Posted by
RME KRNL on Thursday, October 29, 2009 1:58:05 PM
Subtitle: More some old, more some new, more some borrowed, more some blue - but also all the more for you.
1. ObamaCare alternatives?
Oh, I dunno, maybe some of the things the Republicans of the so-called "Party of No" have been proposing but which the Democrats have been ignoring, like:
Interstate insurance competition, medical savings accounts, tax free insurance or credits, tort reform, fee for service, rewarding outcomes, medical malpractice reform, prohibiting coverage denials based on preexisting conditions, guaranteeing portability, electronic prescriptions and medical records, streamlining billing codes and practices, price and quality transparency, pay-for-performance measures, one-stop primary-care “medical homes,” chronic disease management initiatives, tax equity for health insurance purchases, increased incentives for health savings accounts, or creating the ability to purchase insurance or form risk pools across state lines.
Our health care system and health insurance do need reform. Everyone agrees on that, But it's already the best in the world and just needs some tuning up, not a whole new and untested model of car. Especially when the federal government tends not to turn out Ferraris but Edsels, thank you very much.
2. Cap and Trade, Cap and Tax, Crap and Tax - what's the difference?
Once again, class: Everyone wants to ensure our kids grow up in a clean environment. Some just want to bankrupt us while doing it, and some of us would prefer a more logical approach. For the second group, The Heritage Foundation has some figures and charts that provide a helpful look at the immense costs associated with the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax plan to forcibly cap carbon. According to the new report, “The Economic Consequences of Waxman-Markey: An Analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009," recently released:
a. Cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses are $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035;
b. Single-year GDP losses reach $400 billion by 2025 and will ultimately exceed $700 billion;
c. Net job losses approach 1.9 million in 2012 and could approach 2.5 million by 2035. Manufacturing loses would be 1.4 million jobs in 2035;
d. The annual cost of emissions permits to energy users will be at least $100 billion by 2012 and could exceed $390 billion by 2035;
e. A typical family of four will pay, on average, an additional $829 each year for energy-based utility costs; and
f. Gasoline prices will rise by 58 percent ($1.38 more per gallon) and average household electric rates will increase by 90 percent.
So, Waxman-Markey's Crap and Tax Plan does sound like a PLAN, but not a very GOOD plan.
3. Moral relativity and war
Obama and many other leftist liberals are moral relativists. There is no real right or wrong for them, only effective or ineffective. Morality is relative and situational. If the ends justify the means, then do it. And, don't kid yourselves, they are absolutely ruthless in applying such Marxist principles. So, don't let them fool you with their fake morality and false arguments of maintaining our nation's moral high ground by not “torturing” terrorists, so we can once again be “respected” around the world. Besides, I would always like to be liked and respected, too. Everybody likes being popular. But the Muslim jihadists who want to kill us and destroy our way of life are never going to respect us, much less like us. They are fanatics and are therefore fanatical about achieving their goals. We, likewise, must be just as fanatical about protecting ourselves. So, given a choice between being respected by my enemies or being feared, I will pick being feared every time, thank you. In more ways than one, good terrorists are dead terrorists. That way, we don't have to Mirandize them on the battlefield, we don't have to house them with a personal prayer rug and a Koran in Gitmo, where they gain weight from the good food, and we don't have to figure out where they should go when we subsequently release them without trial, without punishment and without justice. Just kill 'em where we find 'em and bury 'em where they fall -- simple, efficient and economical. I think it was Stonewall Jackson who said something like this about war: If you do decide to go to war, unsheathe the sword and throw away the scabbard. Guess he meant war should be an all or nothing kind of thing -- either do it, or don't. And then there's Obama.....still dithering about Afghanistan...
4. That reminds me: Afghanistan and Pakistan
I don't know if anyone else has noticed this or not, but when Obama talks about Afghanistan and Pakistan, it's always Af-gan-i-stan but it's the New England-sounding Pah-ki-stahn. Why is that, anyway? Why isn't it either Af-gan-i-stan and Pak-i-stan or Af-ghan-i-stahn and Pah-ki-stahn? Is it because Pah-ki-stahn is more sophisticated than Af-gan-i-stan? Is it because Pah-ki-stahn is somehow "better" than Af-gan-i-stan? Just askin' - Just sayin'.
5.
Deficit spending
At which Obama and the Congressional Democrats excel, by the way. Jay Ambrose, columnist for The Examiner, on deficit spending: "A friend recently gave me a sense of how much a trillion is with an illustration you can also find on various Internet sites. A million seconds, he said, is 12 days, while a billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds? That's 31,688 years. In other words, a trillion is a whole, whole lot, and that's something you might keep in mind when reading that the
U.S. deficit for 2009 is now projected at $1.4 trillion, which is a cool trillion more than the deficit in 2008 and the most government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product - 10 percent - since World War II."
Way to go, tax and spend Democrats!
6. Hatch Act
In a violation of federal law (the Hatch Act, passed in 1939) against government funded propaganda, Obama's official, taxpayer funded, Department of Health and Human Services website urges Americans, as a precondition to even using their official site, mind you, to send an e-mail to President Barack Obama praising his health care reform plan. Hmmm, a government website funded with taxpayer money, open to provide info to tax payers.....but with preconditions? Oh well, with what Obama's already done in abrogating over 200 years of U.S. contract law and ignoring the Constitution, what's the big deal, right?
7. Obama's Little Blue Book
Until a fellow blogger recently told me, I didn't even know Obama had his own Little Blue Book of sayings and quotes, sort of like Chairman Mao Tse Tung's Little Red Book that all his Revolutionary Red Guard used to carry and quote from, as well as used to salute Mao with when their Great Leader appeared before them in public. Although why there being such an Obama book doesn't surprise me must just be because I've become so jaded and cynical. It's also interesting that it looks like someone else (a publisher) wrote (actually, edited) this book rather than Obama himself. But that, too, fits, because it's now been recently alleged that Bill Ayers wrote Obama's "Faith of My Father" rather than Obama. (I guess, like with the Nobel Prize, Obama just gets credit, or claims credit, for all kinds of things he really hasn't done himself.) It's also interesting to see on the Amazon.com webpage how many people who bought Obama's Little Blue Book ALSO bought Chairman Mao's Little Red Book AND Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" AND Rahm Emanuel's "The Plan." Uh-oh. More connecting the dots, more "linkage," huh?
8. Notable quotable
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), writer, editor and critic: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Sound familiar to a lot of what we've been hearing, say, during Obama's campaign and now almost a year into his presidency, folks?
9.
Czars - trivia question
Question: How many czars are buried in the Kremlin? Answer: Forty-seven czars are buried within the Kremlin walls.
And Obama's 36 "czars" (plus or minus) are burying the Constitution and the rest of us.
10. A czar becomes a -- um, uh -- czar, while the rest of us czar just bewildered
The Obama administration has produced yet another czar, putting America in hot competition against the Russian dynasty for the most czars in a single country. This czar will deal with illegal immigration and border issues via the Homeland Security Department, according to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The czar, Alan Bersin, is a former Justice Department official who led cases against illegal immigrants on the Mexican border. He eventually worked as the U.S. attorney general's Southwest border representative -- a position that was cutely called "border czar." So, although Bernsin is czaready quite comfortable with his anointed title, I think his being a czar and now being a czar again is just, well, a little bizarre.