The Debate Rages On

Now that the debate is hot and engaged, it's interesting to see what's going on. Not by any stretch of the imagination can these failures be blamed on the Republicans anymore. No, the truth is that there are enough Dems to pass this thing, and everyone knows it. But they're still having problems rallying enough support. Hmmm...internal conflict, anyone?

Another side effect of this situation, though, is that we're seeing some seriously different methods of handling this conflict:

The White House ducks, dodges, bobs, weaves, flips and flops — all with great and wondrous conviction and oration. It is perfectly unclear where Obama is on the public option — he tells his own members of his party different things in public than he does the public.

The Speaker, meanwhile, has not budged in her repeated insistence that the House bill have a public option. Her public and private comments have been the same — and she over ruled a deal with the Blue Dogs made prior to the August recess which would have tempered the Public Option — she will not be denied, nor will the 83 signatories of the letter that threatens they will vote NO if there is not a robust public option.

Here's the danger of having wacko Nancy Pelosi running the House:

The Speaker can do what ever she wants with the merged bills from the three Committee’s of jurisdiction — not quite the same as the Senate bringing up a vapor-bill — but the Speaker can re-write ObamaCare in the House Rules Committee, and she can do whatever she pleases in the great “merge” process.

Change the taxes in the bill? No problem. Include Rep. Stupak’s explicit ban on abortion and iron-clad conscience protection for doctors and nurses, easy as pie. Write in language that prevents illegal aliens from being insured, OK. End the cuts to Medicare Advantage — can do. Stop the cuts to Medicare — YES WE CAN. Make sure the bill contains the public option — you bet. Raise or lower the spending levels — yep. Take a pound of flesh from the insurers — done. Change every American’s health plan within five years to fit the design specs of the Secretary of HHS and not allow any others — already happening.

The real problem is that Democratic members, like most who enter public life, actually care about some of these issues — and they are, in the main, binary yes/no issues. Yes or No on the Public Option — there is no gray or maybe, kinda, sorta, if it works like this it will be OK — there is or there isn’t. The same is true for the passion-infested issues of the tax structure and Medicare cuts to pay for ObamaCare, abortion and providing ObamaCare to illegal immigrants, and the overall spending levels of a trillion dollars.

And this is why the 72 hour — read the bill — movement is such a threat to ObamaCare.

Speaking of the White House hiding and dodging, we now know they did have their own health care reform plan...but they're not sharing what's in it:

The White House has been secretly drafting its own health care legislation that it may unveil at some point during the debate if officials believe it would help secure passage of a bill, according to sources familiar with the effort.

Sources differed on how far the process has gotten, with some saying a bill is basically finished and others saying they are aware only of a partially completed effort. White House officials, though they know their preferences, also appear to be constructing different options that could be thrown together depending on how the legislation is shaping up in Congress.

Hot Air analyzes:

This creates another problem for Democrats. Both moderates and progressives in their caucus need traction over some contentious points of the plan, especially the public option. With the White House super-secret plan known, members of both chambers may demand to see it to gauge where they stand with the administration. Both groups would also be concerned, as Roll Call notes, that Obama was preparing to “sell them out.”

No matter how one looks at it, though, it’s a strange notion of leadership. Barack Obama insisted that he had the “judgment to lead,” but on his highest priority domestic-agenda item, Obama leads by … hiding.

Nice leadership, huh?

Several key votes were held yesterday, including some amendments on the most contentious pieces of ObamaKennedyDeathCare:

Democrats on Senate Finance unanimously blocked an amendment to the Baucus bill which would require applicants for the healthcare exchanges or healthcare subsidies show a photo ID before receiving benefits.

The President and Democrats have claimed that illegal immigrants will not be eligible for Obamacare, but every time Republicans have sought to introduce language which would actually require applicants to prove their identity and lawful status the Democrats have voted it down.

Without that requirement, the bill "remains dearly lacking when it comes to identification," Grassley said. "Frankly, I'm very perplexed as to why anyone would oppose this amendment," he said.

But Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman, who represents the border state of New Mexico, said that the type of fraud Grassley said he wants to prevent is highly uncommon. "The way I see the amendment, it's a solution without a problem," Bingaman said.

"Highly uncommon." How would he know?

Related: When you have a second, there's an excellent op-ed over at the WSJ entitled "Why Obama Bombed on Health Care."

UPDATE [DrewM.]: The committee also rejected an amendment sponsored by Orin Hatch that would have prevented money provided via tax credits to be used for plans that included abortion services.

No money for abortion or illegal aliens? How about a bridge in Brooklyn, does Obama have any of those for sale?

Actions speak louder than words, don't they? The Democrats say they're opposed to illegal aliens getting ObamaKennedyDeathCare benefits and using taxpayer funding for abortions...but their actions prove otherwise.

Just because the debate is on doesn't mean that the Democrats are suddenly being nice or courteous. In fact, it's quite the opposite:

Classy. But it gets even worse. The next day this yahoo stood up to apologize, and...well, just watch this 'apology' for yourself to determine how serious he was:

Oh, boy. The obvious rebuttal is: so what if people don't have health insurance? They can get emergency health care at hospitals for anything and everything (and for free, too!). How can any study possibly say that simply not having health insurance kills people?

The references to the holocaust are, of course, completely tasteless and stupid, and only further Nancy Pelosi's accusation that the GOP is a bunch of Nazis for opposing ObamaKennedyDeathCare. What an apology.

Also as a rebuttal to Grayson's asinine remarks, Gateway Pundit helpfully provides this reminder:

...compared to the US, countries with nationalized health care see more women die from breast cancer, see more preemie deaths and see hundreds of patients die each year while waiting in line for treatment.
But, facts don't much matter to democrats and their insistence to nationalize health care.

That's very true. But for the rest of us, they work just fine.

Interestingly enough, I got another one of those Obama hoo-rah e-mails, and it contained a curious statistic:

The cavalry is here -- and they're in white coats and scrubs: More than a half a million doctors and millions of nurses are joining forces to help pass real health reform.

Americans listen to their nurses and doctors when it comes to health reform -- and for good reason. If we can help them amplify their voices, it'll be a huge boost to our campaign for change.

The American Medical Association, Doctors for America, and a dozen other physicians groups representing 500,000 doctors are endorsing reform. So are the American Nurses Association and other organizations representing millions of nurses.

They're speaking out because they see the shortcomings of our health care system firsthand, every day: patients denied the care they prescribe, families losing access to their doctors, and a system that forces them to spend more time with paperwork and less time with patients.

These voices need to be heard -- with so much deception out there clouding the debate, it's critical that medical professionals are able to focus the country on the simple fact that health reform is good medicine.

Hm. Half a million medical professionals support ObamaKennedyDeathCare, huh? That's really strange, because a survey of medical professionals -- not the unions 'representing' them, but the actual medical professionals themselves -- shows that 78% oppose it. When asked if a public option or co-op would address the rising costs of health care, 92% said no.

I have to agree with the President on this one. These voices do need to be heard. It's the unions that need to shut up and stop deceiving the country.

There's my two cents.

Ten For 10

This is what the GOP needs:

Here’s the problem: Republicans are winning right now just because they are not Democrats. That won’t help us though, long term.

At some point we are going to have to have ideas. People forget, though, that the Contract With America did not come about until the end of the 1994 campaign season. It was the summer of 1994 and it did not get traction until after Labor Day in 1994.

Laura Ingraham is being pre-emptive. She has come up with a fantastic idea: Ten For 10. Ten For 10 is about ten ideas to run with for taking back Congress in 2010.

Congressman Tom Price, Michael Williams, Marco Rubio, Michelle Malkin, and others have signed on.

The ideas are:

1. A taxpayer bill of rights
2. End taxpayer funded abortions
3. Secure and defend the border
4. Support a strong dollar
5. Empower American businesses
6. Defend America
7. End Statism
8. End generational theft
9. Restore justice
10. Make America energy independent

For more information, to get details on each of the ten ideas, and to sign the petition, go here.

I’ve signed. You should too.

This is key. The progress the Right has seen over the past few months is simply the blowback reaction to the Left's radical attempts to re-make America into their version of a Statist paradise. If we're going to really make the gains we need in order to save this nation from the Obama tailspin, we need to have a concrete plan for moving forward. It's one thing to be a half-hearted alternative, which is what the GOP has been over the past few years. What's critical is to become the full-bore, pedal-to-the-medal alternative that the country desperately wants and needs.

Ingraham's idea is basically the new Contract With America, and it is an excellent start on that pro-active alternative. If the Right can build a consistent platform around these principles, we'll present a stark difference at the next election, and that's the recipe for victory.

There's my two cents.

Real Leadership From Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also spoke at the U.N. madness-fest last week. His was a powerful speech, and one that deserves to be watched. Here is the best line:

Here's the full speech:

This is what leadership looks like. The Obamessiah could learn a few things by watching this man.

There's my two cents.

It's No Wonder He Loves The Post Office...

...it's a model of what he wants to do to the entire country:

Last week, Democrats on Capitol Hill pushed forward with a $4 billion bailout of the US Postal Service, which continues to lose money while business declines.  One reason that the Post Office has such a large deficit may be their labor practices.  The Federal Times reported earlier this month that the USPS pays out an average of 45,000 hours per week of "standby time," where literally postal employees sit around and do nothing:

The U.S. Postal Service, struggling with a massive deficit caused by plummeting mail volume, spends more than a million dollars each week to pay thousands of employees to sit in empty rooms and do nothing.

It's a practice called "standby time," and it has existed for years — but postal employees say it was rarely used until this year. Now, postal officials say, the agency is averaging about 45,000 hours of standby time every week — the equivalent of having 1,125 full-time employees sitting idle, at a cost of more than $50 million per year.

Mail volume is down 12.6 percent compared with last year, and many postal supervisors simply don't have enough work to keep all employees busy. But a thicket of union rules prevents managers from laying off excess employees; a recent agreement with the unions, in fact, temporarily prevents the Postal Service from even reassigning them to other facilities that could use them.

And let's not forget — ObamaCare will be just like the Post Office!

If nothing reveals the inefficiency of government or government-subsidized operations, this should.  Under the rules, the Post Office cannot shift employees to other facilities; they have to hire new workers in one place while workers sit idle in another.  Small wonder that the USPS finds itself in a multibillion-dollar hole.
How do the employees like it?  They don't:

"It's just a small, empty room. … It's awful," said one mail processing clerk who has spent four weeks on standby time this summer. "Most of us bring books, word puzzles. Sometimes we just sleep."

Employees interviewed said they hate the practice, which relegates them to hours of boredom each day. Postal managers don't like it, either — but they say declining mail volume makes it necessary. …

Employees are often forbidden from doing almost anything while on standby time. In some facilities, the employees aren't allowed to do anything they couldn't normally do on the job. That means no books, no playing cards, no watching television.

Maybe the government should have borrowed them for the Cash for Clunkers program, eh?

Spend taxpayer money on a politically-motivated bailout of a failing institution that is so horrendously inefficient that it can't compete in a free market system, partly because it literally pays its (union) employees tens of millions of dollars each year to sit around and do nothing?

Yep, it's an Obama program, all right!

There's my two cents.

A Tale Of Two Parties, National Security Edition

On the one hand...

First, we have Republicans in the Senate offering an amendment to keep funds from the White House for the closing of Guantanamo Bay and the relocation of 148 of the worst terrorist detainees we've captured.  The amendment would extend a ban Congress imposed in the spring when Barack Obama and his team attempted to bypass the legislature on their Gitmo-closing project:

Senators are again trying to stop the Obama administration from closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility by blocking the money needed to transfer the remaining and most notorious prisoners to the United States, Sen. James. M. Inhofe said Tuesday.

The restriction is part of the Defense Appropriations Bill now being debated on the Senate floor and would extend similar legislation that expires Oct. 1.

Mr. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, supports the bill and thinks it will pass because the 148 remaining prisoners are what he calls "the real bad guys," including accused al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

"I think we may be in a (good) position," Mr. Inhofe, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Washington Times "America's Morning News" radio show. "Now that we're down to the real hardcore, you've got to keep that thing open."

Dianne Feinstein thinks differently, but that's not a big shock.  She probably will be in the minority, especially since Democrats have already put themselves in a bad enough position over health care and the upcoming cap-and-trade bill.  Voting to bring the worst of the terrorists into American prisons would just about guarantee massive losses in the midterms, if not already certain.

On the other hand...

...the latest effort to punish the telecoms for working with the Bush administration on national security has also hit the floor of the upper chamber:

Four Democratic senators have introduced a bill that would, if passed, repeal the legal immunity afforded the telecommunications industry for their participation in President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.

Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Russ Feingold (D-WI), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) announced the measure Monday. In a release, they said the bill "eliminates retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that allegedly participated in President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program."

The four senators, all liberal Democrats, emphasized that they believed granting the industry immunity violated the law and due process.

They have great timing.  The recent exposure of two terror plots by al-Qaeda this month highlighted how important those communication intercepts were in protecting American lives.  Even though the American media chose not to focus on this, the conviction of al-Qaeda plotters in the 2007 conspiracy to blow up several flights from the UK to the US relied heavily on these intercepts as well as in uncovering the planned attack...

Hot Air asks the key question: which party is serious about national security, and which one isn't?

I think we all know the answer.

There's my two cents.

One Thing That Should Be Rushed Through Congress

As you know, I'm not normally a big fan of rushing things through Congress and into law, but this is one exception I'm happy to see go flying through:

Congress has quietly approved to fast track the deployment of the BGU-57A/B or Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). The Pentagon plans to rush the deployment of 10 BGU-57A/B "bunker buster" bombs by June 2010. The MOP is so enormous that it can only be delivered by a B-52 or a B-2A. In fact, the B-2 bombers will need to be refitted in order to carry two MOPs.

Good for them.  It's the right call.

There's my two cents.

Liberalism Really Is A Mental Disorder

Yesterday I had passed along a series of stories that showed the serious illness that infests the liberal mindset. Today we see something that makes those examples look like frivolousness.

By reading on, you're going to see some sick stuff. I wouldn't normally post this disgusting crudity, but it serves to illustrate just how depraved and vile the Leftist mindset actually is.

***Adult Content and Language Warning!***

Oscar winning director Roman Polanski was arrested:

Swiss police confirm they have arrested Roman Polanski. The Polish-born film director fled the U.S. in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with the underage girl.

That's a pretty sterile reporting of what happened. Click here for a partial transcript of the girl's testimony. The short version is that Polanski seduced a 13-year old girl, got her drunk and drugged her, then raped her. When he found out she wasn't on birth control, he sodomized her instead. She repeatedly protested and told him 'no' throughout the whole experience. For his crime, he served 42 days in a mental institution, then (after being released for a bail hearing) fled to Europe, where he has been living a life of luxury and fame ever since.

Now, the wacko Left is showing its true stripes. No, not by calling for justice. They're rallying around Polanski with all kinds of sick and twisted irrational explanations to justify his abhorrent actions against a child. Take a look:

Hey, Whoopi, how about you get your facts straight? First of all, he wasn't just charged, he was convicted. Second, how is 'rape' different than 'rape-rape'? Can we find that in a legal dictionary somewhere? And what about the sodomy, the drinking, or the drugs? Are you saying you wouldn't mind if your granddaughter went through this?

Are you finished contorting yourself into a moral pretzel yet?

Here's more:

Actors and actresses from Harrison Ford to Debra Winger have reportedly joined the growing throng of liberal celebrities calling for Polanski to be released following his arrest in Switzerland last week.

Studio kingpin Harvey Weinstein says he is leading the charge and "e-mailing everybody I know" to push for the swift release of his friend, whom he calls a "humanist" who has been the victim of a gross "miscarriage of justice" for more than three decades.

There's also a petition being circulated by European and Hollywood wackos, and it's signed by the likes of Woody Allen (who married his own step-daughter, by the way) and Martin Scorsese demanding Polanski's freedom because he's the victim, you see. There are a few voices of relative sanity on the Left regarding this incident, but not many.

Even worse, this behavior is apparently par for the course for Polanski. Clear back in 1979, he said in an interview:

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

Um...no, you sicko, everyone doesn't.

And it just gets better: Polanski just finished another children's movie!

All this leads to the inevitable conclusion that the Left is truly depraved and twisted. To justify the inebriation, drugging, rape, and sodomy of a 13-year old girl because this guy has made some good -- according to them -- movies is beyond the pale.

But typical of the liberal Left.

Dafydd Ab Hugh offers this analysis, which strikes me as being dead on:

This illustrates one of the most important points to understand about liberals: They project their own evil and perversion on the rest of us, so that they will not feel uniquely vile and disgusting:

• Liberals tend to be extraordinarily racist; they believe racial minorities are incapable of succeeding without special government help, and they insist that all racial minorities follow the rules set for their race by white liberals. They realize what they really feel about blacks, Hispanics, and other “funny colored people,” but they don’t want to think they’re uniquely racist.

  So they accused everyone else of being racist too.

• They’re just as sexist as they are racist; women are just PLTs who need help from Big Daddy government to achieve even a modest level of success. But they feel creepy harboring such thoughts — and enabling such sexual predators as Teddy Kennedy, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT, 100%), and their “waitress sandwich” sexual assaults — and don’t want to think they’re uniquely misogynist.

  So they accuse everyone else of being sexist too.

• Liberals, who have a deep-rooted sense of entitlement and no compunction against enjoying the privileges of power, tend to engage in the most brazen and extraordinary acts of corruption; most recently, witness the Countrywide plc sweetheart mortgage scandal for “Friends of Angelo”. But with all the vicious rhetoric they spew against unbridled greed and the moral immunity bought by power, they don’t want to think that they themselves are the real exemplars of such corruption.

  So they call everyone else corrupt as well.

This is the standard liberal pattern: They project their own sins on the rest of us to “spread the guilt around,” to paraphrase the Guiltmonger in Chief. So when Polanski says “Everyone wants to f*** young girls,” we should conclude that he understands, in some dark depth of his soul (such as it is), that his tastes are not merely perverted but horribly so. Yet because he doesn’t want to believe that his amorality is uniquely eldritch, he accuses everyone else of likewise being a child rapist at heart — “See? It’s not just me!”

But that's just the thing - it is just them. The vast majority of Americans easily understand that these things are wrong. Most Americans thoroughly reject all of these notions, and especially the vile actions -- like Polanski's -- that are the inevitable result of these notions. On the whole, America is not racist, sexist, or corrupt...but liberals are, and they project those beliefs onto the rest of us because if they didn't, they'd have to face their own racism, sexism, and corruption.

There's my two cents.

The ObamaKennedyDeathCare Debate Begins In Earnest

The Senate is finally getting down to work on destroying the American health care system and economy. There's good news and bad news.

In the Senate, they began debating the vaporbill:

I know that there are many people who are incredulous that the U.S. Senate can proceed to a blank, shell health care bill next week — a vapor-bill.

Every person knowledgeable about Senate procedure believes that the Democrats are both arrogant and desperate enough to bring up a blank bill on the Senate flooor, and are planning for it and expecting this unprecedented action by the Democrats.

Why would the Democrats do this? They are under strict marching orders from the White House to complete action on the bill before the opposition by the public manifests itself further, before the Governor elections in New Jersey and Virginia and before the October 15th deadline expires by which time they must use the super-cram-down reconciliation procedures.

Furthermore, how can anyone be against something that does not exist? How do you know that what you say is in the bill really is in the bill. It is a slap in the face to the Senate’s role Constitutional role as the body that cools the passions of the day and is the deliberative body.

The concerns of the American people to slow down and get it right — which are a prominent feature of every health care poll — are being given the middle finger.

The bill doesn't exist, so no one knows what it includes, nor what it costs. Naturally, the Senate is proceeding full speed ahead! In particular, the Finance Committee voted on their particular version of health care reform yesterday. The central conflict was over the public option. It failed:

In today's Senate Finance Committee mark-up, the public option amendment introduced by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer was defeated by a 10-13 vote.

Democratic Sens. Baucus, Conrad, and Lincoln voted no, joining all Republicans.

Conrad, in particular, said that this plan would bankrupt hospitals, especially in his state. Hm...where is the applause for this wonderful bipartisanship that killed this measure? The silence is strange, don't you think?

Anyway, Max Baucus ironically made the conservative case for why we shouldn't enact any government option at all:

That's right...he just said that Dems should be content with a small step right now because we all know it'll continue growing (into the full-blown government control) in the future through the infrastructure that is put into place now. And yes, Social Security is a great example of how a government program becomes bloated and, well, bankrupt.

Of course, the fact that the government option failed is going to cause problems of another sort. In the House, progressives are still saying they won't support an ObamaKennedyDeathCare plan without it. They're also accusing Republicans of wanting Americans to die because they have no alternative plan. Naturally, they're forgetting all of the alternative plans that we've discussed on this blog in recent weeks.

Another major problem is that of abortion. Specifically, the fact that abortion will be funded by taxpayer dollars. Oh, yes, the Democrats are very quick to say that it's just not true, but...well, just look at the list of amendments they've already killed that would have ensured no taxpayer dollars will be used for abortions:

U.S. Senate

· (1) Senator Mike Enzi’s (R-WY) amendments that would have prevented taxpayer funding of abortion and would prevent abortion clinics from being eligible for federally qualified health center grants;

· (2) Senator Orin Hatch’s (R-UT) amendments that would have prevented tax-funded abortions unless the life of the mother is endangered or unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest (making the Hyde Amendment permanent);

· (3) Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) amendments that would have ensured no abortion mandates, prevented abortion clinics from being eligible for federally qualified health center grants, prevented the invalidation of state laws that regulate abortion, codified the Hyde/Weldon conscience protection law, and ensured that Americans have professional ethicists informing any Government-funded medical decisions; and

· (4) Senator Pat Roberts’ (R-KS) amendment which would have prevented the invalidation of state laws regulating abortion.

U.S. House of Representatives

· In the Education and Labor Committee:

o Amendment to prohibit the abortion coverage mandate (Rep. Souder) failed (19-29).

o Amendment to prohibit the abortion funding mandate (Rep. Souder) failed (19-29).

· In the Ways and Means Committee:

o Amendment to prohibit the abortion coverage mandate (Rep. Johnson) (failed 18-23).

o Amendment to prohibit the abortion funding mandate (Rep. Cantor) (failed 19-22).

· House Energy and Commerce Committee:

o Amendment to prohibit the abortion coverage mandate (Reps. Pitts, Stupak, and Blunt) (failed 29-30).

o Amendment to prohibit the abortion funding mandate (Reps. Stupak and Pitts) (failed 27-31).

Now, just ask yourself: if the Democrats were serious about preventing taxpayer dollars from funding abortions, why would they kill ten separate amendments to do just that?

You know the answer.

And, as a reminder of the monetary costs of ObamaKennedyDeathCare, Heritage reminds us of some of the worst provisions hiding in there:

But even if the public option is not included, there are still plenty of regressive job killing taxes and invasions of privacy in the Baucus plan that makes it terrible public policy:

Taxes Families - Under the plan, everyone will have to have health insurance by 2013. The mandate will apply to all adults and their dependents under age 18. Those who failed to buy insurance would be forced to pay an annual tax between $750 and $3,800 per year. Those who fail to pay the tax could be jailed for up to one year. Worse, 7.7 million households would face a 35% excise tax on their health insurance. 94% of these households would be paying a higher tax rate on their health insurance than they would be paying on their income.

Taxes Businesses - Employers with more than 50 employees that don’t offer health coverage would have to pay a penalty for each employee who qualifies for new federal subsidizes under the bill. To stay in business employers will be forced to cut jobs and cut wages.

Taxes the Sick - The Baucus bill imposes higher taxes on manufacturers and importers of medical devices, health insurance companies, clinical laboratories, manufacturers and importers of drugs. In effect, the Baucus proposal would tax the sick to subsidize insurance for the healthy, and many of the taxes would be imposed on the same people “helped” by the subsidies.

Invades Your Privacy - The Baucus bill enforces both its individual and employer mandates by deputizing the Internal Revenue Service. To enforce these provisions, the bill would therefore require individuals, health insurers, employers, and government health agencies to report detailed health insurance information on all Americans to the IRS, adding significant administrative costs and reducing privacy protections. The IRS would also be required to report personal income data to state exchanges, insurance companies, and employers because premium credits and out-of-pocket limits would depend on income.

Now is the time. Call your Senators and Rep and demand they oppose any form of government intervention in health care.

Right now. After this debate is over, you may not get another chance.

There's my two cents.

The American Trinity: Reprise

Along the lines of presenting what America should be, and where we should be going as a nation, I also wanted to re-post this outstanding video by Dennis Prager about what makes America unique and special in this world:

This is the core of conservatism. This is the foundation of America. This is precisely what we need to get back to if we want to hand to our children the same great nation that was handed to us by our parents.

There's my two cents.

"Dictionary"

No explanation needed:

Brrr! Prepare For The Coldest Winter In A Decade!

Due to global warming, of course:

The East Coast should brace for its coldest winter in a decade, and oil commodities traders for sharply higher prices, says a forecaster who serves the commodity markets.  This comes as two people on the East Coast introduce a bill designed to combat global warming by imposing emissions controls on the energy industry — which will also make prices go higher, but for much longer and much less reason:

The U.S. Northeast may have the coldest winter in a decade because of a weak El Nino, a warming current in the Pacific Ocean, according to Matt Rogers, a forecaster at Commodity Weather Group.

"Weak El Ninos are notorious for cold and snowy weather on the Eastern seaboard," Rogers said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Washington. "About 70 percent to 75 percent of the time a weak El Nino will deliver the goods in terms of above-normal heating demand and cold weather. It's pretty good odds."

As a result, the oil traders have stockpiled heating oil to levels not seen in 27 years.  Even with the huge inventory, prices have still risen, and hedge funds have kept betting on long positions for oil.  They're expecting a long, cold winter with plenty of demand for heating oil.

On the other hand, we have noted meteorologists John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, insisting that the world is growing warmer:

Ending some nine months of closed-door deliberations, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) will release global warming legislation Wednesday that they hope will be the vehicle for broader Senate negotiations and an eventual conference with the House.

The bill's authors said last week that they expect to start hearings early next month on the bill, with a markup in Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee to follow soon thereafter. They also acknowledged that their legislation is just a "starting point" in a bid to win over moderate and conservative Democrats, as well as Republicans. …

Kerry last week sought to change the vernacular surrounding the climate bill and sell its concepts more broadly, insisting it is not a "cap and trade" proposal but a "pollution reduction" bill. "I don't know what 'cap and trade' means. I don't think the average American does," Kerry said. "This is not a cap-and-trade bill, it's a pollution reduction bill" (E&E Daily, Sept. 25).

But a leading GOP opponent to the Senate climate effort quickly pushed back on the Democrat's strategy.

"No matter the semantic games employed, or the extent to which Democrats wish to hide the truth from the American people, cap and trade will mean more job losses, more pain at the pump, and higher food and electricity prices for consumers," said EPW Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.)."

Global-warming activists insist that we can't take an assumption from a single year.  However, if the CWS forecast turns out to be correct, we will have gone eleven years without any warming at all — eleven years in which carbon emissions did not decline in any significant manner.  How does one begin to explain that?  And how will Kerry and Boxer and the rest of their Democratic colleagues try to sell cap-and-trade as a scientific necessity while people spend a fortune heating their homes in the coldest winter in a decade?

Great timing, Senators!

I'll have much, much more on the cap-n-tax bill, as well as the global warming nutballery in some upcoming posts.  The idiocy is in full swing!

There's my two cents.

Another Green Home Example (Of Failure)

The KC Star had an article today that is a beautiful example of all that is wrong -- and braindead -- with the environmentalist wacko movement.

An 800-square-foot house may not sound like much, but one recently built in Rolla, Mo., is special enough to take up residence near the Washington Monument.

The occasion is the Solar Decathlon, for which two Missouri universities have teamed up to compete against 19 other university groups. Each team has designed and built a renewable energy house that will be part of a "solar village" expected to draw 200,000 spectators on the National Mall.

Okay, fine.  Sounds nice, and best of luck to the local groups.  But...

Think of the Solar Decathlon as an NCAA tournament, but with hoop dreams replaced by dreams of energy independence.

*sigh*

There is absolutely no credible or robust evidence that we'll ever be able to become independent of fossil fuels for energy.  Ever.  Anywhere.  At all.  Sure, we get a few percentage points of our current energy needs from wind or solar power, or ethanol, but the bottom line is that no 'alternative' energy source provides the economically viable bang for our production buck that oil, natural gas, and coal do.  In fact, none of those 'alternative' energy sources would even survive in a free market at all without massive politically motivated government subsidies.  Thus, while this project is perhaps commendable in concept, it is also completely misguided in practice.

The competing homes will be able to use the electric grid but, through their renewable sources, are expected to produce at least as much energy as they use during the several-day contest. The houses will get extra points if they produce an energy surplus, and the winner also will have to do well in categories that include being attractive, comfortable and easy to live in.

Nice idea, but it won't work.  Even if they manage to make it energy neutral, I guarantee you it won't be attractive, comfortable, and easy to live in.  More on that in a moment.  But just think about this - they want to pump in a certain amount of energy, and then pull back out more energy than that?!  What sort of strange, magical alchemy do they think is capable of creating energy from nothing?  Moving on:

The event is backed heavily by the U.S. Department of Energy, which screened and pared 40 entrants to this year's 20 contestants. The department also gave $100,000 to each of the teams to help with expenses and is allowing the temporary use of the mall — prime Washington real estate.

And there's your government subsidy.  I'd be a lot more impressed if they could do this sort of thing without wasting any taxpayer dollars.  But get a load of the actual budget for this thing:

The Missouri schools and about 40 of their students have been working for more than a year on the design and construction of the home, at times putting in more than 12-hour days. The students also had to raise the bulk of the project's $600,000 budget, which paid for the house and other expenses.

$600,000?!  Surely this was a massive palace, then, with all the modern conveniences we could imagine, right?  *cough, cough*  Riiiiiight...

The house, which has a bedroom, kitchen and living room, had to be built according to Solar Decathlon rules, including its size and using only off-the-shelf materials or components.

Its dishwasher, washer and dryer meet the Energy Star efficiency standards. Paneling with high-density foam insulation, available from a Jefferson City company, was used for exterior walls. Electricity is generated with 40 photovoltaic panels on the roof.

Solar-heated water — besides being available for showers and dishwashing — circulates through hoses under the floor to help heat the house. A high-efficiency heat pump will provide cooling and backup heating.

The house is programmed to operate at peak efficiency. For instance, if the dishwasher needs to run, it turns on when the water heater is getting the most "solar gain" — meaning more plentiful hot water.

So...this $600k house was made from the same stuff your house was, can't run the dishwasher unless it's sunny out, and offers a whole 800 square feet!  When can I move in?  Better yet, why don't they give me $600k, I'll be in charge of building a house that actually is comfortable and entertaining, energy efficient, and far bigger than 800 square feet, as long as I get to pocket the difference.  I suspect every one of you would take that deal, too.

Um...a question: how hot does the water get?  Is it actually hot -- like hot enough for a good shower -- or just lukewarm?  And how much heat is provided by the water hoses under the floor?  If this thing is that well insulated, is it going to be enough to warm the air inside, especially during a long, cold winter day?  And what happens if it's cloudy for a month straight?  The questions go on, but the point is that while this entire concept sounds happy-happy-joy-joy, reality just has a way of bursting the bubble.

You know, this reminds me of something.  Hm, what was it?  Oh yeah, another almost-$1 million 'green' house that was so environmentally friendly that it failed to be livable.  Guess why?  Frozen pipes.  Seems like a precedent to me.

Go ahead, you can accuse me of trying to pooh-pooh early efforts at becoming more energy efficient.  I'm not against energy efficiency, nor against alternative energy sources.  It just burns me up when Leftists use this issue for political purposes, pushing lies (like we're running out of oil) and hysteria (like saying that we're destroying the planet), and actively preventing domestic energy production (as Dems have done with almost 100% consistency for the past 40 years).  If we had our eyes clear and our minds engaged, these frivolous energy rabbits wouldn't be running around all over the place, we'd have $0.75/gallon gasoline, and vastly less concern about Middle East oil politics.

Welcome to the results of the environmentalist flavor of radical liberalism.

There's my two cents.

PS - I wonder if these student designers are going to be forced to live in their wonderful new creation for a few months to prove their viability as real homes?  Seems like that would be the ultimate test, don't you think?  Then again, maybe not...we already know that environmentalists gravitate toward the stone ages and grossness, so maybe they'd enjoy it...ick.

Checking In On ObamaKennedyDeathCare

Just because other things have come up over the past few days doesn't mean that ObamaKennedyDeathCare isn't still looming. There are several bills now being debated in various Congressional committees, and are likely to be sent out to a full vote in the near future. Here is some more information that is critical for you to know before this vote occurs so that you can make your opinions known to your elected representatives.

Having been busted trying to slip through a provision that would give coverage to illegal aliens without getting caught, now the Democrats are being quite open about it:

Fearful that they’re losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access.

Hey, at least they're finally being honest. That truly is change!

Interestingly enough, several particular items are going to be exempted from the new taxes that will be established:

They were calling it the tax on Q-tips. Amid Republican ridicule, a Democratic chairman backed down Tuesday and exempted consumer items of $100 or less — from condoms to contact lenses — from a proposed tax on medical device manufacturers.

It would help pay for health care coverage for the uninsured in comprehensive legislation.

This is not rocket science. Even so, it should not be rushed, or things like this will happen:

Today the Senate voted, by voice vote, on an amendment by Senator Debbie Stabenow. Keep in mind that Senator Stabenow offered just one amendment to the healthcare legislation.

The Congressional Budget Office, rushing to keep up with the Senate’s aggressive schedule on passing health care legislation, scored the one amendment.

There was a voice vote. Senator Stabenow’s amendment passed.

Only after the amendment passed did the Congressional Budget Office realize it made a mistake in the scoring and under counted the one amendment to the tune of $600 million.

It's a good thing they're taking their time with things on the big bill pop, isn't it? Otherwise, we might be in trouble.

Obama once mentioned the post office as a shining example of why his health care plan should work. While we all know that's not exactly a ringing endorsement, Obama seemed to think it was a brilliant analogy. Now, he's doubling down on it:

Hot Air points out that the Post Office is failing, and needs a bailout:

Not only have Democrats offered a huge bailout to the Post Office, they have attached it to their continuing resolution that will fund the government after the end of the month. That makes it almost impossible to defeat, as Republicans would have to shut down the government over the issue — and with health care and cap-and-trade still on the table, they will want to save their political capital to block the trillions in new spending rather than the billions. The Senate GOP can’t block it anyway, as budget bills are not subject to filibusters.

Since Obama himself offered the USPS as the model of the public option, we can point to this as the inevitable result of a government program in a private market. When it fails or runs over its revenue, the government will inevitably act to subsidize it. The public option will be no different at all in this regard.

Hm. Funny thing, that post office.

So what do the latest polls say? Basically, that ObamaKennedyDeathCare is circling the political drain:

Just 41% of voters nationwide now favor the health care reform proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s down two points from a week ago and the lowest level of support yet measured.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% are opposed to the plan.

Here's the big kicker:

Two demographic factors will come into play a year from now: seniors and independents. In 2008, Democrats got enough of the youth vote to limit any skepticism from older voters, and independents flocked to Barack Obama. On this issue, the Democrats’ signature domestic policy, both seniors and independents have fled their coalition.

Independents now oppose ObamaCare by almost than 3-1, 72%-26%, which is almost the same as the Republican split at 79%-19%. More tellingly, a majority of independents (52%) strongly oppose it. Fifty-nine percent of seniors oppose ObamaCare, with the aforementioned 46% strongly opposing and only 16% strongly supporting it. But the news gets even worse in the preceding age demographics, with majorities in opposition among voters in their 30s (57%), 40s (65%), and 50-64 (58%). Among the 40s, a majority are strongly opposed (54%).

My, my, my. Should be interesting to see if Obama is politicaly suicidal enough to go ahead with this massive change despite the clear will of the people being dead set against it.

Lastly, I will leave you with several stories of the devastating effects of what ObamaKennedyDeathCare will to America:

Repeated surgery cancellations kill elderly cancer patient in U.K.
Cutting off meds
Canadian forced to live with excruciating pain
Canadian avoids death by paying for American care

Serious stuff. Call your Rep and Senator and give them your thoughts.

There's my two cents.

Parade Of Liberalism Hits

Seriously, where is the sanity in liberal thought? Allow me to demonstrate the lack of it through several mind-boggling examples.

Celebrities, diplomats unite behind child rapist

Note well: No matter what the LA Times would have you believe, he’s not an “accused” child-rapist. He pled guilty. The conviction’s on the books. All that’s left to settle is the sentence.

But Hollywood knows a good cause when it sees it.

The surprise detention of Roman Polanski has been met with indignation in Hollywood and sparked a flurry of media speculation over the real reason behind Saturday night’s arrest in Zurich.

Film mogul Harvey Weinstein has got behind a campaign by French film-makers calling on US authorities not to extradite the Oscar-winning Polish director in connection with a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor dating back more than three decades…

“We’re calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation,” Weinstein said, reviving a theme he adopted earlier in the year after he bought international distribution rights at Sundance to the HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

The film uncovered flaws in the legal case against the director, prompting Weinstein to allude to a possible campaign to get the charges against Polanski dropped. At a hearing this year a Los Angeles superior court judge agreed there was “substantial misconduct” in the original hearing.

Again: Convicted child-rapist and fugitive from justice. Magically transformed, by Hollywood libertinism and douchebaggery, into an honest-to-goodness victim who’s being persecuted by the evil empire for, um, forcibly sodomizing a 13-year-old and then skipping bail. I can’t do any better than this righteous Salon piece. Go ye and read, right now.

Get deported, get a refund

A partnership between a Pennsylvania accounting firm and a Mexican human rights group aims to seek out Mexicans recently deported from the United States and offer to help them file for thousands of dollars in tax refunds.

The Center for Border Studies and Human Rights Promotion, based in the border city of Reynosa, already has registered 15 such migrants as of Sept. 11, just days after the program's Sept. 3 launch, the center's legal coordinator, Felipe Gonzalez, told BNA.

Undocumented Mexican migrants may have worked illegally in the United States, but they are still entitled to their share of U.S. tax refunds, say officials with the center and with Warminster, Pa.-based accounting firm Warminster Financial.

“If you worked in the United States in 2006, 2007, or 2008, and were paid by check, you can receive up to $15,000 per year,” stated a flier circulated by Warminster. “Depending on how much you've earned, and how many dependents you can claim, you have the right to request a tax refund. It doesn't matter if you are undocumented, were deported, or returned [to Mexico] because you're out of a job.”

It's Bush's fault...!

"Bush did it" is now apparently the reason we can't close Guantanamo within a year. From the Washington Post:

[Gregory] Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. "I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives," he said.

Obama punts national security to the judiciary

In a stunning display of political cowardice, the Obama administration has decided not to seek specific congressional authorization for a prolonged detention statute for Guantanamo Bay detainees deemed too dangerous to set free. It’s the latest troubling flip flop by the president, an utter abdication of the lofty promises he made during his much-heralded National Archives Speech just this May.

This decision not only weakens U.S. detention policy, it will regrettably serve as an invitation to the courts to expand their role in national-security affairs — an area that is properly the province of the executive and legislative branches.

Feds target yard sales

Thinking of having a fall yard sale to clean out some of the clutter from your house? Be careful, or it could get you in trouble with the Feds, and cost you up to $15 million in fines. Its no joke: the Consumer Product Safety Commission has launched a new enforcement campaign, which it calls “Resale Round-up,” targeting the resale of potentially harmful children’s toys and other consumer products. Potential violators, the CPSC warns, include “thrift stores, consignment stores, charities, and individuals holding yard sales and flea markets.” Even e-bay sales are at risk.

Stimulus transparency? Not so much

The goal was to build a reporting system that allows the public to follow the zigzagging paths of dollars awarded under the $787 billion federal stimulus package. A financial GPS of sorts. But despite federal lawmakers’ pledge of transparency, the final stages of most money trails, along with key information about job impacts, will remain invisible to users of the Recovery.org website when it debuts next month.

Only details of a stimulus grant’s passage through its first two stops after it leaves the federal government must be reported, according to guidance memos from the White House Office of Management and Budget. That means billions of dollars will be untrackable and thousands of recipients will be left unidentified through the database, officials acknowledge.

Obama cuts pensions to WWII vets

In a strongly worded message to Congress outlining its priorities for a military spending bill, the Obama administration today said it disapproved of including money for pensions for 26 elderly members of the World War II-era Alaska Territorial Guard.

The Guardsmen are among those assigned to protect Alaska from the Japanese during World War II.

Michael Savage calls liberalism a mental disorder. After seeing these examples, I'd say it's hard to disagree, wouldn't you?

There's my two cents.

Just What The Doctor Ordered

A while back I posted about Ronald Reagan's visionary leadership. Given this point in American history, when there is a distinct lack of actual leadership in America, I thought it would be good to see a reminder of how pro-American leadership in foreign policy really works:

Newt Gingrich writes about the 25th anniversary of two of Ronald Reagan's landmark speeches, and the effects they had on the world. This is a great bit of history, and worth a review. Excerpt:

In 1980, the United States was losing the Cold War. Under President Jimmy Carter, the American economy had become a disaster -- featuring 13% inflation, 22% interest rates, gasoline lines and shortages, and the beginning of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Our national security situation was verging on the catastrophic. The anti-military left had cut the Defense budget. The Soviet Union was subsidizing massive appeasement marches in Western Europe (secret documents released after the fall of East Germany confirm that Soviet front-groups were behind the demonstrations). Soviet forces were on the offense in Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, Grenada, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

The most public humiliation was the illegal seizure of the American Embassy in Iran in 1979. Iranian militants held American diplomats as hostages in total violation of international law for 444 days. In the face of this assault on America and American citizens, Carter's policy was one of weakness and appeasement. The result was a national sense of humiliation and impotence.

Before Reagan took office, the national establishment favored a policy of "reasonableness" -- that is, they accepted the existence of the Soviet Union as a given and believed it had to be accommodated. In contrast to the "realpolitik" of the national establishment, Ronald Reagan outlined a simple, clear alternative. When asked by a reporter of his vision of the Cold War, Reagan said simply, "We win, they lose."

On March 8, 1983, Reagan offered his most forceful moral claim for this new strategy of victory in the Cold War. In a speech calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire," he defined the illegitimacy of the Soviet dictatorship. It was a speech that Natan Sharansky, then a prisoner in the Soviet Gulag, said galvanized the hopes of the prisoners and raised their morale while demoralizing the Soviet guards and undermining the authority of the Soviet system.

Two weeks later, on March 23, President Reagan outlined in a second speech the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) that was designed to begin a science-and-technology race that the Soviets could not win.

America's elites were shocked by these two speeches. They ridiculed and attacked them. The State Department professionals and the foreign policy elites opposed Reagan. They were all horrified that an American President could be so bold and provocative. They would be almost as unhappy four years later when President Reagan went to Berlin and demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Less than nine years after Ronald Reagan's "Evil Empire" and "SDI" speeches, the Soviet Union disappeared. The scale of this strategic victory and the role of President Reagan in defeating the Soviet Union are ignored by most of academic America and much of the news media. The 25th anniversary of these two speeches is a good time to set the record straight. They were wrong, and Reagan was right.

I wanted to share some audio clips of those two speeches with you. The first speech was Reagan's Address to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida on March 8, 1983. It has since been called the 'Evil Empire' speech because that's what he named the Soviet Union there. Take a listen to some of the best parts:

Clip 1: America as a torch of freedom.
Clip 2: The source of American greatness and the threat of modern day secularism.
Clip 3: The need for peace through strength.
Clip 4: Reagan calls those who demand the supremacy of the state over the individual as the focus of evil in modern world.

The second speech was Reagan's Address to the Nation on National Security from the White House Oval Office on March 23, 1983. He outlined a specific plan to launch an arms race against the Soviet Union that they could not win, based on the idea of peace through strength.

Clip 1: A strong military is the surest means to peace.
Clip 2: The U.S. does not start fights, peace can only maintained through strength.

Truly, this was some bold stuff! You know what strikes me most about it, though? If you listen to all of these, these words can be applied equally well to 2008 as to 1983! Seriously, look at some of these statements:

"I want you to know that this administration is motivated by a political philosophy that sees the greatness of America in you, her people, and in your families, churches, neighborhoods, communities -- the institutions that foster and nourish values like concern for others and respect for the rule of law under God. Now, I don't have to tell you that this puts us in opposition to, or at least out of step with, a prevailing attitude of many who have turned to a modern-day secularism, discarding the tried and time-tested values upon which our very civilization is based. No matter how well intentioned, their value system is radically different from that of most Americans. And while they proclaim that they're freeing us from superstitions of the past, they've taken upon themselves the job of superintending us by government rule and regulation. Sometimes their voices are louder than ours, but they are not yet a majority."

How often to we struggle against politicians who ignore the rule of law (illegal immigration, ethical deficiencies, corruption) and basic values (life and freedom)? How often do we fight against over-bearing regulations that throttle our economy and freedom (global warming)?

At the same time, however, they must be made to understand we will never compromise our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom. We will never abandon our belief in God. And we will never stop searching for a genuine peace. But we can assure none of these things America stands for through the so-called nuclear freeze solutions proposed by some. The truth is that a freeze now would be a very dangerous fraud, for that is merely the illusion of peace. The reality is that we must find peace through strength.

Remember what I blogged about recently with Obama pledging to de-nuke the world by leading America to non-nuke status first? Reagan knew this was poor policy decades ago!

Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness -- pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.

Boy, if this doesn't sound a heckuva lot like the Sharia-governed Islamic states in today's world, I don't know what does! Of course, the one obvious difference is that while the Soviet Union sought to eliminate God altogether, radical Islam seeks to honor Allah by killing or converting everyone else in the world. It may be a different form of totalitarianism, but it's still totalitarianism bent on domination.

Since the dawn of the atomic age, we've sought to reduce the risk of war by maintaining a strong deterrent and by seeking genuine arms control. "Deterrence" means simply this: making sure any adversary who thinks about attacking the United States, or our allies, or our vital interests, concludes that the risks to him outweigh any potential gains. Once he understands that, he won't attack. We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression.

This is a perfect definition of deterrence. What some today don't realize is that true peace is only available through benevolent strength, which is what America offers. We are the most powerful nation in the world, and although we may influence and suggest, we do not conquer nor force other countries to bend to our will unless they attack us first (and even then, we're very slow to military action!). The terrorists themselves have echoed Reagan's theory - remember all the talk from bin Laden about the people following the 'strong horse'? That happened after Clinton pulled troops out of Somalia after a handful of casualties. Bin Laden proclaimed that event proved he was the 'strong horse', which prompted a new series of attacks that culminated in 9/11.

Reagan knew it, our enemies know it...so why does the Left not get it? This is why they cannot be allowed to run the country - they refuse to acknowledge this simple reality. Their willful ignorance is extremely dangerous to all of us. Great stuff from the Gipper, and just as applicable today as it was then.

That's what happens when you base your philosophy on truths that don't change over time. As I've said before, those truths are reflected in conservatism.

Ahhh...it's so refreshing, isn't it? Like water from a cool, mountain spring. That's what we need right now in America.

There's my two cents.