Tag Archives: Politics

Politics

Obama's Education Two-Step

Unless you’ve been in a coma lately, a lot of people are up in arms over President Obama making an address to school students. I feel obligated to weigh in.

As amended, I don’t see a problem with the president urging kids to pay attention, do their work, and stay in school. All kids need to get that message. The sorry thing is, and what people are upset about, is that Obama made an attempt to capture this audience for a political purpose. It started out to be a community organizer’s wet dream. But as amended, it’s a good thing.

That our education system is failing our children really becomes obvious when you look at SAT scores.

I remember JFK putting out a message to school kids and schools that emphasized physical fitness. It wasn’t on TV in our classroom, but it was directed to the students. It wasn’t a political message, it was a good message, and the schools and kids responded positively. And anything that Obama can do to motivate kids to excel (or at least graduate) would be good.

Media, Politics

Obama, Still Lying After All These Weeks

President Obama held a pep rally at an AFL-CIO picnic today to push his health care initiative. Facing BIG LABOR, he blamed opposition to his health care-turned health insurance campaign on ‘special interests’ who were attempting to ‘scare the heck out of people.’ Actually, it is his plans and agenda that is scaring the heck out of people. Witness the polls and the town hall meetings and the Tea Parties across the county. But that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

Oh but that’s not all. In Obama-speak, if you oppose his plan, then you aren’t for health care reform or health insurance reform. That’s a smear. He also said, as he has often repeated, that Republicans don’t have an alternative plan? That’s a lie.

“I’ve got a question for all these folks who say, you know, we’re going to pull the plug on Grandma and this is all about illegal immigrants — you’ve heard all the lies,” Obama said. “I’ve got a question for all those folks: What are you going to do? What’s your answer? What’s your solution?

“And you know what? They don’t have one.“ {emphasis added}

Yes ‘they’ do, and it’s called H.R.3400. But the Obama media never told you about it, did they? Keep an eye out in the Editorial pages of your local paper and for the major networks (CBS, NBS, ABS, and pMS-NBCBS) to call him on it? That our President makes no bones about lying to the American people to push his agenda is disgraceful in an of itself. Based on everything Obama, my guess is the mainstream media will overlook it. The media watchdog died last year.

Regarding President Obama, you have a decision to make. Is he lying about there not being a Republican alternative, or is he that far out of touch that he doesn’t even know it exists? Which one works for you? At some point you have to ask yourself what is motivating the President to lie to the American people? Did we elect a President to put America on the fast track to Socialism? Do you think he would have beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries if he ran on what he is attempting to do today?

Politics

Obama's Wax Wings

What happened to President Obama?
Obama's wax wings melting.
His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

The conventional wisdom is that Obama made a tactical mistake by farming out his agenda to Congress and allowing himself to be pulled left by the doctrinaire liberals of the Democratic congressional leadership. But the idea of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pulling Obama left is quite ridiculous. Where do you think he came from, this friend of Chavista ex-terrorist William Ayers, of PLO apologist Rashid Khalidi, of racialist inciter Jeremiah Wright?

But forget the character witnesses. Just look at Obama’s behavior as president, beginning with his first address to Congress. Unbidden, unforced and unpushed by the congressional leadership, Obama gave his most deeply felt vision of America, delivering the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president. In American politics, you can’t get more left than that speech and still be on the playing field.

In a center-right country, that was problem enough. Obama then compounded it by vastly misreading his mandate. He assumed it was personal. This, after winning by a mere seven points in a year of true economic catastrophe, of an extraordinarily unpopular Republican incumbent, and of a politically weak and unsteady opponent. Nonetheless, Obama imagined that, as Fouad Ajami so brilliantly observed, he had won the kind of banana-republic plebiscite that grants caudillo-like authority to remake everything in one’s own image.

Accordingly, Obama unveiled his plans for a grand makeover of the American system, animating that vision by enacting measure after measure that greatly enlarged state power, government spending and national debt. Not surprisingly, these measures engendered powerful popular skepticism that burst into tea-party town-hall resistance.

Obama’s reaction to that resistance made things worse. Obama fancies himself tribune of the people, spokesman for the grass roots, harbinger of a new kind of politics from below that would upset the established lobbyist special-interest order of Washington. Yet faced with protests from a real grass-roots movement, his party and his supporters called it a mob — misinformed, misled, irrational, angry, unhinged, bordering on racist. All this while the administration was cutting backroom deals with every manner of special interest — from drug companies to auto unions to doctors — in which favors worth billions were quietly and opaquely exchanged.

“Get out of the way” and “don’t do a lot of talking,” the great bipartisan scolded opponents whom he blamed for creating the “mess” from which he is merely trying to save us. If only they could see. So with boundless confidence in his own persuasiveness, Obama undertook a summer campaign to enlighten the masses by addressing substantive objections to his reforms.

Things got worse still. With answers so slippery and implausible and, well, fishy, he began jeopardizing the most fundamental asset of any new president — trust. You can’t say that the system is totally broken and in need of radical reconstruction, but nothing will change for you; that Medicare is bankrupting the country, but $500 billion in cuts will have no effect on care; that you will expand coverage while reducing deficits — and not inspire incredulity and mistrust. When ordinary citizens understand they are being played for fools, they bristle.

After a disastrous summer — mistaking his mandate, believing his press, centralizing power, governing left, disdaining citizens for (of all things) organizing — Obama is in trouble.

Let’s be clear: This is a fall, not a collapse. He’s not been repudiated or even defeated. He will likely regroup and pass some version of health insurance reform that will restore some of his clout and popularity.

But what has occurred — irreversibly — is this: He’s become ordinary. The spell is broken. The charismatic conjurer of 2008 has shed his magic. He’s regressed to the mean, tellingly expressed in poll numbers hovering at 50 percent.

For a man who only recently bred a cult, ordinariness is a great burden, and for his acolytes, a crushing disappointment. Obama has become a politician like others. And like other flailing presidents, he will try to salvage a cherished reform — and his own standing — with yet another prime-time speech.

But for the first time since election night in Grant Park, he will appear in the most unfamiliar of guises — mere mortal, a treacherous transformation to which a man of Obama’s supreme self-regard may never adapt.

related links: Obama, the Mortal | Can You Trust President Obama? | Who Do You Trust?

I rarely post entire articles of a columnist, often using portions of an article to help make a point. In this case however, there is no room to expand on Mr. Krauthammer’s piece. His analysis of Obama’s presidency is spot on.

Media, Pensacola, Politics

Bayou Texar Closed Again

Did you ever think that sometimes when trying to make a point that you may as well bang your head against the wall? That’s the way I feel about what continues to happen to Bayou Texar specifically, but Bayou Texar isn’t the only waterway in Escambia County that has similar problems.

Last week, I found out that efforts to finally locate the sources of bacterial contamination in Bayou Texar were scrapped by some yet unknown city officials. And yesterday what do we see in the PNJ? Another closure. A mere two weeks since Bayou Texar was again closed.

Unfortunately for the environment and people that want to use the waterways, and people living in the pricey homes surrounding Bayou Texar, the Health Alerts in the newspaper are generating as much attention as, oh I don’t know, how about as much attention as H.R. 3400, the Empowering Patients (not government) First Act. Bayou Texar’s water quality is being ignored just as much as the health care initiative that was introduced by Republicans in Congress over a month ago. What’s wrong with this picture?

Yes Virginia, conservatives like clean water too! What is the city’s excuse? And, why would the canceling of the needed research to clean up the Bayou not be newsworthy?

Media, Politics

Dems Lost The Debate On Obamacare

Without question, Democrats and Republicans agree that ‘health care’ and ‘health insurance’ could be improved upon, made more available, and at a lesser cost than what we have today. What is becoming more apparent is that the majority of the folks do not want Obama’s brand of socialized medicine and insurance.

Where this administration is concerned, the will of the people is irrelevant. Citizen’s reaction at Tea Parties and town hall meetings with congressmen all over the country are written off as phony opposition. Those politicians are out of touch, and apparently, they intend to stay that way. They’re not listening to the folks. Instead, they’re out there trying to sell Obamacare like selling cars. And they are selling cars, literally. Cash for Clunkers. No offense to car salesmen intended.

Rather than taking a step back and doing things that could garner bi-partisan support, like doing one thing at a time, starting with getting the economy back in shape first, Democrats in the Senate are considering passing the bill via a maneuver called reconciliation, where only a slim majority of votes are needed, 51. They are reacting to the fact that there probably isn’t enough support for his plan to overcome a filibuster, 60. To go that route just shows that they’ve lost the debate on Obamacare and will just try shoving it down America’s collective throat by any means possible.

If they succeed, it will be an unprecedented maneuver to usurp nearly 20% of the private sector economy, placing it under government control.

Even the New York Times doesn’t think it is a good idea. Considering they’re about as far left as any opinion-shaper out there, that’s saying something. What they’re really worried about is 2010.

If the Democrats want to enact health care reform this year, they appear to have little choice but to adopt a high-risk, go-it-alone, majority-rules strategy.

We say this with considerable regret because a bipartisan compromise would be the surest way to achieve comprehensive reforms with broad public support. But the ideological split between the parties is too wide — and the animosities too deep — for that to be possible.

It’s also fair to say that they’ve lost the debate that we’ve never had. There was zero input allowed from Republicans in drafting H.R.3200. The only ‘debate’ Obama expects is for Republicans to sign on to it. That’s his definition of bi-partisanship.

Speaking of Obama, he is still out there accusing Republicans as the party of NO. That they don’t have a plan. Guess what? There is a plan and it is called H.R. 3400, and was introduced in Congress over a month ago, July 30, 2009 into the 111th Congress. But the Obama media never told you about it, did they? Regarding President Obama, you have a decision to make. Is he lying about there not being a Republican alternative, or is he that far out of touch that he doesn’t even know it exists? Which one works for you?

At some point you have to ask yourself what is motivating the President to lie to the American people? Did we elect a President to put America on the fast track to Socialism? Do you think he would have beat Hillary Clinton if he ran on what he is attempting to do today?

Politics

U.K. Today

News from across the pond ought to at least be a heads up on what to expect from our social engineers in The White House. Folks in the UK are much further along in this sort of thing. I guess you can say they are more ‘progressive?’

First, in a blow to men, women in the UK have been given what they are calling ‘equal birth rights.’ What?

Women in same-sex relationships can now register both their names on the birth certificate of a child conceived as a result of fertility treatment.

Female couples not in a civil partnership but receiving fertility treatment may also both be registered.

Birth certificates won’t be showing a Mother and Mother, but a Parent and Parent. Well isn’t that special? How long before gay men who use a surrogate breeder file a discrimination suit? ? I’m just saying.

Second and Third are about Health Care in the UK, where it is under government control. Ahem.

Second . . .

Researchers have claimed the food provided in prisons is better than in NHS hospitals.

Third . . . Cancer drugs in the UK are now free. But they can’t seem to give them away.

Nearly two thirds of the 150,000 cancer patients in England have not applied for free prescriptions – five months after they became available. The £7.20 prescription charge was abolished for cancer patients after decisions in the rest of the UK to scrap all fees.

Doctors’ groups responded by saying bureaucracy was putting patients off. Dr Richard Vautrey, of the BMA, said “Patients just cannot face filling out papers when they have cancer.”

Macmillian Cancer Support, a British charity said . . .

Mike Hobday, head of campaigns and policy at the charity, said: “More than four months after the introduction of free prescriptions, it’s worrying that the overwhelming majority of cancer patients are still scrimping and saving to pay for their medication.

Scrimping? At less than $12.00 USD per prescription, they are scrimping? How’s that socialist stuff working again? Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had it right when she said ‘the problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.’

Media, Politics

Kennedy Sought To Overturn Himself

Last week, Sen. Edward Kennedy made a real heart-tugging appeal to the State of Massachusetts to change the law so that the Governor can appoint a successor for his senate seat.

Obviously his concern was in keeping a 60 seat (filibuster-proof) majority in the Senate, which could play a role in whether or not the President’s imaginary health care/insurance bill gets passed. Already, the Democrats are considering ramming ‘the bill’ down America’s collective throat by a procedural measure that is not meant to be used for a massive piece of legislation that takes control of nearly 20% of our economy. Watch for those fireworks next month.

The Reuters branch of the Obama media describes Kennedy’s appeal in their ‘Factbox‘ like this . . .

Under state law, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick may not select a successor but must call a special election between 145 and 160 days after the seat becomes vacant.

Before his death, Kennedy asked that the law be changed so an interim senator could be appointed. The ailing statesman said in a letter to Patrick, a Democrat, that the state could not afford to be without a senator for five months.

Reuters must be so busy helping Obama push his plan, that they don’t bother to tell you why the Massachusetts law is the way it is. As a matter of ‘fact,’ the Governor used to be the one to pick a successor in the event of a vacancy until the year 2004. So what happened in 2004?

In 2004 Sen. John Kerry was making plans to be the next president. And in 2004 the Mass. governor was Mitt Romney (R). If Kerry was to win the election, Romney would in all likelihood have replaced a democratic senator with a republican one. And Sen. Kennedy would not have that. He appealed to the legislature to change the law to require an election, with plenty of time for campaigning, instead. Taking that responsibility away from the governor and putting it into the hands of the most liberal state in the country seemed like a guarantee that Kennedy could live with. No pun intended. And that’s what happened.

Fast forward to the present and the governor in the state house is a Democrat. Oh how easy it would be to just let him pick Kennedy’s successor. Darn. It’s that law getting in the way again. No problem, change the rules. The Lion in the Senate will just have his own law overturned and replaced with his latest version,  Gubernatorial Succession version 2.0.

The headline should be, Kennedy Wants To Overturn Himself, if Reuters had all their facts straight.

link: Factbox: Kennedy’s death raises successor speculation

Economy, Pensacola, Politics

Liberal Lies About National Health Care

If  that headline evokes a reflex to hit the delete button, then you’re the one that needs to read this piece. It represents a fair analysis with a dash of humor, as opposed to White House talking points with no analysis whatsoever, into the current health care turned health insurance crisis as manufactured by the Obama administration and its anti-capitalist advisers.

Put in an easily understandable way, Ann Coulter (Mike Papantonio’s favorite punching bag, next to Rush Limbaugh of course) dissects five lies, or misconceptions if you prefer, that President Obama and proponents of government-run health care/health insurance use to get you to accept their prescription for this country.

(1) National health care will punish the insurance companies.

You want to punish insurance companies? Make them compete.

As Adam Smith observed, whenever two businessmen meet, “the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” That’s why we need a third, fourth and 45th competing insurance company that will undercut them by offering better service at a lower price.

Tiny little France and Germany have more competition among health insurers than the U.S. does right now. Amazingly, both of these socialist countries have less state regulation of health insurance than we do, and you can buy health insurance across regional lines — unlike in the U.S., where a federal law allows states to ban interstate commerce in health insurance.

U.S. health insurance companies are often imperious, unresponsive consumer hellholes because they’re a partial monopoly, protected from competition by government regulation. In some states, one big insurer will control 80 percent of the market. (Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.)

Liberals think they can improve the problem of a partial monopoly by turning it into a total monopoly. That’s what single-payer health care is: “Single payer” means “single provider.”

It’s the famous liberal two-step: First screw something up, then claim that it’s screwed up because there’s not enough government oversight (it’s the free market run wild!), and then step in and really screw it up in the name of “reform.”

You could fix 90 percent of the problems with health insurance by ending the federal law allowing states to ban health insurance sales across state lines. But when John McCain called for ending the ban during the 2008 presidential campaign, he was attacked by Joe Biden — another illustration of the ironclad Ann Coulter rule that the worst Republicans are still better than allegedly “conservative” Democrats.

(2) National health care will “increase competition and keep insurance companies honest” — as President Barack Obama has said.

Government-provided health care isn’t a competitor; it’s a monopoly product paid for by the taxpayer. Consumers may be able to “choose” whether they take the service — at least at first — but every single one of us will be forced to buy it, under penalty of prison for tax evasion. It’s like a new cable plan with a “yes” box, but no “no” box.

Obama himself compared national health care to the post office — immediately conjuring images of a highly efficient and consumer-friendly work force — which, like so many consumer-friendly shops, is closed by 2 p.m. on Saturdays, all Sundays and every conceivable holiday.

But what most people don’t know — including the president, apparently — with certain narrow exceptions, competing with the post office is prohibited by law.

Expect the same with national health care. Liberals won’t stop until they have total control. How else will they get you to pay for their sex-change operations?

(3) Insurance companies are denying legitimate claims because they are “villains.”

Obama denounced the insurance companies in last Sunday’s New York Times, saying: “A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.”

Well, yeah. That and the cancer.

Assuming this is true — which would distinguish it from every other story told by Democrats pushing national health care — in a free market, such an insurance company couldn’t stay in business. Other insurance companies would scream from the rooftops about their competitor’s shoddy business practices, and customers would leave in droves.

If only customers had a choice! But we don’t because of government regulation of health insurance.

Speaking of which, maybe if Mr. Gallstone’s insurance company weren’t required by law to cover early childhood development programs and sex-change operations, it wouldn’t be forced to cut corners in the few areas not regulated by the government, such as cancer treatments for patients with gallstones.

(4) National health care will give Americans “basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable” — as Barack Obama claimed in his op/ed in the Times.

You want to protect consumers? Do it the same way we protect consumers of dry cleaning, hamburgers and electricians: Give them the power to tell their insurance companies, “I’m taking my business elsewhere.”

(5) Government intervention is the only way to provide coverage for pre-existing conditions.

The only reason most “pre-existing” conditions aren’t already covered is because of government regulations that shrink the insurance market to a microscopic size, which leads to fewer options in health insurance and a lot more uninsured people than would exist in a free market.

The free market has produced a dizzying array of insurance products in areas other than health. (Ironically, array-associated dizziness is not covered by most health plans.) Even insurance companies have “reinsurance” policies to cover catastrophic events occurring on the properties they insure, such as nuclear accidents, earthquakes and Michael Moore dropping in for a visit and breaking the couch.

If we had a free market in health insurance, it would be inexpensive and easy to buy insurance for “pre-existing” conditions before they exist, for example, insurance on unborn — unconceived — children and health insurance even when you don’t have a job. The vast majority of “pre-existing” conditions that currently exist in a cramped, limited, heavily regulated insurance market would be “covered” conditions under a free market in health insurance.

I’ve hit my word limit on liberal lies about national health care without breaking a sweat. See this space next week for more lies in our continuing series.

link: Liberal Lies About National Health Care: First in a Series

Media, Politics, War On Terror

Can You Trust President Obama?

If you believe what our President says, then you must be wondering now if you can trust what he says from now on. Never mind for now that all that he has said so far about the economy has not come to fruition. Things of that nature have lots of variables and, therefore, wiggle room to leave any discrepancies to chance and judgment, rather than trust.

But when it comes to turning loose Eric Holder, his Attorney General, to fire up a special prosecutor to investigate harsh interrogation techniques, after telling the CIA and its director Leon Panetta that that will not happen, goes completely and directly to his personal integrity, honesty, and trust.

I hate to say this about my president, but he is not the leader he professed to be and that the media has built him up to be. Nor can he be trusted. He is being led by the political base (the far left) of his party, and his teleprompter. And, unfortunately for us, they take priority over our enemy, al-Qaeda.

What we witnessed in April, when he visited the CIA to put out the fires started by the far left demanding he fulfill his campaign promise, and to answer the concerns of former Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA chief Leon Panetta, he said he wouldn’t go there. That was not only his ‘words, just words,’ but that of his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual too!

“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks,” he told employees. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the CIA.”

As the debate escalated, Cheney weighed in, saying if the country is to judge the methods used in the interrogations, it should have information about what was obtained from the tough tactics. “I find it a little bit disturbing” that “they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort,” Cheney said on Fox News. He said, “There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity.”

On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said on the ABC program “This Week” that “those who devised policy” also “should not be prosecuted.”

Since the AG is under the purview of the executive branch, ie. the President, he could keep his word and maybe even keep his CIA director Leon Panetta. To let this spectacle continue will only be to assuage the far left base while giving aide and comfort to the enemy. One could argue that it also serves as a distraction to the insurmountable and unsustainable debt that his policies are heaping upon this country as well as his imaginary health care plan that the folks do not want.

related links:

Energy, Media, Politics

Obama To Fund Offshore Drilling

In Brazil. What?  After closing down ANWR’s coastal plain, which was set aside specifically for oil and gas exploration, President Obama is giving $2 billion in loan guarantees to Petrobras, one of the largest corporations in the Americas. Petrobras is Brazil’s state owned oil company.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

And you’ll never guess who has a 20% share in that company.  Billionaire George Soros, major Democratic contributor who spent $27 million to defeat George Bush in 2004, and then some. In fact, that share is the largest share of any of Soros’ single investments. But that was not always the case. He invested in it just before this corporate welfare plan took place.

Billionaire investor George Soros bought an $811 million stake in Petroleo Brasileiro SA in the second quarter, making the Brazilian state-controlled oil company his investment fund’s largest holding.

Just how this squares with the campaign rhetoric from Barack Obama about corporate welfare, and reducing the use of fossil fuels and separating himself from special interests is simple. It doesn’t.

As to why Obama would sanction such a thing is also simple.  Everybody gets their payback in Obama’s administration. Especially the  lobbyists he said he would distance himself from when he was a candidate. You simply have to wait your turn. AIG, Freddie and Fannie, Wall Street, the UAW, trial lawyers, and now major contributor George Soros.

Here’s an idea: Let American companies do what Obama is paying Brazilian companies to do — drill offshore. We won’t have to pay them money or float them any loans to do it, either. In fact, we will make money off of the leases, while the effort creates hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs in the US, creating more tax revenue rather than emptying out the Treasury.

You would think that, at a time when this administration is spending our grandchildren’s future in order to remake America (his words) and ‘rescue’ our economy, that making a deal like this to a foreign company that has the resources to go it alone would find its way into the mainstream media. Apparently, only when a Republican is in The White House.