1. Millions Will Lose Their Current Insurance. Period. End of Story: President Obama wants Americans to believe they can keep their insurance if they like, but research from the government, private research firms, and think tanks show this is not the case. Proposed economic incentives, plus a government-run health plan like the one proposed in the House bill, would cause 88.1 million people to see their current employer-sponsored health plan disappear.
2. Your Health Care Coverage Will Probably Change Anyway: Even if you kept your private insurance, eventually most remaining plans—whether employer plans or individual plans—would have to conform to new federal benefit standards. Moreover, the necessary plan “upgrades” will undoubtedly cost you more in premiums.
3. The Umpire Is Also the First Baseman: The main argument for a “public option” is that it would increase competition. However, if the federal government creates a health care plan that it controls and also sets the rules for the private plans, there is little doubt that Washington would put its private sector “competitors” out of business sooner or later.
4. The Fed Picks Your Treatment: President Obama said: “They’re going to have to give up paying for things that don’t make them healthier. … If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half for the thing that’s going to make you well.” Does that sound like a government that will stay out of your health care decisions?
5. Individual Mandate Means Less Liberty and More Taxes: Although he once opposed the idea, President Obama is now open to the imposition of an individual mandate that would require all Americans to have federally approved health insurance. This unprecedented federal directive not only takes away your individual freedom but could cost you as well. Lawmakers are considering a penalty or tax for those who don’t buy government-approved health plans.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 28% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -12. That’s the lowest rating yet recorded for President Obama (see trends).

Forty-nine percent (49%) now say that America’s best days have come and gone. Just 38% believe they are still to come. Thirty-four percent (34%) say the country is heading in the right direction. Seventy-five percent (75%) want the Federal Reserve to be audited.

Hope and change!!

The year is 2109. Celebrations continue as mankind's heroic, century-long, quintillion-dollar effort to lower the global mean temperature by 1 degree has paid off: July 2109 is just as hot as July 2009. Few can contain their jubilation.

But even as the carbon-neutral champagne corks fly, the sky darkens. A projectile of a different kind is coming our way. An asteroid streaks across the skies, giving the media just enough time to spread the word. The New York Times, now beamed directly into subscribers' brains via digital-neural networks, fulfills ancient prophecy and warns that women and minorities will be hardest hit by the incoming object.

But there's little we can do. The space flotsam smashes into the solar energy farm formerly known as Arizona. The space rock, 100 meters in diameter, hits at 50,000 mph with the force of thousands of nuclear warheads. Millions die. Dust and debris blot out the sun and will chill the planet for years. Crops fail, billions starve. The heat of impact releases torrents of nitrous and nitric acid rain.

So horrendous is the calamity that some even wonder if the enormous investment in fending off climate change might not have been better spent.

Alas, there's no time to defrost Al Gore's frozen head to ask his opinion.

This vision of the end times came to me on hearing the news that something hit Jupiter in the breadbasket the other week and nobody saw it coming.

It left a Jovian scar as "small" as the Pacific Ocean or as big as Earth. An amateur astronomer in Australia saw it first because none of the pros were even looking. Then again, the rock was probably pretty small, between 50 and a few hundred meters wide. That is to say, about the size of John Edwards' house.

Now, I know what you're saying: So what? It's not like we need an early warning system for Jupiter, a "gassy giant." What have the Jovians done for us? When God starts pelting rocks at Earth, or our own gassy giants, like Chris Dodd, then we can worry.

Well, He has been, on a regular basis. In March, a meteor called 2009 DD45 came within a few inches, astronomically speaking, of smashing into Earth (about 45,000 miles). Fortunately, we spotted that one ahead of time -- a mere three days ahead of time. That's just enough warning for Keith Olbermann to knock out several top-notch diatribes on why George Bush is to blame, but not enough time to, you know, keep New York City from being liquefied.

In 1908, a DD45-sized meteor exploded over Siberia with a force 1,000 times the Hiroshima blast. It leveled 80 million trees over an area twice the size of Los Angeles. If it had arrived five hours later, St. Petersburg would have been gone.

Something to seriously ponder.  Read the rest at Town Hall.

Guest Opinion
by Professor John Evans Evans-John
Harvard School of Harvard Faculty Asshole Studies
Harvard University

When I first learned of the arrest of my colleague Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates after he stood up to the fascist jackboots of a declasse, ill-educated Cambridge police officer, I was of course angered -- but scarcely shocked. L'Affaire Gates simply aired, in public, the dirty 100-thread-count table linen of an American culture where Harvard faculty assholes still face a daily struggle against profiling, abuse, and insolence.

It will come as no surprise that Skip's arrest was the talk of the Douchebag Room at the Harvard Faculty Club last Friday. I and a group of colleagues had assembled for our weekly lunch; I opted for their competently-prepared Ahi Tuna Tartare and an amusing glass of '05 Hospices de Beaune Premier Cru Cuvee Cyrot-Chaudron. I had noticed that the Frantz Fanon Memorial Booth -- Skip's long-reserved lunch spot -- was uncharacteristically empty, and asked our waiter Sergio for an explanation.

"Professor Skeep, he no is come today," said Sergio. "I tink he is in the jail."

Our table exchanged knowing glances, for we knew immediately that Skip was only the latest victim of a system that singles out the Harvard faculty asshole for stigmatization and unequal justice. It is a system that all of us knew too well, and provided an opportunity for an open conversation about our shared experiences as Harvard faculty assholes in America while waiting for Sergio to bring the dessert cart.

One after one came the cascade of stark stories: the rolled eyes of our department secretaries. The Spanish language mockery of our office janitors. The foul gestures of drunken strap-hanging Red Sox lumpenproles aboard the Red Line. The frequent police stops on the highway to Cape Ann and Martha's Vineyard for "Volvoing While Asshole." And then there are the insulting media stereotypes, where we are routinely caricatured as pompous, effete, self-important, irrelevant elitists. All, I might add, by a motley collection of lowbrow inferiors, few of whom have ever published in a peer-reviewed journal. Let alone edit one.

Sometimes it even comes at the hand of self-styled "peers" from D-list state ampersand institutions. One colleague recounted the tale of his restroom confrontation with a Texas A&M professor at a national academic conference last year. After relieving themselves at adjacent urinals, my colleague noticed the oaf leaving hastily for the plenary session and decided to gently point out his hygienic forgetfulness. "A Harvard man washes his hands after urinating," he said. "And an Aggie don't piss all over his hands, asshole," came the reply.

A female colleague from the English department recalled a recent incident along the Charles River jogging path during her regular morning run. A confused passer-by rudely interrupted her progress and requested directions, as if my colleague were some sort of lowly campus guide or untenured adjunct. "Where is the library at?" she demanded. Naturally, my colleague took the opportunity to correct her, noting that "at Harvard we do not end our sentences in prepositions."

"Okay, where is the library at, asshole?" barked the interloper. Needless to say, my colleague's daily morning runs have since been replaced with tear-filled visits to the Faculty Asshole Self Esteem Counseling Center.

Heh!^TM  Go read the rest.

Iowahawk

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is not ruling out the possibility of Russian membership in NATO.

Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon told U.S. lawmakers Tuesday that the United States would consider Russian membership in the military alliance that was founded to protect Europe from Soviet aggression.

Gordon said NATO should be open to European democracies. He added that "if Russia meets the criteria and can contribute to common security, and there is a consensus in the alliance, it shouldn't be excluded."

NATO is often vilified in Russia, which has objected to NATO's expansion to include Russia's neighbors.

But the Obama administration, seeking better relations, says it wants to convince Moscow that NATO is no longer a threat.

The AP/Google

Observations on YOUR President’s Early Days:

1. Offended the Queen of England

2. Bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia.

3. Praised the Marxist Daniel Ortega.

4. Kissed Hugo Chavez on the cheek.

5. Endorsed the Socialist Evo Morales of Bolivia .

6. Announced we would meet with Iranians with
no pre-conditions..

7. Gave away billions to AIG also without pre-conditions.

8. Massively expanded the bailouts.

9. Insulted everyone who has ever loved a Special Olympian.

10. Tripled our national debt in his first 100 days in office.

11. Announced a termination of the space defense system the day after the North Koreans launched an ICBM.

12. Despite the urgings of his own CIA director and the prior 4 CIA directors, released information on intelligence gathering.

13. Accepted without public comment the fact that five of his cabinet members cheated on their taxes and two others withdrew after they couldn’t take the heat.

14. Appointed a Homeland Security Chief who quickly identified as “dangers to the nation”, groups including veterans
of the military, and opponents of abortion on demand....and who ordered that the word “terrorism” no longer be used but instead referred to such acts as “man caused disasters”.

15. Circled the globe so he could openly apologize for America ‘s greatness.

16. Told the Mexican president that the violence in their country was because of us.

17. Politicized the census by moving it into the White House from its Department of Commerce origins.

18. Appointed as Attorney General the man who orchestrated the forced removal and expulsion (from America to Cuba ) of a nine-year old whose mother died trying to bring him to a life of freedom in the United States.

19. Salutes as heroes three Navy SEALS who took down three terrorists whothreatened one American life... and the next day announces members of the Bush administration will likely stand trial for”torturing&rdquo ; a terrorist who had played a part
in killing 3000 Americans by pouring water up their nose.

20. Air Force One over New York City with a fighter close behind.

21. Sent his National Defense Advisor to Europe to assure Europe that the US will no longer treat Israel in a special
manner and they might be on their own with the Muslims.

22. Began the process of nationalizing the auto industry and the insurance industry.

23. Announced that for intents and purposes the health insurance Industry will be nationalized, despite the fact that such a thing is a miserable failure everywhere it’s been put in place.

And people are paying more attention to Michael Jackson than to defending their own liberties.

<snip>

Which health care mouse out there will have the guts to bell the cat who is one of the most famous Parkinson's Disease sufferers in America? Who is going to tell him that the treatments that are associated with Parkinson's -- drugs like Sinemet, Symmetrel, Eldepryl, Parlodel, Permax, Mirapex, Requip, and surgery with the quaint name "deep brain stimulation" -- are just no longer possible for Fox because, well, Mike, your QALY* just isn't up to snuff, babe. You have Parkinson's. You boozed (according to you). As a result, the government has decided treatment for you, Mike, lacks "appropriateness." The "outcome and effectiveness" of treating you -- which is to say the worth of your 47-year old life -- just isn't worth it for the rest of us.

Sorry Mike. Say Goodbye to Hollywood. Close your Parkinson's Foundation (waste of scarce resources, to wax Singeresque). Just go home to the wife and kids, cut off these expensive meds and please die. Quietly. And for heaven's sake, get yourself buried in private. We don't want any of this Michael Jackson type-hoopla disrupting our favorite programs. We have lives to get on with.

*QALY: Quality-Adjusted Life Year. A formula devised by left-wing policy wonks that purports, as David Catron has so ably illuminated on these pages, to measure the worth of your life by assigning a numerical value to each year of your existence. In Catron's words: "A year of perfect health, for example, is given a value of 1.0 while a year of sub-optimum health is rated between 0 and 1. If you are confined to a wheelchair, a year of your life might be valued at half that of your ambulatory neighbor. If you are blind or deaf, you also score low. All that remains is to assign a specific dollar value to the QALY and, voilà, your life has a price tag."

Go read the rest.

American Spectator

Here are just a few very good reasons to hate Obamacare:

• Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!

• Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!

• Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)

• Page 42: The “Health Choices Commissioner” will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.

• Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.

• Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.

• Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

• Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (read: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)

• Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.

• Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)

• Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens

• Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.

• Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.

• Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No “judicial review” is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.

• Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.

• Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.

• Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.

• Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll

• Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll

• Page 167: Any individual who doesnt’ have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.

• Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).

• Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.

Wake the hell up, people.

Why don't we see this in the American Press?

Canada Free Press

Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), the secretary of the House Republican Conference and a former District Court Judge, is having his messages to constituents censored by Democrats on the Franking Commission.  Republicans are no longer allowed to use the words “government run health care” in the communications to their constituents.

Carter received an email from the Franking Commission informing him of the censorship.  

“It came to me from the Franking Commission and I have the email from the Franking Commission here if you’d like to see it,” Carter said.  “We held a telephone town-hall… When you hold telephone town-halls you have a recorded message that introduces the town-hall and the subject matter you’re going to be talking about.  You have to now submit that language to the Franking Commission.

“What we proposed as language was as follows, ‘House Democrats unveiled a government-run health care plan,’” Carter said.  “Our response from Franking was, ‘You cannot use that language.  You must use, ‘The House majority unveiled a public option health care plan,’ which is Pelosi-speak or ‘just last week the House majority unveiled a health care plan which I believe will cost taxpayers…’& rdquo;

“I would submit to you this is a free speech issue, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States,” Carter said. A highly-placed Hill staff source tells HUMAN EVENTS this is the new policy being enforced by Democrats.  Republicans will be forced to use the Democrats’ version of language describing their attempted government takeover of healthcare on their official communications with their constituents or they will have to pay for the postage personally.

Developing…

Human Events

"I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur," Obama told ABC News.

It wasn't Hirohito.

Gateway Pundit

That’s before we got change we could believe in.

Now the cops are on their own. Now officers can do their duty, according to the law and their training, and – without even knowing all the facts – the president of the United States will call them “stupid.”

More specifically, he will say they “acted stupidly.”

Which is pretty stupid in itself.

The nation’s chief law-enforcement official has taken on the nation’s law-enforcement officers.

And all across the country, some folks are asking themselves: If the president doesn’t respect the cops, why should I?

The nation’s hardest job just got harder. And, no, being president isn’t the nation’s hardest job – being a cop is.

The background, of course, is that a Harvard professor, who specializes in race history, broke into his own house because he forgot his key. A neighbor, not recognizing him, and seeing the break-in, called the police.

An officer responded.

And so did the professor.

According to the police report – which has not been disputed factually by either the professor or his defenders – the professor was antagonistic and insulting to the officer. Initially refusing cooperation, the professor repeatedly yelled at the officer and accused him of racism.

Did I mention that the cop was white and the professor was black?

As the officer prepared to leave the professor, he followed the cop out of the house, yelled at him twice – in front of a small crowd of people – and engaged in behavior that under Massachusetts law seems to constitute disorderly conduct.

That’s when the cop placed him under arrest.

And that’s when the madness began, because the professor immediately began crying “Discrimination!&rd quo; and talking to reporters.

Which meant the cop was screwed.

Because in this day and age, there aren’t two sides to the story, there isn’t justice, there isn’t the benefit of the doubt, there’s just the guilty white cop.

In fact, in that phrase “guilty white cop,” the word “guilty” is redundant.

At least it seems to be in the mind of the president.

Because Barack Obama – attorney and former law-school professor – seems not to understand the legal theories of either slander or disorderly conduct.

Nor does he really seem that knowledgeable about stereotyping, discrimination and bigotry.

Because if there is one thing the evening news has gotten right about this incident, it is that it is a good illustration of stereotyping and discrimination.

But it might not be the kind they are thinking of.

Because this event – and a portion of the reaction to it – seem to be examples of stereotyping of and bigotry against law-enforcement officers. If the president says that cops are unduly hard on people of color, he needs to open his mind to the reality that some people of color are unduly hard on cops.

Because bigotry, contrary to what the activists say, is a two-way street.

Nail.  Hammer.  Impact.

Bob Lonsberry

A new peer-reviewed climate study is presenting a head on challenge to man-made global warming claims. The study by three climate researchers appears in the July 23, 2009 edition of Journal of Geophysical Research. (Link to Abstract)

Full Press Release and Abstract to Study:

July 23, 2009

Nature not man responsible for recent global warming

Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.

The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.

"The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely" says corresponding author de Freitas.

"We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

Climate researchers have long been aware that ENSO events influence global temperature, for example causing a high temperature spike in 1998 and a subsequent fall as conditions moved to La Niña. It is also well known that volcanic activity has a cooling influence, and as is well documented by the effects of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption.

The new paper draws these two strands of climate control together and shows, by demonstrating a strong relationship between the Southern Oscillation and lower-atmospheric temperature, that ENSO has been a major temperature influence since continuous measurement of lower-atmospheric temperature first began in 1958.

According to the three researchers, ENSO-related warming during El Niño conditions is caused by a stronger Hadley Cell circulation moving warm tropical air into the mid-latitudes. During La Niña conditions the Pacific Ocean is cooler and the Walker circulation, west to east in the upper atmosphere along the equator, dominates.

"When climate models failed to retrospectively produce the temperatures since 1950 the modellers added some estimated influences of carbon dioxide to make up the shortfall," says McLean.

"The IPCC acknowledges in its 4th Assessment Report that ENSO conditions cannot be predicted more than about 12 months ahead, so the output of climate models that could not predict ENSO conditions were being compared to temperatures during a period that was dominated by those influences. It's no wonder that model outputs have been so inaccurate, and it is clear that future modelling must incorporate the ENSO effect if it is to be meaningful."

Bob Carter, one of four scientists who has recently questioned the justification for the proposed Australian emissions trading scheme, says that this paper has significant consequences for public climate policy.

"The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes.”

“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”

Imagine my suprise...

Climate Depot

U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) is calling on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to investigate allegations that the University of Chicago Medical Center is practicing patient dumping, an illegal act where hospitals divert poor or uninsured patients to other hospitals.

"As an institution that receives federal funds, I am concerned about recent media reports that allege the medical center is turning away and refusing treatment to low-income, uninsured patients," Rush said in a letter to U.S. Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY), the committee chairman.

Rush, who called patient dumping "a widespread problem" in American health care, said he might move to lift the hospital's federal funding if it turns out the allegations are true.

Rush's office has been monitoring the situation at U of C, which has come under fire in recent months for practices that some perceive as slighting blacks and the poor. A Rush spokeswoman told the Daily News in March that Rush was aware of the situation and looking into it. Rush's district includes Hyde Park, where the hospital is located.

U of C has repeatedly denied patient dumping allegations, and says people are misunderstanding the university's intention to promote the idea of medical homes in neighborhoods.

The university says its Urban Health Initiative, crafted in part by Michelle Obama while she worked there, seeks to provide more neighborhood services. Hospital officials hope the initiative will lift pressure on its crowded emergency room as it seeks to trim $100 million from its budget.

Medical center spokesman John Easton said in a statement the university was "disappointed" in the news.

I brought this up MONTHS ago.  Starting to see a pattern yet Obamabots?

Chi Town Daily

83 MILLION OF US WON'T KEEP OUR INSURANCE

AT tonight's press conference, someone should ask President Obama why he's endorsing, and not threatening to veto, the 1,018-page House health-care reform bill now being rushed to passage: It breaks nearly all his core promises about health-care reform.

"If you have health insurance, then you don't have to do anything," Obama said on Oct. 15, 2008. "If you've got health insurance through your employer, you can keep your health insurance, keep your choice of doctor, keep your plan. . . And we estimate we can cut the average family's premium by about $2,500 per year."

Both these solemn pledges, repeated often ever since and as recently as yesterday, are violated in the House bill. Its perverse incentives, plus the onerous regulations Congress plans to impose on employer-provided insurance, would cause more than half of those with employer-provided insurance to lose it -- 83.4 million Americans, according to The Lewin Group, a prominent, politically neutral health-care analysis firm.

And for those who do manage to keep their current insurance -- well, it won't cost $2,500 less, as Obama promised. Lewin estimates it will cost $460 a year more because of new cost-shifting from the government-run plan to private health plans.

That's right. The $1.3 trillion House health-care bill would cause millions of Americans to lose the insurance they have now -- while the rest of us would pay even more than we do now.

Most of those who lose their current insurance would be enrolled in Congress' newly created government-run health plan. The health benefits these Americans get would be decided by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, based on the recommendations of a newly created Health Benefits Advisory Committee. The HHS team would decide, year by year, what health-care benefits you would and would not get in the government-approved package.

Change we can believe in, huh?

Congress would authorize the HHS secretary to pay doctors and hospitals who participate in its health plan on the basis of Medicare rates, plus 5 percent.

But Medicare rates are much lower than those in private insurance -- 19 percent lower for doctors and 32 percent lower for hospitals. So the plan means big cuts in payments to health-care providers. They'd try to cover part of their losses by charging more to the private plans still left.

Melt the phones, people...

FNN

by John Stossel

It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August.

Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system".

Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system.

Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based on subjective value judgments and personal information as they delicately balance their interests, needs and wants. Who is in a better position than they to tailor those choices to best serve their purposes? Yet the politicians believe they can plan the medical market the way you plan a birthday party.

Leave aside how much power the state would have to exercise over us to run the medical system. Suffice it say that if government attempts to control our total medical spending, sooner or later, it will have to control us.

Also leave aside the inevitable huge cost of any such program. The administration estimates $1.5 trillion over 10 years with no increase in the deficit. But no one should take that seriously. When it comes to projecting future costs, these guys may as well be reading chicken entrails. In 1965, hospitalization coverage under Medicare was projected to cost $9 billion by 1990. The actual price tag was $66 billion.

The sober Congressional Budget Office debunked the reformers' cost projections. Trust us, Obama says. "At the end of the day, we'll have significant cost controls," presidential adviser David Axelrod said. Give me a break.

I really like this guy.  Go ye, and read the rest.

Townhall

Barack Obama has insisted on getting a health-care bill passed before the August recess, despite the complex issues involved and the massive amounts of spending it will require.  Why the rush?  Polling numbers explain part of it, of course, but the AP’s report on a delay in announcing budget numbers may hold the key:

The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today’s bleak landscape.

The administration’s annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama’s budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.

The release of the update — usually scheduled for mid-July — has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess.

The administration is pressing for votes before then on its $1 trillion health care initiative, which lawmakers are arguing over how to finance.

Obama cannot afford to have another report hit the street showing that he has miscalculated — again — the extent of the deficit, just as he proposes a deficit-busting program.  The White House has instead iced the report to keep people from seeing just how badly Democratic spending has dented the budget, and how revenues have not recovered despite their predictions of growth by Q2.  They want to hold off those numbers until Obama has a bill he can sign on his desk, by which time it will be too late.

Consider this: if those budget numbers looked good, would the White House postpone revealing them?  Obama could use all the good news he can get at the moment, especially with two big-spending bills stalling in Congress.  If the deficit looked better than their May predictions, or even if it looked the same, those numbers would have already hit the front pages of newspapers across America and every network news broadcast, with the message that the worst has passed.

This is a shell game, a 3-card Monty being played by the Obama administration.  They are withholding data that rightfully belongs in the public square, so that the electorate can inform themselves of the nation’s fiscal standing before Congress votes to spend more of our grandchildren’s money.  Perhaps the news media might remind Obama of this during his prime-time presser on Wednesday.

Hot Air

The international treaty to protect the ozone layer turns twenty this year and claims success. But is there really reason to celebrate?

Environmentalists have made many apocalyptic predictions over the past decades and, when they have not come to pass, have proclaimed that their preventive measures averted disaster -- as with the 1987 Montreal Protocol On Substances That Deplete The Ozone Layer (Montreal Protocol). The many lurid predictions of skin cancer epidemics, eco-system destruction and so on have not come true, and to Montreal Protocol proponents this is cause for self-congratulation.

But in retrospect the evidence shows that ozone depletion was an exaggerated threat in the first place and that the parade of horrors was never really on the cards. As the parties to the treaty return to Montreal for their 20th anniversary this week it should be cause for reflection, not celebration, especially for those who see it as a success story to be repeated for climate change.

The treaty came about over legitimate but overstated concerns that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs, then a widely used refrigerant gas) and other compounds were rising to the stratosphere and destroying ozone molecules. These molecules, collectively known as the ozone layer, shield the earth from excessive ultraviolet-B radiation (UVB) from the sun. The 1987 Montreal Protocol led to a CFC ban in most developed nations by 1996, while developing nations were given an extension but are under pressure to curtail it.

So what do we know now? A 1998 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report said that "since 1991, the linear [depletion] trend observed during the 1980s has not continued, but rather total column ozone has been almost constant ..." This was too soon to be attributable to the Montreal Protocol as that same report noted that the stratospheric concentrations of the offending compounds were still increasing at the time of writing. In fact, they did not begin to decline until the end of the 1990s. This lends credence to the view, widely derided at the time of the Montreal Protocol, that natural variations explain the fluctuations in the global ozone layer more than CFC usage.

More importantly, the feared widespread increase in ground-level UVB radiation has also failed to materialize. Keep in mind that ozone depletion, in and of itself, is not of consequence to human health or the environment. It is the concern that an eroded ozone layer would allow more of the sun's damaging UVB rays to reach the earth that gave rise to the Montreal Protocol. But the WMO concedes that no statistically significant long-term trends have been detected, noting earlier this year that "outside the polar regions, ozone depletion has been relatively small, hence, in many places, increases in UV due to this depletion are difficult to separate from the increases caused by other factors, such as changes in cloud and aerosol." In other words, ozone depletion's impact on UVB over populated regions is so small as to be easily lost amidst the noise of background variability.

Needless to say, if UVB has not gone up, then the fears are unfounded: indeed, the much-hyped acceleration in skin cancer rates has not happened. For example, U.S. National Cancer Institute statistics show that malignant melanoma incidence and mortality, which had shown a long-term increase that pre-dated ozone depletion, had actually been leveling off during the time of the putative ozone crisis. Further, no eco-system or species was ever shown to be seriously harmed by ozone depletion. This is true even in Antarctica, where the largest seasonal ozone losses, the so-called Antarctic ozone hole, occur each year. Also forgotten is a long list of truly ridiculous claims, such as the one from Al Gore's 1992 book Earth in the Balance that, thanks to the Antarctic ozone hole, "hunters now report finding blind rabbits; fishermen catch blind salmon."

The Montreal Protocol has not made these problems go away -- they never occurred in the first place.

The parallels with climate change are striking. Again we face a real but hyped environmental problem. In both cases, virtually everything the public has been told that sounds terrifying is not true, and what is true is not particularly terrifying. Nor has Gore changed much. His claims of blind animals have been replaced by equally dubious assertions in his global-warming movie and book An Inconvenient Truth, including predictions of a massive sea level rise that would wipe away South Florida and other coastal areas.

Perhaps, decades from now, participants in the Kyoto Protocol, the climate change treaty modeled after the Montreal Protocol, will meet and congratulate themselves because none of their scary assertions came true. But how much will have been spent to save us from problems we didn't have in the first place?

The burden of that cost will, as ever, fall hardest on the poorest.

Ben Lieberman is a senior policy analyst for energy and environment at the Heritage Foundation, in Washington, DC.

Critical Opinion

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - To address the serious threat of global warming, Americans should be required to "pay" for the carbon content of goods they consume from countries around the world, a top U.S. official said on Friday.

"It's important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America -- and it's our own consumption activity that's causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

Locke spoke to the business group after meetings this week with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and other officials on how the two countries could work together to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.  [Which is a blatant lie, Global temperatures have been declining since 1998.  --ed.]

Unless China, the United States and other countries begin to reduce output of the heat-trapping gases, the world faces a "catastrophe" in the form of more frequent floods, droughts and rising sea levels, Locke said.  [Warm mongering bullshit.  --ed.]

Mr. Locke, you sir are a dumbass.  I suggest you google Smoot-Hawley.

Reuters

You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?

If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone else like him — with Sutent, your premiums will increase. Do you still think the drug is a good value? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.

In the current U.S. debate over health care reform, “rationing” has become a dirty word. Meeting last month with five governors, President Obama urged them to avoid using the term, apparently for fear of evoking the hostile response that sank the Clintons’ attempt to achieve reform. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published at the end of last year with the headline “Obama Will Ration Your Health Care,” Sally Pipes, C.E.O. of the conservative Pacific Research Institute, described how in Britain the national health service does not pay for drugs that are regarded as not offering good value for money, and added, “Americans will not put up with such limits, nor will our elected representatives.” And the Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus, told CNSNews in April, “There is no rationing of health care at all” in the proposed reform.

Remember the joke about the man who asks a woman if she would have sex with him for a million dollars? She reflects for a few moments and then answers that she would. “So,” he says, “would you have sex with me for $50?” Indignantly, she exclaims, “What kind of a woman do you think I am?” He replies: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price.” The man’s response implies that if a woman will sell herself at any price, she is a prostitute. The way we regard rationing in health care seems to rest on a similar assumption, that it’s immoral to apply monetary considerations to saving lives — but is that stance tenable?

Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another. In the United States, most health care is privately financed, and so most rationing is by price: you get what you, or your employer, can afford to insure you for. But our current system of employer-financed health insurance exists only because the federal government encouraged it by making the premiums tax deductible. That is, in effect, a more than $200 billion government subsidy for health care. In the public sector, primarily Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits, high patient copayment requirements, low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients and limits on payments to hospitals.

The case for explicit health care rationing in the United States starts with the difficulty of thinking of any other way in which we can continue to provide adequate health care to people on Medicaid and Medicare, let alone extend coverage to those who do not now have it. Health-insurance premiums have more than doubled in a decade, rising four times faster than wages. In May, Medicare’s trustees warned that the program’s biggest fund is heading for insolvency in just eight years. Health care now absorbs about one dollar in every six the nation spends, a figure that far exceeds the share spent by any other nation. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it is on track to double by 2035.

Read this article carefully, people.  Don't buy into the bullshit.  They are softening you up to just DIE if you cost too much to treat.  Do you REALLY want the government deciding what "too much" is, and whether or not you want to try different treatments?

New York Times

Ed Lynch who’s running against Marxist Bobby Wexler and reports on two scary sections of Obama’s Health Care scheme:

“[The] president is …. saying …if you like your healthcare coverage and your doctor, nothing will change and you can keep what you presently have. That is a complete lie.”

“I read the whole bill….TWICE, Section 104(A) of HR 676 states, “It is unlawful for a private health insurer to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided under this act.”
Forget about Aetna, BC/BS etc. They’re dead the second this becomes law. All they will be selling is cosmetic surgery. If you want a tummy tuck you’re in!

“.. [this] section .. [also] says.. [the government] will issue everyone identification cards [NOT]… based on a social security number[s]. .. That’s good news for all of the illegal immigrants that do not have social security numbers. Do you see a pattern here?”

“ They tout this legislation as an expansion of Medicare for everyone. Medicare… costs a little over $10,000 per year for each person covered. So a family of four would cost the American taxpayer about $40,000. … the $5,000 per year .. I pay for my family of four is more than $40,000 per year [in] “government math”. Estimate[s of].. the Kennedy plan [says it] will cost $1,000,000,000,000 to cover 16 million people. Here is the math: 306,000,000 people/16,000,000 times $1,000,000,000,000 = a little over $19,000,000,000. That is 19 TRILLION dollars….”

“..Section 101(a) [says] “ALL individuals residing in the United States are covered” under this act. That means … all “illegal” immigrants..”
Ed Lynch is exactly the kind of great young conservative candidate we need. He’s fighting Wexler; suing him over Wexler’s Maryland residency. Help him keep fighting the Marxists in Washington. Go to http://www.electlynch.com/ Work for him.

Change!!!

The Collins Report

A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government... Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom's name.

There exists ample authority under which population&nbs p;growth could be regulated...It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

“It was in this context that I came across the picture in Life Magazine of the black man who had tried to peel off his skin . . . I know that seeing that article was violent for me, an ambush attack.”

Barack Obama describes his racial awakening at age nine and the impact of the disturbing image of a black man driven to self mutilation to escape his blackness (Michael Jackson was just a kid at the time).  Powerful images.

Also entirely false.  Life never published any such photos. 

Later Obama would talk about his great struggle with racial issues at Punahou School in Hawaii.  Former classmates don’t dispute that there were racial discussions at Punahou.  But according to Sharon Churcher of the UK Daily Mail Online Barry Obama was not a part of those discussions.

The character in Obama’s alleged autobiography known as “Ray” in real life is Keith Kakugawa also disputes Obama’s self portrayal as an “angry black man”.  According to Churcher, the two had lots of long, “soulful” discussions but never about race.  What Keith does remember was Barry’s intense longing for his parents.

Obama recalls being “tortured” by fellow students at Punahau.  But school friends recall it a bit differently and remember Obama as a “spoiled high achiever” according to Churcher.

Traditionally works of fiction are identified as such.  In his preface to the 2004 edition of Dreams From My Father

Chicago Tribune reporters Kirsten Scharnberg and Kim Barker interviewed more than forty of Obama’s former classmates, teachers, friends and neighbors and came to the startling conclusion that “several of his oft recited stories may not have happened the way he has recounted them.”

While the mainstream media loves to rhapsodize about Barack Obama’s Remarkable Journey™ what deserves more attention is the psychology of the man who is now the most powerful person in the world.  Actually it would have been more useful had the mainstream press been willing to give some serious thought to Obama’s mental health before November 4, 2008. Obama says he cannot honestly say that the voice in the book is not his or that he would tell the story much differently today than I did ten years ago (Pg.  4).

The press is thoroughly enchanted with the Obama biracial, multicultural extravaganza of a life story so it is no surprise that the actual facts are far from the romantic fairy tale the media has confabulated.  Instead when we examine Obama’s childhood and adolescence we find abandonment, chaos, alcoholism and abuse along with an excruciating quest for identity that has not been resolved.

The chaos started long before Obama was born.  His maternal grandfather was so disappointed at the birth of a daughter rather than the son he longed for, he actually named the baby girl after himself.  One can only imagine what elementary school is like for a little girl named “Stanley”.  She eventually became known by her middle name, Ann.  What is the effect on a child knowing you were a disappointment to your father right out of the womb?

Ann married Barack Obama’s father, the focus of his “autobiography&rdqu o;.  Barack senior abandoned the family before the child was two years old.  According to Churcher, Barack senior was not exactly father of the year.  He is described as a “drunk and a bigot” who was a cruel man, prone to drunken rages.  Time reporter Amanda Ripley says Ann filed for divorce from Barack senior in 1964 citing “grievous mental suffering” as the grounds.  That may have been the standard grounds for divorce in those days. But Barack senior’s third wife, Ruth claimed he beat her brutally in drunken rages.  Churcher describes Barack senior as an abusive bigamist and womanizer.  Obama blames “racism” on both sides for the demise of his parents’ marriage.

Most of us will admit to doing less than sensible things when we were young and in love.  But young Ann Dunham took it a bit further than sending a few really dopey Hallmark cards.  Ann met Indonesian Lolo Soetoro and married him when Barry was about six years old.  Starting a new life with a new husband is one thing but dragging a young child to a Third World country is quite another.

Jakarta, Indonesia in the 1960’s was a harsh place for a child.  Not much of an infrastructure and staggering inflation which was creating shortages.  Indonesia was a violent place in the era following hostilities with the Dutch.  Not exactly the white picket fence kind of place.

An insightful and well written article.  Go read the rest at Canada Free Press

Monday night Democrats voted to shut down the U.S. House Representatives rather than allow a handful of Republican Congressmen to speak on the floor. What could have been so offensive or frightening about our discourse that Speaker Pelosi felt she had to protect her party by gagging free speech in the House?

In fact, we had planned to speak on the lack of transparency of the House since Democrats took control. We had planned to criticize Speaker Pelosi for repeatedly denying Members, the media, and the public to right to read legislation before it was voted on. We were set to discuss House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s statement last week that if his Members were required to read the Democrats’ healthcare reform package before it was voted on, it would fail.

So the Speaker obviously feels that if the public is truly aware of her party’s agenda, they will reject it. She is now making sure the public is kept in the dark by trampling the centuries-old democratic traditions of the House.

Absolutely disgraceful.

Human Events

Democrats ran on the Culture of Corruption charge in 2006 and gained control of both chambers of Congress on the promise to clean up Capitol Hill.  The Wall Street Journal finds instead that Democrats have used their power to spend taxpayer dollars on high-priced global travel.  Taxpayer-funded Congressional delegation travel has increased by 50% since the Democrats took charge:

Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands.

The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That’s a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.

The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among lawmakers as “codels,” has risen nearly 70% since 2005, when an influence-peddling scandal led to a ban on travel funded by lobbyists, according to the data.

Lawmakers defend codels as necessary research for voting on complicated legislation.  Prior to 2006, lobbyists picked up the tab for many of these flights, but the Jack Abramoff scandal put that practice in extreme disfavor.  Instead of limiting themselves to the truly necessary travel, though, lawmakers have actually traveled more — and we’re paying for it.

Where do they go?  Afghanistan?  Iraq?  Honduras?  Not quite:

Although complete travel records aren’t yet available for 2009, it appears that such costs continue to rise. The Journal analysis shows that the government has picked up the tab for travel to destinations such as Jamaica, the Virgin Islands and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Lawmakers frequently bring along spouses on congressional trips. If they take commercial flights, they have to buy tickets for spouses. If they fly on government planes — as they usually do — their spouses can fly free.

Read the rest at Hot Air.

It’s not easy living in the DC area. The place is a 60 square mile enclave bordered by reality, where the phrase “I voted for George Bush” gets you looked at like you have two heads, while being a gay vegan is considered perfectly normal. No, really!

You can imagine how irritating it gets when out trying to enjoy a beer and one of Al Gore’s cult followers begins proselytizingsomeone&rsqu o;s belief system is pointless. Pointing out how Climate Change is based more on belief than fact quickly sets them off, and they usually proceed to cite heavily flawed studies or quotes from an equally unreliable source. You could go back and forth all day, or you can end the conversation fairly quickly - simply state that you don’t debate religion, and if you’re to be expected to treat it like science, your green friend has to do so first. They can accomplish this by answering three simple questions: to the cause of Global Warming. But I’ve discovered that like the followers of any other religion, debating

1) Given the age of the planet and how widely the temperature has fluctuated over time, what is the ideal temperature that the Earth must be, and how will we maintain it over time?

2) One of the foundations of scientific theory is that it stands up to defeating theories that prove it wrong. We’ve heard how shrinking glaciers prove global warming, growing glaciers prove global warming, more storms prove global warming, and fewer storms prove global warming. What events prove their theories false?

3) Every few years a new threat comes along that threatens our very existence unless drastic action is taken yesterday. Of course, the media provides sensational screaming headlines backed up by irrefutable scientific evidence to promote these scares. Off of the top of my head here are a few from the last 40 years:

• Population would outgrow food supply causing mass starvation
• Oil reserves would be depleted by 1980
• Global Cooling
• Dioxin threatened us all (until it was discovered a pint of Ben & Jerry’s contains 3,000 times the “safe” level)
• Oil reserves would be depleted by 2000
• The hole in the ozone layer would continue to grow at an exponential rate

Since all of these crises turned out to be wrong, why is it that this time is different?

Go read the rest.

Flopping Aces

As we prepare to celebrate Independence Day, we will hear about our Founding Fathers, about those who fought our wars to preserve and safeguard our nation, and other men and women who contributed to the nation’s greatness.

It is good to look back, but future generations will look back as well and wonder how such a great nation became such a silly nation, the object of scorn and ridicule around the world, challenged by every gangster nation that shares the planet; attacked by Al Qaeda, threatened by North Korea, mocked by Venezuela, insulted by Iran, and sustained by the wealth of China and other lenders.

America Governed by Fools

What other republic is governed by fools who voted without reading “climate” legislation whose 1,200 pages of rules and regulations will enrich a few and leave the rest scrambling to pay the light bill? That is, if the light turns on. If passed by the Senate, it will be the largest tax increase in the history of the nation. It exists to “save the planet” from a “global warming” that is not happening.

What other nation would systematically ensure that its vast resources of coal, enough to power plants to produce electricity for the next hundred or two hundred years, not be used because no new plants will be built? Fully fifty percent of our electricity comes from coal, but this nation is about to waste billions of dollars on wind and solar energy—so called “clean” energy—which accounts for about one percent.

If wind or solar was a sensible way to produce electricity, surely utilities would have invested in it long ago. It isn’t. It never will be. Only a very silly nation would shift billions of dollars to such “clean” and “renewable” energy when it was sitting on top of tons of coal.

Only a silly nation would ensure that its other vast, natural and national resource, oil, would be put off limits to all exploration and extraction in Alaska and along our vast coastlines, as well as huge reserves in the nation’s interior. Only a silly nation would do this while listening to its politicians talk about “energy independence.”

Only a silly nation would ignore the vast potential of nuclear power and use all manner of bureaucratic obstacles to drive up the cost of building plants to generate electricity.

Only a silly nation would ignore the security of its southern border as a virtual invasion of illegal aliens pours across, and take advantage of all manner of welfare programs, special education programs for their children, and free medical services. Our prisons, too, are filling up with illegal aliens.

Only a silly nation with twelve million or more of these illegal aliens in its midst would actually be looking for a way to magically make them citizens overnight while ignoring the fact that they having been taking jobs from natural born and naturalized citizens by working “off the books” and sending billions back to Mexico and points south. Amnesty would double or triple the existing population of formerly illegal aliens in America as family members joined them.

Spot on.  Oh, Canada!

Canada Free Press