The contents of these articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
A desperate Obama delays his Asia trip to deal with health care
Obama has delayed his first international trip of the year, a three-country visit to Asia, to focus attention on the final push to salvage health care legislation after a year of contentious debate.
The trip to Guam, Australia and Indonesia - the world's most populous Muslim country, where Obama spent several years as a youngster - will now run from March 21-26, rather than March 18-24, according to a senior administration official who spoke condition of anonymity because the White House hadn't announced the delay.
The trip was scheduled to coincide with his daughters' spring vacation from school, but now his family apparently will not accompany him because of the later dates. No Spring Break for the Obama’s.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100312/D9ED50K00.html
Health-Care Bill Faces New Hurdle, Republicans Say
Republicans said they won a parliamentary victory as they try to fight Democrats’ efforts to pass legislation to overhaul and take over the U.S. health-care system.
Republicans say Obama must sign a Senate health-care bill into law before the House and Senate can approve changes to it under a process called reconciliation. The Senate parliamentarian told Republicans that a reconciliation bill has to “make changes in law,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
West Virginia Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller said the parliamentarian’s ruling wouldn’t disrupt plans for the House to pass the reconciliation legislation before the Senate acts on it. “Its always been my understanding that’s what they were going to do,” he told reporters.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a1L0cLABQhP0
If Democrats ignore health-care polls, midterms will be costly say Democrat pollsters
In "The March of Folly," Barbara Tuchman asked, "Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests?" Her assessment of self-deception -- "acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts" -- captures the conditions that are gripping President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership as they renew their efforts to enact health-care reform.
Bluntly put, this is the political reality: First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Comprehensive health care has been lost. If it fails, as appears possible, Democrats will face the brunt of the electorate's reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls. Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes.
Nothing has been more disconcerting (say Democrat pollsters) than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats' current health-care plan. Yes, most Americans believe, as we do, that real health-care reform is needed. And yes, certain proposals in the plan are supported by the public.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/11/AR2010031102904.html
Opinion:
Democrat drama reveals their lack of respect for real “democracy”
Who needs Jerry Springer when we have the Democrat House majority? (Of course, I’d have to ask who needs Jerry Springer in any case – but that’s another story)
This morning the White House revealed how desperate it really has becine regarding their health care scheme. Obama set a March 18 deadline for passage of the Democrat bill in order to be able to sign it before heading off for an Asian family junket. Things are in such disarray, however, Obama has had to change his schedule because the House cant meet it.
So much for the Obama family Spring Break outing … junketing at taxpayer expense.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is even more frazzled than usual. Her eyes burn with an intensity not seen since the media had her so badly trapped on her anti-CIA claims. Those claims proved baseless – and today she faces some that probably do. Now it’s a question of what did she know about the Democrat Congressman caught having lunch with a Barney Frank staffer.
It is very significant that just having lunch with a Barney Frank staffer is cited as evidence Congressman Eric Massa has been leading a gay secret life. Talk about reputation destruction! Of course Barney deserves it – he has brought it on himself.
But Massa was also rooming with a group of unmarried male staffers. I find that being a matter of condemnation to be strange as well. Where was Massa’s family in all this?
The big question now is focused on Pelosi and whether she acted appropriately when the Massa problems became obvious. All evidence to this point, indicates she brushed it away as she focused with increasing intensity on Obama’s tax scheme disguised by Democrats under the title “Cap and Trade”. Pelosi got Cap and Trade passed by the House and with a razor-thin margin. The Senate has not acted on it.
Pelosi had an obligation to act on the Massa case but failed to do so.
After his strange appearance on Glenn Beck, there is no doubt Massa is a badly confused guy and is lying about a lot of elements in his story. Beck was even moved to apologize to his audience for having wasted their time by having Massa as a guest.
Beck needn’t have bothered. The Massa appearance removed all doubt regarding his probable guilt – guilty of precisely what is not full known. For the Pelosi case, we know enough to proclaim her performance in this case displayed a major ethical failure. After all, look at the furor over GOP Congressman Tom Foley – and his case is not nearly as absurd as Massa’s.
But this is not all.
The bottom line is clear: Democrats in the House don’t have enough votes to be assured they can pass whatever health care scam the Obama White House dishes out. For the second day in a row, Pelosi has ALL Democrat Congressmen meeting in secret, behind closed doors (“don’t need no stinkin’ bi-partisan stuff to fool with”). Committee meetings have been cancelled (since they control all levers of Congressional ;power, Democrats can get away with doing that).
Harry Reid led the way in using such secret efforts for crafting health care scams. We can only wonder how many bribes Pelosi is offering to House members. Two of their major threats come from pro-life Democrats such as Bart Stupak who say they will not vote for a health bill that doesn’t specifically outlaw any and all federal funding of abortion.
Now Hispanic Congressional members are screaming about how Democrats are blowing off their needs, demands, and entitlements. Ola!
Yesterday, Pelosi pretty well told the White House where to stick their teleprompters when it comes to setting deadlines. She told the media the House will vote on health care when it is ready to vote on health care.
I have this Eric Massa inspired vision of Chicago enforcer, Rahm Emanuel (Obama’s Chief of Staff) stalking Congressional showers, finding Democrats who are not on board on health care, then poking their chests with his finger, to demand they sign on and suck up to White House plans for taking over health care. A "nekkid" Emanuel storming wet floors of shower stalls, searching out Congressmen he can poke with his finger, is a vision not likely to inspire many people. We can only guess whether Emanuel now wears a towel since Massa blew his cover.
Massa has given us a fearsome vision of Rahm Emanuel -- Massa thus provides us with the most terrifying moment in a shower since Janet Leigh faced Norman Bates in Psycho. Think of Rahm Emanuel as Norman Bates -- without the motel.
But I digress. Back to Obama’s health care conspiracy. If Pelosi had the votes, she’s have taken a vote. She doesn’t, she hasn’t, but never count her out.
She controls a mighty degree of raw power and a huge ability to grant favors or impose punishment. Plus no one wants to be fingered by Rahm Emanuel. Being allowed to shower in peace is not guaranteed in the Constitution, but this is the first time such a right has become an issue.
We can thank Massa for at least bringing this to light – proving again that blind hogs do find an occasional acorn.
Speaking of acorns – Obama’s own ACORN – has gotten a pass from a liberal federal judge who rules Congress cannot deny that far left body federal funding. Wait until that sinks in with American grass root voters.
If the outcome didn’t carry such a potential for serious damage to the country, it would make great fun – sort of a reality show that just goes on and on.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
Free Citizens or Tail-Wagging Pets?
Jeremy L. Lantz
The American people are not animals. We are not content merely to be fed, walked, and taken care of.
Nor do we take joy in fetching sticks and sitting, heeling, and rolling over. As freedom-loving human beings, we have needs far greater than food stamps, welfare checks, unemployment benefits, and government-run health care.
But just because government cannot provide what makes people uniquely human does not mean that government cannot take away what does. If Mr. Obama truly wanted to solve problems and help people, then he would stop viewing the citizen through the prism of the almighty dollar and his physical wants and understand that the real meaning of life runs far deeper than these. Most liberals fail to understand and acknowledge that by providing for all of one's physical wants, government destroys the deeper meaning and purpose of man's life.
For over twelve months, as the economy faltered and people suffered massive job losses and falling property values, Mr. Obama took what he believed was a once-in-a-generation opportunity presented by the financial crisis and focused his gaze on the holy grail of the radical liberal agenda -- government-run health care, accompanied by cap-and-trade and environmental statism and the always-present payoffs to his union masters. The result was unemployment around ten percent, massive spending, out-of-control government deficits, and a total neglect of policies to aid individuals and businesses to begin innovating and hiring again.
Instead of lasering his focus on promoting policies that encourage free-market expansion and private employment and entrepreneurship, Mr. Obama took the opportunity to "save and create" public-sector union jobs and to pass legislation purporting to help us, but that ultimately will enslave us under the bureaucracy of more Washington. All the while, the American public has been screaming "NO!" to the government's attempt to take over health care, global warming is being debunked and its hoax is finally being exposed, and America and its companies are going bankrupt, in large part because of the massive pensions, benefits, and salaries scored by private- and public-sector unions against American industry and federal, state, and local governments.
But Mr. Obama's political life and radical ideology are tied to big government and little people. In taking the prerogative to solve our problems and to help us, all under the utilitarian guise of greatest good for the greatest number of people, Mr. Obama is robbing Americans of the most fundamental safeguard we have against the seizure of our liberties. If the diffusion of powers between federal, state, and local governments is essential to safeguard us from tyrannical rulers in Washington, then an assured, self-confident, and stubborn citizen who resists the government's helping hand and adores his freedom is even more vital. But the policies that stem from the government's so-called benevolence will only further destroy self-sufficiency and personal responsibility, and along with them, man's own dignity.
If men no longer respect themselves, if they no longer feel a sense of pride and satisfaction in solving their own problems and helping themselves, then they will feel little remorse when liberty is taken from them. Worse still for any prospect we have of regaining lost liberties, this bleeding of self-respect destroys in men even the desire to have these things. It is the case, as Wilhelm Roepke summarized it in The Social Crisis of Our Time, that
if one wishes to follow an extreme policy of social assistance (social eudaemonism), it is first of all necessary that one should point out the truism that in social matters one cannot overstep certain limits without destroying the secret spring of a healthy society, i.e., the sense of responsibility.
When government destroys the sense of responsibility within society and the dark cloud of dependency begins to fill the void, so-called benevolent bureaucrats step in to further spoil the day. "If we are to be mothered," wrote C.S. Lewis, then "mother must know best." In a nation built upon the foundation of liberty and the rights, duties, and responsibilities of the individual, the consequences of such paternalistic policies reek of our society's ongoing decay. Of this decay, Roepke went right to the point. Such policies, he wrote, "degrade men finally to a completely domesticated creature, to a tail-wagging pet." "At any rate," he went on, "paying taxes, sticking stamps and standing in line waiting for rubber stamp wielding bureaucrats, are not the activities which first come to our mind when we try to envisage a healthy solution of the social problem."
Nevertheless, many people continue to believe that healthy solutions to our social problems can come only from a benevolent Washington. But in Washington's haste to take action and fix everything, we abandon the best and most obvious solution to most problems -- for government to get out of the way and unleash the power and innovation of the American people.
It was this that President Reagan understood best. When he once said that "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help,'" it was not because he held a properly limited government in contempt, but because of what the all-powerful government had become and what it was doing to the very fabric of what America has always stood for. Unlike Obama's false promise of some bureaucratic fix from Washington, it was Reagan's faith in the exceptional nature of the American experiment that gave him his characteristic optimism. President Reagan understood better than anyone else that liberty causes men to aspire to do great things, and ultimately, to triumph and achieve them. And it was President Reagan who understood that if people are not responsible for their material well-being, then they have no spiritual well-being -- and without spiritual well-being, they are broken.
If government would simply resist the temptation inherent in power, if it would cease to act outside of its authority and instead advance the cause of freedom by preserving and protecting ordered liberty, then the American people would in ever greater numbers take the license to aspire to and achieve great things. Liberty would once again meet duty, and in so doing, personal responsibility could begin to be reborn. Government, then, would once again take its proper place: not as a necessary evil, but as a strong but limited partner in promoting and expanding liberty and unleashing the productive capacity of a nation of three hundred million free people.
As the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises put it,
"Government as such is not only not an evil, but the most necessary and beneficial institution, as without it no lasting social cooperation and no civilization could be developed and preserved."
Right now, we are a long way from there.
Jeremy L. Lantz is an attorney in Atlanta, Georgia. He is finishing up the final draft of his first book, The War on Liberty.
2.
Ringmaster-in-Chief
Neil Braithwaite
P.T. Barnum was an American showman and founder of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He was also widely known for his flamboyant style and elaborate hoaxes. A famous quote from the audacious showman says quite a lot about his take on the gullibility of humanity: "There's a sucker born every minute." A born pitchman if there ever was one, Barnum could sell sideshow tickets to throngs of inquisitive and often skeptical people hoping to see some strange human or animal oddity that they almost certainly knew would turn out to be a fake.
While we all understand that P. T. Barnum was an exceptional entertainer and showman, his financial business philosophy was always the same -- sell the hoax. And while we may not see ourselves as "suckers" in the truest sense of the word, that's what we are if we have our doubts and still buy a ticket to see the show, and then later complain that we have somehow been taken. In capitalism, it's called "caveat emptor," which for us common folk translates to "let the buyer beware."
It becomes more obvious every day that Barack Obama has turned out to be a far greater pitchman than even P. T. Barnum could have ever imagined. President -- or should I say Pitchman -- Obama's understanding of the gullibility of humanity seems eerily similar to that of P. T. Barnum.
For starters, Obama obviously believes, as Barnum did, that "there's a sucker born every minute," and he thinks that selling his entire socialist plan for America completely depends on it. Obama's radical circus has been traveling around this great land for over a year now, with the ringmaster-in-chief telling everyone that his economic plans are working to perfection, even though the facts tell a completely different story. But the president knows that he has to convince enough suckers that his plans are actually working in order to continue his socialist agenda -- so the radical circus travels on.
Obama also employs the same strategy as P. T. Barnum when it comes to selling his hoax: Make outrageous claims about your product, never stay in one place too long, and always keep the circus moving. This strategy worked well for Barnum, because while the attraction to see the bizarre and unbelievable lured many people in, they were never given a chance to see it clearly or long enough to verify its authenticity. And if people ever realized that they had been taken, by the time they came back to voice their complaint, the circus would be gone.
President Obama's pitch for health care is a great example of how he uses P. T. Barnum's sucker strategy. With his radical circus moving from town to town, pitchman Obama shows up making outrageous claims to lure people into his health care sideshow. Standing on his soapbox, the handsome, well-dressed, fast-talking radical pitchman guarantees authenticity and satisfaction. "Step right up before it's too late, and see a universal health care system that will be the envy of the entire world," shouts the persuasive pitchman. Unfortunately, by the time many people realize they have been taken, Obama's radical circus will be long-gone.
President Obama has eclipsed P. T. Barnum's wildest dreams by pitching the biggest economic and social hoax in the history of this great nation.
All that is left for this audacious ringmaster-in-chief to do is sell the hoax and implement his radical socialist plan for America.
With a Democrat majority in both the House and the Senate coupled with the full support of almost every media outlet, the slick pitchman can say anything he pleases without fear of enough truth getting out to dissuade the masses regarding his plans. If Obama is successful, then before the end of his first term in office, the social, political, and financial landscape of America will be transformed from a capitalist to a more European-socialist style economy.
It is an open question whether the checks and balances in government will stop ringmaster Obama from raising the center pole of his three-ring radical circus tent to complete the building of the greatest socialist show on earth, smack dab in the middle of our nation's capital.
While tossing away a couple of bucks on a sideshow is an easy pill to swallow for most circus-goers, blowing trillions of taxpayer dollars along with a long laundry list of American rights and freedoms is off the scale of comprehension for even the most credulous circus midway patrons.
Who will save America from this radical socialist monster of the midway?
Neil Braithwaite writes political commentary and satire and is a regular contributor to PoliticalDerby.com.
3.
“Paul Ryan v. the President” (The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board)
'Every argument has been made. Everything that there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody has said it," President Obama declared yesterday as he urged Democrats to steamroll his plan through Congress. What hasn't been heard, however, is even a shred of White House honesty about the true costs of ObamaCare, or its fiscal consequences.
Nearby, we reprint Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan's remarks at the health summit last week, which methodically dismantle the falsehoods—there is no other way of putting it—that Mr. Obama has used to sell "reform" and repeated again yesterday. No one in the political class has even tried to refute Mr. Ryan's arguments, though he made them directly to the President and his allies, no doubt because they are irrefutable. If Democrats are willing to ignore overwhelming public opposition to ObamaCare and pass it anyway, then what's a trifling dispute over a couple of trillion dollars?
At his press conference yesterday, Mr. Obama claimed that "my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions—families, businesses and the federal government." He said it is "fully paid for" and "brings down our deficit by up to $1 trillion over the next two decades." Never before has a vast new entitlement been sold on the basis of fiscal responsibility, and one reason ObamaCare is so unpopular is that Americans understand the contradiction between untold new government subsidies and claims of spending restraint. They know a Big Con when they hear one.
Mr. Obama's fiscal assertions are possible only because of the fraudulent accounting and budget gimmicks that Democrats spent months calibrating. Readers can find the gory details in Mr. Ryan's pre-emptive rebuttal nearby, though one of the most egregious deceptions is that the bill counts 10 years of taxes but only six years of spending.
The real cost over a decade is about $2.3 trillion on paper, Mr. Ryan estimates, and even that is a lowball estimate considering how many people will flood to "free" health care and how many businesses will be induced to drop coverage. Mr. Obama claimed yesterday that the plan will cost "about $100 billion per year," but in fact the costs ramp up each year the program exists. The far more likely deficits are $460 billion over the first 10 years, and $1.4 trillion over the next 10.
What Mr. Ryan calls "probably the most cynical gimmick" deserves special attention, which is known in Washington as the "doc fix." Next month Medicare physician payments are scheduled to be cut by 22% and deeper thereafter, though Congress is sure to postpone the reductions as it always does. Failing to account for this inevitability takes nearly a quarter-trillion dollars off the ObamaCare books and by itself wipes out the "savings" that the White House continues to take credit for.
Some in the liberal cheering section now claim that this Medicare ruse isn't Mr. Obama's problem because it was first promised by Republicans and Bill Clinton in 1997. But then why did Democrats include the "doc fix" in all early versions of the bill to buy the support of the American Medical Association, only to dump this pricey item later when hiding it would make it easier to fake-reduce the deficit?
The President was (miraculously) struck dumb by Mr. Ryan's critique, and in his response drifted off into an irrelevant tangent about Medicare Advantage, while California Democrat Xavier Becerra claimed "you essentially said you can't trust the Congressional Budget Office." But Mr. Ryan was careful to note that he didn't doubt the professionalism of CBO, only the truthfulness of the Democratic gimmicks that the budget gnomes are asked to score.
Yesterday Mr. Obama again invoked the "nonpartisan, independent" authority of CBO, which misses the reality that if you feed the agency phony premises, you are going to get phony results at the other end.
The President also claimed the reason his plan is in trouble, and the reason Democrats must abuse the Senate's rules to ram this plan into law, is that "many Republicans in Congress just have a fundamental disagreement over whether we should have more or less oversight of insurance companies." So most of Mr. Obama's first year in office has been paralyzed over nothing more than minor regulatory hair-splitting. This is so preposterous that the President can't possibly believe it.
Congress's spring break begins on March 29, and Democratic leaders plan on jamming this monster through Congress before then. Americans have to hope that enough rank-and-file Democrats aren't as deaf to fiscal honesty as this President.
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