Monthly Archives: December 2009

Politics

Dems Clinch Deal Among Dems

In what can only be called a bi-partisan victory for Obamacare, Democrats on Saturday managed to get the 60 votes needed by bridging the gap between the far Left of their party and those giving the impression that they’re not part of the far Left of their party. So by the administration’s definition, they can claim bi-partisan support.

Not letting a crisis go to waste, whether real or imagined, Democrats can take pride in their success for a seismic piece of legislation that did not appeal to a single Republican or a majority of Americans.

NYT link: Democrats Clinch Deal for Deciding Vote on Health Bill

Politics

Tax The Rich Shifts To Tax The Young

Not only will your insurance premiums go up under Obamacare, but if your earnings are under $80,000/year, typically a younger demographic, your cost will be much higher. Tax the rich shifts to tax the young.

The other effect, which is the whole point of a single-payer health care system, is that the government will own you. You will no longer be allowed to make your own health care decisions including where and how you want to spend your money for it.

These increases will stem from the bill’s provisions that bar insurance companies from raising rates on sick people and from excluding people based on pre-existing conditions. Both of these mandates will mean higher costs for the younger and healthier population. This bill is, in effect, a tax on the young.

Nor will subsidies do much to mitigate the impact. To get a subsidy under the bill you have to earn less than about $80,000 a year (combined household income) and have spent between 2 and 10 percent of your income on premiums.

So a couple making a combined income of $40,000 would have to pay about 5% of their income: $2,000 before they could get subsidies. Those making $60,000 would have to pay about 8% of their income — $4800 – before they could get a subsidy. And those making $80,000 would have to chip in 10% of their income — $8,000 – before they would get a subsidy.

link: HOW OBAMACARE WILL HURT YOUNG PEOPLE

Economy, Politics

Universal Health Care Has A Track Record

Less Health Care For More Money: What’s The Catch?

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a column about John Brodniak of Oregon, who developed a cavernous hemangioma, causing him great pain as blood leaks into his brain.

According to Kristof, Brodniak can’t get medical help because we don’t have universal health care. Senators who vote against ObamaCare, Kristof said, are morally equivalent to someone who would walk past a man “writhing in pain on the sidewalk.”

Continue reading Universal Health Care Has A Track Record →

Economy, Media, Politics

Today’s Special, Lies And Deception

The Obama administration is scrambling to get something, anything, passed that they can call health care reform. But it’s not because your health is so lousy and you’re going to die. According to surveys, most Americans, somewhere over 80% of them, are satisfied with their health care and health insurance situation. The emergency seems to be in the mind of the President to get something passed, else he’ll lose face with his rhetoric of the last year and a half.

Today, President Obama just had a pow-wow with Democratic senators and the two Independents to try and convince them to vote for this debacle of a health care bill. Today the President said that Americans want more affordable health care that will reduce the deficit. And he’s right. We do. Problem is, the bill in Congress won’t do either.

The irony is that he vowed not to vote for a bill that wouldn’t reduce cost and reduce the debt. He’ll sign it if it gets to his desk, through lies and deception, with help from lazy if not uninformed constituents still awestruck by the man who reads a great teleprompter, all with help from a media willing to let it all go unchallenged.

Paramount in this health care bill is the power and control that shifts from the folks to the government. That’s the goal. Not our collective health.

Another example is the way the President proposes to deal with the economy. Rather than the people making their own choices with their own money through reducing taxes and providing tax incentives for businesses to expand and hire, the President does just the opposite. Not only that, but HE is picking the winners and losers. HE as in the government. The government takes over industries and companies left and right. The government chooses to sell cars (and payback the UAW), so they have a cash for clunkers program that was an utter failure and had no long term effect on either the economy or the industry. Now, HE decides that manufacturers of caulking compound need an economic boost, not THE FOLKS in general, just these people. See the pattern here? Does Obama look anything like a little dictator? So the point of picking the Cash for Caulkers program is for the green-ness of it. It won’t help or stimulate the folks or the economy. Like putting air in your tires, it’s a good idea providing they are under-inflated, but it won’t do squat to make our economy recover, which ought to be his number one priority. Caulking a leaking window seal is a good idea, but if you don’t have a job or are working two jobs already to keep from losing your home, you’re not going to have money to spend on house maintenance, presuming you have a leaky house to begin with. And if you did, it won’t do anything for your job security.

Doing projects like that should come after we realize some economic recovery in the old fashioned free-market driven way. Not because we have a President who likes to act like a King who tells the people what he wants them to do.

President Obama, who has never run a business or made a payroll, says the ‘fat cats’ don’t get it. It’s Obama that doesn’t get it. Well, I’ll have to sort of take that back. What he does get is that socialism, and economic social justice works better for him. Because all that he has done and wants to do, will do only that. He said he didn’t like the Constitution. From what he is doing to America, it is obvious. He will remake America, to be just like Europe, and worse. His economic plan for America is a model for the global scale with his Cap & Trade scheme.  More social justice, only for the world. And of course, current and future generations of Americans will pay for that too, if he gets his way.

related picture: Hard Pill To Swallow

Economy, Politics

Ten Differences Between Power And Control

Democrats in the Senate hit a snag Sunday in getting the 60 votes necessary to take over the health care industry. Thank you Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) for your NO vote. America dodged a bullet today, but the fight over the direction of America is not over yet.

Still saying that by cutting Medicare by half a trillion dollars, and increasing the number of people covered by 40+ million people will decrease cost and increase quality of care, the plan turned down today would have added millions more people to the plan by lowering the age of eligibility  from 65 to 55, and still maintain that costs will come down and quality of health care be improved.

And, it conspicuously has no tort reform. In short, it will do the opposite of what it is claimed to do. The dirty little secret here is the administration doesn’t care as much for people’s health care as it does for the power of controlling it.

And speaking of power and control, check this website that offers ten different uses of power and control. From how to revive the economy to improving health care, President Obama and his administration fall neatly into number seven.

7. Power is often exerted by people who believe they have the “answers” but lack the patience for others in their lives to come to a consensus or agreement on what an appropriate course of action should be. The “power play” is using the position of authority or status to get your way with total disregard for the feelings or ideas of others. Control is often exerted by one who believes he has the “answers,” yet also believes that no one in his environment will listen to him. The “control play” is the refusal to reveal any ideas, thoughts, emotions, attitudes, beliefs or alternative problem solutions, so as to avoid expected or anticipated rejection.

links: Lieberman resists Medicare buy-in plan | Handling the Use of Power and Control

Florida, Pensacola, Uncategorized

Dibromochloromethane, Mmmm Good

No matter in what state or city you live, when your locale becomes famous for one reason or another, and whether good or bad, you tend to take notice. So it was with me to learn that sweet old Pensacola, the City of Five Flags, is also among the lowest rated when it comes to the quality of drinking water.

Because the above chart leaves some ambiguity in perspective, I’ve asked the EWG people for an explanation and will update this post if/when I get a response.

Does that mean that Pensacola is the worst out of 48,000 communities or that there are 99 others that are worse, or that there are perhaps hundreds more that are worse and you merely stopped at 100?

That website has a lot of data on it, a neat and search-able database. Let’s be careful not to fall into ‘the sky is falling and we’re all gonna die’ mindset though. From a chemist’s perspective, nothing we ingest is pure. Well, not unless you ate the mercury in elementary school science class.

Besides, Dibromochloromethane doesn’t taste too bad. It’s in Arlington’s water too!

I remember hearing Boortz talk about a school that tested the water in their drinking fountain and from the toilet bowl in the restroom, and the toilet water tested better. Same for ice in ice machines. Without proper maintenance, they can produce more bacteria in the ice for your soda than what is in the toilet. That’s after flushing I think.

related links: Over 300 Pollutants in U.S. Tap Water | National Tap Water Quality Database | Pensacola (Emerald Coast Utility Authority) Water Analysis

Media, Politics, United Nations

ClimateGate News You Can Use

In what is being described as the climate conference in Hopenhagen, as opposed to Copenhagen, Bruce Bawer reports from Copenhagen and sheds the light on the real climate in Copenhagen that the mainstream media somehow fails to notice. Or, maybe doesn’t want you to see?

It follows along the line of America is bad, capitalism is bad, and bow to the religion of climate change. It appears to be a political version of Woodstock only in an anti-capitalist environment instead of an anti-war environment.

And if you would like to see the list of emails commenting on FOIA – Freedom of Information Action including concerns about FOIA ways to hide, delete documents from the scrutiny of FOIA – click here.

link: PJTV: ClimateGate

Economy, Energy, Media, Politics, United Nations, Venezuela

Controlling The Message On ClimateGate

A senior member of the United Nations climate change movement shut down a journalist at a climate change news conference in Copenhagen for asking about the leaked emails and deleted data. It was enough to make Hugo Chavez (the hemisphere’s idiot) proud.

It didn’t happen in Communist China, Iran, or Venezuela. It happened at a press briefing at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Professor Stephen Schneider, who is a senior member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had two armed UN security guards to order cameraman Ian Foster to stop recording. The guard then threatened to take away the camera and expel the film crew from the conference.

Was it a gotcha question? Of course it was. But it was also a legitimate question that should be addressed. I mean really. How can you talk about Tiger Woods without also talking about his blond infidelity? How can President Obama talk about his administration without also talking about Bush?

How Professor Schneider handled the question, by removing the member of the media, just follows along the M.O. of the leaked emails. It’s called an inconvenient truth. Somebody ought to make a movie about that.

Here it is, as they say, caught on tape.

link: U.N. Security Stops Journalist’s Questions About ClimateGate

Uncategorized

aSide Order

After you see this video, if you don’t see and feel something more than just a man and a dog, then you probably don’t have a pulse either.

Video Link: TheAmazingSkidboot.wmv

h/t Dave

Climategate reveals ‘the most influential tree in the world’

The CRU studies were based on cherry-picking hundreds of Siberian samples only to leave those that showed the picture that was wanted. Other studies based on similar data had clearly shown the Medieval Warm Period as hotter than today. Indeed only the evidence from one tree, YADO61, seemed to show a “hockey stick” pattern, and it was this, in light of the extraordinary reverence given to the CRU’s studies, which led McIntyre to dub it “the most influential tree in the world“.


NOTE: Since Liberals have no sense of humor, if you are one, please skip this part.

Did you know???

That the words “RACE CAR” spelled backward says “RACE CAR.”

That “EAT” is the only word that if you take the 1st letter and move it to the last, it spells its past tense “ATE.”

And….have you noticed that if you rearrange the letters in “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS,” and add just a few more letters, it spells out: “Go home, you free-loading, benefit-grabbing, kid-producing, non-English-speaking assholes and take those other hairy-faced, sandal-wearing, bomb-making, goat-loving, raggedy-ass bastards with you.”

How WEIRD is that???

h/t Sheri

Economy, Florida, Politics

H.R. 4219, Audit The Stimulus

In one of the latest slap in the face to taxpayers, did you know that stimulus dollars, 6 million of them, were used to stimulate multi-millionaire and Hillary Clinton campaign pollster Mark Penn?

As for Mark Penn’s $6 million. That was pure and simple political payback. Not a job stimulus by any stretch of the imagination.

Hearken back to the last campaign. After it was clear that Hillary was not in contention, she made the statement that her campaign was in the hole for millions of dollars and that she would support Barack Obama if he would pay off her campaign debt. Well, it looks to me that this is just what happened, only I had to pay it with ‘stimulus’ dollars, not Barack Obama with his campaign dollars.

From my perspective, the only change I see that came to Washington with Obama’s election was that Chicago politics moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And I’m sick of it.

For an administration that SAYS they are going to be open, read bills, deliberate bills on C-Span, and make bills available online for the public to see, doesn’t it just take the cake that a bill has to be introduced to force some transparency? H.R. 4219 will open the books on the so-called job stimulus. Well, that is if it will ever see the light of day.

It’s long past time for some transparency here, before we go one step further. Time to pull the administration’s pants down and take a look.

See press release below over auditing the spending of the stimulus money, or more correctly, our money, our kids’ money, and their kid’ money.

endofstoryMiller Press Release on Audit of Stimulus, December 9th, 2009

Miller, Wilson, Kingston, and Souder Demand Audit of Stimulus Funds

(Washington, D.C.) – Congressman Jeff Miller (FL-01), Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02), Congressman Jack Kingston (GA-01), and Congressman Mark Souder (IN-03) today demanded an audit of stimulus funds. Just this morning, reports showed that Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s pollster, received $6 million in stimulus money to preserve three jobs. Furthermore, the Administration still hasn’t thoroughly addressed the major discrepancies and inaccuracies of reporting on Recovery.gov. With the Government Accountability Office stating that one out of every 10 jobs created by the stimulus are also fake, it’s high time for Congress to act. The National Commission on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will create a bipartisan commission to investigate the effects of this “stimulus” bill.

Congressman Jeff Miller: “In my home state of Florida 52 jobs were created in the 34th Congressional District, according to the Recovery.gov website. 46 jobs were created in District 00. However, these districts simply don’t exist. How can the Administration expect us to trust their dubious jobs created numbers when they can’t even manage their own website? We need an audit of this spending immediately.”

Congressman Joe Wilson: “It’s time for Congress to demand answers on behalf of the hardworking taxpayers that we represent. The misnamed stimulus is one of the largest spending bills in our nation’s history and it is critical that American taxpayers receive adequate answers as to the whereabouts of stimulus funds. I can not fathom how Hillary Clinton’s pollster received $6 million to preserve just three jobs when that could sustain dozens of South Carolina’s families for life. I urge Speaker Pelosi to consider our legislation to ensure full accountability of every stimulus dollar spent.”

Congressman Jack Kingston: “What do you get for $18 million? The Obama Administration’s website that creates phony congressional districts and fishy jobs numbers. It’s time to pull back the curtain and get some of that transparency and accountability promised on the campaign trail. Until this Administration can provide the American people with an accurate accounting of their record breaking spending scheme, Congress should dry out the trough.”

Congressman Mark Souder: “Not only has the stimulus failed in its goal of reining in rising unemployment, the published report tracking the funds revealed imprecise statistics, nonexistent congressional districts and significantly overstated the number of jobs created. I am pleased to join Congressman Joe Wilson on this important legislation to put an end to this unaccountable stimulus spending spree. During this time of economic recession, Hoosier taxpayers deserve to know where and how their dollars are being spent.”

H.R. 4219, the National Commission on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (text can be found here) will create a ten member panel, appointed by the President and Democrat and Republican leaders in the House and Senate, will investigate how many jobs have actually been saved or created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5); the circumstances in which those jobs have been saved or created; and, the effectiveness of measures taken to prevent the improper payment of funds. Following the investigation, the Commission will make recommendations on what changes could be made to save or create more jobs and what steps can be taken to prevent the improper allocation of taxpayer dollars.