President

Barack Obama - Business - Capitalism - Communism - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Free Trade - Journalism - Liberals - Media Bias - President - Security/Safety - Socialism - Society/Culture - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Union Boss Admits to Using Members as Political Activists

September 15, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

An interesting admission by James A. Williams, president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades in Philadelphia, can be seen in an interview he did with the Philly Inquirer. It is an admission that conforms one of the things that anti-union folks have been saying for years, but one union officials are loath to admit.

While discussing the hard economic times, the Philly Inquirer asked how the recession was affecting the union. In his answer President Wilson admitted that his union uses out-of-work members for “political events.” Wilson mentioned that they lower dues to $1 a month after a member has been out of work for more than six months, but that isn’t just the kind hearted union looking out for its members. No, the union expects something in return for that lowering of dues.
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Union Boss Admits to Using Members as Political Activists”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Health - Liberals - President - Socialism - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Mayo Clinic Loses Millions Because of Medicare

September 14, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Anchorage Daily News has a very interesting editorial that reveals that the celebrated Mayo Clinic has lost millions because of Medicare over the last year.

In its editorial the ADN is warning that the public option is “as unhealthy as Medicare” because of the artificially low payments the government remits to healthcare providers, doctors and hospitals.

President Obama and the left love to point to the Mayo Clinic as one of America’s premier medical institutions and rightfully so. But the ADN reveals that the clinic lost $840 million on it’s $1.7 billion worth of Medicare work. ADN notes that the loses that doctors and hospitals are being hit with because the government refuses to pay market prices for services to patients, many doctors and hospitals are limiting new patients on Medicare.
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Mayo Clinic Loses Millions Because of Medicare”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Capitalism - Communism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Free Trade - Health - Liberals - President - Socialism - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Obama Dissembles Again About His ‘Responsibility’ For Healthcare

September 14, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a new 60 Minutes interview, President Obama made a big show about telling correspondent Steve Kroft that he “owns” healthcare if it goes wrong and that because of this he has “every incentive to get this right.”

But is this true? Will Obama face any real, personal consequences for any possible failures of Obamacare if it gets passed? I would say he doesn’t.

In the interview, Obama sonorously tells Kroft,

“I have no interest in having a bill get passed that fails. That doesn’t work. You know, I intend to be president for a while and once this bill passes, I own it. And if people look and say, ‘You know what? This hasn’t reduced my costs. My premiums are still going up 25 percent, insurance companies are still jerking me around,'” Obama explained.

“I’m the one who’s going to be held responsible. So I have every incentive to get this right,” he added.

This claim that he will face consequences if Obamacare becomes a mess later because he didn’t “get it right” is a bald-faced lie.
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Obama Dissembles Again About His ‘Responsibility’ For Healthcare”

Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Communism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Freedom - GOP - Health - House of Representatives - Journalism - Liberals - Media Bias - President - Republicans - Socialism - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Not The Party of No, GOP’s Offered Many Healthcare Bills

September 13, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

For months the Old Media, President Obama, and the Democrats have been jabbing the GOP for being the “party of no” and for not offering any healthcare ideas of its own. Byron York of the Washington Examiner, however, reveals the facts behind this epithet and finds the attack to be false. The truth is, the GOP has offered all sorts of ideas and bills, not that the Democrats have bothered to entertain any of them.

We learned earlier in the week that Obama hasn’t invited GOP leaders to the White House since April. And there’s been report after report that Democrats either don’t need or don’t want to bother with Republicans during this process. All this despite Obama’s happy-talk of how he wants bi-partisanship.
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Not The Party of No, GOP’s Offered Many Healthcare Bills”

Barack Obama - Britain - Budget - Capitalism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Europe - Freedom - Health - Liberals - President - Security/Safety - Socialism - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Shattered Lives: Victims of Government Healthcare

September 13, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The National Center for Public Policy (nationalcenter.org) has assembled a compendium of horror stories of the “shattered lives” of 100 victims of government healthcare from all over the western world. This book serves as a warning to every advocate of the “free” healthcare that Obama is trying to sell like snake-oil from a traveling case. If government gets control of our healthcare, our entire system will be worse off for it.

In “Shattered Lives: One Hundred Victims of Government Health Care,” author Amy Ridenour presents us with 100 heartwrenching stories of healthcare victims from Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Japan and other western nations, stories that should serve as a warning against our blundering down the destructive path of nationalized healthcare.

Ridenour regales us with tales of self-dentistry because government healthcare refuses service, deaths over canceled operations or long-delayed treatment, and citizens that had to flee their own country to find lifesaving healthcare in other lands. There are tales of babies born in home toilets because government healthcare refused to see a pregnant mother, diseases undiagnosed, and restrictive and ill-conceived rationing to services causing blindness and other ailments.
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Shattered Lives: Victims of Government Healthcare”

Abortion - Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Children - Christianity - Communism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Education - Family - Free Trade - Freedom - Health - Liberals - President - Socialism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Will Obamacare Put Abortion Providers in Schools?

September 11, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a section innocuously titled “School-Based Health Clinics,” the House bill, H.R. 3200, seems to set up Democrats to invite groups like Planned Parenthood into our schools to serve as a school “health clinic.” (‘Sec. 399Z-1. School-Based Health Clinics.)

And even more insidiously the bill provides for these “clinics” to be initiated immediately — effective date to be July 1, 2010 — whereas much of the rest of H.R. 3200 does not take effect until 2013. Why the rush? If one were cynical, one might think that the fast tracking of these “clinics” was meant to catch critics off guard. After all, if these “clinics” are slipped into our schools before anyone is aware of them, it will be harder to get them out or to protest the whole deal beforehand.

Here is how Sec. 399Z-1 begins:
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Will Obamacare Put Abortion Providers in Schools?”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Communism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Free Trade - Freedom - Health - House of Representatives - Liberals - President - Socialism - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Revenue Neutral? Hardly!

September 10, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

A couple of stories have recently come out that really put the lie to President Obama’s claims that “his” healthcare bill is revenue neutral. These on top of the original plan-killing news that came out of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office in July. In July the CBO said that Obama’s plan was clocking in at over a trillion dollars and said there would be no savings despite the rosy picture that the administration tried to paint for it all.

Early in September, the CBO dealt Obamacre yet another body blow to its claims of fiscal savings. CNSNews reports that the current House health bill will hike Medicare drug coverage premiums twenty percent forcing seniors to pay more for the same coverage they currently have.

“Overall, CBO estimates that enacting the proposed changes would lead to an average increase in premiums for Part D beneficiaries, above those under current law, of about 5 percent by 2011,” CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said to Camp in a letter. “That effect would rise over time and reach about 20 percent in 2019.”

So much for “helping” Seniors save costs!
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Revenue Neutral? Hardly!”

Anti-Americanism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Health - Liberals - President - Society/Culture - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Obamacare Gives Union Leaders Gov’t Power in Healthcare Bill

September 10, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Kevin Mooney of the Washington Examiner has a piece from Sept. 2 that warns that H.R. 3200, the House healthcare bill, gives special consideration to union bosses for positions on various healthcare management boards.

This means that Barack Obama is handing official government power to union bosses!

Sections 123 and 2251 of H.R. 3200, the version of Obamacare being pushed by House Democratic leaders, are of particular concern, according to NRTWC, because they could put union-backed appointees on new government committees that recommend mandatory health insurance benefits provided by private insurers, and personnel policies the bill describes as necessary “to ensure quality and adequacy” of the nation’s health care workers.

This is nothing but raw political payback. It has nothing whatever to do with “insurance,” or “healthcare,” or any legitimate attempt to save money and cut costs. In fact, with union bosses heading things up it is likely that costs will soar as they pad the plan with goodies to their friends.
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Obamacare Gives Union Leaders Gov’t Power in Healthcare Bill”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Congress - Conservatives - GOP - Health - House of Representatives - President - Republicans - Warner Todd Huston

Rep. Wilson Apologizes to The White House

September 9, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Dang it. Here I thought we had a new hero on the conservative side. Representative Joe Wilson (R- SC) yelled out “you lie” when the president DID lie during his healthcare speech Wednesday night. Now news has it that Wilson has called the White House to apologize.

Just when I thought we had a Republican with a spine, he whimps out on us.

Obama insisted that “his” plan (which is not his plan at all) would not cover illegal aliens with free healthcare coverage. The problem with Obama’s insistence that illegals aren’t covered the truth is they are. Many sources have proven that Obamacare does, indeed, cover illegals.

So, when Obama said it didn’t during his address to the joint session, Wilson passionately called out that Obama was a liar.

Wilson was right. Obama was lying.

Too bad Wilson lost his spine after this initial good showing.
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Rep. Wilson Apologizes to The White House”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Capitalism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Health - House of Representatives - Liberals - President - Republicans - Senate - Socialism - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Obama’s Newest Healthcare Sales Pitch: Lies and Damned Lies… I Mean HIS!

September 9, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The snake-oil salesman in chief offered “his” healthcare prescriptions this Wednesday night. What he’s been selling the last 5 months is anyone’s guess, but be that as it may, here are my reactions to tonight’s message written as I listened (a sort of delayed live blog, as it were).

First of all let’s be honest. Anything the President said tonight really isn’t very meaningful. After all, the bills have already been written and are out of committee. No rewrites will be in the offing because of what Obama said tonight. But the fact that he assembled this joint session is evidence that he knows he is in trouble with his healthcare ideas. This was a Hail Mary pass, for sure.

Obama started with his assessment of the economy since when he spoke to Congress last. “A full and vibrant economy is still many months away,” he told us. Naturally he claimed that his “bold and decisive” actions pulled us back from the brink. This is a tad hard to believe as we are still seeing deep job losses.

Obama opened his healthcare discussion by saying he is “determined to be the last” president to discuss healthcare. This is a bit odd since he is proposing that government take over our healthcare system. Realizing that federalizing our healthcare system certainly means that every president from this point forward will have to deal with healthcare. If “his” plan gets through he most assuredly won’t be the “last” president to talk about healthcare. Many, many more presidents will have this mess to deal with.
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Obama’s Newest Healthcare Sales Pitch: Lies and Damned Lies… I Mean HIS!”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Health - House of Representatives - Liberals - President - Senate - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Obama Talks Healthcare Tonight and it Doesn’t Matter

September 9, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

President Obama is going to offer “his” healthcare prescriptions tonight at a special joint session of Congress. But why is he doing this now? After all, the bills are already written and most of the committees have already passed their versions out of committee. What is it that Obama will say that will make any difference at all tonight?

Does the president imagine that “his” ideas will send Congress running back to the drawing board after they’ve already gotten their bills written and passed from committee? If he imagines that he is pretty naive.

We have several other eyebrow raisers with this joint session address, as well. First of all is the whole claim that Obama will suddenly at this late date offer “his” plan. How is it that President Obama has spent the last five months talking about his Obamacare plan but we are only now hearing “his” plan? What has he been talking about for all these many months? Hasn’t he been selling this as his plan all along?

If he hasn’t been selling these healthcare plans as “his” plan all along, then what was he selling? Did he even know? Did the president have any idea at all about what he was talking about lo these many months?
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Obama Talks Healthcare Tonight and it Doesn’t Matter”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Communism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Freedom - Health - Journalism - Liberals - Media Bias - President - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Gov’t Refuses Transplant, NYTimes Says it’s Insurance Problem?

September 9, 2009 by 4 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

It is interesting to see how people will twist and turn reality in order to support President Obama’s socialistic healthcare program, but this story has to take the cake. It is the story as detailed in The New York Times of Eric De La Cruz, a young man who was sadly diagnosed with a heart condition in his 20s.

Eric was diagnosed with severe dilated cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart that enlarges and weakens the heart muscle. Unfortunately, Mr. De La Cruz and his loving sister, former CNN on-air talent Veronica, toiled for several precious but wasted years to find a way to get the heart transplant that Eric needed to prolong his life. Mr. De La Cruz was never able to get his transplant and died waiting for a transplant that never came.

The delays were several. To begin with, Mr. De La Cruz did not have any insurance to rely on to fund his care. For several years the De La Cruz’ went through enrollment for Social Security disability benefits — of which he was twice refused — and later successfully for Medicaid benefits that would come through his home state of Nevada. Unfortunately, Nevada’s state enforced rules excluded anyone past the age of 20 for heart transplants. The state of Nevada determined it could not change its 20 and under rule even though it was clear that Mr. De La Cruz would die without the operation.
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Gov’t Refuses Transplant, NYTimes Says it’s Insurance Problem?”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Freedom - Journalism - Liberals - Media Bias - President - Religion - Warner Todd Huston

Wash. Post: Nationalized Healthcare is ‘The Most Catholic’?

September 9, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Washington Post’s religion writer Anthony Stevens-Arroyo had a lot of praise for Teddy Kennedy’s funeral Mass but not because of its religious content. Stevens-Arroyo thought that the thing that made the Kennedy funeral “the most Catholic” was the constant allusions to things political.

Stevens-Arroyo began his piece asking, “So, did Kennedy’s liberal politics interrupt a ritual meant to unite and not divide?” His answer seems to reveal his own liberal politics instead of any understanding of American Catholicism and he certainly comes down on the side of those that saw no reason not to impose political matters on a Mass.

After several paragraphs that celebrated the fact that Kennedy’s Mass featured “political persuasion in ritual,” Stevens-Arroyo goes on to excuse Kennedy for his support of abortion by removing any religious meaning to the issue and claiming it was only political. This in itself shows that Stevens-Arroyo, the religious reporter, doesn’t want to address the actual religious principle behind the issue.

But his view on what is and is not “Catholic” is what is most striking here.
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Wash. Post: Nationalized Healthcare is ‘The Most Catholic’?”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Democrats/Leftists - Health - Liberals - President - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

‘Life Expectancy’ A Bad Measure of Successful Healthcare

September 9, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Forbes Magazine will feature a report by the Hudson Institute’s Marie-Josee Kravis who points out the fallacy of tying a nation’s average life expectancy to its level of effective healthcare. In her estimation, life expectancy does not translate necessarily to good or bad healthcare and the left’s penchant for using it as a metric to denigrate America’s healthcare system is illegitimate.

Kravis writes that, “life expectancy reflects not only health care but also diet and lifestyle. A raw match of life expectancy against health care spending is naive.” She then goes on to discuss some of those mitigating factors. Things such as road fatalities, obesity, and drinking and smoking habits are different from country to country and thee factor materially affect life expectancy/ None of them are a result of the healthcare system, either. They are habits of the people, not failures of the healthcare system.

Karvis then offers one stat that might prove a model to get a better measure of healthcare: cancer survival rates. It seems that ours is better than other western nations.
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‘Life Expectancy’ A Bad Measure of Successful Healthcare”

Ann "Babe" Huggett - Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Capitalism - Communism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Education - Journalism - Liberals - Media Bias - Patriotism - President - Society/Culture - Western Civilization

A Teachable Moment Concerning Obama Quotations

September 9, 2009 by

-By Ann “Babe” Huggett

As the controversy surrounding President Obama’s September 8 education speech to the nation’s school children starts dying down, it’s easy for adults and even parents to forget that what was seemingly short, innocuous and narcissistic on the surface has a follow-up program of indoctrinating American children into the Cult of Obama. The speech is over, the lesson plans are just beginning and it’s going to be nine whole months of “Obama-this” and “Obama-that” for those students stuck in our ignorance factories a.k.a US public schools.

Originally, the main lesson plan was to have students follow-up their viewing of Obama’s “I-Me-Mine” oration with essays detailing how each student could personally “help Obama” achieve the President’s goals. However, that smacked too much of turning little Johnny and Janie Q. Public into junior enforcers of socialist engineering. Instead the essay was neutered to merely describing the student’s educational goals. Considering that most students have been trained to not only be dumber than dirt but to be eager participants in our current toxic culture, Obama’s exhortations to study, work hard and invent things must have come as quite a shock. Here they were expecting to be able to rhapsodize about becoming the next bling-laden rapper or Hollywood tartlet and instead now have to lower their expectations to pharmacist and secretary. Unless, of course, they can’t spell those types of careers and have to ask their teacher to suggest something like “brain surgeon” or “rocket scientist” in order to maintain self-esteem.
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A Teachable Moment Concerning Obama Quotations”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Censorship - Democrats/Leftists - Health - Liberals - President - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Obama’s Hate Speech: Team Obama Scrubs Website of Posting

September 8, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last week, the MyBarackObama website forced a meet-up posting down the memory hole. Obama’s Organizing For America (his ground stormtrooper organization that evolved from his campaign army) section of his website had a posting for what was going to be a meet-up in Illinois to push Obamacare. Apparently, even the extremists that run Obama’s website were ashamed of the intemperate rhetoric in this listing and so, down the memory hole it goes.

As it happens, the meet-up writer felt compelled to call Republicans “domestic terrorists,” and “proud right-wing terrorists. The posting went on with all sorts of ignorant comments and slams on half the American voter base, castings aspersions, calling names, and indulging in all sorts of hate speech.

A Google cache of the site can be seen HERE. Or if you click on the screen shot below, you can see what the page looked like before Team Obama scrubbed the site of this outrageous site.
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Obama’s Hate Speech: Team Obama Scrubs Website of Posting”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Communism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Free Trade - Freedom - Liberals - President - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Obamaism, Unionism, Interventionism… Are Turning USA Into a Third World Nation

September 7, 2009 by

Economists from George Mason University and The Locke Institute, as well as Nobel laureate James Buchanan are warning that if President Obama is allowed his interventionist, fascist way the U.S.A. will be laid low and turned into a third world nation.

Here is a short editorial by Charles K. Rowley of GMU that appeared in The Telegraph.

Adam Smith would not be optimistic in today’s economic world

Adam Smith once commented that “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation”. He meant that bungling governments imposed only a limited check on the economic performance of a Great Nation.
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Obamaism, Unionism, Interventionism… Are Turning USA Into a Third World Nation”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Business - Capitalism - Communism - Congress - Crime - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Jobs - Journalism - Liberals - Media Bias - President - Socialism - Society/Culture - Taxes - Thomas Brewton

Labor Day: A Tribute To Highway Robbers

September 7, 2009 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Labor Unions are a throwback to the days of travel by horseback, when highwaymen fell upon lone travelers, beating them and robbing them of their possessions. Unions still have the ambivalent status of thugs, to their victims, and Robin Hoods, to their supporters.

Crafts labor unions evolved out of the medieval system of crafts guilds, which used an apprenticeship system to restrict the number of craftsmen in every skilled trade and thereby to set prices and limit competition. After the start of the industrial revolution in the early 1800s, the crafts guilds morphed into unions of skilled workers, such as carpenters, electrical workers, metal workers, etc.

Today’s industrial unions of unskilled workers such as the United Auto Workers, longshoremen, and steelworkers have a somewhat different provenance. Their inspiration was Karl Marx’s several Socialist Internationals, which in different incarnations were headquartered in Europe and in the United States. Marx envisioned cooperation among all workers – the employed and unemployed – in labor unions as the means to destroy what he called the despotism of capitalism. It is such unions that bankrupted the automobile and big steel producers in the United States and reduced the port of New York to secondary status. (See Labor Unions: Socialism’s Shock Troops)
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Labor Day: A Tribute To Highway Robbers”

Barack Obama - Capitalism - Communism - Democrats/Leftists - Liberals - President - Socialism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Is Obama’s Commie ‘Green Czar’ A Quitter… Just Like Palin?

September 6, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama made a huge mistake thinking that everyone in America hates their own country just like Reverend Wright, the killer Ayers, and now green czar Van Jones.

But Obama was wrong. Some Americans still actually love their country.

So, now that Van Jones’ apostasies have been revealed and he’s quit his president appointed position, I have a few questions:

What was it that the left castigated Governor Palin for? Wasn’t it that she was a “quitter”? Didn’t they chortle and guffaw that Palin quit her position as governor? Wasn’t it the worst thing they ever heard of at the time?

We all know that the left was all frothed up over Palin’s resignation, of course.

So, I am sure that now the entire left will rise up in unison to attack Van Jones for being a quitter… right?

After all, the left is full of integrity, right?

Right?
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Is Obama’s Commie ‘Green Czar’ A Quitter… Just Like Palin?”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Business - Capitalism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Free Trade - Health - Jobs - Liberals - President - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Obama Admin. Clueless About Modern Medicine

September 4, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

With each passing day we see mounting proof that President Obama and his White House really haven’t a clue about modern medicine. Doctors all across the nation are finally starting to realize this, too. Cardiologists and Oncologists, for instance, are beginning to understand that President Obama and his takeover of our healthcare system is based on power and not service to patients.

Bloomberg is reporting that a group of Cardiologists and Oncologists are protesting the planed Medicare cuts in their services. The “Medicare proposal, announced July 1, slashes projected spending for care by cardiologists and oncologists by more than 10 percent each, while paying family doctors 8 percent more and nurses an additional 7 percent.”

The thought was to push preventative care but these cuts will have “unintended” consequences: rationing.
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Obama Admin. Clueless About Modern Medicine”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Democrats/Leftists - Europe - Freedom - Health - Liberals - President - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Sweden’s Healthcare Failures: A Warning to U.S.

September 3, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

David Hogberg of the National Policy Center has an interesting, in depth study of the mess that is Sweden’s single payer healthcare system from 2007 that is very relevant to today’s discussion of Obamacare because much of what Obama wants has already proving a failure in Sweden.

“The experience of Sweden demonstrates,” Hogberg says, “that when a nation adopts market-oriented reform for its health care system, the reforms will fail if the market is not permitted to work.”

Hogberg discusses some of the detailed changes that Sweden made to its system in the 1980s. These changes were made because costs were getting out of control and the government felt some market forces needed to be added to the system to help balance it. But the efforts were half measures that didn’t work.
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Sweden’s Healthcare Failures: A Warning to U.S.”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Britain - Democrats/Leftists - Journalism - Liberals - Media Bias - President - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Absurdity: Media Re-Brand Obama as Kennedy-Like With Photo

September 3, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Perhaps it is the Brit’s unseemly penchant to slobber over royals, but a recent photo of President Obama has elicited that ever-so-common, shop-worn, knee-jerk royalesque response in the media over there. (Yes, it’s a words-with-dashes sort of day)

The photo of the president at his Oval Office desk while daughter Sasha playfully spies on him from behind a couch has caused the Brit media to raise comparisons to the famous photo of J.F.K at his desk as little John, John plays under it.

At least three British news sources and one Australian outlet absurdly claimed that the Obama photo “invoked” the comparison to J.F.K. to which one can only say, stuff and nonsense. (The Telegraph, SkyNews, The Mail, and the Australian.)

There is no “invoking,” no provoking, no revoking, prevoking or postvoking. There’s no voking at all, but one does wonder what the Brits are toking.
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Absurdity: Media Re-Brand Obama as Kennedy-Like With Photo”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Freedom - Health - Liberals - President - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Ready For the Newest Obamacare Messaging?

September 2, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

ABC’s Jake Tapper has an interesting look inside the Obama messaging factory as it appears to be making plans to change its way of trying to sell Obamacare to the country. This change is in the offing because Obama is thus far losing the debate and they are all painfully aware of this in the White House.

Tapper has a revealing quote from former Senator Tom Daschle (D, SD) that presages the new, new way of selling the snake oil that is Obamacare.

“I think we have to do better at making this issue a moral imperative,” Daschle told the New York Times Magazine.

“I don’t think we’ve succeeded at that yet. I think the more we can bring everybody to an understanding about how this, in many respects, is the civil rights battle of the early part of this century — it’s a fight for the disabled, it’s a fight for the sick, it’s a fight for equal rights when it comes to health.”

So we’ve gone form calling it a “healthcare” plan, to calling it “insurance reform,” now, it seems, we are about to retool the debate into a “civil rights” issue.
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Ready For the Newest Obamacare Messaging?”

Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Freedom - Health - Journalism - Liberals - Media Bias - President - Warner Todd Huston

Obama to Offer His Own Plan?

September 2, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Marc Armbinder of The Atlantic is reporting that President Obama will be unveiling his own healthcare plan in the coming week as a way to kick start the debate back in his favor.

One of the easy digs against Obama until this time has been that he not only had nothing to do with the various plans floating around Congress (at least three bills thus far) and, worse, that he hasn’t seemed to really know what is in any of them.

Now Obama is about to offer his own plan. Some of it will be ideas already in play and others will be new.

He plans to list specific goals that any health insurance reform plan that arrives at his desk must achieve, according to Democratic strategists familiar with the plan. Some of these “goals” have already been agreed to, including new anti-discrimination restrictions on insurance companies. Others will be new, including the level of subsidies he expects to give the uninsured so they can buy into the system.

Obama will also specify a “pay for” mechanism he prefers, and will specify an income level below which he does not want to see taxed.

He will insist upon a mechanism to cut costs and increase competition among insurance companies — and perhaps will even specify a percentage rate — and he will say that his preferred mechanism remains a government-subsidized public health insurance option, but he will remain agnostic about whether the plan must include a robust public option. Officials won’t say whether the president intends to endorse a specific “trigger” mechanism if the competition mechanism fails, but they say he will make it clear that the final bill must contain language that increases competition.

But here are the real questions. So Obama has his own “new” plan to offer. So what? Does it have the force of law, has he found a few Congressmen or Senators to sign on, is it actual legislation of just his blather that has no force of law?
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Obama to Offer His Own Plan?”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Congress - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - Founders - History - House of Representatives - Liberals - Nancy Salvato - President - Senate - Society/Culture

Two Americas or One Nation with Liberty & Justice for All

September 2, 2009 by 1 Comment

-By Nancy Salvato

Fundamental law is the key to maintaining the rights and freedoms of every citizen in the United States of America. It is questionable how many people actually understand what is considered fundamental law, or why it is referred to as such. The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights -which was promised as part of the ratification of the US Constitution in order to ensure its passage-, are both considered to be the fundamental law of the United States. These documents, along with the Declaration of Independence are commonly referred to as our founding documents – the Charters of Freedom.

Fundamental law is so important to this society that the justices working in our federal judicial system are sworn to uphold it. Every case that comes before the Supreme Court brings into question fundamental law. If a law or decision contradicts fundamental law, it is to be overturned. The only way to change the fundamental law of our nation is through the amendment process and in the history of our country, this has only occurred 27 times, including the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution -which are encompassed in the Bill of Rights.

Every President and every US Representative and Senator take an oath of elected office, swearing to uphold the US Constitution.
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Two Americas or One Nation with Liberty & Justice for All”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Frederick Meekins - Free Trade - Freedom - Health - Liberals - President - Security/Safety - Socialism - Society/Culture

Healthcare Trickery & Scottish Wimpery: Headline Potpourri #6

September 2, 2009 by 1 Comment

-By Frederick Meekins

With Obama seeming to withdraw the so-called “public option” from the healthcare reforms being considered by Congress, many will assume that the battle is now over. However, things may be more dangerous than ever before.

Up for consideration are so-called “healthcare cooperatives” that will attempt to blend aspects of public and private systems, no doubt with the care and responsiveness that homeowner associations have become renowned for. What is to prevent companies from eliminating their insurance programs and pushing their employees into these?

This is what Walmart-types are drooling for in the propaganda where they say they won’t be happy until everyone is insured. What they are really hoping for is the opportunity to drop the coverage of their own employees.

The Libyan responsible for the bombing of PAN AM Flight 103 has been set free. Since the terrorist is dieing of cancer, Scottish officials claim that he was released in compliance with the nation’s values.
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Healthcare Trickery & Scottish Wimpery: Headline Potpourri #6″

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Freedom - Liberals - President - Socialism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Dear Leader Chairman MauObama Addresses School Children

September 1, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

We’ve been fortunate enough to receive an advanced copy of The One’s address to the nation’s children and have been authorized by the fairness Czar to reproduce it here.

Hello my little children.

Welcome to your first day of school, and for those of you that already started, I welcome you, as well.

In this historic address to all our precious children, I have decided to offer a new tone, a tone unlike what I was left with by the former president. I think we need to get beyond politics. You great kids aren’t interested in all that anyway, right?

I do, though, want to urge you all to study hard, do your homework, and strive always to do the right thing. We all must work hard to overcome the mess left us by others, of course. And to do that we all need to pay close attention to the world around us.

For instance, if you hear someone dissing your school, making fun of education, or telling you to just forget all that hard work, well you tell them I said forget that noise. If they keep it up, you tell your teacher about it.

And if you hear someone making fun of your leaders, why call me up and tell me about it. Even if it happens to be your friends or your family, call 1-800-tellObama, or go on the web and email me at fishy@whitehosue.gov.

Once you identify all these nasty people and tell me about it, I’ll send someone around to straighten them out.

And while you are at it, go home and tell your parents to help us pass healthcare reform. We want all you kids to be happy and healthy but some people want to kill you. Tell me about them, too.

Remember, do as I tell you and all will be happy and good. If you don’t you might die horribly.

That is all, Children. Remember to OBEY.
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Dear Leader Chairman MauObama Addresses School Children”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Freedom - Health - Liberals - President - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Obama to Offer His Own Plan?

September 1, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Marc Armbinder of The Atlantic is reporting that President Obama will be unveiling his own healthcare plan in the coming week as a way to kick start the debate back in his favor.

One of the easy digs against Obama until this time has been that he not only had nothing to do with the various plans floating around Congress (at least three bills thus far) and, worse, that he hasn’t seemed to really know what is in any of them.

Now Obama is about to offer his own plan. Some of it will be ideas already in play and others will be new.
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Obama to Offer His Own Plan?”