Bob's Political Digest for July 28, 2009

A Short Course in Brain Surgery
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Rf42zNl9U
Watch this!

Obama regrets remarks
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20090723/NEWS-US-OBAMA-RACE/
On race. And on the Special Olympics. And on….

Why Obamacare Is Sinking
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072302723.html
Excerpt: What happened to Obamacare? Rhetoric met reality. As both candidate and president, the master rhetorician could conjure a world in which he bestows upon you health-care nirvana: more coverage, less cost.

Obamacare haunted by unkept promises of stimulus
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obamacare-haunted-by-big-promises-of-stimulus-8012320-51521412.html
Excerpt: If Barack Obama fails to enact national health care, it will be because he sowed the seeds of his own demise last Feb. 17 -- the day the president, surrounded by Democratic leaders, signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill. In the legislative campaign leading up to that moment, both Obama and congressional Democrats made promises and took actions that are now coming back to haunt them as they pursue their goal of remaking the nation's health care system.

Election 2010: California Senate
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/california/election_2010_california_senate
Down from 9 to 4 points, with 16 months to go. This would be the upset of the century, sending shock waves through the statist establishment.

ObamaCare Dives Into End-Of-Life Debate
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/24/obamacare-medicare-death-business-healthcare-obamacare.html
Excerpt: It brings to mind Boomsday, a 2007 satirical novel by ForbesLife editor at large Christopher Buckley, in which the government solves its fiscal problems by offering tax breaks to those who kill themselves before retirement age.

Dear Congress, oppose public health care plan
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/west/090723
Excerpt: I find, through much search, no authority whatsoever for Congress to establish a federal health care plan in Article 1 of the United States Constitution.

House healthcare talks break down in anger
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/house-healthcare-talks-break-down-in-anger-2009-07-24.html
Excerpt: House healthcare negotiations dissolved in acrimony on Friday, with Blue Dog Democrats saying they were “lied” to by their Democratic leaders. The seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee stormed out of a Friday meeting with their committee chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), saying Waxman had been negotiating in bad faith over a number of provisions Blue Dogs demanded be changed in the stalled healthcare bill. “I’ve been lied to,” Blue Dog Coalition Co-Chairman Charlie Melancon (D-La.) said on Friday. “We have not had legitimate negotiations.

Liberal and Conservative Democrats Feud Over Bill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/24/AR2009072403651.html?wpisrc=newsletter
Excerpt: Tensions in the House over the issue reached a boiling point Friday, when, during a back-and-forth day of private huddles, Democrats emerged at times to accuse one another of lying or "empowering the Republicans." (“Empowering Republicans” is the only Capital Crime statists recognize.)

Obama's health plan - too good to be true
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/07/25/IN3I18SM9O.DTL
Excerpt: So forgive me if I am skeptical when Obama - who called it "painful" to squeeze one half of 1 percent from the gargantuan federal machine - claims, as he did at Wednesday night's news conference, that two-thirds of his plan to provide universal access to health care for Americans "can be paid for by reallocating money that is simply being wasted in federal health care programs." What shocks me is how smart people actually buy into the notion that the administration can expand health coverage and that it will not - indeed, should not - cost most taxpayers a dime. As Kaiser Family Foundation President Drew Altman wrote, "Our polls show that most Americans (60 percent) think that if policymakers made the right moves they could cover the cost of health care reform without spending new money, which is not true."

The Democrats’ Dilemma on Health Reform
http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/the-democrats-dilemma-on-health-reform/#more-4426
Excerpt: I actually feel a bit sorry for them. President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress got some very, very bad advice from health policy experts they relied on during the past election. It was the same bad advice they have been getting year after year, election after election, for as far back as memory serves. But now that it is time to legislate, these politicians must face real economists who look at evidence over at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Although the CBO Director and staff are appointed by Congressional Democrats, they are professionals and they have been willing to stand up to the pressure and essentially say that last year's campaign rhetoric was hogwash.

Stumbling governors signal trouble for Dems
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Stumbling-governors-signal-trouble-for-Dems-8016272-51603962.html
Excerpt: With polls showing a drop in Barack Obama's job rating and sinking support for the Democrats' health care plans, there is evidence of collateral damage where you might not expect to find it, in the standing of Democratic governors. Pennsylvania's Ed Rendell is suddenly getting negative job ratings in both the Quinnipiac and the Franklin and Marshall polls -- his lowest marks in seven years as governor. Ohio's Ted Strickland, who has spent most of his first term working amicably with Republican legislators, scores under 50 percent in the latest Quinnipiac poll and has only tenuous leads over two Republicans, John Kasich and Mike DeWine, who may run against him next year.

Mark Steyn: Obama knows 'stupidly' when he doesn't see it
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/gates-professor-black-2506786-racism-sgt
Excerpt: As to the differences between the professor's and the cops' version of events, I confess I've been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. "It's like Shakespeare's 'My love is like a red, red rose,'" he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale. As it happens, "My luv's like a red, red rose" was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. 16th century English playwright, 18th century Scottish poet: What's the diff? Evidently being within the same quarter-millennium and right general patch of the North-East Atlantic is close enough for a professor of English and Afro-American Studies appearing as an expert witness in a court case. Certainly no journalist reporting Gates' testimony was boorish enough to point out the misattribution.

Germany: Muslim stabs wife "in the name of the Koran"
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/027012.php
This "27-year-old Afghan man" must be some kind of Islamophobe.

"We don't ask other factions to recognize Israel because we in Fatah have never recognized Israel"
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/027005.php
Note to BO: "Fatah does not recognize Israel's right to exist," Natsheh said, "nor have we ever asked others to do so." His comments, which appeared in an interview with Al-Quds Al-Arabi, came in response to reports according to which Fatah had asked Hamas to recognize Israel as a precondition for the establishment of a Palestinian unity government. "All these reports about recognizing Israel are false," Natsheh, who is closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, said. "It's all media nonsense. We don't ask other factions to recognize Israel because we in Fatah have never recognized Israel."

Honor attack in UK: acid poured down lover's throat
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026997.php
Excerpt: Muslim woman fears death in an honor killing after her lover was attacked with sulphuric acid. These killings, as we have documented here, happen again and again in an Islamic context….

Possible honor killing in Canada: Three Muslim sisters murdered; parents and brother arrested
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026996.php
Excerpt: Rona Amir Mohammed's sister, Diba Masoomi, said: "We are convinced that this is a crime of honour." We learn here that "the teenage girls dressed in modern fashion," which may have been part of the problem.

Conyers Sees No Point in Members Reading 1,000-Page Health Care Bill--Unless They Have 2 Lawyers to Interpret It for Them
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=51610&print=on
What we’ve suspected

Joys of the single-payer system—funny but scary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2jijuj1ysw&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebreakdownofamerica%2Ecom%2F%3Fp%3D347&feature=player_embedded
From my friend, Del: This is a nice mini-documentary about what it's like to actually try to get help in the Canadian system. Several years ago I got sick with chest pains while in Canada, and can personally testify to the overcrowding and super delays in the hospital there. Not to mention the inexperienced nurse's aide who thought that for me to have a EKG she needed to scrub my chest with extra rough sandpaper until blood flowed. (Honest, I kid you not, I had scabs for several days.) The bottom line for me is that while we sure need an improvement in the Health Care system in this country to make it more efficient and less costly, setting up a massive federal bureaucracy to do it as proposed is not going to solve very many problems at all, and will absolutely make a lot of new problems and not save any of us a dime, in fact it's pretty much assured that it will cost us all more one way or another. Keep telling your congress people you don't want the Pelosi monster plan to go anywhere but out the door. –Del

Soviet Officer Who Shot Down John McCain in Vietnam Dies
http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9446&Itemid=65
This is a tad old, but I just saw it and thought it interesting—a long-ago example of the gullible left. Excerpt: During that now long-ago war, Moscow repeatedly insisted that no Soviet officers were serving in any capacity on the side of the North Vietnamese, a denial many anti-war groups in the United States and other Western countries accepted as true. And as a result, Trushechkin had to wait many years to receive public recognition of his exploits.

Poll on Obama & the Economy
http://js.polls.yahoo.com/quiz/quiziframe.php?poll_id=46067
Vote early & often.

Petition to require Congress to use the Health Plan they pass
http://fleming.house.gov/index.html
Sign up for fairness

Border agent killed in unusual violence within U.S.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-07-25-border-agent-death_N.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno
No comment from BO?

Obama ripped off Seinfeld for health care proposal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh3ln3swL7Q&feature=player_embedded
Too funny

Obama vs…..Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2MjQ17kDng&feature=player_embedded
All things to all people.

The Center Cannot Hold
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18249
According to Boskin, Obama's budget will: Almost triple the deficit. Add $6.5 trillion to the national debt. Leave future U.S. taxpayers (many of whom will make far less than $250,000) with the tab.