The contents of these articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
Obama's union push stymies contractors
Obama's plan to force contractors to hire union workers for large government construction projects is proving easier said than done, confusing and costlier than expected.
The General Services Administration (GSA), for example, first called for "project labor agreement" or PLA to win bids to rehabilitate the Washington office complex, but earlier this month backtracked, saying the solicitation was in error and it would instead ask contractors to submit two bids, one with a PLA and one without - a highly unusual and costly requirement.
Brett McMahon, vice president of business development for Miller & Long Co. Inc., the country's largest concrete subcontractor and the largest employer of construction workers in the Mid-Atlantic region, estimates a general contractor would spend more than $100,000 putting together a single bid for a job of that size and submitting dual bids would increase the cost by about $75,000.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/27/obama-union-push-stymies-contractors/
Nevada Publisher: “Hey Harry: Where is Nevada's gift?”
“Just three days ago Uncle Harry said that if a senator didn't get his state "something" in the health-care "reform" package, then that senator wasn't doing his or her job. Yesterday Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., upped the ante. saying that every state did "get something" in the measure.”
“What's Nevada's gift? Uncle Harry, as everyone knows, is the Big Kahuna of the Senate. He "brings home the bacon," his TV commercials claim. So if Nebraska got dispensation from Medicaid increases forever, one can only imagine the magnitude of Nevada's present.”
Polling indicates Harry Reid will have a rough time gaining re-election.
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/hey-harry-where-is-nevadas-gift-80104262.html
Hillary, Return to your Office!
Hillary Clinton might be well advised to get off the dinner circuit and return to her office, because it appears that the Department of State is in need of supervision.
Reports from Jerusalem today suggest our embassy officials there are deliberately trying to force an international incident by attempting to run over a border guard, transporting in diplomatic vehicles a passenger without proper papers, insulting female Israeli border guards and failing to stop and present the proper travel documents at border crossings.
[A] US diplomatic car allegedly tried running over a Defense Ministry security guard recently at an IDF checkpoint in the West Bank. The car had been stopped after the occupants refused to present identification papers. [snip][O]ne of the consulate cars was found to have transported a Palestinian without permits between Jerusalem and the West Bank. [snip]
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/dear_hillary_return_to_your_of.html
Opinion:
The real Obama – without the masks, handlers, and teleprompters
Never before has a politician risen to the highest office in the land, with so little experience, training, or background. We were asked to take him at his word and just let him run things.
That’s not working out all that well for the American people.
Obama is a politician in a hurry – a demand for unrelenting speed for no particular reason and without any apparent understanding. His truly dumb demand for closing Gitmo prison within a year, is an example. The demand was 100% political and made in total ignorance of reality.
Obamas’ failure in closing Gitmo on his announced schedule, is surpassed by the irresponsible and dangerous handling of the terrorists in custody there. Obama’s own Attorney General, Eric Holder, has outrageously caved to demands and presented 9/11 conspirators with exactly what they wanted in terms of a platform from which to preach their hatred of America and send forth a call for recruitment.
Hmmm does that sound a bit like the sermons of Obama’s pastor? Ben Stein has some answers:
Buddy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2373124/posts
WE FIGURED HIM OUT!
By Ben Stein
Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed?
Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths:
The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008.
They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.
They ignored his anti-white writings in his books.
They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright.
They ignored his refusal to explain years at a time of his life as a student.
They ignored his ultra-left record as a "community organizer," Illinois state legislator, and Senator.
The American people ignored his total zero of an academic record as a student and teacher, his complete lack of scholarship when he was being touted as a scholar.
Now, the American people are starting to wake up to the truth. Barack Obama is a super likeable super leftist, not a fan of this country,way, way too cozy with the terrorist leaders in the Middle East , way beyond naïveté, all the way into active destruction of our interests and our allies and our future.. The American people have already awakened to the truth that the stimulus bill -- a great idea in theory -- was really an immense bribe to Democrat interest groups, and in no way an effort to help all Americans.
Now, Americans are waking up to the truth that ObamaCare basically means that every time you are sick or injured, you will have a clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles like agency telling your doctor what he can and cannot do.
The American people already know that Mr. Obama's plan to lower health costs while expanding coverage and bureaucracy is a myth, a promise of something that never was and never will be -- a bureaucracy lowering costs in a free society. Either the costs go up or the free society goes away.
These are perilous times.. Mrs. Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State,has given Iran the go-ahead to have nuclear weapons, an unqualified betrayal of the nation. Now, we face a devastating loss of freedom at home in health care.
Mr. Obama knows Americans are getting wise and will stop him if he delays at all in taking away our freedoms. There is his urgency and our opportunity. Once freedom is lost, America is lost. Wake up, beloved America .
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu . He writes "Ben Stein's Diary" for every issue of The American Spectator.
The day’s top blogs:
1.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/obamacare-to-cost-middle-class-families-15000-a-year.html
Obamacare To Cost Middle Class Families $15,000 A Year
Crippling new bill will lead to a “rebellion”
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Families struggling in the midst of a deep recession who earn a combined total greater than $88,200 and don’t have their health care covered by their employer will be hit with a mandatory annual fee of about $15,000 according to the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the final Senate Obamacare bill.
As we highlighted yesterday, the health care bill would introduce a raft of new taxes that would inevitably lead to higher costs that would be passed on to the public. A Boston Globe analysis revealed that there were at least 19 new taxes contained in the legislation which is set to be passed on Christmas Eve.
On top of this, a CBO analysis identifies five facts about the bill that will financially devastate families with an annual income greater than 400 percent of the federal poverty level.
Under Obamacare, Americans will be forced to buy government-approved health insurance and anyone earning a middle class wage will have to pay for it out of their own pocket. Federal subsidies will only be provided for people who are not offered coverage by their employer and earn below the 400 percent poverty level.
Employers will not be required to offer their workers coverage, being subject to a $750 annual penalty if they fail to do so, a figure most analysts say is not high enough to prevent employers from dropping their plans, meaning that more people will be forced to buy government health care.
“The Senate health care bill gives employers two powerful incentives to stop offering health insurance coverage to their workers,” writes Terry Jeffrey. “First, if an employer does offer coverage, its lower-wage workers will lose the federal insurance subsidy they would otherwise get. Secondly, if an employer does not offer coverage, the $750-per-worker fine it faces will be far less than the premiums it would pay if it did offer coverage.”
Costs are also set to soar as a result of insurance companies being hit with federal mandates that increase their risk.
“Policies purchased through the exchanges (or directly from insurers) would have to meet several requirements: In particular, insurers would have to accept all applicants, could not limit coverage for pre-existing medical conditions, and could not vary premiums to reflect differences in enrollees’ health,” according to the CBO.
This will inevitably force insurance companies to pass higher costs on to the public.
As a consequence of all these factors, families whose employers drop their plan will be forced to buy it on their own – at a cost of over $15,000 dollars a year.
“Average premiums per policy in the nongroup market in 2016 would be roughly $5,800 for single policies and $15,200 for family policies under the proposal,” states the CBO.
Jeffrey predicts that families being hit with a federally mandated $15,000-per-year insurance bill will provoke a “rebellion”.
“When that happens, the liberals will not say: We made a mistake. We never should have forced families out of their employer-based health insurance and required them to purchase a $15,000 policy,” he writes.
“They will say: We told you so. We cannot trust these greedy insurance companies. We need a single-payer system so the government can provide everyone with health care. Just like they did in the Soviet Union.”
2.
Senior Dem: Kill the Senate health reform bill and start over
Michael O'Brien
The Senate's healthcare bill is fatally flawed, a senior Democrat atop a powerful committee said on Wednesday.
Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the House Rules Committee and co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, said that the Senate's bill is so flawed that it's unlikely to be resolved in conference with the bill to have passed the House.
"The Senate health care bill is not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago," Slaughter wrote in an opinion piece for CNN's website.
Slaughter argued that while the House bill is far from perfect, the Senate bill's exclusion of a public option, along with abortion funding restrictions and other measures, make the bill undeserving of a vote.
Specifically, Slaughter said, the Senate bill would charge seniors higher premiums, would fail to nix health insurers' antitrust exemption and would not go far enough in extending coverage to people in the U.S.
"Supporters of the weak Senate bill say 'just pass it — any bill is better than no bill,' " Slaughter wrote. "I strongly disagree — a conference report is unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills."
The New York Democrat also sounded a note similar to what Republicans have said (though for different reasons): Scrap the current healthcare bill, and start over.
"It's time that we draw the line on this weak bill and ask the Senate to go back to the drawing board," she said. "The American people deserve at least that."
Update, 2:54 p.m.: A Senate Republican aide chimed in on Slaughter: "Unfortunately for moderate Democrats, all the sweetheart deals in the world couldn’t help you win an election when voters from across the political spectrum hate you because of your support for this disastrous bill."
3.
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/where-did-these-guys-come-from/
Where Did These Guys Come From?
Victor Davis Hanson
The Origins of Omism
I do not think it will be easy to delay Obamism. It is not just that both houses of Congress are under liberal leadership with ample majorities, with a White House and captive media egging them on. The problem is that now the entire engine of the federal government is harnessed in the most unapologetic way to pushing through a far left agenda. There is no shame, no hesitancy in using the full powers of the state.
How does that work out? Without qualification (remember we are in a new age of transparency and ethical reform) votes are bought with hundred-million-dollar earmarks; the attorney general predicates judicial action on the political ramifications of indicting or not indicting; federal bureaucracies (watch the EPA if cap and trade stalls) are devoted to the new Caesar rather than the letter. of the law.
Such a strange scenario we have found ourselves in—a clear majority of Americans is opposed to almost everything Obama has to offer; congressional representatives know they are acting against the will of the people, but know too that they are offered all sorts of borrowed money for their districts to compensate for their unpopular actions. And a charismatic commander in chief believes that he can charm even the angriest of critics, and that anything he promises (Iran’s deadlines, closing of Guantanamo, new transparency, no more lobbyists, etc) means zilch and can be contextualized by another “let me be perfectly clear” speech spiced with a couple of the usual “it would have been impossible for someone as unlikely as me to have become President just (fill in the blanks) years ago”
No, I would not count Obama out. So what drives his agenda? What are its origins?
Here are the three most prominent catalysts.
Equality of Result
What Barack Obama advocates is as old as Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics, the agenda of the classical dêmos and Roman turba.
It is why the French Revolution emphasized égalité and fraternité, while the Founding Fathers instead championed the freedom of the individual from the despotism of the state. In short, equality of result doctrine ignores the role of markets, of skills, of tragedy itself that renders some of us ill, others in perfect health, some born gifted, others less so, some evil by nature, others good, and instead promises that the state can even us all out through its power of material redistribution. Give us all the same amount of money and perks at the end of the day, and then utopia reigns under the benevolent watch of Ivy-League professors and organizers.
It is a given that what we make is not our own, but predicated on the liberality of society. Thus, for those who were too greedy, too conniving, or even too lucky, the state must step in to ensure that we end up the same.
In its most benign form, we know this as progressivism or communitarianism, a big government, high tax philosophy that co-exists within democracy. Its more pernicious strains are socialist, in which the state ensures, through bureaucratic fiat and a labyrinth of laws that curb free expression, that redistribution is institutionalized. And the virulent form (thankfully with the fall of the Soviet Union and the transformation of China not so global-threatening any more) is, of course, a murderous communism, in which any means necessary are justified to ensure the desire ends and the rule of anointed apparat. Remember, history’s greatest killers (Stalin and Mao) do it all “for the people.”
Multiculturalism
But there is another element to Barack Obama besides progressive statism. A number of contemporary –isms and –ologies (multiculturalism, moral equivalence, utopian pacifism, post-modernism) also help to explain Obamism, especially in cultural terms. Our universities subscribe to race/class/gender theory of exploitation, in which much of the unhappiness of today’s women, of today’s nonwhite, and of today’s poor originates with the privileges of the white Christian Western male that are predicated on oppression.
It works like this: The ghetto resident, the denizen of the barrio, the abandoned and divorced waitress with three young children, can all chart their poverty and unhappiness not to accident, fate, bad luck, bad decisions, poor judgment, illegality or drug use, or simple tragedy, but rather exclusively to a system that is rigged to ensure oppression on the basis of race, class, and gender—often insidious and unfathomable except to the sensitive and gifted academic or community organizer.
So Obama combines the age-old belief that the state is there to level the playing field (rather than protect the rights of the individual and secure the safety of the people from foreign threats), with the postmodern notion that government must recompensate those by fiat on the basis on their race or class or gender. Remember all that, and everything from the Professor Gates incident, to the dutiful attendance at the foot of Rev. Wright to Van Jones become logical rather than aberrant. Michelle Obama could make $300,000 and she will always be more a victim than the Appalachian coal miner who earns $30,000, by virtue of her race and gender.
The Chicago Way
A third and final ingredient to Obamism is the Chicago way. Here we see an interesting updated version of the old big-city, Daley thuggery. Rahm Emanuel threatens recalcitrant congressmen with reminders of the long Obama memory. The Axelrod/Jarrett clique ensures that the government channels stimuli to blue-states, that key Congress people are bought off with tens of millions of government largess, that every campaign promise—from no lobbyists and airing on C-span health care debates to posting impending legislation on the Internet for set durations and “reaching across the aisle”—is simply cynical fluff that no sane person would take seriously.
So?
In short, we have a traditional statist bent on redistribution (Obama’s words, not mine), updated with the postmodern belief that race/class/gender oppressions require government affirmative reactions (which also abroad explains why we reach out to enemies and shun allies), all energized by an ends justify the means Chicago bare-knuckles apparat.
And?
These true believers, then, don’t really care that the Blue Dogs (if such really exist) bite the dust in 2010, if Harry Reid goes up in smoke, or indeed, if Barack Obama is reelected. Instead, they will institutionalize an agenda that will affect America for generations, move it sharply to the left, and earn a spot in the academic pantheon of American heroes.
have no more than 45% of the public’s support is like asking whether the English Prof who teaches incomprehensible Foucauldian theory worries whether he has only 2 students, or whether the well-off union boss is all that upset that membership has sunk to 30% of the workforce, or multimillion-dollar-earning Sarah Palin-interviewing Katie Couric is worried about her sinking ratings, or whether the New York Times columnists are upset that their mother paper is broke with subscription and readership down, and laying off thousands of blue-collar employees.
Instead, for the true believer, it is all about the self, and the sense of the self—and damn all other considerations. (We saw that with Jimmy Carter as well; that he destroyed liberal Democrat politics for a generation meant nothing; that he won prizes and jet-setted the world for thirty years meant everything. For these people, it is always about them—all the time. Let us eat cake as they end up liberal icons for the duration).
What Are We Left With?
The most blatant cynicism in recent American political history—a man who ran as a bipartisan who is the most partisan we’ve seen, a healer whose even flippant comments are designed to offend, a statist who assumes that the sheared sheep cannot stampede somewhere else, a reformer who trusts his honey-laced rhetoric can disguise Daley style-corruption.
On that happy note.
Everything, as my dear late mother lectured me, happens for a reason, or at least presents a sort of logic—irony, paradox, karma, and nemesis being the best ways of interpreting our unfathomable existences. It took messianic narcissistic Barack Obama to expose the full extent of the mess that a once noble tradition of 19th-century liberalism had devolved into. Only he could have rammed it down the throats of the American people, and when he is done, we will suffer, but also sicken of it for quite a while.
Comments