Joe Eszterhas believes

Proof again there is hope yet for the morally derelict of our society.

I can relate. Been there, done that.

I actually voted for George McGovern and Jimmy Carter before I began to understand..

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Your new prescription is ready

.....if the Public Option Dems succeed in getting their way.



H/T Neal Boortz, via Fred Gregory.

Why health care reform will not work

The Dem majority will not make their trial lawyer affinity group benefactors mad by insisting that meaningful tort reform be part of any package.

Noteworthy:

"But this is the one reform Washington will not seriously consider. That's because the trial lawyers, among the largest contributors to the Democratic Party, thrive on the unreliable justice system we have now.

Almost all the other groups with a stake in health reform—including patient safety experts, physicians, the AARP, the Chamber of Commerce, schools of public health—support pilot projects such as special health courts that would move beyond today's hyper-adversarial malpractice lawsuit system to a court that would quickly and reliably distinguish between good and bad care. The support for some kind of reform reflects a growing awareness among these groups that managing health care sensibly, including containing costs, is almost impossible when doctors go through the day thinking about how to protect themselves from lawsuits."

When Cap 'n Trade goes down the tubes, watch for the EPA to backdoor it into existence

In a similar manner as the Obamanation will use in an effort to get Obamacare through via the Reconciliation process in Congress, CO2 taxation and regulation will be handled by EPA edict:

Here's the story of the current academic fraud being used by the True Believers in an attempt to perpetuate the continuation of the scam agenda.

Noteworthy:

"All of this is much more than an academic spat. It now appears likely that the U.S. Senate will drop cap-and-trade climate legislation from its docket this fall — whereupon the Obama Environmental Protection Agency is going to step in and issue regulations on carbon-dioxide emissions.

Unlike a law, which can’t be challenged on a scientific basis, a regulation can. If there are no data, there’s no science. U.S. taxpayers deserve to know the answer to the question posed above."

It's Thug Politics at its best, but the outcome will ultimately be the proper one: the death and burial of this most outrageous scheme yet invented to seperate the public from their money for something of no legitimate benefit.

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CBO vindicates Medicare Advantage companies victimized by Dem demogougery

CBO says Medicare Advantage seniors WILL suffer from lower benefits, to say nothing of the higher premiums, and the departure of their carriers from the market that will also result from the cut:

"However, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, in testimony before Baucus’s own Senate Finance Committee, said, in fact, the cuts in Medicare Advantage would result in a loss of benefits and lower enrollment.

'The effect of the original chairman’s mark on Medicare Advantage enrollment in 2019, would be a reduction of roughly 2.7 million people or 20 percent of the enrollment,' Elmendorf said Tuesday. '[T]he competitive bidding process would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries through Medicare Advantage plans.'

Elmendorf said that, by 2019, the value of extra benefits provided by private insurers but not by the government, would be cut in half if health reform is passed.

'The additional benefits would be smaller: $42 in additional benefits per month in 2019, and it’s a little less than half of what we would project under current law,' he said."

Another look at Net Neutrality

Who could be against net neutrality? After all, Wikipedia describes it as "a principle proposed for residential broadband networks and potentially for all networks. A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as one where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.

The principle states that if a given user pays for a certain level of internet access, and another user pays for a given level of access, that the two users should be able to connect to each other at that given rate of access."

Who would be against a principle like that, right? And didn't almost everybody agree that the recent uproar over the Time Warner plan to charge fees based on usage was a bad thing?

Holman Jenkins says it's time to re-think the entire thing now that wireless is becoming part of the deal.

Noteworthy:

"Here's where the real fight begins. Google has been one of the most influential net-neut proponents. It recently secreted its top lobbyist, Andrew McLaughlin, into a White House job as deputy head of telecom policy. But Google also understands, as its chief Eric Schmidt recently put it, 'It's very, very important that the telecom operators have enough capital to continue the build-outs.'

Google's trick will be to lobby for the optimum of Internet socialism—'tiered' pricing may be OK, in which some consumers pay extra for a bigger pipe. But usage-based pricing that would give consumers a reason to think twice before clicking on a Google-sponsored ad? It would be the end of Google's business model.

And Google has allies. The greatest fear of Microsoft, Amazon, eBay and Yahoo is having to plumb their deep pockets and offer competing payments to broadband carriers to speed their bits to consumers. They much prefer spending their money to sprinkle server farms around the globe, assuring fast, reliable access for their customers in a way that no newcomer can easily replicate.

......But then, for all the grass-roots pose, net neut has always been a weapon in the hands of status-quo companies trying to protect themselves against technological change. First AOL, now Google: A lot of things may be new under the sun, but regulatory incentives aren't one of them."

What's the lesson here?

For end users, I think it's "Be careful of what you wish for".

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Which seniors will be hurt the most when Obama and the Dems gut the Medicare Advantage program?

No big surprise here. It's the low income and minority seniors who will pay dearly if no cost/low cost premiums are not available to seniors when Medicare Advantage disappears, as it's currently likely to do by 2012.

Despite this, Baucus and the Obamanation demagogues the issue and plays Thug tactics at it's worst against an organization that dares to inform their clients of the potential damage they may suffer.

Noteworthy:

"Earlier this month, Humana sent a one-page letter to its customers enrolled in its Medicare Advantage plans, which offer private options to Medicare beneficiaries. Humana noted that, because of spending cuts proposed by Democrats, 'millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable.' The Kentucky-based company also urged its customers to contact their Representatives. Pretty tame stuff, as these things go.

Mr. Baucus took it as a declaration of war. He complained to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal health-care agency, which on Friday duly ordered Humana to cease and desist. CMS claimed the mailer was 'misleading and confusing' and told the company it has opened an official probe as to whether the mailer violated laws about how the insurers that manage Advantage plans are allowed to communicate with their customers, as well as other federal statutes.

......In fact, the Baucus draft legislation slashes $123 billion over the next decade from Medicare Advantage, which Democrats hate despite the fact that almost one-fourth of beneficiaries have chosen it over traditional fee-for-service Medicare. One reason seniors like it is because private insurers focus on quality and preventive care and try to manage benefits, as opposed to simply paying bills.

A new study from America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group, finds that seniors on Advantage in California spent 30% fewer days in hospitals over fee-for-service patients, based on federal data. Democrats say that insurers are 'overpaid,' but the cuts—as Humana correctly noted—mean that seniors may lose this coverage."

What Humana said is absolutely true.

But it's not just Humana that's being targeted for attempting to tell Medicare advantage enrollees of their potential loss:

" 'While these programs need to be made more efficient, if the proposed funding cut levels become law, millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable,' it said.

It urged seniors to sign up with Humana for regular updates on the health care legislation, and encouraged them to contact their lawmakers in Washington."

Disclosure: Several years ago, I represented Humana (I no longer am affiliated with them), but this incredible abuse of free speech transcends pecuniary interests.

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The common sense on health care reform that Obama and the public option "regressives" refuse to heed

"There are plenty of areas we can work together on. There really are. We ought to be focusing on preexisting conditions. We ought to be focusing on the area of portability so if you lose your job you don't necessarily lose your health care. And we ought to, and I think we could come together, on the issue of medical liability reform.

These are the kinds of things that we could do if the administration would push the reset button and scrap the bill that they've got."

-- Eric Cantor (R-VA)

It won't happen, Congressman.

The insistence in installing a strategy of subversive and incremental change as a way to their universal health care goal is more important than actually achieving what they consider to be an inferior form of health care reform. They will let this thing die if they don't get their childish way.

It's all about The Agenda.

Always, and forever.

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"Welcome to government of the activist, by the activist and for the activist"

Obama's failed "Stimulus", which apparently no one in Congress read, was mainly written by a collection of Leftists and "Regressives" of the most radical and obnoxious sort.

Excerpt:

"Clearly, the stimulus bill that no congressman read is not working. As it turns out, no congressman may have written it either. It's largely the creation of a coalition of leftist organizations called the Apollo Alliance, whose primary interests are saving the Earth, environmental justice and redistributing wealth. They are not friends of job-creating capitalism.

On Apollo's Web site, Sen. Reid, whose state also leads in foreclosures, is quoted praising the group of which former green czar Van Jones was a board member.

'We've talked about moving forward on these ideas for decades,' Reid is quoted as saying. 'The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them.' "

Why are we allowing Obama and his thug pals to operate like this?

We need to re-double our efforts to make sure we rid our nation and our people of this most ob noxious political, social, and economic re-making ever seen in America's history.

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So Obama "didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money"?

Yeah, right. And the Moon is made of green cheese.

Noteworthy:

The story in a nutshell:

Bertha Lewis is the CEO of ACORN.

In a review of Lewis’s contacts list, which was leaked to RedState, Bertha Lewis has the office, cell phone, home number, and private personal email address of Patrick Gaspard.

Patrick Gaspard holds Karl Rove’s position in the White House and was Obama’s Political Director during the campaign.

In addition to Patrick, Bertha has Patrick’s brother Michael in her rolodex. She lists Michael as working at the Advance Group.

The Advance Group is ACORN’s lobbying organization.

In other words, besides having Obama’s political director’s contact info, the political director’s brother works for ACORN via its lobbying shop.

It's all a coincidence, right?

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Obama and the NEA conspire to push The Agenda

"The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable."

Noteworthy:

"On August 10th, the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and the Corporation for National and Community Service hosted a conference call with a handpicked arts group. This arts group played a key role in Obama’s arts effort during his election campaign, as declared by the organizers of the call, and many on the call played a role in the now famous Obama Hope poster.

Much of the talk on the conference call was a build up to what the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was specifically asking of this group. In the following segment, Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, clearly identifies this arts group as a pro-Obama collective and warns them of some 'specific asks' that will be delivered later in the meeting."

Listen to the clips, and read the rest of the article......

Of course, the Obamabots won't see this as any big deal.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

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When is a tax increase NOT a tax increase?

When that noted Truthsayer Barry O'Bama says it isn't.

The constitutionality of this is highly suspect, but no one on the "regressive" side seems to care about things like since last year's election.

You will notice that Obama once again fails (on purpose) to acknowledge the dichotomy of mandatory health insurance and mandatory auto liability insurance.

UPDATE: It's officially a tax:

"If you put something in the Internal Revenue Code, and you tell the IRS to collect it, I think that's a tax," said Clint Stretch, head of the tax policy group for Deloitte, a major accounting firm. "If you don't pay, the person who's going to come and get it is going to be from the IRS."

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But a GREAT day golfing is worth.....well, you'll see

Details

Harvard economist says the impact of Obama's stimulus "will not be significantly different from zero"

But we knew that already, didn't we?

Noteworthy:

"Incoming data will reveal more in coming months, but the data available so far tell us that the government transfers and rebates have not stimulated consumption at all, and that the resilience of the private sector following the fall 2008 panic--not the fiscal stimulus program--deserves the lion's share of the credit for the impressive growth improvement from the first to the second quarter. As the economic recovery takes hold, it is important to continue assessing the role played by the stimulus package and other factors. These assessments can be a valuable guide to future policy makers in designing effective policy responses to economic downturns."

Not that any of this will phase our resident local "smart guy" and his fellow economic rocket scientists, who have consistently and arrogantly broadcast their complete ignorance and incompetence in their purported "analysis" of the current financial crisis.

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Obama's "Regressive" tribe is restless

The whiny attitude is extremely funny in "Obama's Presidency Isn't Too big To Fail", don't you think?

You know that Obama and his presidency, the most radical and leftist in history, is in trouble when the Lefty Looney Tooners start abandoning him.

This implosion of Obamacare looks like it could put a stake through the heart of these bloodsuckers before their fangs can do additional damage beyond the disasters they've already created. Hopefully, we will be able to erase the incredible damage already done starting in the 2010 election and culminating with a widespread victory in 2012.

Watch for the other signature pieces of legislation like Cap 'n Trade, draconian financial and communication industry control, illegal alien amnesty and citizenship, and others to be dropped for lack of political ability to ram these obnoxious notions through.

I think they've figured out that the nation and our citizens WILL NOT permit that to happen.

Oh wait, I shouldn't say that...hysterically irrelevant fools like Buie will start accusing me of advocating violence again.

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North Carolina's "Healthy Youth Act" will promote "sexual rights and freedoms" for children

Jessica Custer at Civitas has details about how the "regressive" education element has filled the newly adopted "Comprehensive Sex Education" program full of leftist worldview agenda items on the issue of sex and sexuality.

Excerpt:

"Students can then flip through the mini-book and learn about their 'sexual rights' which include; the right to choose how much risk one is willing to take sexually, the right to participate in whichever behaviors one is most comfortable with, and the right to express one’s sexuality—and how to do it.

Funny, I can’t remember reading about sexual rights in the constitution, nor do I remember learning that sexuality is a 'right'.

.....Grossman points out that ninety percent of parents want their children to delay sexual behavior but when they participate in CSE, they will hear an entirely different approach that does not have the child’s best interest in mind. The result: an unstable foundation of lies, false information and manipulation that holds sexuality as a right and not a personal decision."

Unbelievable!

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Holder (sort of) gets his wish granted

Unfortunately for him, the agenda-driven outcome he envisioned is just not going to happen.

The local "smart guy" does his usual smarmy best to turn things to an outcome his "regressive" sycophants will love, but the reality based local blogosphere will be discussing the subject here.

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Baucus anounces the Senate version of Obamacare: The Magic Number is 13 percent

That's the amount of your annual income Baucus envisions you paying for your family's health care BEFORE co-pays, deductibles, and any other coverage split.

For a family with two kids and $100k income, thats THIRTEEN THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS to start, or almost ELEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS PER MONTH, plus all the other items you'll pay when you actually use it.

Without having hard figures at hand, I'd say that represents about TWICE the amount most families now pay currently for personally paid family health insurance policies., with the only added benefit being no exclusion for pre-existing conditions.

What a deal!

And it's clear that the 10 year, $856 billion cost numbers being projected are a joke.

Noteworthy:

"The CBO's cost estimate understates the number who would receive the subsidy because it ignores the incentive for many firms to drop employer-provided coverage. It also ignores the strong incentive that individuals would have to reduce reportable cash incomes to qualify for higher subsidy rates. The total cost of ObamaCare over the next decade likely would be closer to $2 trillion than to $1 trillion."

This is nothing more than a major disaster for the nation.

It's time to make this piece of excrement die once and for all, and start over again on health care reform.

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Democrat/"Regressive" race baiting update

Oppose Obama on any and all particular issues on The Agenda?

Well, that settles it! You're just a racist, aren't you?

Here's their dirty little secret: It's all designed to draw attention away from his radical, failed presidency.

But we knew that already, didn't we? And increasing numbers of Americans are figuring that same thing out daily.

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As always, Our Congressman tells the truth

....particularly as it applies to Obamacare.

Last week's Obamacare speech made no real difference

Even the ABC/WaPo poll admits it, much to their chargrin and their best attempts to marginalize the implications.

It's not surprising, despite the Tank Media Tag Team's best efforts to discredit and downplay all the things negative about Obamacare, and the Obamanation in general.

Witness the latest example, the underreporting and misreporting of the massive protest in our nation's capital last Saturday:

"The Daily Mail said 2 million Americans participated. My friend Charlie Martin extrapolated from the pictures an attendance figure of 2.3 million. Here is a time lapse of the parade portion of the event so you can get a feel for yourself of the size of the crowd. Whatever the actual number it is sure to be seriously underestimated by the Obama-besotted members of the press corps who are also likely to misrepresent the participants and their views."

Some of the lefty blogger dummies (yes, I know-- that's redundant) actually tried to tell us there were only 30,000 in attendance!

Meanwhile, Joe Wilson hasn't been hurt by the Democrat demonizing of his truth-telling. Here's a reason why (2:56 mark):

Questions for Obama and Obamacare supporters everywhere

None of them wants to provide an answer for this question that Craig Ritter posed.

How will adding 46 (or is it 30?) million uninsured, mandating coverage for pre-existing conditions, mandating preventative services, mandating insurance companies pay a greater portion of out of pocket expenses, removing any lifetime caps on insurance coverage, be able to lower medical expenses, and lower premiums, when insurance companies can't just amass $70 trillion or so in unfunded liabilities, like Medicare has?

It's just what we would expect from "Health Care in Fantasy Land".

Excerpt:

"Most of all, he wishes Obamacare would pay for itself, plus all prescription-drug costs for senior citizens, with 'money already being spent' on 'waste and fraud' in Medicare and Medicaid, with the elimination of the pesky 'overhead' of capitalism, and with new 'fees' (taxes) on capitalism. In fact, he has no real plan for reducing costs, and everything he proposes only will add to them and to the burgeoning federal bureaucracy. As it is, congressional bean-counters say Obamacare would add $239 billion to the deficit over 10 years and many times that amount in each successive decade, and it comes with built-in unfunded liabilities of at least $9 trillion."

Obama and the "Regressives" demonization of insurance companies needs to stop

The smearing of health insurance companies as the "bad guys" is a favorite tactic of Obama and Obamanation politicians, and is aided and abetted by "regressives" and loony tooners near and far.

Here's some interesting facts that should put that particularly odious agenda item talking point to rest.

Noteworthy:

"To highlight abusive practices, Mr. Obama referred to an Illinois man who 'lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found he hadn't reported gallstones that he didn't even know about.' The president continued: 'They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it.'

Although the president has used this example previously, his conclusion is contradicted by the transcript of a June 16 hearing on industry practices before the Subcommittee of Oversight and Investigation of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The deceased's sister testified that the insurer reinstated her brother's coverage following intervention by the Illinois Attorney General's Office. She testified that her brother received a prescribed stem-cell transplant within the desired three- to four-week 'window of opportunity' from 'one of the most renowned doctors in the whole world on the specific routine,' that the procedure 'was extremely successful,' and that 'it extended his life nearly three and a half years.'

The president's second example was a Texas woman 'about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne.' He said that 'By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer more than doubled in size.'

The woman's testimony at the June 16 hearing confirms that her surgery was delayed several months. It also suggests that the dermatologist's chart may have described her skin condition as precancerous, that the insurer also took issue with an apparent failure to disclose an earlier problem with an irregular heartbeat, and that she knowingly underreported her weight on the application.

These two cases are presumably among the most egregious identified by Congressional staffers' analysis of 116,000 pages of documents from three large health insurers, which identified a total of about 20,000 rescissions from millions of policies issued by the insurers over a five-year period. Company representatives testified that less than one half of one percent of policies were rescinded (less than 0.1% for one of the companies)."

It's amazing how the lies and exaggerations from those who want to impose the draconian "regressive" version of health care on the rest of us never get fisked by the Tank team Tag team partners to The Agenda.

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"The Biggest Liar of Them All"

Robert Romano:

"Barack Obama is lying. And there is no need to apologize for telling it like it is, as Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) did after he shouted 'You lie!' as Obama spoke to the joint session of Congress on Wednesday. He’s a liar.

As you know, in the speech to Congress, Obama took one last bite at the apple to try and sell his government takeover of the health care sector. Therein, he attempted to dispel what he termed to be 'bogus claims.' Let us review a few of his 'clarifications.'

On Wednesday, Obama claimed illegal aliens would not be eligible for the government-run plan. But they are: the only eligibility requirement is income. As ALG News recently reported in 'The Hidden Cost of ObamaCare,' under the House version of the so-called public “option,” individuals up to 400 percent of the poverty level, or making approximately $43,320 or less annually, will be eligible for some level of health coverage under the plan whether through the public 'option,' Medicaid, or otherwise.

Or, 91.5 million people as of 2006 aged 25-65 who fell into that income bracket, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Throw in the 35 million who were 65 and older at that time, and the total figure comes to over 125.8 million eligible for ObamaCare, compared with 80.5 million who now receive their health care from the government.

As a result, approximately 45 million more people—the exact figure the Census Bureau reports as being uninsured—will be receiving their health care from Uncle Sam. And it includes illegal immigrants! Why?

As House Republican Leader John Boehner has pointed out, there is no prohibition enforcement in the bill against non-citizens receiving coverage under the so-called public 'option.' Wrote Boehner on his website, 'Republicans offered two amendments in the Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce Committees that were rejected by Democrats. The first would have prevented illegal immigrants from being automatically enrolled into Medicaid and the second would have required better screening for applicants for federally-subsidized health care to ensure they are actually citizens or legal immigrants.'

Without a citizenship verification requirement, a person would only need to prove they make less than $43,320, and they’re in. Those are the facts.

The lies do not stop there. Obama challenged opponents who believe government-run care would result in rationing. He said, 'The best example is the claim made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but by prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens.'

To be fair, this is more than a slight misrepresentation on Obama’s part, but it is true that under the plan, there will be bureaucrats rationing treatment—and that in essence will result in seniors being denied care. And, yes, that very likely means they would die sooner than if they had received the life-saving treatment, surgery, or drugs now covered under Medicare. How do we know that?

A means of cutting 'costs' that has been repeatedly touted by the Obama Administration, as reported by Politico, is 'a White House proposal to empower an outside body, like the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, to make binding recommendations for cost cuts in government-run health care programs.' That includes Medicare, which House Democrats have already said they plan on cutting by $500 billion over ten years.

On July 22nd, Obama elaborated on his plans to cut Medicare to pay for his overall plan by allowing an 'independent group of doctors and medical experts' to determine how to cut the program tens of millions of seniors now depend on for medical care.

And he said it again in his speech, '[W]e will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead.' That’s it. That’s the rationing board—and Obama specifically defined what their role would be, when he defined what he viewed as 'waste' in the system.

Obama was answering the question of a woman whose mother had a pacemaker installed at the age of 100 after being told she was too old. She’s now 105.

Here’s what Obama said in full response, 'We’re not going to solve every difficult problem in terms of end-of-life care, a lot of that is going to have to be we as a culture and as a society starting to make better decisions within our own families and for ourselves. But, what we can do is make sure that some of the waste that exists in the system that is not making anybody’s mom better, that is loading upon additional tests or additional drugs, that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know, and your mom know, that, you know what, this isn’t going to help, maybe you’re better off not having the surgery but taking the pain killer.'

So, the rationing board will let doctors and individuals know what is and is not covered.

Just how would they let the doctors know? By not paying for those 'unnecessary' tests and drugs. And how would those aging mothers find out? When those life-extending treatments are denied. The message, in short, will be: take two aspirins and call the undertaker.

And Barack Obama knows it. Most importantly, seniors know it.

According to James Carville’s Democracy Corps polls, a full 54 percent of seniors oppose the Obama nationalized health care plan. According to the poll conducted in June, 41 percent of seniors strongly oppose the Obama plan and only 14 percent strongly favor it.

'What every single member of Congress needs to do is go home to their districts and tell those 65 years old and older, and those who soon will be, that the plan is take their health care away to pay for somebody else’s,' said ALG President Bill Wilson when the rationing board was announced.

Finally, Obama said that 'The plan will not add to our deficit.' That is just an out-and-out lie.

The Congressional Budget Office Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf, the non-partisan budget analyst single-handedly delivered a critical blow to the ObamaCare plan, stating that 'the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health-care.' And that 'The [cost] curve is being raised.' By how much?

Even assuming the best case scenario, that the program operates as intended to insure an additional 45 million people, at a cost of $4,700 for an average insurance premium, the total cost would rise to $211.5 billion extra annually for government health care responsibilities. That’s $2.115 trillion over ten years. And that’s assuming that the number always stays at 45 million eligible. Which it won’t.

Obama said himself that 'If you lose your job or you change your job, you'll be able to get coverage.' Right now, that includes about 50.4 million people, according to the current U-6 unemployment rate at 16.8 percent as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Should economic conditions worsen, the simple eligibility based on income noted above and employment status would still apply, and the government health care rolls would soar.

It goes on and on. So, instead of apologizing for calling out these blatant lies told by Obama to the American people, it is time to dispel them once and for all. Barack Obama is a liar. Only now, he can no longer get away with it."

No, Democrats would NEVER treat a president as disrespectfully as Wilson did last night

Rahmbo:

"After the speech, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff who sat a few rows in front of Mr. Wilson, said he immediately approached senior Republican lawmakers to encourage them to identify the heckler and urge him to issue an apology quickly.

'No president has ever been treated like that. Ever,' Mr. Emanuel said."

Really?

Sgt. Friday and Col. Potter tell Obama to wise up

Hat tip: Fred Gregory.

Comments from the Cato live blog of the Obama speech tonight

Link.

Here are some excerpts:

8:21
Michael F. Cannon:

“Buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer.” Absurd. CBO: “Premiums for employment-based plans are expected to average about $5,000 per year for single coverage and about $13,000 per year for family coverage in 2009. Premiums for policies purchased in the individual insurance market are, on average, much lower—about one-third lower for single coverage and one-half lower for family policies.”

8:23
Cato Institute:

Here's a real look at health care systems around the world. "The grass is not always greener," says Michael Tanner.

8:27
Michael F. Cannon:

“Our overall efforts have been supported by an unprecedented coalition of doctors and nurses; hospitals, seniors’ groups and even drug companies – many of whom opposed reform in the past.” …but who now support reform, because we’ve bought them off!

Michael F. Cannon:

“There is agreement in this chamber on about eighty percent of what needs to be done, putting us closer to the goal of reform than we have ever been.” No, there has been silence about that 80 percent, because everyone’s been focusing on the other 20 percent. Once people start delving into the mandates and price controls in the 80 percent, they’re not going to like what they see: higher premiums, higher taxes, lower wages, lower-quality care, and government rationing.

8:29
Michael F. Cannon:

“It’s a plan that asks everyone to take responsibility for meeting this challenge – not just government and insurance companies, but employers and individuals.” Translation: I’m going to tax the hell out of you, but I don’t want you to notice how much I’m going to tax you. So I’m going to tax employers and insurance companies, and they’re going to pass the taxes on to you. The taxes on employees and individuals won’t even show up in the government’s budget. It’s all very clever. No, seriously – just ask my economic advisor Larry Summers.

Michael F. Cannon:

“Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.” Umm, Mr. President? You’ve repeated lots of untrue stuff before – in particular that very statement. Are you making it true this time? Or are you still pretending?

8:49
Michael F. Cannon:

Ah, the "Medicare Trust Fund." I'm not going to take a single dollar out of this empty pocket to pay for health care reform.


Michael D. Tanner:

Thus, one in five seniors will be kicked off Medicare Advantage

9:14

Patrick Basham:

The GOP should pose Obama these two questions: (1) Name one Administration or Congress that has eliminated several hundred billion dollars of waste from government programs? (2) Specify the waste in Medicare & Medicaid that you'll eliminate totaling several hundred billion dollars?

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Friedman joins Krugman in the Over the Edge category

Times must be tough for Tommy Terrific Friedman, and he needs to draw some attention to his work.

That's the only logical explanation for his recent Times column telling us of the greatness of ChiComm one party rule.

Kenneth Anderson takes the arrogant and pretentious Krugman wannabee to task.

"Friedman does not mean this merely. . .in the sense that there are better and worse autocrats and dictators. That point was forcefully and correctly made by Jeane Kirkpatrick back in Dictators and Double-Standards in the 1980s. No, lest anyone misunderstand him, Friedman is at pains to emphasize that he is not doing a Double-Standards Dictators, Least Worst Alternative analysis here. That would be important, as assessing tradeoffs usually is. On the contrary, he is deliberately comparing autocracy and democracy, and specifically China and the United States, and finding the latter wanting by the admirably robust standards of the former.

Friedman does not mean this merely. . .in the sense that there are better and worse autocrats and dictators. That point was forcefully and correctly made by Jeane Kirkpatrick back in Dictators and Double-Standards in the 1980s. No, lest anyone misunderstand him, Friedman is at pains to emphasize that he is not doing a Double-Standards Dictators, Least Worst Alternative analysis here. That would be important, as assessing tradeoffs usually is. On the contrary, he is deliberately comparing autocracy and democracy, and specifically China and the United States, and finding the latter wanting by the admirably robust standards of the former.

There is the dismaying whiff here of the 1930s and the loss of faith in those years by political elites and the chattering classes in the future of parliamentary democracy as measured against the robust and healthy decision-making processes of those, uh, non-parliamentary systems; a loss of faith in the ideal of parliamentary democracy when what, in fact, was warranted was a loss of faith in a particular cadre of corrupt and cynical political elites themselves. There is decadence here, but it is not the decadence of democracy. (Update: To be clear, before chattering classes get all chattery ... it is just a whiff, of decadence, and no, not the F-word.) The impasse of the American political class over reaching Friedman's elite-preferences on everything from health care to climate change, and his dismissal of the processes of democracy in favor of China's autocratic rule, lead him to th[] remarkable thought [that one-party autocracy is better than what we have in the United States today]

It is characteristic of Thomas Friedman's thought to move from particular issues of policy to sweeping conclusions about the Nature of Man and God and the Universe, typically based around some attractively packaged metaphor - flat earth, hot earth, etc. Rarely, however, has he been quite so clear about the directness of the connections he sees between his preferred set of substantive outcomes; his contempt for American democratic processes that have, despite all, managed to hang in there for, I don't know, a few times the length of time between the Cultural Revolution and today; and his schoolgirl crush on autocratic elites because they are able to impose from above.

Let me just say for the record that this is a monstrous column. When faced with American public defection from elite-preferred outcomes on certain policy issues that involve many difficult tradeoffs of the kind that democracies, with much jostling and argument, are supposed to work out among many different groups, Friedman extols the example of ... China's political system, because it's both enlightened and autocratic? Who among us knew?"

Hat tip: PowerLine.

What Obama should say tonight

Holman Jenkins has the Obaminator's speech all ready to go.

Excerpts:

"Critics wonder: How can a new 'public option' bring meaningful competition to the health-insurance marketplace and drive down costs?

They miss the point. The great work done so far has tended to squash competition, and we would continue this work—by restricting the ability of insurance companies to design and market their policies; by regulating what coverage they can offer; by using tax distortions to keep consumers in the dark about what their health care really costs, so they will continue to treat it as a 'free lunch' when it actually gobbles up more and more of their disposable incomes.

People, this is why insurance rates keep going up and up, and why a competitive marketplace, in which consumers reward those who provide high-quality care at low cost, hardly exists. And I say again, with all humility, this is a great bipartisan achievement.

So the purpose of our public option is not to change any of this, but merely to scoop up the growing number of Americans who won't be able to get private coverage because we've made private coverage so expensive and uneconomic."

....and:

"But let's put aside our differences and recognize how much we have already accomplished together. I say to Republicans and Democrats alike, if we can just keep working together to inflate the burden of public and private health-care spending as we have the past 30 years, we will push the system to the breaking point. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. (Democrats chant, 'Yes we can.' Nancy Pelosi levitates above the audience, flies around the chamber three times and bursts into flame. . . .)"

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More on the true costs of Obamacare and the other underfunded entitlements

Are you ready for another run on the dollar?

This time, its not George Soros and his thugs. It's the ChiComs:

Noteworthy:

"Do we all get that? The biggest holder of foreign debt, $2,000,000,000,000 worth according to this story, is going to try to slip away from the dollar while no one’s looking.

What Turbo Tax Timmy is doing is printing dollars to buy up Treasuries. Meaning, he’s printing money, which has no intrinsic value other than what you can get someone to trade you for it … that is, it’s basically a piece of paper, to buy up an asset which at least gives the appearance of having value since at least in theory the Fed will redeem it for dollars."

And yet the fools (especially those local ones) who say the financial meltdown is not a crisis of confidence will remain clueless.

I guarantee that they will be no more ready to protect themselves than they have been throughout this mess they helped in creating.

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Obamacare will result in lower living standards for Americans

When combined with the massive defecits and the inevitable poor quslity of service we can expect from the plan as currently formulated, Lower living standards are an inevitable outcome.

Noteworthy:

"The CBO's deficit projections are based on the optimistic assumptions that the economy will grow at a healthy 3% pace with no recessions during the next decade; that there will be no new spending programs after this year's budget; and that the rising national debt will increase the rate of interest on government bonds by less than 1%. More realistic assumptions would imply a 2019 deficit of more than 8% of GDP and a government debt of more than 100% of GDP.

Such enormous deficits would crowd out productivity-enhancing investments in new equipment and software as the government borrows funds otherwise available to private investors. The result would be slower economic growth and a lower standard of living.

In the nearer term, the projected deficits could cause interest rates on bonds and mortgages to rise sharply if bond investors fear that the government will not prevent inflation. This is a greater risk now that more than half of the U.S. government debt is held by the Chinese and other foreign investors. Such an interest rate rise could kill a recovery in 2010 or 2011 and depress growth in the years that follow."

The "regressive" drumbeaters for government-run health care would not care about that sort of thing, as long as their cherished government health care program gets enacts. When their quality of living deteriorates because of the things discussed here, they will only see it as "a further failure of the free market philosophy" anyway, and agitate for further statism in our society.

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The Huff 'n Puff Posters blame Beck for Van Jones' departure

It's not Glenn Beck's fault that Jones is a wacko looney tooner.

Read this hysterical bit:

".....the hypocrisy uncovers the real truth of this whole affair: Van Jones was targeted by the political terrorist known as Glenn Beck -- the man who leads a 21st century lynch mob looking to hunt down anyone (and especially anyone black) who has ever been a part of progressive movement politics.

....In placating the demands of this terrorist and his lynch mob, the Obama administration has simultaneously empowered that terrorist and that lynch mob, while abandoning its own progressive base.

WAY too funny!

It's pretty apparent Obama was glad to see a political liabilty go. Jones is one of the many fringecakes that never should have made it into an Obama Administration.

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Understanding what the true costs of Obamacare will be

Walter Williams, at the Patriot Post US.

"President Obama and congressional supporters estimate that his health care plan will cost between $50 and $65 billion a year. Such cost estimates are lies whether they come from a Democratic president and Congress, or a Republican president and Congress.

... At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee, along with President Johnson, estimated that Medicare would cost an inflation-adjusted $12 billion by 1990. In 1990, Medicare topped $107 billion. That's nine times Congress' prediction. Today's Medicare tab comes to $420 billion with no signs of leveling off. How much confidence can we have in any cost estimates by the White House or Congress?

Another part of the Medicare lie is found in Section 1801 of the 1965 Medicare Act that reads: 'Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize any federal officer or employee to exercise any supervision or control over the practice of medicine, or the manner in which medical services are provided, or over the selection, tenure, or compensation of any officer, or employee, or any institution, agency or person providing health care services.' Ask your doctor or hospital whether this is true."

New and Improved "Racial Justice"

Mark Alexander, at the Patriot Post US:

"The Justice Department is planning to hire more than 50 new civil rights lawyers whose job will be to target 'racism' in America. So much for Barack Obama's post-racial presidency.

Indeed, it seems that Eric Holder's contemptible job as Attorney General is to politicize and racialize 'justice,' both by investigating the good guys at the CIA for protecting America over the last eight years and now by rooting out (read: making up) 'racism.'

Naturally, to liberals, racism is a one-way street. In February, Holder, who is black, said, '[I]n things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.' He continued, '[W]e, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.' Now, thanks to Holder, some folks can look forward to talking more about race -- from within a Justice Department interrogation room."

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"Pulling the trigger on Obamacare"

The "trigger" is just another Trojan Horse for government run health care, and is just the latest smoke and mirrors routine "regressives" have used all along to deceive Americans about their true objectives for "health care reform".

"Health care reform" as currently constituted needs to die NOW. It's time to start all over on a brand new proposal with no smoke and mirrors, with no open-ended mandates, with complete transparency throughout the entire process.

From Robert Romano, at Get Liberty Dot Org:

As bipartisan negotiations in the Senate have failed to trick Republicans into supporting a vigorous government-run takeover of the entire health care system, Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are making a last ditch effort to sway at least one Republican member: Olympia Snowe of Maine.

Reports CNN Politics, “For the past months, Snowe has been pushing the idea of a safety net plan, or ‘trigger,’ for a public health care option as part of a key compromise. A source familiar with her negotiations with Obama said that's one of the things they're talking about…The idea would give insurance companies a defined period to make changes in order to help cover more people and drive down long-term costs. But if those changes failed to occur within the defined period, a trigger would provide for creating a public option to force change on the insurance companies.”

Concern over a government-run medical system has galvanized citizens nationwide in opposition to let their voices be heard in town halls. And they’ve left the members of Congress ducking for cover. The political damage has been so extensive that Barack Obama is preparing an address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday to in yet another attempt to sell his latest scheme for ObamaCare.

According to FOX News, White House aides have said that Obama “will deliver the message that Democrats are willing to go it alone if it cannot get Republicans behind it.” The joke is that he does not actually need a single Republican vote to pass what he wants if his own party would just rally behind him.

The true trouble that ObamaCare faces is that Democrats believe that they are on a political Titanic—and vulnerable members in both chambers are stampeding to get to the lifeboats.

The reason Democrats want Snowe—or somebody like her—is so they can parade her around as the token Republican brokering a grand compromise, thus providing what they believe is political cover. And so, now they are ready to give Snowe what she has been asking for: a delayed implementation of the government takeover of the health care system in exchange for selling out her own party.

And if Olympia falls for the Snowe-job, she will do so knowing full well that her sell-out is a charade. After all, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already played the socialist hand.

“If they want no public option, but a trigger, you can be sure that the trigger will bring on a very robust public option,” said Pelosi, knowing full well that she gets to define and control the mechanism, tied to the escalating costs of providing life-saving treatments.

And of course, government controls that, too. It currently mandates minimal levels of coverage to be provided at the state level. It prohibits insurance to be purchased across state lines. It thus allows regional, corporatist monopolies to operate with impunity that in turn pay handsomely via political protection money to elected officials keep the status quo.

In the legislation now before Congress, even if the so-called public “option” were put on a trigger tied to costs, the bill would still force employers to provide coverage and individuals to buy coverage or else pay a tax. It would establish a whole new body of regulations that would force insurance companies that would eventually, inevitably bankrupt private insurance.

As reported by the Heritage Foundation, the legislation establishes “a single minimum coverage standard that will eventually apply to nearly all health plans and establishes a new ‘Health Benefits Advisory Committee’ within HHS to make detailed recommendations, which the secretary of HHS would then impose through regulation.”

Thus, by simply upping what must be minimally covered under private health plans, costs would skyrocket, and the deadly trigger on ObamaCare would be pulled.

They can call it whatever they want. A delayed public “option.” A compromise. A trigger. But, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid are determined to get what they want. And whether now, sooner, or later, they are determined to force through a bill that inevitably results in socialized medicine.

Olympia Snowe can go along with it, too, if she wants. But she must realize that, really, she’ll only be pulling the trigger on the American people. On freedom of choice. And on quality health care that provides for the young and protects the old.

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Regarding the Van Jones "truther" news

Byron York marvels at the lack of a Tanked Media feeding frenzy.

Excerpt:

"If you were to receive all your news from any one of these outlets, or even all of them together, and you heard about some sort of controversy involving President Obama's Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, your response would be, 'Huh?'"

Gosh, Byron.

As Instapundit suggests, it's not like Jones said "Macaca", or something.

At any rate, WaPo's too interested in detroying Bob McDonnell to care.

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How Obama screwed up healthcare reform

He ignored what pollsters had told advocay groups four years ago, and didn't learn the lessons that the Hillarycare debacle made obvious.

Noteworthy:

"When pollsters told the advocacy groups the public option probably wouldn't fly, they were told to paper over the problem with a better 'message,' according to a participant in the project.

'We tried to do our best to come up with some fancy words to help talk about this,' this participant said, but in the end, he said, marketers and pollsters involved in the Herndon Alliance may have told their advocacy group clients what they wanted to hear.

It was an early warning of the trouble that was to engulf President Barack Obama's most ambitious legislative effort despite years of careful groundwork laid by supporters.

Two overarching problems have bedeviled the Democrats' health-care push. One is the difficulty of persuading people who already have health insurance that the plan offers something for them. Polls suggest many Americans are happy with the coverage they have.

The other is the cost, estimated at $1 trillion over a decade. While Democrats say the plan will be budget-neutral, Republicans say the cost savings and tax increases being used to fund new programs would better go toward reducing the fast-growing federal budget deficit."

John Carney says that Obama bet that Republicans would fold

"The Obama administration 'expended great effort to line up the support of health-care insurers, pharmaceutical makers and care providers, believing that by keeping them around the table, they could win over Republicans and stop the kind of industry-led attacks that helped sink the Clinton plan,' writes the Journal team.

It was supposed to be a simple formula. Win over the health care industry shepherd, and the Republican will follow like sheep. But it didn't work.

What seems to have gone wrong can be described as a failure of the imagination: Obama's administration just never believed Republicans would stand up for their limited government principles if that meant opposing business interests. They were apparently assuming that Republicans and conservatives could be won over by winning over 'business interests,' as if free market and anti-government positions were just rhetorical cover for policy making at the behest of business. "

(Hat tip: BOTWT)

Medicare Advantage is doing EXACTLY what its critics say it doesn't do

It's controlling costs, upholding the quality of care, and it's avoiding hospitalizations of those who are enrolled:

"Medicare Advantage is not a perfect program, and there is serious discussion to cut funding to the program as a way to help pay for health care reform. But this analysis clearly demonstrates the program’s value – to the health care system and to Medicare Advantage enrollees. It also reinforces findings from a recent study by Massachusetts Health Quality Partners that, on certain clinical quality measures, Massachusetts seniors enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan receive better care than those in traditional fee-for-service plans. Medicare Advantage delivers on its promises: the right care at the right time, additional benefits beyond traditional Medicare, and greater care coordination between health plans and providers that helps enrollees remain as healthy as possible.

....But a decision to cut funding to the Medicare Advantage program means that, ultimately, Medicare beneficiaries’ benefits will be cut. If funding cuts are made, Medicare Advantage enrollees will be faced with higher premiums and/or reduced benefits. Since many of these enrollees are on fixed incomes (according to statistics from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation), any adjustments to their Social Security and/or pension benefits will be insufficient to cover their increased health care expenses."

If the Obamacare drumbeaters and "regressives" in general get their way, Medicare Advantage will be gone by 2012, as de-funding of the program is a big priority of those partisans. They know that private Medicare programs like this pose a direct threat to their beloved "public option'" "single payer health care", or any other name you would care to apply to programs that are designed to worsen the quality of care and increase its costs to everyone.

Already, many Medicare Advantage providers have opted out for the 2010 year coverage because of their disgust with they way "regressive" politics marginalizes their part in providing a valuable and essential service to many seniors.

Watch the pushback on this to be fast and furious. I know of one one local blogger and academic type whose main talking point against Medicare Advantage just got thoroughly discredited.

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Obama's "green czar" exposed as a Truther

The Obamanation looney tooners keep on popping up, don't they?

Even worse, the partisan hack creep/clown and his administration enablers initially denied it.

Excerpt:

"It looks like the well-oiled Axelrodian machine in the White House forgot about Google when they released their statement.

Bummer."

Here's Krauthammer on the subject:

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Why the funeral industry likes Obamacare

The health care problem is structural, not moral

"It's the System":

Noteworthy:

"The White House is correct when it says that millions of Americans can’t afford private health insurance. But what it doesn’t mention is that government regulations reduce access to affordable private insurance, strangle competition, and make insurance more expensive. State insurance regulators frequently require insurers to offer certain services—fertility drugs, alcohol-abuse treatment, and chiropractor services, for example—that consumers might not choose if they had a say in the matter. The Council for Affordable Health Insurance notes that these mandates may push up the cost of basic health insurance by 20 to 50 percent, depending on the state."

The "public option" bleaters somehow never manage to get around to discussing this point.

I disagree with Howard's point about affordability. Private health insurance IS affordable, particulary under the HSA/Major Medical concept, but most of the complainers have been sold on the idea that they deserve low co-pays for routine visits with primary care providers, rather than assuming the full responsibilites for such payments until a deductible is met.

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"All in all you're just another brick in The Wall"

Cato:

"It's one thing for a president to encourage all kids to work hard and stay in school – that's a reasonable use of the bully pulpit. It's another thing entirely, however, to have the U.S. Department of Education send detailed instructions to public schools nationwide on how to glorify the president and the presidency, and push them to drive social change. Frighteningly, this is what President Obama has done.

In anticipation of the president's planned September 8 address to students nationwide, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent a letter and detailed 'classroom activities' to schools with all sorts of troubling buzzwords and guidance. In his letter, Duncan asserts that the work of educators is 'critical to…our social progress.' It's a statement that strongly suggests – as many educators have held and continue to hold – that it is the job of public schools to impose values, often collectivist, on students."

Read this other line from Duncan, as quoted here:

"In his letter to principals, Duncan said viewing of the speech is encouraged, not mandatory."

So:

Collectivism in the classroom , as indicated by our nation's Education Czar.

Who the......heck gave him the authority to assign that task?

And then this:

"......viewing of the speech is encouraged, not mandatory"?

Not mandatory? But COULD be, if some Obamanation bureaucratic functionary so decrees?

Nah, there's nothing to worry about in THAT little missive, is there?

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