What Obama Doesn’t Know WILL Hurt Us

-By Warner Todd Huston

Earlier in the week President Obama was part of a conference call held to talk about his healthcare plans during which he admitted that he was uninformed about what was in the healthcare legislation he was pushing for. But even as he admitted he had no clue about provisions of the bill, he insisted that certain things will happen once it’s passed.

Once the healthcare bill that is under consideration in the House of Representatives was released, it was discovered that one part of it would force all new insurance policies to conform to the government’s public plan options or such policies would be prohibited by law. In other words, the bill would effectively eliminate private insurance as soon as the bill passed. Obama claimed he’d never heard of this provision when asked about it.

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What Obama Doesn’t Know WILL Hurt Us”


Obamacare Means an End to Liberty and Freedom

-By Warner Todd Huston

It may seem silly, but the singular fact about freedom is that having it means you have the God given right to ruin your own health without government saying you can’t, or standing in your way to get the medical care you need to fix your own mess. Obamacare, however, will both tell you how to live (taking away your freedom) as well as withhold from you the medical care you need to fix yourself. In fact, by its very nature, government healthcare has to end up that way.

Do you doubt that statement? Do you think that the benevolent father in Washington would never withhold medical care from those in need just because they are fat, old, or because they smoke or drink too much? Is this just fearmongering on my part as far as you are concerned? Au contraire. It is already happening in countries that have national socialistic healthcare systems and the sad tale of Gary Reinbach (RIP) of Dagenham, Essex, U.K. is exhibit number one.

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Obamacare Means an End to Liberty and Freedom”


The Old Age Penalty For Healthcare Services

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last week England’s Yorkshire Post featured a few stories on the failure that is British nationalized healthcare. Among others, it featured one 54-year-old woman that had to wait 18 months to get an abscess taken from her mouth and a 74-year-old man that found he could not get the care for his heart condition that he needed because he was deemed too old to be worth the effort.

Once again, we have a perfect example of the sort of nationalized healthcare administered by government bean counters and bureaucrats (and NOT doctors) that will result here if we institute Obamacare.

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The Old Age Penalty For Healthcare Services”


Even Healthcare Liberal Wants Process Slowed

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama is just about to ride his “skycycle” over the edge of Snake River Canyon, right to certain disaster.

Barack Obama is rushing headlong off the healthcare cliff despite rising calls to slow the debate so that lawmakers can wrap their heads around the whole thing. Even liberal Douglas Elmendorf, Harvard trained and member of the leftist Brookings Institute, is practically begging Congress to slow down and deliberate with the attention the whole enterprise deserves.

Elmendorf is a true believer in healthcare “reform,” too. He believes in a massive, socialist take over of healthcare by the government. But even he is saying that the bills currently under consideration are a mess that will cause more trouble in healthcare than they will fix. His primary concern is that the legislation being considered would cause wild increases in healthcare costs despite the claim by Obama that such costs will come down.

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Even Healthcare Liberal Wants Process Slowed”


Time Warns President He Could Lose Healthcare Battle

-By Warner Todd Huston

It looks like Time Magazine’s Karen Tumulty is getting scared that we could be losing the healthcare battle so she is urging Obama to “step in” and fix it all for us. Why, only the dulcet tones of The One could save us all from… wait, isn’t this whole thing his deal in the first place?

What is curious with this piece is the fact that Tumulty seems oblivious to the possibility that if healthcare is failing to win the day, that failure could be squarely laid at the president’s feet. After all, it is his campaign promise and his “highest priority” that we tackle healthcare. Yet Tumulty, while mildly scolding Obama for not being hands on enough, is all too willing to blame everyone but Obama for the floundering of the debate.

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Time Warns President He Could Lose Healthcare Battle”


Is Dem. Arrogance Causing Pelosi Trouble on Healthcare?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Hill newspaper is reporting that Speaker Pelosi is finding that the tough slog that the healthcare debate is having in the House of Representatives is the “price” she is paying for the arrogant rushing of the Cap and Trade bill that the Democratic leadership earlier forced through the House. The way that bill was rammed down the throats of Democrat moderates rankled them and they are getting payback by slowing progress, even opposing parts, of the healthcare bill.

Pelosi rushed the climate bill through without giving her own members time to read the bill and come to understand it. The result was a vote that has gotten moderates beaten up pretty well by constituents that were never given an opportunity to voice their opinions before their representatives voted.

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Is Dem. Arrogance Causing Pelosi Trouble on Healthcare?”


Senate Calls Its Healthcare Plan Ca Ca. No Really!

-By Warner Todd Huston

OK, is it just me or did the Democrats on the Senate’s health committee make their healthcare plan out to be …well, poo poo? It can’t be just me. Look at the name they’ve chosen for their healthcare plan. They have called it the Quality, Affordable Health Coverage for All Americans plan. The acronym for that would be QAHCAA. How else can one pronounce that but cahca? And what is that closest to but ca ca? That’s a little Spanish lingo for… well, poo poo.

Yes, the Senate is raining QAHCAA down upon us with its healthcare bill. Soon we’ll be knee deep in QAHCAA. QAHCAA will be coming out our ears. The whole thing is a pile of QAHCAA. The Senate has jammed 10 pounds of QAHCAA into a 5 pound bag. We are all in deep QAHCAA.

Nice going Democrats. That is one fine acronym for your bill. Very fitting. Right on. Props to what ever half-witted staffer you let come up with that one!

(H/T P.J. Gladnick of Newsbusters.org)


Snowe Dampens Dems Healthcare Ardor and Polls Begin to Turn

-By Warner Todd Huston

Senator Olympia Snowe is the Democrat’s one great hope for “bi-partisan” healthcare. Of course, by that Democrats mean that Snowe is the only one that will give them any cover at all that what they are considering could possibly appeal across party lines. But, even Snowe is saying that the healthcare train needs to be slowed down despite Obama’s cries for full speed ahead.

Snowe has recently begun to say that a vote on the bill before the August recess, as Obama keeps pushing for, is way too soon and that the Senate needs to slow down considerably.

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Snowe Dampens Dems Healthcare Ardor and Polls Begin to Turn”


Obama’s Secret Dinner With Lefty Historians

-By Warner Todd Huston

Is it any surprise that the historians that attended a secret White House dinner with President Obama last month are nearly all well known for a leftist outlook on history? Is Obama programming his “historical” coverage already?

Was there a Richard Brookhiser in attendance or a Larry Schweikart? Was there someone like Forrest McDonald at Obama’s secret dinner? Nope. Except for one attendee, the invited historians have all used their status as historians to make all sorts of ahistorical proclamations about modern politics which is quite un-historian-like of them.

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Obama’s Secret Dinner With Lefty Historians”


NYT Decries ‘Partisan Divide’ in Healthcare, Never Mentions Democrat Opposition

-By Warner Todd Huston

Here’s another one of those wonderful examples of how the Old Media will use a headline that makes a stark claim about how rotten Republicans are for opposing a Democratic plan while at the same time conveniently ignoring the opposition to the same idea among Democrats.

This time it is the “partisan divide” in the healthcare debate. The Times tsks Republicans for solidly lining up to oppose Obama’s wild grab for nearly 20 percent of the nation’s economy through his healthcare plans. Yet not once does the Times mention the many areas in which Democrats are disagreeing with Democrats on Obamacare. The Times makes it seem as if there is no dissent among Democrats and it is only those meanie Republicans holding up the wonderfulness of Obamacare.

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NYT Decries ‘Partisan Divide’ in Healthcare, Never Mentions Democrat Opposition”


Arlington Cemetery Records a Mess

-By Warner Todd Huston

Salon.com has a disheartening story about the troubles at the national cemetery at Arlington, Virginia, those sacred grounds were thousands upon thousands of our nation’s heroes and notables have been buried. Infuriatingly, it seems that cemetery records are a mess, some of them not corresponding to headstones, many garbled or lost.

This is the nation’s most revered cemetery yet some soldier’s names are lost to the permanent record, some burials are unknown because of failed record keeping, it is even thought that some headstones are on the wrong graves.
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Arlington Cemetery Records a Mess”


Bad Economy to Get Worse With Obamacare

-By Warner Todd Huston

This week and last we’ve seen some firmer ideas from House Democrats on how they expect to pay for Obamacare and from those ideas it is becoming increasingly, painfully obvious that small businesses will be hit hard with tax increases and this during one of the worst economic downturns in decades. Right when we need economic growth from small business, the backbone of the country, Democrats are making to punish them thereby pushing any economic recovery far off into the future… if at all.

Not all Democrats want to tread this suicidal path, granted. We’ve discussed the efforts of the 40 self-professed Blue Dogs several times before (Here and here) as last week they sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Stenny Hoyer of the Democratic leadership in the House warning them that they weren’t necessarily on board with the current direction that Democrats in the House were going on healthcare.

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Bad Economy to Get Worse With Obamacare”


Obamacare Bill FILLED With Gov’t Pork Projects

-By Warner Todd Huston

It’s an emergency, they tell us. We NEED it NOW, the Democrats insist. No time to mess around, it’s time to get serious Obama told us. If we don’t get Obamacare quick the world will topple around us we are assured. So what is the Senate doing instead of taking the time to consider these important issues? Instead of worrying about healthcare, the Senate is spending its time larding the bill billions of dollars in pork projects.

As the Boston Globe reports, added to the bill is “billions of dollars for walking paths, streetlights, jungle gyms, and even farmers’ markets.” This spending is supposedly to improve the country’s “health infrastructure” – a laughable rhetorical device if there ever was one.

This is, we all know, nothing but par for the course in pork spending by the Congress that Obama claimed would be above such nonsense once he came to rule. Either he lied again, or Congress isn’t paying any attention to the president’s claims.

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Obamacare Bill FILLED With Gov’t Pork Projects”


Charlie Cook: Another Out of Touch Liberal

-By Warner Todd Huston

You know when a liberal has lost any capability to understand the common American when they completely miss the pain that liberal tax hikers cause the average citizen in this country. Charlie Cook recently showed this elitist attitude in a National Journal column on the outrageous costs of the Cap and Trade bill – better called the Cap and Tax bill. Of course, to him, the tax hike on the average American is not a big deal and he doesn’t understand how anyone could be upset over it all.

Cook is perplexed why Washington pols were “getting an earful” from constituents over the energy tax hikes that the Cap and Trade bill will force on the nation. He just couldn’t figure why adding “only” an additional $175 a year to the average citizen’s electric bill was such a big deal.

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Charlie Cook: Another Out of Touch Liberal”


1,866 earmarks in Energy and Water Bill

-By Warner Todd Huston

Want to see a full list of the earmarks in the Energy and Water Bill that the House is about to begin debating? Well, I hope you have some stamina because there are 1,866 of them to read.

You’ll notice that many of them are being requested by “the President.” That would be the Barack Obama 2012 re-election campaign project you are seeing there.

For some reason, my list is causing trouble with the code here, so the full list was posted by Jamie Dupree.
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1,866 earmarks in Energy and Water Bill”


Romneycare Failing, Obamacare Will Follow

-By Warner Todd Huston

It is surprising that the national debate on Obamacre has thus far excluded any real examination of the state wide healthcare program signed into law in 2006 by Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. But maybe the fact that Romneycare, a system closely resembling Obama’s policies, is failing on several levels serves as a reason that Democrats want to pretend that system doesn’t exist when debating their own programs.

The Wall Street Journal had a July 11 editorial that looked a little closer at Romneycare and found the whole thing wanting, suggesting that Obamacare might be “dead on arrival” if Romneycare is reviewed.

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Romneycare Failing, Obamacare Will Follow”


Obama’s Stimulus Stimulates Nothing But Votes for Obama

-By Warner Todd Huston

Of his Social Security program, Franklin D. Roosevelt once said that the whole thing had nothing to do with helping the aged. “They were politics all the way through,” he said of his Social Security payroll withholding taxes. In other words, the So. Sec. program was created solely to give the Democrat Party a permanent majority on the “we care” ticket. FDR knew from the get-go that the program was an unsustainable sham but it was all about politics, not old people anyway.

Seventy some years later Barack Obama was praised as a second coming of FDR when he ran for office. His promises of everything for everyone were hailed as a second new deal. As we all know the economy took a dive at the tail of 2008, it continued apace into 2009 and once Obama took office he campaigned hard for a “stimulus” plan to lift America from its economic doldrums. It was an “emergency” he said, we couldn’t get by without it, he claimed. He cared about all of America, you see, and he, the great father in Washington, had the cure for what ails us. The great god of D.C. loved all his children we were sonorously informed.

Well, maybe not all. You see, just as FDR’s “help” only went to further his own political goals and not the country’s economic recovery, Barack Obama’s benevolence seems to have benefited mostly those that voted for him.

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Obama’s Stimulus Stimulates Nothing But Votes for Obama”


Obama Wants to Fine YOU for Not Bowing to HIS Wishes

-By Warner Todd Huston

So, one of the aspects of Obamacare that is not being talked about too much is the fines Obama will inflict on average, middle class Americans that don’t want to join his nationalized healthcare service.

At this point, Obama favors a $1,000 fine to those of you that don’t want any part of a nationalized system under his control. That’s $1,000 of your hard earned money swiped away from you for not knuckling under to his dictats.

For an interesting exercise, I thought I’d check around the web to see what fines around the country would be for other things, things that are far more egregious of a violation of the law. Things like illegal drug possession, assault, or drunken driving.

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Obama Wants to Fine YOU for Not Bowing to HIS Wishes”


ACORN Shenanigans in South Carolina

-By Warner Todd Huston

Recently, the Smosska Corporation swooped into Florence, South Carolina promising to instantly create some 400 new jobs with an assurance of 3,000 before next year is out. For an area that needs jobs this seemed like welcome news.

Last week a job fair was held in Florence by the new company at which free health care was offered those that would be hired. At that time an aptitude test was taken by applicants if, that is, they had the $40 fee to pay to take the thing. The company claimed this “fee” would be used to pay for drug tests if they were hired. This fee, however, made some people curious.

The fee and several other curious characteristics of this company caused suspicions to be raised about its legitimacy. It turns out, there is not yet an actual building in which this Smosska Corporation is housed, there don’t seem to be too many current employees, and there doesn’t seem to have been any actual products created by Smosska in the past — though the corporation is supposed to have been formed in 2001. Even the original email address given out was a Yahoo account, not an official corporate web host address.

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ACORN Shenanigans in South Carolina”


Det. News: Can’t Even Write About Phone Etiquette Without Obama Love Making a Call

-By Warner Todd Huston

Have you ever met someone that just can’t stop talking about a particular topic or person regardless of the subject of conversation? Folks like that slip their obsession into every conversation until people just don’t even want to start up a conversation with them any more. And when an unsuspecting person starts talking with such a person, everyone in the know around them just roll their eyes and avoid eye contact. It is beginning to get like this when reading anything in the Old Media these days because it seems that regardless of the topic under discussion, start struck love for Obama is slipped into the piece somehow.

The Detroit News’ Marney Rich Keenan gives us a perfect example of this in hers headlined, “Whatever happened to simple phone etiquette?” It’s supposed to be a piece lamenting the loss of the formal way of answering a telephone and really has nothing to do with politics. Keenan waxes nostalgic for that formal way of talking to folks and seems to say this loss is a cultural coarsening that is something to mourn… except when Obama does it, of course. Yes, when The One does it, why it’s cool and hip and makes her “go weak in the knees.”

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Det. News: Can’t Even Write About Phone Etiquette Without Obama Love Making a Call”


NYT Encouraging Old Folks to Give up and Die

-By Warner Todd Huston

Hey, grandma, hurry up and die so that Obamacare can pay for healthcare for more worthy, younger folks. That seems to be the message that The New York Times is selling in order to smooth the waters for the nationalized healthcare system that president Obama is trying to peddle to us all.

The Times is running a series titled “Months to Live” in order to help spread the sort of end of life issues that are helpful to Obama’s healthcare agenda, one of which seems to be the idea that elderly should forgo any sort of heroic measures to keep them alive so as not to waste those resources that might be able to go to younger, more vital patients.

In a July 8 article reporting on the end of life care afforded Catholic Nuns in Pittsford, New York, the Times hailed the “dignified” way that nuns end life there with particular emphasis on how many of them refuse extraordinary efforts to keep themselves alive. Apparently, the Times thinks we should emulate the nuns and just let ourselves die without trying too hard to keep on living.

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NYT Encouraging Old Folks to Give up and Die”


Dems Address Paying For It

-By Warner Todd Huston

Soak the “rich.” That’s the plan. In fact, that is always the plan with tax and spend Democrats. This time it is a new “surtax” on Americans making over $250,000 a year (or $350,000 per couple) to pay for Obamacare.

Ominously, the plan has a hike mechanism right at the outset as Charlie Rangel (D, NY), head of the House Ways and Means Committee, has inserted language that will raise the tax higher if they don’t get as much money as they want with this first dip into the rich folk’s wallets. If anyone thinks Democrats will imagine they’ve gotten enough the first time and that the hike trigger doesn’t need to be pulled… well, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

So, who will this hit? Can anyone doubt that it will be doctors themselves? After such a raid into American’s paychecks, it will be doctors that will find that they are being taxed in order to pay themselves further reduced rates by government reimbursements through this new healthcare system.

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Dems Address Paying For It”


Democrats proving Again That Compromise is Not an Option on Healthcare

-By Warner Todd Huston

In this report we get a nice one-two punch. Not only are we seeing Democrats once again refusing even a tiny compromise with Republicans on Obama’s takeover of nearly 20% of our economy with his healthcare plans, but we also get to see another example of why Huffington Post is not journalism. I like a nice one-two punch for a Wednesday.

For one thing, the HuffPo article hilariously calls Democrat pitbull Rahm Emanuel a “conservative Democrat.” But let’s start with the more important political point and deal with the HuffPo chicanery second.

In a HuffPo “report” by Sam Stein, we see leftists, and extreme activists getting their shorts in a wad over the proposition from Republicans that the so-called public option only be set off by a “trigger,” one that would usher in that public option if insurance companies “fail to deliver” the affordable coverage that Obama is demanding. This trigger idea would exclude the public option at the outset only to have it come in later if needed.

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Democrats proving Again That Compromise is Not an Option on Healthcare”


One Reason Our Healthcare System is in a Mess: Trial Lawyers

-By Warner Todd Huston

OK, my headline is admittedly too simplistic. In fact, the whole medical malpractice milieu is sorely in need of a fix. We have unnecessarily large awards to aggrieved patients, crushing insurance costs to doctors to cover malpractice, a situation where defensive medicine drives up costs, and an entire industry of lawyers whose job it is, apparently, to rape the system and cause it to be burdensome for all of us. On top of that, we have a national party in the Democrats assisting these very destructive lawyers to do just that. This is a part of our medical system that truly needs reform.

We can start by getting Democrats to stop doing everything they can to bend over backwards for the John Edwards’ of this world — ambulance chasers extraordinaire. Democrats are the reason this has gotten so bad. And imagine, we are trusting to Democrats to “fix” what they, themselves broke with the greedy assistance of the trial lawyers.

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One Reason Our Healthcare System is in a Mess: Trial Lawyers”


State Workers Worried About Losing ‘Cadillac’ Medical Benefits

-By Warner Todd Huston

If you want to see the logical disconnect of unions and their lap dog lawmakers where it concerns costs to government, one need look no further than the over indulgent healthcare plan that New Hampshire’s state workers have been lavished with.

On July 4, the Boston Globe published a story that details the incredibly rich healthcare plan that state workers have succeeded in getting due to union negotiations with pliant Democrat lawmakers. It seems that they get just about any kind of care they want and all for “free.” It’s called a “Cadillac” healthcare plan and it is amazing for its coverage.

According to the Globe, surgery is free for New Hampshire state workers. So are MRIs, CT scans and X-Rays. It gets even more indulgent.

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State Workers Worried About Losing ‘Cadillac’ Medical Benefits”


Democrats Will Reveal How They Want to ‘Pay’ For Healthcare

-By Warner Todd Huston

We may know by the end of the week how the Democrats are claiming they will pay for their healthcare plans. News out of the House of Representatives is that they will introduce their bill on either Thursday or Friday of this week.

In the mean time, on Tuesday a caucus meeting with Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) will be held on Tuesday to discuss the funding plans. This will be followed by a brief by House Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) while Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) will speak on Friday. Rangel is last because his committee is in charge of finding the tax increases that will pay for the plan.

Democrats also say that the “public option” will be a prominent feature of their bill and will be similar to the current Medicare system.

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Democrats Will Reveal How They Want to ‘Pay’ For Healthcare”


Reid, Pelosi Don’t Want Healthcare Bill Read by Congress, Public Before Vote

-By Warner Todd Huston

Amazingly, neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nev) nor Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif) want to give Congress or the public much time to read the upcoming Healthcare bills they are rushing through their respective chambers before forcing a “yes” or “no” vote on them.

In a recent interview, Senator Reid was asked if he’d commit to giving the Senate and the public a week to digest any healthcare “reform” bill before he brought the bill up for a vote. Reid however, refused to make such a commitment.

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Reid, Pelosi Don’t Want Healthcare Bill Read by Congress, Public Before Vote”


Businesses Hit Hard With Obamacare, Say Goodbye to Mom and Pop Stores

-By Warner Todd Huston

The most insidious part of Obamacare is the backdoor taxes, and defacto control of our healthcare by the nanny state that President Obama’s plan is loaded with. And here is another one that is not getting much play. Employers would be socked with requirements to pay for 72.5 percent of the cost of insurance premiums for their full-time employees under the plan being considered in the House.

They would also be required to pick up an as yet undetermined percentage of the insurance plans for part-time employees, as well. This alone will insure that part-time jobs across the nation are terminated for the destructive cost involved in having them.

Or, conversely, many full-time jobs will be eliminated if the costs of insurance is so steep and that of part-timers less so. Either way, jobs will be lost because of these new, never before seen expenses.

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Businesses Hit Hard With Obamacare, Say Goodbye to Mom and Pop Stores”