Monthly Archives: March 2010

Media, Politics

Chicago Politics At 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

With the specter of Rod Blagojevich still fresh in our memory, his protege, President Barack Obama, seems to be doing what he knows best, having been raised on Chicago politics.

He needs Democrats to support his latest version of Obamacare.  And it’s too late, and people wouldn’t stand for, another bribe like the Louisiana purchase, or the Cornhusker kickback. But there are other ways.

Like this one.

Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

This ought to be the headline on the news tonight at CBS, NBS, ABS, CNNbs, and pMSNBCbs. But it won’t. Not in the context of there being anything fishy going on. What will be in the news will be the usual shoot the messenger kind of story, beginning with ‘Republicans are launching into partisan attacks, accusing the President of using backroom deals to pass his health care plan.’ Those crazy Republicans.  If there was a Republican in The White House, don’t you know the media and the Left would be screaming that the President is using political appointments to buy a vote?

Related links: Is Obama Now Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes? | Payoffs for states get Harry Reid to 60 votes

2010 Election, Politics

It's Not Out Of Touch, It's Ignoring

Today President Obama’s made his last (well, one can only hope) push for government-run health care and health insurance from The White House. Standing in front of the tackiest gold drapery fit for a king. Or at least someone who probably thinks he is a king.

That’s the setting. Here’s the setup.

  • For most of the last 10 months, there has been a groundswell of Americans that are completely turned off with a government-run solution to health care-turned health insurance ‘reform,’ also known as a ‘public option.’  That groundswell has a name. Tea Parties. It is  comprised of Americans that think the government is getting too big, spending too much, borrowing too much, taxing too much, and becoming ever more intrusive in the lives of Americans, trampling on liberty and freedom. Obamacare does all of that.
  • Adding hubris to audacity, Obamacare was developed entirely without any input from Republicans. It is a Democratic plan.
  • Despite the window dressing of today’s ‘concessions,’ Obamacare is still fundamentally a Democratic Party plan. The ‘for show’ summit last week did not start at square one. It started at square two.
  • In the most recent election cycle, people in three states made their preferences known by voting Republicans in, and Democrats out. Including in Massachusetts, a liberal Mecca. They made their preferences known at town hall meetings all over the country.
  • The public’s negative opinion of Obamacare has caused the President’s poll ratings to fall, and fall, to record lows.
  • The negative opinion of Obamacare has caused the President to lose support of Democrats in Congress and the Senate to a point in the Senate that has fallen below the 60 votes needed to affirm the will of the people, as is the current rules in the Senate.

You would think that the President may have noticed the displeasure of Americans with his agenda. It is impossible for him not to have noticed. What is happening now is he is flat-0ut ignoring the will of the people.

His statement today is illustrative of a person who thinks he is a king or dictator instead of someone who does the people’s business. He is doing his own business. Democrat’s business.

In The White House today, President Obama said “I do not know how this plays politically (oh really? see above), but I know it’s right.” Translation;  America, I know what is best for you. You’re just too stupid to realize it. He is speaking of using a simple majority ‘reconciliation’ vote for this legislation if he has to, to force Obamacare down America’s collective throat. Something he said he would never do.

The same attitude is prevalent in other Democrat party faithfuls like Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL). Tonight on the Larry King show, speaking about Obamacare, Grayson says “It’s what America needs, it’s what America deserves.” Notice he didn’t say it’s what America wants. Sorry Mr. Grayson, America has done nothing to deserve Obamacare.

2010 Election, Media, Politics

Obama: Shouldn't Pass Health Care Without 60 Votes

Blatant hypocrisy from Obama is no longer newsworthy. Correction, it has never been newsworthy. Remember, for Progressives and their willing accomplices in the media,  the end justifies the means. That, and the media watchdog is dead.

OBAMA 2007: You gotta break out of what I call the sort of 50-plus-one pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory with 50-plus-one but you can’t govern. You know, you get Air Force One and a lot of nice perks as president but you can’t — you can’t deliver on health — we’re not going to pass universal health care with a — with a 50-plus-one strategy.

OBAMA 2007: The bottom line is is that our health care plans are similar. The question, once again, is: Who can get it done? Who can build a movement for change? This is an area where we’re going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We’re going to have to have a majority to get a bill to my desk that is not just a 50-plus-one majority.

OBAMA 2006: Those big-ticket items, fixing our health care system. You know, one of the arguments that sometimes I get with, uhh, my fellow progressives and — and some of these have — have flashed up in the blog communities on occasion — is this notion that we should function sort of like Karl Rove, where we — we identify our core base, we throw ’em red meat, we get a 50-plus-one, uhhh, victory. See, Karl Rove doesn’t need a broad consensus because he doesn’t believe in government. If we want to transform the country, though, that requires a — a sizable majority.

OBAMA 2005: A change in the Senate rules that really, uh, I think would change the character of the Senate, uh, forever. [snip] Uhhh, and what I worry about would be th-th-that you essentially still have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply majoritarian, uhhh, absolute power on either side, and that’s just not what the Founders intended.

OBAMA 2004: My understanding of the Senate is is that you need 60 votes to get something significant to happen, which means that Democrats and have to ask the question: Do we have the will to move an American agenda forward, not a Democratic or Republican agenda forward?

link: Flashback: Barack Obama Said Democrats Shouldn’t Pass Health Care Without 60 Votes in Senate

Economy, Politics

Obama Presents, Govt Health Care R Us

It took Hillary Clinton many months of closed door secret meetings to come up with her version of so-called health care reform. Which had no support.

In 12 months under Barack Obama, we have a house version and a senate version. Then in 4 weeks we have a combined version. All of which were rejected.

Don't like that one? Here's another.

Last week, the President had a TV show called a bi-partisan meeting to resolve the differences and start from square two, not square one, to presumably force Republicans to surrender their principles and succumb to government run health care. So that didn’t go as he had planned.

Now, in four days time, tomorrow, the President will present yet another health care / health insurance ‘reform’ plan.

It is apparent that what we are seeing are cobbled versions of what has already been proposed, and rejected. Else we are supposed to believe that the President has done, in a matter of days, what it took probably hundreds of people many months to do.

But only he can do it. He is Barack Hussein Obama. Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm.

Question is how does he do it? Simple. He goes to Government Health Care R Us and takes a plan off the end-cap. Or maybe he just pulls one out of his, uh, hat.

Economy, Politics

Pay-Go, Or Not Pay-Go, That Is The Question

Lost in all the accusations of gridlock aimed at Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), as if gridlock is always a bad thing, is the fact that Bunning is holding the administration’s feet to the fire. Why? Well, because he can. And good for him.

He is holding Congress to the Pay-Go legislation that was passed that Democrats held up as being responsible and as a hedge to deficit spending. All Bunning is doing is forcing them to obey their own law.

Bunning’s case is this. If they can show how it will be paid for, he’ll not block a ‘unanimous consent.’ Besides all that, why shouldn’t every Senator be made to record their vote, not hide behind ‘unanimous consent,’ and go on record for voting for increasing the debt with this piece of legislation?

Link: One Senator Holds Up Bill, in New Level of Gridlock – WSJ.com.

Economy, Energy, Media, Politics, United Nations

Investing In Global Warming, Cap And Trade

Hardly a week goes by lately where news comes out that adds to the doubt about ‘man made’ global warming. From incomplete and manipulated data, to selective science of hand-picking tree samples, to lost or destroyed supporting data, and lately to statements of Phil Jones.

Phil Jones was forced to step down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after a series of leaked emails and other documents suggested that the data supporting global warming theories had been “cooked” and that opposing theories were being suppressed.

But this was not the end of the revelations.

“Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

“And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.”

What do you mean ‘statistically significant‘ you ask? According to Phil Jones . . .

This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level.

And associating climate change to man-made global warming, there’s this question to Jones . . .

“How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?”

Jones: “I’m 100 percent confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.”

OK fine. And we now know all about their data and record keeping problems.

So what’s the point? The whole point of this ‘man-made’ global warming hysteria is to execute a transfer of wealth through whatever way possible, under the pretense that we can adjust the global thermostat as well as sea-level. It’s is a political movement that has turned into a near religion with environmentalists.

Then there’s this gem about rising sea levels . . .

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

Whether it by by the United Nations, the Kyoto Protocol, and more locally, the administration’s Cap & Trade legislation, all of these schemes are designed to move money from our side of the earth to the other, with the side benefit of depressing our economy and raising prices even further. I mean it just makes sense. If you’re a slip and fall lawyer, you go after the money. In the global scale, the ‘richest’ nation in the world is right here. And for anyone who was in Copenhagen, you saw who the evil one was. It was the United States, and it was capitalism.

In light of what is now known, we are starting to see signs in the US of hopping off this man-made global warming bandwagon. But not everyone.

Know who is heavily invested in this scheme? Al Gore. He probably has the most to lose when the cap and trade and carbon credit trading schemes fall through. Starting with a company he and another investor started called Generation Investment Management LLP. I’m all for capitalism, and according to Al Gore and the media, he’s just putting his money where his mouth is. The reason capitalism works is because there is risk taking. When the market demands it, entrepreneurs will provide. Responding to the market, or not, determines who wins and who looses. Gore’s company is an associate member of the Chicago Climate Exchange. A carbon credit trading exchange. (Available right now at $.10/share. Their stock fell 33% after the Copenhagen global warming festival in December.) How much Gore has invested varies from guesstimates from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. Suffice it to say, if things go the way he hopes they will, he’ll make George Soros’ wealth look like small change.

So yesterday, either in denial or a last ditch attempt to saves his investments, or both, Al Gore opines in the New York Times ‘We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change.’ The first sentence of his opinion piece says it all . . .

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Right. The sky is falling. On him. Then, from high on the mountain, not far from the burning bush, Gore ends with this. From Rick Moran at American Thinker.

Finally, this bit of weirdness that shows Gore for what he is; a megalomaniac:

From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis – inconvenient as ever – must still be faced.

Al Gore sees himself as a redeemer – as Jesus Christ. And where is there room in a democratic republic for someone who thinks that the rule of law should be an “instrument of redemption?”

Who else has put their money where their mouth is? Well, in a more muted and covert kind of way, the BBC has. They have $12.5 billion of their pension funds invested in companies whose future depends on the success of the whole man-made global warming movement and subsequent laws and regulations.

Just something to keep in mind the next time you see an article about a man-made global warming ‘crisis.’