SPN 2009 Conference: Final Day

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Wednesday session began with a breakfast address by James K. Glassman the former Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, U.S. Dept. of State during the George W. Bush administration. He spoke on Internet freedom (as opposed to net neutrality) and expressed his hope that a thousand Internet flowers would bloom without onerous regulation squelching it all. (I’ll add some photos later once I return home. All the camera stuff is packed up for the trip home at his time)

Mr. Glassman is about to begin his new role as the executive director of the forthcoming George W. Bush Institute to be housed in Dallas, Texas at the soon to be built G.W. Bush library.

I asked him if he could keep in mind the danger that state taxation presents to the Internet and urged him not just to focus on the federal threat that the Obama administration is presenting at this time. He agreed and I am hopeful that this subject will form a part of his future strategy.
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SPN 2009 Conference: Final Day”


Don’t Copy Europe’s Mistakes: Less Government Is the Right Way to Fix Healthcare

In this Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video, Eline van den Broek explains that government interference is driving up healthcare costs in America and warns that European style health “reform” will make the situation even worse. Based on what has happened in Europe, she explains that universal health coverage is not the same as universal healthcare, that insurance mandates mean more government control, and that price controls simply do not work. More Information: www.freedomandprosperity.org


Rep. Wilson Apologizes to The White House

-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”


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

-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!”


23 Dems Say They’ll Vote No on Healthcare

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Hill is reporting that 23 House Democrats are vowing to vote no on H.R. 3200 as the bill now stands.

Speaker Pelosi, however, can afford to lose 38 of her fellow Democrats and still pass the bill, according to reports.

One of the standout quotes from The Hill’s coverage is a Pelosi spokesman’s reply to reporters about the bill:
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23 Dems Say They’ll Vote No on Healthcare”


Dear Leader Chairman MauObama Addresses School Children

-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”


Publius Podcast

-By Warner Todd Huston

Why do they let him get away with it? That is the question I ask this week on the Publius podcast. Why do they let President Obama lie repeatedly during his snake-oil sales pitch for healthcare?


In Oregon’s Gov’t Run Helathcare Lobbyists Prioritize Treatment, Not Doctors

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Independence Institute created an awesome new video based on original research to show the awful effects of health care rationing under Medicaid in Oregon, and how Obama Care would do the same thing.

As it happens, each year politicians get together to decide what illnesses will get priority funding. Naturally, once the politicians (not doctors, but politicians) decide what “deserves” to be funded by Oregon’s government run healthcare system, the lobbyists flood in and begin to agitate for their own priorities.

The result is that often times serious illnesses end up pushed down this list as the political needs of lobbyists get pushed up to be funded first.

“In less than 90 seconds the new video highlights the upside-down priorities of Oregon’s Medicaid system. Lobbying groups have used the political process to push coverage for special-interest causes like substance abuse and weight loss treatment ahead of treatments for some kinds of cancer on the priority list.”

THIS, folks, is the only and obvious outcome of turning our medical care into a political football just like Obamacare does.
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In Oregon’s Gov’t Run Helathcare Lobbyists Prioritize Treatment, Not Doctors”


Union Thugs Beat Up Man at Anti-Obamacare Meeting

-By Warner Todd Huston

The St. Louis Tea Party movement is incensed that thugs from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) beat up an African-American conservative that had come out to a recent anti-Obamacare protest. The attack sent the man to a local hospital.

In response to this unprovoked attack, the St. Louis Tea Party folks are going to descend upon the St. Louis headquarters of the Service Employees International Union tomorrow, Saturday August 8. The Tea Party folks are going to take the fight to these union thugs.

Notice how there hasn’t been ANY violence at these raucous townhall meetings… until the union thugs showed up. Then, all of a sudden, people are getting beaten up! THIS is the union way people. It is also the Democrat way.
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Union Thugs Beat Up Man at Anti-Obamacare Meeting”


White House Website Asking for Informants on Anti-Healthcare Advocates

-By Warner Todd Huston

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that the Obama White House is now asking the public to snitch on their fellow citizens by sending an email to White House staffers informing them of other Americans that oppose Obamacare. I know what you are saying. You are probably saying that I am just a rabble rousing conservative that is just trying to stir trouble. You are probably thinking that I am taking something out of context.

Well I wish I were.

An August 4 bog post on the White House website is clearly asking for Americans to snitch on their neighbors. WH staffer Linda Douglas, a former “journalist” turned political operative, is featured on a video telling tall tales about Obama’s healthcare plan and how wonderful it is for America. But here is the scary part:
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White House Website Asking for Informants on Anti-Healthcare Advocates”


What if the DMV Gave You Your Healthcare?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Here is a more thoughtful video on why Obamacare is bad for us all. Most of the videos we get are the flashy, soundbyte type, but this one is just one fellow having a conversation with us on why Obamacare is such a disaster economically and will curtail our freedom. It was put out by the Acton Institute.

Of course, one of the worst aspect of this policy, like most Big Government policies, is that Obamacare treats you like a child not smart enough to make your own decisions. But another problem is that once we get this mess in place it will be nearly impossible to get rid of it once we all realize what a mess it is. You know the old saying, there’s nothing so immortal as a government program.


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?”


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”


Slippery Slope 2: A Water Slide With Govt’s Bid to Control America’s Waters

-By Warner Todd Huston

Not long ago I wrote a piece on how the law often becomes a slippery slope when in the hands of judicial activists and radicals that look to the law in order to warp it to their agenda. Today I have a different example of that warping of law except this is one from the legislative side in Congress. This time Congress is attempting to take under its control all water in the United States, even that which sits on or under privately owned lands.

Senator Russ Feingold (D, Wis.) has introduced S. 787, legislation that is meant to help alleviate the confusion that has occurred for litigants since the 1972 passage of the Clean Water Act. Since ’72 a series of confounding decisions have put agencies and users in a quandary as to the implications of the act and its authority.

Unfortunately, Feingold’s revision of the bill makes matters worse. Oh, sure it solves the question of authority, alright. But it solves it by seeming to claim that the federal government controls all of America’s waters. From the puddle in your back yard, to the aquifer under your property, to the stream on your land, to every last rivulet, farm pond (even man-made ones), and navigable waterway, it’s all Uncle Sam’s if the over broad language in this bill is to be believed.

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Slippery Slope 2: A Water Slide With Govt’s Bid to Control America’s Waters”


Hillary’s Jihadist Friend

-By Warner Todd Huston

Hillary Clinton invited a controversial Muslim from Virginia, Esam Omeish, to participate in a conference call of Muslim leaders last week following President Obama’s call to reach out to Muslims in Cairo, Egypt. Omeish made headlines after it was discovered that he told a crowd at a pro-Palestinian rally in 2000 that “the jihad way is the way to liberate your land.”

So how did this radical Muslim end up as a member of Hillary Clinton’s outreach effort to loyal American Muslims? Is this just another example of the poor vetting process that goes on in the Obama administration? Did Hillary even know this man’s background before she invited him to participate in this conference call? Did she know this man’s outrageous Jihadist tendencies before her office contacted him?

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Hillary’s Jihadist Friend”


McCain/Graham Are Right on THIS one, Anyway!

-By Warner Todd Huston


After several years of missteps and dunderheaded RINOist policy proscriptions, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham got one right for a change. The unctuous pair published an Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal on May 6 that is spot on in its analysis of the dangerous road down which Barack Obama and the Democrats are taking us as far as the war on terror is concerned.

Because this issue is so important and so as not to waste time, we will take as a given here the poor standing that both Senators rightfully have with conservatives, set aside their RINOism, and move past their inability to “get it” on every other issue but this one. What McCain and Graham had to say in their WSJ piece is of supreme importance and it is an area where we can all agree upon in all the most important ways. So, let’s focus on the Guantanamo facility and the greater debate on the war on terror, shall we?

In the first paragraph of the piece McCain and Graham pinpoint one of the most injurious things that Obama’s possible upcoming “truth commissions” will have on future American administrations. Obama’s prosecutions of Bush officials for having given their honest council to the president will simply destroy the trust that future advisers will have to give their best council. If future advisers imagine that they can be hauled off to jail with ever new administration’s ascension to office, no adviser will ever feel safe. All will unduly hedge their advice for simple self preservation. This cannot help but hurt this country from this point forward.

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McCain/Graham Are Right on THIS one, Anyway!”


7 Senate Republicans Reply to DHS ‘Rightwing Extremists’ Scaremongering

-By Warner Todd Huston

Seven Republican Senators have this week signed a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking for the proof upon which the Department of Homeland Security based its outrageously accusatory report on so-called rightwing extremism in the Untied States.

The seven scold the DHS and the Obama administration for its over-broad generalizations that seem to assume that nearly half the electorate is prone to becoming terrorists merely because they hold right of center political views.

The letter alludes to the central point in this whole episode: that the U.S. government has now determined that the traditional American beliefs of small government and adherence to the Constitution is now suddenly a determinant in forming citizens into homegrown terrorist groups. After 200 years, all of a sudden believing in run-of-the-mill American beliefs makes you a terrorist! These seven Senators want to know why.

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7 Senate Republicans Reply to DHS ‘Rightwing Extremists’ Scaremongering”


CAGW’s 2008 Pig Book Released!

-By Warner Todd Huston

Citizens Against Government Waste is announcing the release of the 2008 Pig Book.

The Congressional Pig Book (download in pdf format) is CAGW’s annual compilation of the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. The 2008 Pig Book identified 11,610 projects at a cost of $17.2 billion in the 12 Appropriations Acts for fiscal 2008. A “pork” project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures. To qualify as pork, a project must meet one of seven criteria that were developed in 1991 by CAGW and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition.

The latest installment of Citizens Against Government Waste’s (CAGW) 18-year exposé of pork-barrel spending includes $3,000,000 for The First Tee; $1,950,000 for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service; and $188,000 for the Lobster Institute in Maine.

In fiscal year 2008, Congress stuffed 11,610 projects (the second highest total ever) into the 12 appropriations bills worth $17.2 billion. The 11,610 projects represent a 337 percent increase over the 2,658 projects in fiscal year 2007. The $17.2 billion is a 30 percent increase over the fiscal year 2007 total of $13.2 billion. Only the Defense and Homeland Security bills included earmarks in fiscal year 2007, so comparisons of other bills are made between fiscal years 2008 and 2006. Total pork identified by CAGW since 1991 adds up to $271 billion.

Visit the CAGW site to read a longer summary of the wasteful, pork spending perpetrated by Congress in 2008.

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CAGW’s 2008 Pig Book Released!”


Democrats Prove That Rooting Out Corruption Doesn’t Interest Them

-By Warner Todd Huston

Unless they can be used as weapons when Republicans are in power, ethics and corruption investigations are not interesting to Democrats.

During the final years of Bush’s presidency, the House Oversight Committee was abuzz with activity as Democrats used the power of the committee and it’s generous budget to “get” President Bush. Chairman Henry Waxman used the power of his committee chairmanship to subpoena Bush administration officials at the drop of a hat and his committee was deemed indispensable by Democrats for holding government accountable.

That was then.

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Democrats Prove That Rooting Out Corruption Doesn’t Interest Them”