Political Digest September 15, 2009

Should Joe Wilson apologize to Congress?
Yes, he should apologize to Speaker Nancy “Pork” Pelosi, who put the huge pork-laden budget on the President’s desk, which he was only too eager to sign, despite his campaign lie to banish pork by going line by line through the budget.

He should apologize to Rep. Barney Frank, who promised the American People that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were sound and wouldn’t cost tax payers a nickle.

He should apologize to Rep. Charlie Rangel, who has repeated lied on his economic disclosure form about his income and tax situation.

He should apologize to Rep. John “Airport” Murtha, who escaped the abscam scandal by the skin of his teeth, and has bled the public white in getting pork for his district, buying his re-election with our dollars.

He should apologize to Rep. Alcee Hastings, who was impeached and convicted for bribery and perjury by the Democrat-controlled congress while serving as a judge, only to get elected to the Congress from a black district. Blacks supporting bums in public office because they are black (see Sen. Burris) feed racism.

Yes, he should apologize to all the assembled tax cheats, grafters, porkers and liars of both parties. Otherwise, they will vote their disapproval of him. And that would be….

…an honor?

Obama does lie
http://blog.nj.com/njv_johnbury/2009/09/obama_does_lie.html
Excerpt: Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) is right. President Obama is lying about this health care reform. He may not think he is, invoking the Costanza rule where it's not a lie if you believe it, but he is through willful ignorance.

Left swallows defeats to pave way for victory
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Left-swallows-defeats-to-pave-way-for-victory-8237382-59176802.html
Excerpt: It will be the $900 billion cost of President Obama's health plan that will cause the most problems among Democrats. Deciding whom to tax, hiding the fact that they are pushing the national debt past 100 percent of our gross domestic product, and trying to wiggle out of the political blame for Medicare cuts should keep the majority party busy through much of the fall. An already long battle for liberals is only just beginning as the Congressional Budget Office keeps dumping boiling oil on the advancing forces of do-gooderism. The idea that giving away health care saves money is so laughable that the phrase "bend the cost curve" may become the "mission accomplished" of the Obama administration.

Inside the 9/12 protest
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Inside-the-912-Tea-Party-protest-59181917.html
Excerpt: Dr. David Dunch had never been to a political demonstration before. Yet on Saturday Dunch, a surgeon who has practiced for 25 years in Youngstown, Ohio, found himself marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, wearing a white medical coat with a small American flag tucked into the breast pocket, explaining what's wrong with President Obama's national health care proposals. "It's a mistake," Dunch says. "It's going to result in ultimate rationing and limiting care to our elderly. We need universal access of patients with pre-existing illnesses. We need to open up the 50 states to all insurance plans. We need tort reform. We don't have to trash the current system." Dunch has come here with his wife, who is a nurse, because he believes the president is "telling half-truths" by citing the support of the American Medical Association to suggest that most physicians favor Obamacare -- when in fact the AMA represents a relatively small minority of doctors. The situation is enough to turn a private physician into a protester. "I've never been political before," Dunch says. "This is atypical for me."

Waiting for Obama
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/92592
Excerpt: But in their frustration at the president’s vacuity, the Post editors overlook a key problem. There isn’t a way to do the things he has promised (avoid adding to the deficit and slow down health-cost inflation) with the sort of government-run system Obama is wedded to. You can’t do it unless you massively ration care, which, if we have learned anything in the past month, is not going to be an easy sell to the public. If you want to try to do these things, you can’t get there through a government-centric plan. What may get there is expanding the health-care insurance market, spurring individual health-insurance purchases, and real tort reform.

Morning Fix: Obama, Health Care and Political Timelines
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/morning-fix-1.html?wprss=thefix
Excerpt: Every member who has to stand before voters in 2010 must make their own calculation about how a vote for (or against) the Obama health care proposal will play in their districts. It's this every-man-for-himself mentality that the White House is fighting as they seek to rally support for the bill and why compromise -- even among Democrats -- is so elusive.

Public Option Fades From Debate Over Health Care
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/health/policy/13plan.html?_r=2
Excerpt: Once in office Mr. Obama and his advisers have sent conflicting signals about how critical a government-run health plan would be. He prefers a public plan but is open to other ideas. Dancing around the issue for eight months, Mr. Obama has seemed, at various times, pragmatic, flexible or indecisive.

We Don’t Need a Public Option
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MGMyY2Y5YTNiYWFiODUxMmRmMzVmZjM3NjE4N2U5ZTQ
Excerpt: But there is another remedy for shaking up this market: increased transparency. Unlike the public option, this is actually favored by voters: Americans overwhelmingly want the government to require that performance ratings on hospitals and doctors be publicly available. Transparency could stimulate competition by revealing which insurance companies and policies provide the most medical-care benefits and best outcomes per dollar, which ones offer the best doctors and hospitals, and which ones hassle sick people the least. Armed with answers to these questions, consumers could reward best value. If insurers with lackluster scores do not improve, competitors would enter this surprisingly entrepreneurial market. (The leading providers of high-deductible insurance, for example, were formed only nine years ago.)

Obama’s Dilemma
http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/obamas-dilemma-ten-degrees-of-separation/#more-5229
Excerpt: Proposition One: No health insurance company should be able to turn down any applicant or charge a higher premium because of health status. Proposition Two: The federal government should tell you what health insurance you must have, where you will get it and what price you must pay and levy steep fines on you and your employer if you fail to comply.

Proposition One is what people thought they heard Barack Obama say during the election, and they voted for it. Proposition Two is what they are now hearing from Congress and they’re not buying it. Yet what has never been said publicly is that Two follows from One. That is, it is almost impossible to have One (which people seem to want) without Two (which they don’t want). Can Barack Obama (with all his oratorical skills) convince people that One and Two are related and that they have to accept Two in order to have One? I doubt it As I have said many times, almost no one on Capitol Hill or in the Obama Administration understands health care as a complex system. Invariably, they think they can enact ideas that are popular and avoid ideas that are unpopular without understanding that they are all linked. It is only when politicians sit down with economists who are trained to analyze complex systems that it dawns on them that they are in a very unpleasant trap. They have been in that trap for the past eight months, and no one seems to know how to get out of it. The only thing worse would be for the Republicans to jump in the same trap with them.

I’ll say it again
If most people understood basic economics, few members of Congress of either party would be re-elected. I recommend, again, Basic Economics by Dr. Thomas Sowell.

'Doctors told me it was against the rules to save my premature baby'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211950/Premature-baby-left-die-doctors-mother-gives-birth-just-days-22-week-care-limit.html
No rationing in National Health Care? Baby meets UK death panel. Excerpt: Miss Capewell, 23, said doctors refused to even see her son Jayden, who lived for almost two hours without any medical support. She said he was breathing unaided, had a strong heartbeat and was even moving his arms and legs, but medics refused to admit him to a special care baby unit.

Senior Citizen Speaks Out on Healthcare Bill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MJsF11PsnQ

From a Marine Vietnam vet
The pictures on the website below were taken in just one of the main gathering spots of what is being called the "conservative Woodstock". The crowd visible there is in the hundreds of thousands, and you can see plenty of women and middle-aged people and some young people, and yes, just a few Blacks. (The most courageous of all, just as the Black soldiers in the Civil War were the bravest. Obama got 98% of the Black vote, which is a form of racism in action, it takes one big balls Black person to oppose this Administration in any way.) The DC cops closed the streets to the buses early on, so people had to get out and walk 3 miles and more to get to the demonstration. There was no violence, no calls for violence by any speaker or on any signs, no police incidents, and when the crowd left, almost no trash at all. This was the cleanest and most orderly demonstration of real size the Capitol has seen in living memory. This is mostly Middle-to-Medium Right America with some sprinkling of Far Right. Almost every sign handmade, most people smiling, not in screaming, red-faced anger, nobody with a kerchief over their face. These are free people expressing their concerns, however valid or invalid they may be, in a totally peaceful and law abiding way. Maher and the rest of the Leftists can call them morons or like unto Brownshirts, but that reflects enormously more on the person making that claim than on these demonstrators. Don't ever let someone lay one word of crap on you about all conservative demonstrators having to be crazy radicals, Nazis, racists, fools, dupes, and paid agitators. I have been in the middle of all kinds of demonstrations, listened to the Far Left ones and read their literature, and ambled through the Conservative sides too, and know personally local Tea Party supporters from Connecticut to California. I know what professionally organized and financially well supported demonstrations look and sound like, and what they are not like, and they are nothing like this was.Your fellow Americans yesterday in DC. --Del
http://www.lookingattheleft.com/2009/09/conservative-woodstock-rocks-the-capital/

Serial Dishonesty
"Barack Obama will not stop committing serial dishonesty with the American people until the media expose his false figures and bogus exaggerations for what they are: fraudulent scare tactics. Last night Obama told a litany of lies. He said the total cost of his health reform would be $900 billion over ten years, but even the government-run Congressional Budget Office found it would cost $1.6 trillion. He claimed his reform would not cover illegal immigrants or abortions, but nothing in any of the Democrat bills requires citizen verification and several organizations including the National Right to Life Committee have shown exactly how federal funds would be used to pay for abortion-on-demand. He knows these are lies and he tells them because he is confident the left wing 'news' media will let him get away with it. Worst still, Obama used these lies to play on Americans greatest fears and vulnerabilities. He warned that more people would die unless we passed his sweeping plan and threatened that our country's economic pulse would weaken with American businesses closing. And still, the media let him get away with it. This must stop. The media must expose Obama's calculated scare tactics and lying on 'reform.' Failing to do so gives him a green light to lie and cry wolf about whatever he wants, whenever he wants. And it will aid in the most radical government takeover ever attempted in America." --Media Research Center President Brent Bozell "The Patriot Post (www.patriotpost.us/subscribe/)”

Beck and the Mainstream
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/14/AR2009091400790.html
The MSM continues to make itself irrelevant by maintaining an agenda.

Some Blacks Now Have Doubts About Obama
by Star Parker
http://townhall.com/columnists/StarParker/2009/09/14/some_blacks_now_have_doubts_about_obama
Excerpt: According to the Pew Research Center, the president's approval rating nationwide is now 10 points lower than last April. Included in this is a three-point drop in his approval among blacks. You might say, Star, a drop in approval ratings among blacks from 95 percent to 92 percent is trivial. But I say not so. If we assume this reflects the 16 million blacks who voted for Obama last November, a three point shift means there are about a half million blacks who now have buyer's remorse. This is meaningful. You take real risks going against the establishment in black America. Psychological risks, professional risks, and sometimes risks to personal safety. Peeling off a black who voted for Obama means moving heaven and earth.

Carbon Footprints and Straitjackets
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1018/Carbon-Footprints-and-Straitjackets.aspx
Sorry, General Patton, no more tanks! Too big a carbon footprint.

Want to know who is Hannah Giles?
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Want-to-know-who-is-Hannah-Giles-59123682.html
Investigative journalists who don’t follow the MSM party line? This could be the start of something good.

Where is Obama’s center?
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTI2Y2YyMzExNGI2OWNjNWU2YWM2NTdiYzY2OTIzNGQ=&w=MA==
The always-entertaining Mark Steyn. If you haven’t read his book America Alone, do so. Excerpt: If so, it’s a rhetorical feint that’s otherwise meaningless. The minute a first-world country has “free” health care, it becomes the provider of choice to anyone who can get there, particularly for any long-term ailments requiring state-of-the-art medications. In 2004, Britain’s Health Protection Agency revealed that 44 percent of HIV patients being treated by the National Health Service were not residents of the United Kingdom at all, but from southern Africa. In essence, a huge number of AIDS patients in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Swaziland, and Lesotho have decided to outsource their health-care needs to British taxpayers. Similar trends will manifest themselves here in nothing flat.

Today, tomorrow, next week
http://randomactsofpatriotism.blogspot.com/2009/09/today-tomorrow-next-week.html
Excerpt: Nothing we have done since 9/11 has deterred the will of the enemy to strike again. We have deposed a murderous thug in Iraq, but lacking a plan to control the place after we won, we are left in a tenuous position. Afghanistan is a mountainous country, and the enemy need only wait, striking at targets of opportunity, until we tire and leave. The rest of the fanatics, in Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan...(is there a pattern here?), and likely some in position here in the United States, are not cowed, impressed, or defeated. When the situation favors them, they will attack again.

Islam: Ignorance is not a Strategy
http://townhall.com/columnists/AllenHunt/2009/09/14/islam_ignorance_is_not_a_strategy
Excerpt: In sum, Islam was conceived as a political movement wedded to a religious faith. Mohammed envisioned Islamic political hegemony from the outset, and immediately organized his own army to pursue that vision. Yes, the founder of the religion of peace led his own army and waged bloody, violent wars against those who would oppose his own reign. Most Americans should know that, but clearly, we do not. Mohammed's vision extended worldwide, or to as much of the world as he understood at the time. Global political hegemony and domination. Force used to achieve it and to enforce it. Conversion by coercion or force. These themes run continually throughout the history of Islam. Jihadism took root in full force (no pun intended) several centuries after Mohammed, and the notion has continued unabated in a variety of ways ever since.

The Trucking and Gravel Issue Should Not be “Fought with Blood,” Either
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/09/13/newsreal-sunday-the-trucking-and-gravel-issue-should-not-be-%e2%80%9cfought-with-blood%e2%80%9d-either/
Good column

Senate hypocrite
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/09/13/the-haughty-hypocrite-who-condemns-rep-joe-wilsons-you-lie-outburst/#comment-6534
I know, I know—which one?

Letter to Obama
http://stevemishket.blogspot.com/2009/09/open-letter-to-president-obama-7-912.html

For Coast Guard and CNN, an Exercise in Embarrassment
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/11/AR2009091102802.html?wpisrc=newsletter
Excerpt: "We have seen at least one boat come up the Potomac and challenge the Coast Guard," reported CNN's Jeanne Meserve, as the network showed a gloomy, long-range image of the river with the caption "Coast Guard fires on boat on Potomac River." The Coast Guard, Meserve said, "sent a transmission saying they expended 10 rounds." Gunfire on the Potomac! Near the Pentagon! On 9/11! Federal Aviation Administration officials, watching the scene on CNN, ordered a ground stop at nearby Reagan National Airport. About 10 police cars sped to the scene, between the Memorial and 14th Street bridges. Officials at Coast Guard headquarters didn't seem to know what was going on. … Unusual, indeed. Particularly because there were no intruders, no suspicious boats, no guns and no shots. After half an hour of chaos, red-faced Coast Guard officials explained that they had undertaken a routine training exercise -- the sort that occur on the river about four times a week.

UN admits Cap & Trade a fraud?
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/09/14/united-nations-admits-cap-and-trade-is-a-fraud/
Excerpt: The legitimacy of the $100 billion (£60 billion) carbon-trading market has been called into question after the world’s largest auditor of clean-energy projects was suspended by United Nations inspectors. SGS UK had its accreditation suspended last week after it was unable to prove its staff had properly vetted projects that were then approved for the carbon-trading scheme, or even that they were qualified to do so.

Debt Be Not Proud: The Sorry Tale of America’s Out-of-control Spending
http://www.american.com/archive/2009/september/debt-be-not-proud-the-sorry-tale-of-america2019s-out-of-control-spending
Excerpt: and relative to GDP, thanks to the current recession, the stimulus effort to end that recession, and the bailout of the country’s financial system. The budget deficit for fiscal 2009 is estimated to be a staggering $1.6 trillion, larger than the entire national debt as recently as 1984. It is the largest peacetime deficit (measured as a percentage of federal revenues) since 1936, when the country was still in the throes of a far worse economic downturn. The deficit will cause the ratio of debt to GDP to rise to over 80 percent by the end of fiscal 2009. That will be the highest it has been since 1950. Worse, the Obama administration is projecting unprecedented annual deficits over the next ten years if its political agenda of cap and trade, universal healthcare, and other expensive programs is enacted. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, these programs will average more than 4 percent of GDP each year and total $9.3 trillion over the decade. That would mean a doubling of the national debt in absolute terms and at least a 50 percentage point rise in the ratio of debt to GDP, taking us back nearly to where the debt was at the end of World War II. And that, of course, assumes a quick recovery from the current recession….

IED placement
http://www.apacheclips.com/media/10005/ied_exlosion_kill_Taliban_diggers/
Some pleasant late-night viewing.