Reflections at 14,000 feet

From the memory of one who's been there, the majesty of the world from the top of Pike's Peak is understated in this video.

Hat tip: Walter Batista

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Thanksgiving greetings from our Resident

Via Net Right Nation.

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The latest analysis on "Climategate"

Hat tip: Fred Gregory

Now playing on the floor of the U.S. Senate

Hat tip: Patriot Post US.

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More on the dangers of "Net Nuetrality"

From the Heartland Institute, this well thought out treatise on the dangers of "Net Neutrality" explains why this movement is so popular among "regressive" internet users.

Noteworthy:

"....From the founding of the 'copyleft' movement, to the publication of The dotCommunist Manifesto, to modern attempts to foist net neutrality upon the Web and wireless technology, the neutralists have made their aims clear. 'Big Business' must be brought to its knees – all the better to pray for mercy (or at least permission to operate) from government bureaucrats who will replace the free market in deciding how broadband networks are run and how content will flow.

Neutralists cynically promote the false notion that broadband providers should be regulated provided like public utilities. Yet access to the Internet is not similar to electricity, water, or natural gas. Internet access and technology is a complicated service delivered by competing private companies that have spent hundreds of billions of dollars bringing ever-faster broadband and wireless innovation to consumers. Upsetting this market-based model of service will lead to less innovation, slower broadband build-out, and a poorer technological experience for all.

Neutralists view the wireless sector as virgin territory in which to advance their goals. But the wireless sector is even more competitive than the land-based ISP marketplace, and innovation is
occurring there at a torrid pace. The market, not government, brought the Internet to the palm of our hands, and the government, not the market, has slowed the spread of wireless communications services by its mismanagement of the spectrum. Neutralists have cleverly exploited the language of freedom to advance their goals – calling for a 'free' and 'open' Internet, and declaring the market guilty of 'discrimination' and 'unfair practices.'

But the Internet is already 'open' and 'free' in the sense that the technology sector is open to the next competitor to produce the next groundbreaking innovation, and individuals are free to accept or reject it. Not all discrimination is bad, and the market is well-equipped to swiftly punish any unfair practices."

Medicare cuts proposed under Pelosicare will lead to coverage crisis

Why don't they tell us something we didn't already know?

Noteworthy:

"The report offers the clearest and most authoritative assessment to date of the effect that Democratic health reform proposals would have on Medicare and Medicaid, the nation's largest public health programs. It analyzes the House bill, but the Senate is also expected to rely on hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts to finance the package that Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to take to the floor this week. Like the House, the Senate is expected to propose adding millions of people to Medicaid.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administers the two health-care programs. Foster's office acts as an independent technical adviser, serving both the administration and Congress. In that sense, it is similar to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which also has questioned the sustainability of proposed Medicare cuts.

In its most recent analysis of the House bill, the CBO noted that Medicare spending per beneficiary would have to grow at roughly half the rate it has over the past two decades to meet the measure's savings targets, a dramatic reduction that many budget and health policy experts consider unrealistic."

Of course, this information will fall on the deaf ears of the "Government Health Care Is The Answer" crowd.

They DON'T CARE how bad this thing is or how much it costs. They want it passed because they know that their Universal Health Care cherished Libthink agenda item will be an unstoppable conclusion once this hurdle is cleared.

Domestic crisis at the White House!

Health Care "reform" will bring skyrocketing premiums

But we knew that already, didn't we?

Here's more evidence the Dem/Lefty/"Progressive" health care reform jokers cheerleaders don't want you to know:

"Democrats claim that government subsidies would help families adjust to the higher cost of insurance. But those subsidies won't offset many people's hikes. For example, premiums for a two-child family with annual income of $66,150 would still go up 24 percent under the Senate's plan -- after the subsidy is taken into account. That's an extra $80 a month.

It's easy to understand how 'reform' will raise health costs -- by imposing onerous new regulations on insurance. For instance, reforms passed by the House and under consideration in the Senate would mandate that all policies cover such benefits as pediatric dental services and maternity coverage -- even if you don't want such coverage. The reform package's new minimum-benefit requirements alone would add $245 a month to the average New York family's premium.

But somehow,the "Government Healthcare Is The Answer" team never seems to want to discuss things like that, do they?

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"Why Isn't He Better at Being President?"

Jennifer Rubin asks the question that most folks want answered.

"Obama was the subject of many a pundit’s admiration. So smart! So worldly! Harvard Law Review. And so eloquent. That his speeches upon further reflection were practically unintelligible or self-parodies (are we the ones we have been waiting for? are the oceans really going to recede?) didn’t much matter. He was so smart.

So why isn’t his presidency going better than it is? Seriously, if he’s so smart and well-educated, shouldn’t he have come up with something better than the stimulus boondoggle? Shouldn’t he have gotten sanctions passed on Iran or figured out how not to offend both sides in the Middle East non-peace process? As Bret Stephens points out, we have gotten “bloated government, deficits and health-care bills; paralysis over Afghanistan and Iran; the convulsions over Gitmo and the CIA torture memos.” And then the mind-numbingly idiotic decision to put KSM in a Manhattan courtroom to preach the wonders of jihad and go after his captors. None of this seems very smart."

But for those of us who have been paying attention all along, these results WERE predictable.

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Obama: Failure of the cult, the ideology and the statism

Peter Wehner sums up the already determined legacy of Obama:

"What we are finding is that Barack Obama is not a practical character; he is a dogmatist. He has avoided what’s needed and beneficial in order to promote a sweeping statist agenda. He is turning out to be an ideologue instead of a statesman.

The enormous goodwill the president had at the beginning of the year has evaporated. The public still rather likes him — but they don’t much like what he is doing to them and to their country.

There will be a high price for him to pay for carrying through on his liberal ambitions. But it is his party — the instrument of his ambitions — that will suffer the consequences first."

More bad news for Dems

Michael Barone:

"Is the health care issue hurting Democrats in key Senate races? Sure looks like it."

Gosh, how can that be?

Didn't the Usual Suspect "experts" tell us that this November's election results had absolutely nothing to do with Obama and the Democrat policies and job performance?

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The NY-23 election is NOT over

So says the Syracuse News.

Noteworthy:

" 'For Doug to win, we needed a three-way race,' Ryan said, adding that the campaign’s internal polls showed Hoffman would win with all three candidates.

'Given the majority of these ballots are from a three-way race, we think the ballots are going to break Doug’s way,' Ryan said.

Ryan declined to say what percentage of the absentee vote the campaign believes Hoffman would need to win the race. Nevertheless, Hoffman’s campaign is optimistic.

'When people look back at this race, it was a remote possibility that Doug Hoffman would be a contender,' Ryan said. 'But miracles do happen.' "

More:

"As it stands now, Bill Owens may be in Washington and voting the Pelosi Party line but when the vote is certified he may be ousted. The state Board of Elections indicated that '...all ballots will be counted, and if the result changes, Owens will have to be removed.' Concession speech or not, if the voters in the 23rd District elected Doug Hoffman and not Bill Owens, then Hoffman will be the Representative.

There are currently over 10,000 uncounted absentee ballots, many of which were in the military where a strongly conservative bias exists. Given the narrow margin of Owens' lead at this time, it's entirely possible that this race could still swing for Hoffman."

Sources indicate that the Democrats would not have had the votes to pass the Health bill if Owens had not been sworn-in and pledged his support for it. Several other Representatives have indicated that they would not have cast their votes in favor of the bill if they were not certain that it had the votes to win."

My, my, my!

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Regarding the current administration's exceedingly wise judgment

"Loading More People On To the Titanic"

"...in the hope that it will sink even faster."

Noteworthy:

"The bizarre result is an incentive for families to skip buying coverage, and pay a fine that is only a small percentage of their premium costs. They'll still be able to get insurance on demand from the exchanges should they have a big medical problem. That's like being able to buy insurance on your house after it burns down. This kind of system will not make insurance costs lower.

Some supporters of the House bill say that, while the legislation doesn't tackle health care costs, it's still important to reduce the number of uninsured. Their reasoning goes: The pressure of adding 30 million more people to the system, coupled with the unsustainable cost trends, will eventually force Washington to deal with real health care reform."

The Ft. Hood terrorist: Did he act alone, or was he a Sleeper?

"He was a typical fundamentalist Muslim":

"Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a 'spiritual adviser' to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001."

More:

" 'So many time I talked with him,' said Akhter, a community leader who is sort of like a mosque gadfly, challenging congregants to reject literal, rigid interpretations of Islam. 'I was trying to modernize him. I tried my best. He used to hate America as a whole. He was more anti-American than American.'

Despite all the conversations, Akther said, 'I couldn’t get through to him. He was a typical fundamentalist Muslim.' "

...and this:

"Throughout the Muslim community, there is a battle over legitimacy, authority and identity. Back in Silver Spring, on the day of the debate between the engineer and the doctor over the meaning of jihad, Akhter said that Hasan told him that if he didn’t believe in jihad as warfare, 'Then you are not a Muslim.'

....finally:

"In the midst of the many conversations he had with Hasan, Akhter stood outside the Muslim Community Center, distributing photocopies of a Washington Post article about an Afghan mother who tried to stop her radicalized son from carrying out a suicide bombing; the bomb exploded in the family’s home, killing the mother, her son and her three other children. In a later email to mosque members, he urged them, 'Let us wake up, and take note of who are potential terrorists, who are fanatics, who are fundamentalists' in the community.' "

"If the IRS and Medicare Had a Baby, It Would Look Like This"

......and that is one UGLY baby, isn't it?

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The effective death of the Cult of Obama

Krauthammer: "The Myth of '08, demolished".

Noteworthy:

"The vaunted Obama realignment vanished. In 2009 in Virginia, the black vote was down by 20 percent, the under-30 vote by 50 percent. And as for independents, the ultimate prize of any realignment, they bolted. In both Virginia and New Jersey they’d gone narrowly for Obama in ’08. This year they went Republican by a staggering 33 points in Virginia and by an equally shocking 30 points in New Jersey.

White House apologists will say the Virginia Democrat was weak. If the difference between Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds was so great, how come when the same two men ran against each other statewide for attorney general four years ago the race was a virtual dead heat? Which made the ’09 McDonnell-Deeds rematch the closest you get in politics to a laboratory experiment for measuring the change in external conditions. Run them against each other again when it’s Obamaism in action and see what happens. What happened was a Republican landslide.

The Obama coattails of 2008 are gone. The expansion of the electorate, the excitement of the young, came in uniquely propitious Democratic circumstances and amid unparalleled enthusiasm for electing the first African-American president."

Ah, but certain people locally and nationally want you to believe the falsehood that Obama and his policies had absolutely nothing to do with last Tuesday's election results.

And by the way, the Moon is made of green cheese too.

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A heretical but rational liberal look at PelosiObamaCare

An honest examination from the liberal side on this monstrosity reveals exactly how bad this disaster is.

Excerpt:

"So what does it all add up to? The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment to help provide health coverage for the vast majority of its citizens. I support this commitment, and I think the federal government’s spending priorities should be altered to make it happen. But let’s not pretend that it isn’t a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won’t. Many Democratic insiders know all this, or most of it. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it (and many other Administrations before that) is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind. At some point in the future, the fiscal consequences of the reform will have to be dealt with in a more meaningful way, but by then the principle of (near) universal coverage will be well established."

That sums up the whole Dem/Lefty/"Progressive" attitude on health care "reform": "Get the deal done now. Let someone else deal with the disaster we've created."

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The Ft Hood mayhem and the rise of grassroots jihadism

Was the call to action heeded?

Noteworthy:

"Whether Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan acted out of insanity or some bizarre moral dilemma, he conducted an attack on U.S. soil of a terrorist nature. Americans need to become more vigilant since we are more vulnerable to attack from jihadists now than ever.

....Terror cells will be even harder to prevent as new grassroots jihadists do not need to communicate directly with a central authority. They now get their information from websites and take cues to from leadership messages published on them. There will be less chatter to monitor because these groups will find each other locally and keep their operations small and low-key.

My prediction on the matter is that the issue will be resolved only as 'a U.S. soldier carried out the Fort Hood attack' and let the assumptions about a violent soldier fall where they may. For this Administration and their cronies, it's a lot more convenient than fulfilling one of the only stated responsibilities of our federal government."

David Axlerod: Obama's very own Baghdad Bob

This has got to be the most absurd rationale about the impact of Tuesday's election I've heard yet:

"David Axelrod, netting the prize for the most shameless display of post-defeat spinning, added an additional father to Bob McDonnell's victory in Virginia: Barack Obama.

McDonnell ran 'not as a Sarah Palin Republican, but more as a Barack Obama centrist,' said Axelrod, according to liberal columnist E.J. Dionne.

Axelrod's fanciful description of Obama as a 'centrist' betrays what he denies: that hundreds of thousands of voters in major states once thought permanently blue did recoil from a year of radical, Obama-led change, both real and proposed."

The new political sign of the times

Let's give the sign a little perspective:




Add to that the excuses, rationales, and outright cognitive dissonance among Dems/Lefties/"Progressives over last Tuesday's election events.

Yet these Rocket Scientists expect the public to stand still for the rape and pillage inflicted by their health care "reform", and Cap 'n Trade monstrosities.

Exactly how stupid ARE these people?

Hat tip: PowerLine

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"Net Neutrality" equates to "Government Control"

When Net Neutrality came into the spotlight as a public issue, it sounded like a reasonable proposition. Who could argue with such noble principles like these stated at a website called Free Press?

"The future of the Internet as we know it depends on maintaining freedom and openness online. This crucial legislation will help to ensure that the public -- not big phone and cable companies -- controls the fate of the Internet.

The rules that govern the Internet must protect economic innovation, democratic participation and free speech online. If we don’t make Net Neutrality the law once and for all, we could see the innovation and promise of the Internet derailed forever.

An army of lobbyists has been unleashed by the phone and cable companies to kill Net Neutrality so they can become the Internet’s gatekeepers. But the momentum is shifting in the public’s favor. President Obama has repeatedly called for Net Neutrality; we have a new pro-Net Neutrality chairman now heading the Federal Communications Commission; and popular support is growing every day....."

The pertinent points turns out a little differently though when some critical thinking and a little research and perspective are brought to focus on the subject.

Noteworthy:

"Masked beneath the comfort language of the net neutrality bill are provisions that will effectively turn over management of the internet within the United States to the federal government via the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). It's a power for which the FCC hungers. Perhaps it envies China.

So there's nothing neutral about the Obama administration's push for net neutrality. 'Neutrality' is a D.C. comfort word for control. "

In the end, it all turns out to be just one more cog in the construction of a "regressive" political, economic, and social control agenda, doesn't it? And, as always, the people and our nation pay the price and give up more rights for "the greater good".

Are you really surprised to find this out?

"Free Press"! As if......

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Watch for Democrat voter fraud in NJ governor's race

There's a good chance the Dems, with their shady tactics, and their ACORN thug allies are ready to steal the election away from Chris Christie:

"The state has received a flood of 180,000 absentee ballot requests. On some 3,000 forms the signature doesn't match the one on file with county clerks. Yet citing concerns that voters would be disenfranchised, Democratic Party lawyer Paul Josephson wrote New Jersey's secretary of state asking her 'to instruct County Clerks not to deny applications on the basis of signature comparison alone.'

Mr. Josephson maintained that county clerks 'may be overworked and are likely not trained in handwriting analysis' and insisted that voters with suspect applications should be allowed to cast provisional ballots. Those ballots, of course, would then provide a pool of votes that would be subject to litigation in any recount, with the occupant of New Jersey's highest office determined by Florida 2000-style scrutiny of ballot applications."

The standard Democrat script calls for this type of thuggery every time they lose an important election by a small margin. It was successful in putting Franken the Clown into the Senate seat in MN.

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Do YOU want to be dependent on the Political Class for health care?

Mike Pence talks about the dangers if we let the abomination of Obama/Pelosi/Reid Care become a reality



More on "The Worst Bill Ever":

"Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of 'change,' but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo.

Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi's handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR's National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated."

Instead of "The Worst Bill Ever", I think of this outrage as "The Worst Bull.... Ever".

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Lieberman speaks truth to power on the public option

Hat tip: Gateway Pundit, who adds:

"Once again Joe Lieberman puts country over politics. No wonder the democrats hate him."

Halloween's over, but this is too good not to post