The contents of these articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
Pelosi confident House will pass health care bill
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saturday she's confident the House will pass health care legislation and dismissed Republican criticism that she did not have enough votes for the measure.
Pelosi declined to say when House members would vote on a health care bill, or how many votes that she had secured. Although she added that lawmakers were "on the verge of making history."
She also dismissed criticism by House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio that she did not have sufficient votes.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100314/ap_on_go_co/us_pelosi_health_care_7
New Sen. Brown bashes Obama's `bitter' health push
Newly arrived Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts accused President Barack Obama and Democrats on Saturday of a "bitter, destructive and endless" drive to pass health overhaul legislation that Brown warned would be disastrous.
Brown himself can claim responsibility for the Democrats' failure to pass health overhaul legislation to date. They were on the verge of doing so before Brown claimed the late Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat in a special election upset in January, depriving Democrats of their filibuster-proof supermajority and throwing the health care effort into limbo.
It has been gradually revived, and Democrats are now pushing for final passage before Easter under complex Senate rules that would allow them to sidestep a Republican filibuster. Republicans in the House and Senate are unanimously opposed to the sweeping legislation, which would extend coverage to some 30 million uninsured Americans with a new mandate for nearly everyone to carry insurance now pushing for final passage before Easter under complex Senate rules that would allow them to sidestep a Republican filibuster. Republicans in the House and Senate are unanimously opposed to the sweeping legislation, which would extend coverage to some 30 million uninsured Americans with a new mandate for nearly everyone to carry insurance.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100313/D9EDQESG3.html
Climategate – a scandal US media refuses to cover
It’s been called the “biggest scientific scandal in history.” It has everything to earn Pulitzer consideration: lies and misconduct in high places, political implications, even massive financial transactions that may or may not be legitimate or even legal. It’s big news … as long as you read the Telegraph, the Guardian, the London Times, or even major Indian papers.
It’s no news at all if you read the U.S. mainstream media.
In the ninety days — three months exactly at the time of this writing — since the Climategate files story broke, there has been an amazing amount of breakout in the climate science story, with major error after major error being uncovered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report IV (AR4). There has been the discovery of suspicious conflicts of interest on the part of the chair of the IPCC, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, and the expanding story of the financial connections between the carbon trading cabal and the scientific climate clique in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Dr. Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit has “stepped aside” while under investigation, after which the UK government said it appeared there may have been criminality in CRU’s refusal to fulfill Freedom of Information requests. Scientist members of the IPCC have resigned, not wishing to continue to be associated with the poor quality of work being revealed. And the UN chief diplomat in charge of climate change matters, Yvo de Boer, resigned in a sudden move that shocked UN climate watchers
http://webmail.aol.com/30746-111/aol-1/en-us/Suite.aspx
Opinion:
The reality of tea parties and the actual movement they helped spawn
I’ve had a number of phone calls and emails with political friends – most of them consultants – in Washington as Obamacare has loomed.
I have yet to find one of the Washington types who has a realistic grasp of the tea party and what it actually is. They keep looking for organized groups because that’s the norm and the conventional way things usually happen.
But Washington is a very big echo chamber and often loses touch with grass root reality.
A major portion of the Washingtonians don’t understand the conservative victories in the Texas textbook revisions is as much a reflection of what has been dubbed the “Tea Party Protest Movement”.
Perhaps that lack of perception leads to way to discussing this movement thing without the baggage of the “tea party” title. Far too many groups – some of them a bit extreme – have tried as hard as they can to co-opt the title. They want to capture the image and raise tons of dollars to promote conservative efforts.
The real movement is ubiquitous. A majority of those who represent its massive power will never attend a rally and never contribute a dime. A million joined in a September 12 demonstration in Washington. Liberals and others – even Bill O’Eeilly – worked hard to claim only about 60,000 attended.
It matters little – reality is that crowd, but any size – reflected a minute segment of what the movement is. It is really a sudden political awakening of normal Americans across the country who recognize we are on the wrong track – a very wrong track – and are intent on doing whatever they perceive they can do to push for honest reform.
Some, such as Glenn Beck, offer interesting insight, but he displays a stunning lack of understanding of the political system and reality. Beck continually blames both parties equally for the condition in which the nation finds itself today.
Without a doubt, Republicans have made serious mistakes here and there – but to suggest the parties are equally to blame reflects pure ignorance, or shameful bias of some sort.
Beck calls on Americans to vote out both parties. Thus he is hinting at a third party movement. No intelligent American would support a third party. Such a development would be the same as voting for liberal Democrats to maintain their dominant majorities.
For better or for worse, we are in a two party system. There are two and only two choices when entering the polling place in November – vote Democrat or vote Republican. Period (of course some could choose to just stay home and not vote at all). Any other option will benefit Democrats.
What we are seeing so far, is a movement smart enough to reject third party fantasies. That is the good message many got from the Special Congressional election in New York’s 23rd District. Local Republicans anointed a liberal GOP candidate who embraced left wing views, and conservatives brought in a third party candidate. Even national conservative stars such as Sarah Palin endorsed the third party candidate. The Internet was crammed with emails supporting him. Predictably, in the end, the third party led to a victory for the liberal Democrat as anyone who knows politics could have predicted. The lesson was not lost on many conservatives.
The bottom line should become clear by November. What we are seeing is a rising up of normal Americans – people Obama pictured as clinging to their bibles and guns, and those which his Homeland Security Secretary – Americans who disagree with Obama on key political issues, especially veterans – identified as her Department’s targets as potential terrorists.
Homeland’s Janet Napolitano’s infamous, memo displayed just how off target Washington liberals are. They are still looking at last November’s vote totals and thinking they still apply.
They don’t. Not at all.
This activist movement wants government spending to stop. They don’t want the government to takeover their health care system, and those who understand Cap and Trade are very opposed. Illegal immigration remains a major issue and will bloom anew when another liberal effort at granting amnesty becomes a major consideration.
They support our troops wherever they fight, and they want to see Senior Citizens treated honestly – something the Democrat bill doesn’t do at all.
It’s a national debate in which whether we continue using “BC” and “AD” to designate historic eras, is a relative minor issue – but one that is significant in its illustration conservatives were in charge of the Texas text book debate.
Liberals left those meetings in frustration. They should brace themselves because more of the same is in store.
For all its short comings, America remains a nation steeped in honest convictions. For a while, a mainstream media succeeded in deluding normal America into believing it was marching to different drummer. The Internet has revealed the lie, and allowed us to realize we are an entire orchestra – one that functions from a basic respect for values and doesn’t need a single leader to guide us out of the wilderness.
People are voting with their TV remotes and making Fox News the dominant force in Cable news. Recent elections prove that very same point. So does the Texas text book victory.
Americans are on the right track – with a singular goal of retaking their country from liberals who have led us to the brink. Survival means electing and re-electing conservatives who can bring about positive change – real change – not what Obama claimed to promote.
Conservatives are increasingly activist and increasingly dedicated to by passing candidates who are not. Ask Florida’s governor who is seen as “moderate”, but who is being crushed by a lesser known Republican, Marco Rubio who is a conservative.
Therein lies an accurate reflection of politics today. Take heart.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
http://businessandmedia.org/46millionmistakes.asp
46 Million Mistakes
Pick a news outlet – almost any news outlet. Chances are they have misreported one of the key facts in the healthcare debate. One of the basic reasons for the supposed need for healthcare reform is the huge number of Americans who lack health insurance. The number typically quoted is 46 million (sometimes inflated to 47 million 48 million or even 50 million).
It’s a common error but a huge mistake in math. Politicians make it, especially President Barack Obama and others supporting his health care plan. Obama cited this number (46 million) in a March 5 speech about health care reform. Michael Moore included the error in his healthcare film “SiCKO,” by claiming “…there are nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance” (as stated on the SiCKO webpage). But the error is most commonly made by journalists who don’t actually check the claim. Instead they just repeat a liberal talking point.
It’s flat out wrong and here’s why:
• Mistake – There are 46 million to 50 million people uninsured in the United States
These are inflated numbers in an already skewed statistic. The Census Bureau cites there are 46.577 million people uninsured in America. Rounding up is sometimes useful, but when it results in an extra 2 million to 4 million people it’s fraudulent. In February, Chip Reid of CBS misled viewers by claiming that the health care reform package is “a big first step in getting health insurance to America’s 48 million uninsured” – and that is just one example of many.
Fact – There are 45.657 million people in the United States who are uninsured.
• Mistake – 40+ million Americans are uninsured
The operative word here is “American.” Non-citizens are not Americans. The Census Bureau says that this total includes 9.7 million uninsured non-citizens.
Fact – There are at most 35.9 million uninsured Americans
• Mistake – These uninsured Americans cannot afford health insurance
According to the Census Bureau report 17 million of those uninsured make at least the median household income, which is roughly more than $50,000. In this case, 8.3 million earn between $50,000 to $74,999 dollars a year. Then, add that to the 9.1 million who earn even at a higher pay grade, more than $75,000.
Fact – There are at most 20 million Americans who may not be able to afford health insurance.
• Mistake – All of these 20 million people are chronically uninsured.
Dr. Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, reports that “45 percent of the uninsured are going to have insurance within four months” [according to the Congressional Budget Office]. This is because due to natural frictional unemployment (which is always present in the economy) many are in between jobs and are waiting to get health insurance from their employers.
Fact: The Kaiser Foundation puts the number of uninsured Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 13.9 million and 8.2 million.
2.
Why our 'post-modern presidents' fail
RALPH PETERS
Since the end of World War II, our country has had three great presidents: Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.
Their politics varied, but these giants stand in sharp contrast to our last three presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Barack Obama. The first two presided over gravely flawed presidencies; the third is on his way to outright failure.
What makes these two presidential trios so different? A recent visit to the Truman Museum and Library in Independence, Mo., made me ask what made those great presidents great.
The answer is character. The three greats were men of great character; the three recents, men of great ambition -- driven, in their different ways, by a fateful sense of entitlement.
And you don't build character by punching your ticket at today's Ivy-League universities, then dashing straight into politics.
The people I admire most in life aren't the golden boys (or girls), but those who've come up the hard way. Frankly, failure builds character -- in those who have the gumption to get back up on their feet and fight to succeed.
Until the Reagan years, it was still possible to become president without elite credentials. Harry Truman had only a high-school diploma. Reagan graduated from the sort of college today's Washington insiders mock. Eisenhower was a Military Academy grad -- back when West Point was still an engineering school.
Most important, each man tasted bitter disappointments along the way. Young Harry Truman had to return from Kansas City to work 16-hour days on his family's troubled farm. After combat service in the First World War, he co-owned a men's store -- only to face bankruptcy in the postwar recession. Barely averting that bankruptcy, he paid each debt he owed over the years.
Eisenhower thought his career was finished when he failed to get a combat command during World War I. His peers gained medals while he trained troops Stateside. Years later, he was little more than a football coach in uniform. But he never gave up -- and worked relentlessly at his profession.
Ronald Reagan knew what it felt like to be written off, to be regarded as a second-rater. Descending through B-movies to minor television jobs, he seemed finished. He wasn't. Reagan remade himself to serve the country he loved. And the world's better and safer for it.
Each of these men -- all from rural or small-town backgrounds -- knew hardship, failure and what it was like to sweat for a living. Not one of them would stand a chance of being elected president today.
Instead, we've had Clinton, Bush and Obama, with their laurel wreaths of degrees from Oxford, Yale and Harvard. Two did have challenging childhoods (who hasn't?). But once they figured out how to game the system and get into top schools, Clinton and Obama never deviated from their identical goal of becoming president.
George W. Bush did fail in business -- but he never had to worry about how he was going to feed his family. The Bush-dynasty safety net was there for him -- Dad could always make the phone call.
As president, Bush showed tenacity -- and far more character than Clinton or Obama -- but he, too, fit the post-modern model of gaining the White House from an inside track.
Will we ever again have a president who didn't go to an Ivy League school, who knows what it's like to struggle -- as so many Americans struggle every day -- and who's tasted defeat, but got back in the ring with his dukes up?
Wouldn't it be a fine thing to have another president whose first serious taste of failure didn't come in the Oval Office?
We don't need presidents with exclusive academic credentials. We need presidents who know what it's like to work for a living. We need presidents who understand average Americans. We need presidents for whom the White House isn't just the ultimate résumé entry.
Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan had different visions of what was right for America -- but their concern was America, not themselves.
These profoundly different men had two other things in common: They weren't lawyers, and they had the courage to make tough decisions, from dropping the first atomic bombs to telling the chieftain of an evil empire to tear down a wall.
Our post-modern presidents can't even decide what to do with blood-soaked terrorists. I don't think that would've been a problem for Harry, Ike or the Gipper.
Ralph Peters' new book, "Endless War," is on sale now.
3.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/the_rube_goldberg_progressives.html
The Rube Goldberg Progressives
Robert T. Smith
Progressives in America are wedded to the Rube Goldberg approach to the running of our economy. Rube Goldberg became famous through his cartoons depicting overly complex systems to accomplish simple tasks. Rube Goldberg's name has been adopted into the Merriam-Webster dictionary as an adjective used to describe accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply. From a scientific perspective, the Progressives who currently inhabit Washington D.C. need a physics lesson to dispel the faulty notion behind their Rube Goldberg economic system and economic perpetual motion machine.
As an organic, self-organizing natural system, our economy can be viewed in scientific terms in much the same way as the physics of energy. Potential energy is stored energy, for example a spring that is compressed. When the potential energy is released it is transformed into kinetic energy, or the energy of motion. Kinetic energy is realized when the compressed spring is released.
Kinetic energy allows for the ability to do work by means of the energy of motion. The force of the spring when released is available to exert energy that works to push an object if in contact with the spring. There is typically a reason or cause for assembling this energy system to create work, for example, to run a spring-driven machine or mechanism.
The potential energy of our economic system is comprised of available or stored materials or natural resources, labor, land or property, and technology. To put this into context, consider a small business where potato chips are manufactured. The materials and natural resources are the potato chips, oil, salt, and components of the packaging materials. The other components of the potato chip manufacturing economic system include the workers, land, building, machinery and other property owned to facilitate manufacturing. The manufacturing plant owner brings the technology of potato chip manufacturing together with the potential economic energy components to produce the outcome of this economic activity, potato chips available for purchase by consumers.
For these independent components of economic energy to be assembled and released there must be a reason or cause. The reason or cause of this economic energy system is the desire of the potato manufacturing plant owner to create wealth. Wealth is the measure of the applied kinetic energy of our economic system.
The ingenuity of Americans to assemble the component pieces of potential economic energy, and release that potential economic energy to form economic abundance and wealth has lead to the American success story. Wealth generation is the outcome of Americans freely conducting their lives as they see fit in the pursuit of happiness. The perpetual motion machine of Americanism is driven by freedom; the freedom to obtain, assemble, and release economic energy and create wealth.
With abundant materials and resources, labor, land and property, and technology, the constraints on America's wealth come mostly from government. Government controls are the constraints on the forward motion kinetic energy of our economic system that serves to inhibit economic growth and wealth creation.
The labyrinth of government controls is extensive; as examples: government controls over the cost or availability of our energy resources (e.g., oil, gas, coal, nuclear, etc.); government controls on labor through labor laws, such as minimum wage laws and laws favoring unionization; government control of land and property through zoning and taxes; and government control of technology through environmental controls and limitations. While all of these government controls produce limitations on our economic system, nobody would argue that the judicious application of certain controls is necessary. It is the overzealousness and complexity of these controls that is an issue for economic abundance and the generation of wealth.
Most recently, the Progressives can't seem to comprehend why our economic system is stalled. In addition to the ever increasing baseline of government controls, the chaos and uncertainty the Progressives have caused in their attempt to establish additional draconian controls related to carbon regulation and health care , as examples, doesn't register as an impediment to the economy in their minds. The Progressives gravitate to the Rube Goldberg complex system of stacking on ever more and complex government controls and manipulations of the system, when the simple direct system of free market capitalism lies right before their eyes. Freedom to produce wealth requires the controls to be removed, relaxed, and/or limited, not increased.
The Keynesian theory of pump priming is an add-on piece to the complexity of the Progressive Rube Goldberg economic system. The stimulus packages recently inflicted on our country are the current pump priming examples. The science behind the Keynesian economic theory is that once the economic system is put in motion or stimulated, the stimulated motion of the economic machine provides the energy to continue the motion of the economic machine. In essence, once the economic system is stimulated, no additional energy is needed; the economic system then provides its own energy.
Painfully evident to all except the Progressives, their pump priming stimuli will not overcome the controls currently installed or planned to impede the forward progress of our economy. As an analogy, imagine a Progressive teaching their toddler to ride a bike. The Progressive pushes while the toddler's foot is pressed on the brake controlling or impeding the forward motion of the bike. The Progressive stimulating push is sufficient enough for the bike to travel only about one arms length. How vexing it must be to the Progressive to push and push without achieving the desired outcome of continued bike motion; how painful it is to watch the Progressives in our government wrestle with this self-inflicted problem while our economy flounders and so many are unemployed.
The economic laws of physics cannot be overcome by ever more applying the brakes of controls on the economic system. The current and planned Progressive additions to the government labyrinth of regulatory and legal controls and controlling agencies, and the Keynesian pump priming stimuli would likely even amuse Rube Goldberg.
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