Political Digest September 1 2009

A call to arms!
End the kakistocracy of the enuretic statists!

Palin: Can't have health care reform without medical malpractice reform
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Palin-Cant-have-health-care-reform-without-medical-malpractice-reform-53949082.html
Excerpt: Palin takes on another aspect of the debate and stakes out a position that seems designed to highlight one of the biggest weaknesses of President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders - their dependance upon trial lawyers for funding. Palin notes the inextricable link between controlling health care costs and getting spiralling medical malpractice insurance premiums under control, and quotes from a recent oped in The Washington Examiner by Texas Gov. Rick Perry discussing his state's success in lowering costs and expanding access by capping malpractice awards.

Fourth Finger May Show If You Have What It Takes: Amity Shlaes
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a_rUjFYb7tM0
Excerpt: The pay gap between women and men is again in the news. Run the numbers from a July 1 report of White House salaries and you’ll find that the average female staffer in the White House earns $9,168 less than a male. This gap is a tad embarrassing for President Barack Obama and his progressive Democratic Party, which tends to argue it is nurture, and not nature, that causes such disparities. After all, Obama campaigned on a promise to help women by doing all that is politically possible to make their status equal to that of men. Hiring should be the easy part.

The Real CIA News
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574375012840827276.html
Interrogations were carefully limited, briefed on Capitol Hill, and yielded information that saved innocent lives.

How a Detainee Became an Asset
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/28/AR2009082803874_pf.html
Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding

Obamacare fuels grass-root bucks for GOPers
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Hugh-Hewitt/Huge-Hewitt-Obamacare-fuels-grass-root-bucks-for-GOPers-56248872.html
Excerpt: “$10 for Tark” and “$10 for Tom” are message machines aimed at congressional Democrats still thinking about trying to push Obamacare through the House and Senate when they return in two weeks. Danny Tarkanian is challenging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada’s November 2010 vote (dannytarkanian.org). This week, more than 5,000 new donors sent $10 or more to the former University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Runnin’ Rebel as a way of sending a message to Reid to shelve Obamacare.


Shea-Porter Instructs Security to Remove a Former Peace Officer from Town Hall
http://www.nowhampshire.com/2009/08/30/shea-porter-instructs-security-to-remove-a-former-peace-officer-from-town-hall/
Excerpt: In four short years Carol Shea-Porter has evolved from a rabble-rousing, town hall disrupting anti-war activist who once had to be forcibly removed from a President George Bush event in Portsmouth to a Member of Congress who instructed armed security guards to remove a frustrated voter from her own town hall event in Manchester on Saturday. In the appended video, Shea-Porter can be seen instructing security to remove a man for standing to ask a question without a ticket. Shea-Porter previously held a lottery to determine who could ask questions. She can also be heard taunting the man on his way out by saying, “I do hope the movie theater can be a little quieter for you.” NowHampshire.com has learned that the gentlemen Shea-Porter removed, Carl Tomanelli from Londonderry, is a retired New York City patrolman.

Poll on health care
http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/the-pundits-versus-the-people/#more-4913
More folks think cost, quality and access will get worst if the system is changed. Imagine that.

Obama faces growing anger on the left
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/31/obama-inaction-angers-his-base/?source=newsletter_must-read-stories-today_photo_feature
Excerpt: By the time this year's tally for gay service members discharged under the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy had hit 250, Rep. Alcee L. Hastings said he could wait no longer. The Florida Democrat decided in June to send a letter to President Obama demanding that the policy be repealed. Mr. Hastings said he was surprised when 76 other members - most of them fellow Democrats - agreed to add their signatures, and even more surprised when the letter went unanswered for the next two months. "We're being ignored," he said. (Hastings was impeached as a judge for ethical misconduct, but was elected as a Democrat to Congress, race trumping ethics.)

Thug at Protest
http://patriotroom.com/article/obama-goon-at-tea-party--you-are-not-going-to-arrest-me---police---put-your-hands-behind-your-back-or-i-will-shoot-you-with-a-tazer-

Democrats echo Truman and threaten to nationalize the Internet
http://www.redstate.com/neil_stevens/2009/08/29/democrats-echo-truman-and-threaten-to-nationalize-internet/
Excerpt: S. 773, a bill by West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat, has a 55-page draft bill that would create new “emergency” powers for the President, a ‘cybersecurity’ Enabling Act of sorts, that would give the President the authority broad powers over any “non-governmental” computer networks, whether public or private, that are declared by the President to be “critical.” (Regardless of the question, the answer is “Government.”)

Iran Arms Remained Sealed
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125167591120871075.html?mod=djemITP
Excerpt: The chief executive of the Italian firm named by the United Arab Emirates as having delivered containers with weapons from North Korea to an Iran-bound ship said his company received the shipment in sealed crates that were never opened before being put on the freighter.

Blue Dogs “brain dead”?
http://www.redstate.com/dan_perrin/2009/08/28/democratic-house-chairman-of-the-ways-and-means-subcommittee-on-health-calls-blue-dogs-brain-dead/
Excerpt: The intolerance of the left wing of the Democratic Party’s members of Congress for those who do not agree with them on health care reform was on display again, in public. Many of the old bull Democratic House Chairmen are hard core leftists, like the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee’s Health Subcommittee, Pete Stark (D-CA). Yesterday, Stark pounded his fellow Democratic colleagues on health care reform. In a media conference call sponsored by Campaign for America’s Future, Congressman Stark called Blue Dogs “brain dead”…. (Love that Democrat unity!)

Helping Arlen
http://www.redstate.com/brianfaughnan/2009/08/28/more-trouble-for-arlen-specter/
Excerpt: When Arlen Specter switched parties back in April, he realized that some of his former supporters might regret having donated money to someone who was no longer a Republican. He made a concession: “Upon request, I will return campaign contributions contributed during this cycle.” That could wind up being a costly promise. Specter has raised $11 million this cycle, and only has $7.5 million on hand. That said, some donors have a lot invested in Specter and won’t want their money back. And many others might want their money back, but either aren’t aware of his promise or won’t bother to make the request. Well, the Club for Growth has stepped up to the plate to do something for that latter group. They have offered to contact Specter’s donors and help them ask for their money back. Yesterday they received legal permission to do so.

Lockerbie bomber 'set free for oil'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6814939.ece
My correspondent in London, Michael Sherbourne, a WWII vet, was the first to suggest to me what the Times now seems to confirm: The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal. Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.

Replace the entire congress?
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2009/57_would_like_to_replace_entire_congress
Yeah, but a majority still think their own guy is great, in most cases.

Marijuana found in another national park
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/29/thousands-more-pot-plants-found-in-another-nationa/?source=newsletter_must-read-stories-today_headlines
The benefits of open borders.

Congressional Research Service: ObamaCare will cover illegal immigrants
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/28/congressional-research-office-obamacare-will-cover-illegal-immigrants/

How “progesssive” are you?
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/03/progressive_quiz.html
Interesting test. Seems to think I’m pretty conservative. Imagine that.

Boycott Israel?
tp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbIQto3KPUM&eurl

Vietnam War Museum
http://www.vietnamwarfoundation.org/

Racial Profiling?
http://www.connpost.com/ci_13198771?IADID=Search-www.connpost.com-www.connpost.com

Slavery Reparations
http://www.davidstuff.com/incorrect/reparations.htm

Culture
"Chicago politics is not about ideology. It is about, 'Who Gets What, When, and How,' to quote the inimitable Harold D. Laswell, one of the outstanding political theorists of the last century. The sine qua non of Chicago politics is power, getting it and keeping it. Everything else is incidental. Even corruption is a byproduct of power and is functional only if it enables you to stay in power. In Chicago politics, you don't make waves, you don't back losers, and you 'don't talk to nobody nobody sent.' Chicago politics is always about hierarchy and centralization. ... If you want to understand Obama's health care policy, you need to start where Obama starts. You need to start with Chicago. You need to look at constituent interests. Obama won in 2008 because, among other things, he mobilized the electoral periphery. He mobilized young voters and minority voters, people who traditionally had a lower probability of showing up on Election Day. Chicago politics is about mobilizing the vote. 'Vote early and often' is the city's sardonic refrain. Obama needs his newly socialized base. He needs them to keep coming to the polls. In the vein of Chicago politics, he needs to deliver benefits to them. Unrewarded, the electoral periphery will revert back to apathy. Health care is a reward to this base of people who are on the economic as well as political periphery. ... Obama understands that his objective is to provide his base with the spoils of power -- in this case insurance. ... If all that Obama wanted were to insure those who fall between the cracks, he could put them into the same wonderful program that Congress created for itself by subsidizing their premiums. This would neither require a thousand pages of legislation nor a new series of bureaucracies. But building a new power base resulting from the mobilization of the political and economic periphery requires redefining the nation's health problems as the nation's health catastrophe. Health reform is Chicago politics on a national level." --University of Cincinnati emeritus professor of political science Abraham Miller
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