collar workers. But blue-collar workers account for more than two-thirds of all jobs lost in the recession, as of the close of 2009. Health care reform initially centered on securing the uninsured, one in 10 adults, rather than the broader issue of costs. It was governance for the least among us. In stereotypical terms, it was received as excessively maternal."
A frustrated caucus keeps complaints quiet
"Some say that any public airing of their disagreements with Obama runs the risk of politically damaging the president and ultimately slowing the advancement of other African Americans. 'He's ours. He has to be more careful because he is the first black ever to be president,' said Rep. Diane Watson (Calif.). '. . . I want to help him, to protect him.'"
The Big Lie of Health Care Reform
"The real issue is that there are those who wish to argue that, despite all the adverse (if not catastrophic) consequences of ObamaCare to the system, health care is a 'basic human right' and therefore the basis for a massive new government entitlement program. But health care isn't an 'inalienable right' -- it's a basic human necessity -- just like food, clothing and shelter. All of these basic human necessities are bought and sold every day in the free market in the context of the goods and services that they really are.
"The simple reality is this: there are those in our society who can afford these necessities, and there are those in our society who can't. For those who can't afford the basic human necessity of proper health care -- just like food, clothing, and shelter -- that need becomes the basis of voluntary charity and aid."
"The simple reality is this: there are those in our society who can afford these necessities, and there are those in our society who can't. For those who can't afford the basic human necessity of proper health care -- just like food, clothing, and shelter -- that need becomes the basis of voluntary charity and aid."
Friday, March 12, 2010
If Democrats ignore health-care polls, midterms will be costly
"Unless the Democrats fundamentally change their approach, they will produce not just a march of folly but also run the risk of unmitigated disaster in November."
Washington, Not The Individual, Gets Control In President's Plan
"Who gains control under the president's proposal? The people in Washington, who will oversee what services are covered by your insurance and at what price, who will 'guide' clinical decisions through a Medicare panel for your doctor and who will regulate countless other aspects of health care with, literally, dozens of new committees and agencies."
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Obama’s gift — it just keeps giving to Bush.
"Barack Obama has oddly done a great service to George W. Bush. Almost every issue about which the media and our elite culture once faulted Bush for has been even more applicable to Obama himself."
AP: Advocates say minorities losing stimulus work
If this was a white president, hell would have broken loose months ago.
Obama Approval Sinks To All Time Low, Americans Worried About Unemployment
What else is new? People should have gone to Coke machines for real change.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Kevin Libin: Sarah Palin knows her Canadian health care history. Do we?
"In any case, as there’s certainly no evidence the Heaths didn’t pay for the care they received in Canada. In fact, visiting Americans typically did (and still do). Actually, in the ‘60s, Canadians often did. U.S. journalists seem happy to take it for granted that health care up here has always looked exactly like it does today, but it hasn’t. As blogger Matthew Campbell rightly points out 'if Palin’s family did travel in the mid-1960s, they would not have used the same state-run system that Canada uses today.' Rather, they would have used a system that looked and operated much like the American system at the time."
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/03/10/kevin-libin-sarah-palin-knows-her-canadian-health-care.aspx#ixzz0ho4lAgQt
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Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/03/10/kevin-libin-sarah-palin-knows-her-canadian-health-care.aspx#ixzz0ho4lAgQt
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Thomas Sowell: Stimulus or sedative?
"President Obama keeps telling us that he is 'creating jobs,' but more and more Americans have no jobs. The unemployment rate has declined slightly, but only because many people have stopped looking for jobs. You are only counted as unemployed if you are still looking for a job.
"If all the unemployed people were to decide that it is hopeless and stop looking for work, the unemployment statistics would drop like a rock. But that would hardly be a solution.
"What is going on, that nothing seems to work?
"If all the unemployed people were to decide that it is hopeless and stop looking for work, the unemployment statistics would drop like a rock. But that would hardly be a solution.
"What is going on, that nothing seems to work?
Poll: African Americans will pay higher energy bills to reduce global warming
I don't believe it at all. I know black people better than that.
Cause and Effect
"Obama says insurers will raise premiums 'as long as they can get away with it.' You could say the same about a lot of people, of course. We lawyers have tended to raise our rates as long as we could 'get away with it.' Obama's labor union supporters negotiate to raise their wages 'as long as they can get away with it.' The newspapers that made Obama a national figure raise their advertising rates 'as long as they can get away with it.' Any manufacturer will raise the price of its goods 'as long as they can get away with it.' To do otherwise could expose management to legal liability to shareholders. What stops all of us from raising our prices indefinitely? Why, at some point, can't we 'get away with it?'
"The answer is competition. Any company will--and should--raise the prices of its goods or services until they reach the point where they are constrained by competition. Our government has followed a perverse policy with regard to health care, by limiting the extent to which health insurers can compete against each other and thereby constrain each others' prices. The obvious solution, if we want to rein in health insurance costs, is to 1) broaden competition in the industry to the maximum amount possible, and 2) repeal all mandates that require insurance companies to charge for coverages that many people don't want.
"If the Democrats took those two basic steps, they would significantly reduce the cost of health care. But they wouldn't dream of doing anything so effective to reduce costs, because they want health care costs to remain high. They need high costs to justify government medicine, which means, at its core, a radical restructuring of the relationship between the citizen and the state."
"The answer is competition. Any company will--and should--raise the prices of its goods or services until they reach the point where they are constrained by competition. Our government has followed a perverse policy with regard to health care, by limiting the extent to which health insurers can compete against each other and thereby constrain each others' prices. The obvious solution, if we want to rein in health insurance costs, is to 1) broaden competition in the industry to the maximum amount possible, and 2) repeal all mandates that require insurance companies to charge for coverages that many people don't want.
"If the Democrats took those two basic steps, they would significantly reduce the cost of health care. But they wouldn't dream of doing anything so effective to reduce costs, because they want health care costs to remain high. They need high costs to justify government medicine, which means, at its core, a radical restructuring of the relationship between the citizen and the state."
A Complicated Enemy: Obama Seeks to Vilify Health Insurers, Give Them $336 Billion Check
"During the 2008 Presidential campaign, then-Senator Obama criticized a proposal by Sen. John McCain because it would send government help for people to buy insurance directly to insurance companies.
“'But The New Tax Credit [For Health Insurance] He’s Proposing? That Wouldn’t Go To You. It Would Go Directly To Your Insurance Company – Not Your Bank Account,' said Obama in October on the Campaign trail.
"And yet that’s exactly what Democrats' proposal would do and why so many would prefer public insurance option to compete with the private market. Supporting the Senate bill will be tough for many liberal Democrats in the House."
“'But The New Tax Credit [For Health Insurance] He’s Proposing? That Wouldn’t Go To You. It Would Go Directly To Your Insurance Company – Not Your Bank Account,' said Obama in October on the Campaign trail.
"And yet that’s exactly what Democrats' proposal would do and why so many would prefer public insurance option to compete with the private market. Supporting the Senate bill will be tough for many liberal Democrats in the House."
London Daily Mail: Shaming of the NHS: Patients STILL treated in kitchens, abandoned in mop cupboards and left without meals despite Labour's billions
"Patients are routinely being treated in kitchens, mop cupboards and corridors because hospitals are so overcrowded, a shocking survey reveals.
"Third World conditions are commonplace, with hospitals housing patients for days in storage areas, offices, TV rooms and outpatient clinics.
"This disturbing treatment of the sick and vulnerable comes despite a tripling of the NHS budget by Labour over the past decade."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256520/Despite-Labours-billions-nurses-say-patients-STILL-treated-kitchens-abandoned-mop-cupboards-left-meals-privacy-mixed-sex-wards.html#ixzz0hiaB7793
"Third World conditions are commonplace, with hospitals housing patients for days in storage areas, offices, TV rooms and outpatient clinics.
"This disturbing treatment of the sick and vulnerable comes despite a tripling of the NHS budget by Labour over the past decade."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256520/Despite-Labours-billions-nurses-say-patients-STILL-treated-kitchens-abandoned-mop-cupboards-left-meals-privacy-mixed-sex-wards.html#ixzz0hiaB7793
London Times: Labour hid ugly truth about National Health Service (NHS)
"One report, based on the advice of almost 200 top managers and doctors, says hospitals ignored basic hygiene to cram in patients to meet waiting-time targets."
Warmists overwhelmed by fear, panic and deranged hatred as their 'science' collapses
"Sorry chaps, it won’t wash. The debate has moved on. It’s not about 'the science' any more. (Not that it ever was). It’s about economics. Politics. Money. The taxpayer versus Big Government.
On all of which, more later…."
On all of which, more later…."
Europe's free health care has a hefty price tag
"'What we can be proud of in Europe is the ground rules, that everyone has the right to health care,' said Jose Martin-Moreno, a health expert at the University of Valencia in Spain. 'But the implementation has been difficult and one size does not fit all.'
"Private health care is also available in Europe, creating in some instances a two-tier system that critics say defeats the egalitarian impulse national systems were built on."
"Private health care is also available in Europe, creating in some instances a two-tier system that critics say defeats the egalitarian impulse national systems were built on."
There's No Such Thing as Free Health Care
"In England, health care is 'free'—as long as you don't mind waiting. People wait so long for dentist appointments that some pull their own teeth. At any one time, half a million people are waiting to get into a British hospital. A British paper reports that one hospital tried to save money by not changing bedsheets. Instead of washing sheets, the staff was encouraged to just turn them over."
War, brought to you by 'anti-war' progressives
"As evidenced by VoteVets' dusty, neglected campaign at StopIranWar.com, stopping another war from happening in the Middle East ceased to be a concern to the professional liberal movement -- if it ever was more than a fleeting anti-Republican position -- the moment Bush left office. Nowadays, if exploiting fears about the Persian Menace can be used to help Obama and the Democratic Party in some form or fashion, rest assured VoteVets and other Blue Team role players will not think twice about doing so, especially since demonizing foreigners has the added co-benefit of demonstrating one's essential reasonableness and respectability within Washington circles. It could have rather unfortunate consequences for the Iranians, though, but so what? Iran ain't a battleground state (yet)."
Monday, March 8, 2010
ObamaCare Means a Two-Tier Health Care System
"If Obama wins, Europe is our future. In Britain, Gordon Brown does not go to his local NHS clinic to get substandard medical care, nor does he go to the scandalously dirty hospitals in the Midlands. In Brussels, the European Union bureaucrats would just sneer at medical care for ordinary folks. They get nothing but the best. That hypocrisy is all over the American ruling left as it is emerging today: Obama and Al Gore both attended special upper-class schools from early on in life. Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar. They are special, these well-born rulers, not like you and me."
and
"I’ve personally attended a European lecture given by an utterly arrogant chief of an acute care unit. He explained his criteria for pulling the plug on unconscious patients at a major European university hospital. His answer was: budget. His ward was budgeted to keep people on life support for a maximum of two weeks. After that, it’s 'goodbye, Sally' — we need your bed for another case."
and
"I’ve personally attended a European lecture given by an utterly arrogant chief of an acute care unit. He explained his criteria for pulling the plug on unconscious patients at a major European university hospital. His answer was: budget. His ward was budgeted to keep people on life support for a maximum of two weeks. After that, it’s 'goodbye, Sally' — we need your bed for another case."
The end of the road for Barack Obama?
"It is a universal political truth that administrations do not begin to fragment when things are going well: it only happens when they go badly, and those who think they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not. The descent of Barack Obama's regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons."
Tribe in Zimbabwe Proven to be Descendants of Biblical Hebrews
"The Lemba tribes in Zimbabwe have an oral tradition that their ancestors were 'Jews' who left Judea about 2,500 years ago and settled in a place called Senna, later migrating into East Africa. After 2,500 years of exile, British DNA tests have proven that the Lemba traces its linage to the Kohanim (Priests) of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem."
Sean Penn Suggests Prison Time for Journalists Who Call Hugo Chavez a Dictator
"At the end of a discussion of Haiti on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, actor Sean Penn went on a rant in defense of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, suggesting prison time for American journalists: 'every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it! And accept it. And this is mainstream media, who should – truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.'"
Saturday, March 6, 2010
President's 2011 Proposed Budget Sets Wealthy at $190,650
"The definition of a wealthy American acording to President Obama just keeps changing. In the 2008 Presidential race, then candidate Obama, stressed that those making under $250,000 would not see any tax increases. Well, folks, he lied. If you make $190,650 or more you are being targeted as "wealthy" in President Obama's 2011 Proposed Budget."
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Pushing Banks to Buy Bad Loans
"Isn't this how we got into trouble in the first place?"
CBO Projects President's Budget Will Average One Trillion/Year Deficit
"The Congressional Budget Office completed its scoring of the budget submitted by President Obama. Its projection is a warning that the United States faces real economic trouble. Based on their numbers the United States will be running an annual deficit of approximately One Trillion Dollars/Year (over 60% higher than the President's projection).
"To put that into perspective, during the heavy spending Bush years the highest deficit was $459 billion dollars. Once Barack Obama became President, and was able to get his hands on the second half of the 2009 budget, deficits started exceeding the trillion dollar level. Obama's budget above makes the trillion dollar figure seem common place."
"To put that into perspective, during the heavy spending Bush years the highest deficit was $459 billion dollars. Once Barack Obama became President, and was able to get his hands on the second half of the 2009 budget, deficits started exceeding the trillion dollar level. Obama's budget above makes the trillion dollar figure seem common place."
Friday, March 5, 2010
Top recipients of insurance industry money:
1 Dodd, Chris (D-CT) Senate $258,400
2 Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) Senate $195,100
3 Pomeroy, Earl (D-ND) House $157,900
4 Frank, Barney (D-MA) House $147,499
5 Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR) Senate $147,300
6 Kanjorski, Paul E (D-PA) House $144,200
7 Grassley, Chuck (R-IA) Senate $139,450
8 Cantor, Eric (R-VA) House $130,750
9 Bean, Melissa (D-IL) House $129,700
10 Burr, Richard (R-NC) Senate $127,500
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2010&ind=F09
Top recipients of health professionals money:
1 Reid, Harry (D-NV) Senate $303,725
2 Price, Tom (R-GA) House $271,775
3 Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR) Senate $252,150
4 Pallone, Frank Jr (D-NJ) House $240,350
5 Specter, Arlen (D-PA) Senate $233,150
6 Dodd, Chris (D-CT) Senate $233,000
7 Wyden, Ron (D-OR) Senate $208,971
8 Kirk, Mark (R-IL) House $202,600
9 Gingrey, Phil (R-GA) House $178,325
10 Vitter, David (R-LA) Senate $175,350
Pharmaceuticals:
1 Burr, Richard (R-NC) Senate $172,019
2 Hatch, Orrin G (R-UT) Senate $148,365
3 Dodd, Chris (D-CT) Senate $133,100
4 Reid, Harry (D-NV) Senate $124,850
5 Eshoo, Anna (D-CA) House $112,050
6 Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR) Senate $99,250
7 Specter, Arlen (D-PA) Senate $97,950
8 Murray, Patty (D-WA) Senate $89,250
9 Capuano, Michael E (D-MA) House $86,350
10 Kirk, Mark (R-IL) House $84,460
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2010&ind=H04
Lawyers:
1 Reid, Harry (D-NV) Senate $1,774,223
2 Gillibrand, Kirsten (D-NY) Senate $977,472
3 Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) Senate $849,269
4 Specter, Arlen (D-PA) Senate $757,900
5 Meek, Kendrick B (D-FL) House $544,933
6 Boxer, Barbara (D-CA) Senate $454,970
7 Leahy, Patrick (D-VT) Senate $412,541
8 Dodd, Chris (D-CT) Senate $411,329
9 Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR) Senate $382,886
11 Bennet, Michael F (D-CO) Senate $364,350
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2010&ind=H01
2 Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) Senate $195,100
3 Pomeroy, Earl (D-ND) House $157,900
4 Frank, Barney (D-MA) House $147,499
5 Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR) Senate $147,300
6 Kanjorski, Paul E (D-PA) House $144,200
7 Grassley, Chuck (R-IA) Senate $139,450
8 Cantor, Eric (R-VA) House $130,750
9 Bean, Melissa (D-IL) House $129,700
10 Burr, Richard (R-NC) Senate $127,500
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2010&ind=F09
Top recipients of health professionals money:
1 Reid, Harry (D-NV) Senate $303,725
2 Price, Tom (R-GA) House $271,775
3 Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR) Senate $252,150
4 Pallone, Frank Jr (D-NJ) House $240,350
5 Specter, Arlen (D-PA) Senate $233,150
6 Dodd, Chris (D-CT) Senate $233,000
7 Wyden, Ron (D-OR) Senate $208,971
8 Kirk, Mark (R-IL) House $202,600
9 Gingrey, Phil (R-GA) House $178,325
10 Vitter, David (R-LA) Senate $175,350
Pharmaceuticals:
1 Burr, Richard (R-NC) Senate $172,019
2 Hatch, Orrin G (R-UT) Senate $148,365
3 Dodd, Chris (D-CT) Senate $133,100
4 Reid, Harry (D-NV) Senate $124,850
5 Eshoo, Anna (D-CA) House $112,050
6 Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR) Senate $99,250
7 Specter, Arlen (D-PA) Senate $97,950
8 Murray, Patty (D-WA) Senate $89,250
9 Capuano, Michael E (D-MA) House $86,350
10 Kirk, Mark (R-IL) House $84,460
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2010&ind=H04
Lawyers:
1 Reid, Harry (D-NV) Senate $1,774,223
2 Gillibrand, Kirsten (D-NY) Senate $977,472
3 Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) Senate $849,269
4 Specter, Arlen (D-PA) Senate $757,900
5 Meek, Kendrick B (D-FL) House $544,933
6 Boxer, Barbara (D-CA) Senate $454,970
7 Leahy, Patrick (D-VT) Senate $412,541
8 Dodd, Chris (D-CT) Senate $411,329
9 Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR) Senate $382,886
11 Bennet, Michael F (D-CO) Senate $364,350
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2010&ind=H01
Bill Gates Talks About Vaccines to Reduce World Population
"The primary focus of his multi-billion dollar Gates Foundation is vaccinations, especially in Africa and other underdeveloped countries. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a founding member of the GAVI Alliance (Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunization) in partnership with the World Bank, WHO and the vaccine industry. The goal of GAVI is to vaccinate every newborn child in the developing world.
"Now that sounds like noble philanthropic work. The problem is that the vaccine industry has been repeatedly caught dumping dangerous—meaning unsafe because untested or proven harmful—vaccines onto unwitting Third World populations when they cannot get rid of the vaccines in the West. Some organizations have suggested that the true aim of the vaccinations is to make people sicker and even more susceptible to disease and premature death."
"Now that sounds like noble philanthropic work. The problem is that the vaccine industry has been repeatedly caught dumping dangerous—meaning unsafe because untested or proven harmful—vaccines onto unwitting Third World populations when they cannot get rid of the vaccines in the West. Some organizations have suggested that the true aim of the vaccinations is to make people sicker and even more susceptible to disease and premature death."
Barack Obama and the date-rape of America
"As president, Barack Obama courted us with sweet talk, but America grew increasingly uncomfortable with his advances and firmly said, 'Stop' – in fact, screamed bloody murder for months. Yet Obama remains obsessed with forcing himself on America."
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Media Matters ADMITS Barack Obama Has Bribed Congressman Jim Matheson
"Impeachable offense it is." -- Yoda
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The Climate Industry Wall of Money
"The big-money side of this debate has fostered a myth that sceptics write what they write because they are funded by oil profits. They say, follow the money? So I did and it’s chilling. Greens and environmentalists need to be aware each time they smear with an ad hominem attack they are unwittingly helping giant finance houses."
Arctic Ocean warming, icebergs growing scarce, Washington Post reports
"The climate of New-York and the contiguous Atlantic seaboard has long been a study of great interest. We have just experienced a remarkable instance of its peculiarity. The Hudson River, by a singular freak of temperature, has thrown off its icy mantle and opened its waters to navigation.” – New York Times, Jan. 2, 1870
“Is our climate changing? The succession of temperate summers and open winters through several years, culminating last winter in the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout the valley of the Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older inhabitants tell us that the winters are not as cold now as when they were young, and we have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in this last decade.” – New York Times, June 23, 1890
“The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions.” – New York Times, Feb. 24, 1895
Professor Gregory of Yale University stated that “another world ice-epoch is due.” He was the American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress and warned that North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be “wiped out.” – Chicago Tribune, Aug. 9, 1923
“The discoveries of changes in the sun's heat and southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to the conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age – Time Magazine, Sept. 10, 1923
Headline: “America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise” – New York Times, March 27, 1933
“America is believed by Weather Bureau scientists to be on the verge of a change of climate, with a return to increasing rains and deeper snows and the colder winters of grandfather's day.” – Associated Press, Dec. 15, 1934
Warming Arctic Climate Melting Glaciers Faster, Raising Ocean Level, Scientist Says – “A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a "serious international problem," Dr. Hans Ahlmann, noted Swedish geophysicist, said today. – New York Times, May 30, 1937
“Greenland's polar climate has moderated so consistntly that communities of hunters have evolved into fishing villages. Sea mammals, vanishing from the west coast, have been replaced by codfish and other fish species in the area's southern waters.” – New York Times, Aug. 29, 1954
“An analysis of weather records from Little America shows a steady warming of climate over the last half century. The rise in average temperature at the Antarctic outpost has been about five degrees Fahrenheit.” – New York Times, May 31, 1958
“Several thousand scientists of many nations have recently been climbing mountains, digging tunnels in glaciers, journeying to the Antarctic, camping on floating Arctic ice. Their object has been to solve a fascinating riddle: what is happening to the world's ice? – New York Times, Dec. 7, 1958
“After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder.” – New York Times, Jan. 30, 1961
“Like an outrigger canoe riding before a huge comber, the earth with its inhabitants is caught on the downslope of an immense climatic wave that is plunging us toward another Ice Age.” – Los Angeles Times, Dec. 23, 1962
“Col. Bernt Balchen, polar explorer and flier, is circulating a paper among polar specialists proposing that the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two." – New York Times, Feb. 20, 1969
“By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half . . . ." – Life magazine, January 1970
“In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” – Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day, 1970
"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind. We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." – Barry Commoner (Washington University), Earth Day, 1970
Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor, "the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.” – Newsweek magazine, Jan. 26, 1970
“The United States and the Soviet Union are mounting large-scale investigations to determine why the Arctic climate is becoming more frigid, why parts of the Arctic sea ice have recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of that ice cover contributes to the onset of ice ages.” – New York Times, July 18, 1970
“In the next 50 years, fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, could be sufficient to trigger an ice age." – Washington Post, July 9, 1971
“It's already getting colder. Some midsummer day, perhaps not too far in the future, a hard, killing frost will sweep down on the wheat fields of Saskatchewan, the Dakotas and the Russian steppes. . . .” – Los Angles Times, Oct. 24, 1971
“An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.” – New York Times, Jan. 5, 1978
“A poll of climate specialists in seven countries has found a consensus that there will be no catastrophic changes in the climate by the end of the century. But the specialists were almost equally divided on whether there would be a warming, a cooling or no change at all.” – New York Times, Feb. 18, 1978
“A global warming trend could bring heat waves, dust-dry farmland and disease, the experts said... Under this scenario, the resort town of Ocean City, Md., will lose 39 feet of shoreline by 2000 and a total of 85 feet within the next 25 years.” – San Jose Mercury News, June 11, 1986
“Global warming could force Americans to build 86 more power plants -- at a cost of $110 billion -- to keep all their air conditioners running 20 years from now, a new study says...Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010, and the drain on power would require the building of 86 new midsize power plants – Associated Press, May 15, 1989
“New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.” -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 17, 1989
"[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots . . . [By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers . . . The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.” – "Dead Heat: The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect," Michael Oppenheimer and Robert H. Boyle, 1990.
"It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Ninos are going to become more frequent, and they're going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we'll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we'll have El Nino upon El Nino, and that will become the norm. And you'll have an El Nino, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years,” according to Dr. Russ Schnell, a scientist doing atmospheric research at Mauna Loa Observatory. – BBC, Nov. 7, 1997
"Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people." -- The Birmingham Post in England, July 26, 1999
“This year (2007) is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998.” – ScienceDaily, Jan. 5, 2007
“Is our climate changing? The succession of temperate summers and open winters through several years, culminating last winter in the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout the valley of the Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older inhabitants tell us that the winters are not as cold now as when they were young, and we have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in this last decade.” – New York Times, June 23, 1890
“The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions.” – New York Times, Feb. 24, 1895
Professor Gregory of Yale University stated that “another world ice-epoch is due.” He was the American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress and warned that North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be “wiped out.” – Chicago Tribune, Aug. 9, 1923
“The discoveries of changes in the sun's heat and southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to the conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age – Time Magazine, Sept. 10, 1923
Headline: “America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise” – New York Times, March 27, 1933
“America is believed by Weather Bureau scientists to be on the verge of a change of climate, with a return to increasing rains and deeper snows and the colder winters of grandfather's day.” – Associated Press, Dec. 15, 1934
Warming Arctic Climate Melting Glaciers Faster, Raising Ocean Level, Scientist Says – “A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a "serious international problem," Dr. Hans Ahlmann, noted Swedish geophysicist, said today. – New York Times, May 30, 1937
“Greenland's polar climate has moderated so consistntly that communities of hunters have evolved into fishing villages. Sea mammals, vanishing from the west coast, have been replaced by codfish and other fish species in the area's southern waters.” – New York Times, Aug. 29, 1954
“An analysis of weather records from Little America shows a steady warming of climate over the last half century. The rise in average temperature at the Antarctic outpost has been about five degrees Fahrenheit.” – New York Times, May 31, 1958
“Several thousand scientists of many nations have recently been climbing mountains, digging tunnels in glaciers, journeying to the Antarctic, camping on floating Arctic ice. Their object has been to solve a fascinating riddle: what is happening to the world's ice? – New York Times, Dec. 7, 1958
“After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder.” – New York Times, Jan. 30, 1961
“Like an outrigger canoe riding before a huge comber, the earth with its inhabitants is caught on the downslope of an immense climatic wave that is plunging us toward another Ice Age.” – Los Angeles Times, Dec. 23, 1962
“Col. Bernt Balchen, polar explorer and flier, is circulating a paper among polar specialists proposing that the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two." – New York Times, Feb. 20, 1969
“By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half . . . ." – Life magazine, January 1970
“In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” – Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day, 1970
"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind. We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." – Barry Commoner (Washington University), Earth Day, 1970
Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor, "the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.” – Newsweek magazine, Jan. 26, 1970
“The United States and the Soviet Union are mounting large-scale investigations to determine why the Arctic climate is becoming more frigid, why parts of the Arctic sea ice have recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of that ice cover contributes to the onset of ice ages.” – New York Times, July 18, 1970
“In the next 50 years, fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, could be sufficient to trigger an ice age." – Washington Post, July 9, 1971
“It's already getting colder. Some midsummer day, perhaps not too far in the future, a hard, killing frost will sweep down on the wheat fields of Saskatchewan, the Dakotas and the Russian steppes. . . .” – Los Angles Times, Oct. 24, 1971
“An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.” – New York Times, Jan. 5, 1978
“A poll of climate specialists in seven countries has found a consensus that there will be no catastrophic changes in the climate by the end of the century. But the specialists were almost equally divided on whether there would be a warming, a cooling or no change at all.” – New York Times, Feb. 18, 1978
“A global warming trend could bring heat waves, dust-dry farmland and disease, the experts said... Under this scenario, the resort town of Ocean City, Md., will lose 39 feet of shoreline by 2000 and a total of 85 feet within the next 25 years.” – San Jose Mercury News, June 11, 1986
“Global warming could force Americans to build 86 more power plants -- at a cost of $110 billion -- to keep all their air conditioners running 20 years from now, a new study says...Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010, and the drain on power would require the building of 86 new midsize power plants – Associated Press, May 15, 1989
“New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.” -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 17, 1989
"[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots . . . [By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers . . . The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.” – "Dead Heat: The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect," Michael Oppenheimer and Robert H. Boyle, 1990.
"It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Ninos are going to become more frequent, and they're going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we'll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we'll have El Nino upon El Nino, and that will become the norm. And you'll have an El Nino, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years,” according to Dr. Russ Schnell, a scientist doing atmospheric research at Mauna Loa Observatory. – BBC, Nov. 7, 1997
"Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people." -- The Birmingham Post in England, July 26, 1999
“This year (2007) is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998.” – ScienceDaily, Jan. 5, 2007
Why Democrats Believe They Must Pass Health Reform
"In other words, passing health care reform is a bit of a Holy Grail for Democrats. It is one of the most important debates and potential accomplishments for the party’s most ardent partisans – and has been for many years. Failure to enact this legislation would render a crippling blow to those most apt to volunteer, talk to their friends about politics, give money and vote in the upcoming midterm election. These base voters may not always guarantee the party’s victory, but without them defeat is assured."
Anti-War Left: The Sham Movement.
"When George W. Bush was president the Patriot act was the most evil piece of legislation ever written. Now with Obama, it's a-okay.
When George W. Bush was president bad news from Iraq was the lead story in virtually every newscast. Now with Obama, we don't hear a peep.
When George W. Bush was president virtually every left wing blog had a digital counter telling us how much the war in Iraq had cost. Now with Obama, I guess it's free.
When George W. Bush was president we knew every day how many Americans had died in Iraq. Now with Obama, I guess that number has become zero."
Not all of the anti-war left. There are many who have the integrity to challenge Obama as much as they challenged Bush.
When George W. Bush was president bad news from Iraq was the lead story in virtually every newscast. Now with Obama, we don't hear a peep.
When George W. Bush was president virtually every left wing blog had a digital counter telling us how much the war in Iraq had cost. Now with Obama, I guess it's free.
When George W. Bush was president we knew every day how many Americans had died in Iraq. Now with Obama, I guess that number has become zero."
Not all of the anti-war left. There are many who have the integrity to challenge Obama as much as they challenged Bush.
Communist Wants To Burn America To The Ground
"We have to help bring this government down, we have to help destroy this system and that requires increasing the alienation that working class and oppressed people feel. The way change is going to happen in this country is through the destruction of what we call the United States of America.
"I’m opposed to white supremacy not because it’s white people involved. I am opposed to the system we traditionally call imperialism and the idea that some people have rights and privileges that are not granted to all human beings. And the solution to that problem is called communism and socialism and we should put it in our mouths. We should say it when we say what is your politics? I am a socialist. I demand that we have health care for people and it’s not a demand that’s negotiable with health insurance companies.
"We will take your insurance companies; we will take the farms in this country; we will shut down the military apparatus in this country and I am tired of being told to stuff my anger back in my pants."
Make my day, pal.
"I’m opposed to white supremacy not because it’s white people involved. I am opposed to the system we traditionally call imperialism and the idea that some people have rights and privileges that are not granted to all human beings. And the solution to that problem is called communism and socialism and we should put it in our mouths. We should say it when we say what is your politics? I am a socialist. I demand that we have health care for people and it’s not a demand that’s negotiable with health insurance companies.
"We will take your insurance companies; we will take the farms in this country; we will shut down the military apparatus in this country and I am tired of being told to stuff my anger back in my pants."
Make my day, pal.
Will Obama Still Be Blaming Bush in 2012? Bet on It
"In 2012, Obama will be running for reelection on his track record — and you can bet that, on campaign stops, he’ll still be blaming Bush. It’ll be surreal."
Why I No Longer Support Decriminalizing Marijuana
"Firstly, cannabis use is associated with an increased risk of experiencing schizophrenia symptoms, even after psychotic symptoms preceding the onset of cannabis use are controlled for. … Secondly, early cannabis use (by age 15) confers greater risk for schizophrenia outcomes than later cannabis use (by age 18). The youngest cannabis users may be most at risk because their cannabis use becomes longstanding."
Michelle Malkin: Andy Stern & Barack Obama: Fiscal responsibility fraudsters
"Everything you need to know about President Obama’s commitment to fiscal responsibility and cost containment can be summed up in two words: Andy Stern. The profligate, corruption-coddling head of the powerful Service Employees International Union was named to the White House debt commission last week. If President Obama thinks Andy Stern holds the cure for our government spending woes, you can be certain his latest health care prescription will be fiscal hemlock."
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