Goodbye to Your Health Insurance

RealClearPolitics - You Will Lose Your Private Health Insurance

Do you believe it is an accident that suddenly no mammograms are required at less than 50 years of age? Expect many rulings of this sort in the months and years to come, but rest assured that the STATISTICS on health will continue to look better and better. The fox is in charge of the hen house, he has declared the hens are all fine and happy!

So there we have the real essence of this bill. It restricts our choice of which insurance to buy and pushes us into more expensive plans. At the same time, it destroys the economic incentive to purchase insurance in the first place and replaces insurance with a free-floating tax on one's very existence.

Essentially, this bill forces the insurance companies to cover everyone at the same rate without regard to pre-existing conditions, demands that the coverage cover every little thing (thus making sure that health costs go up), and removes any prospects of profit for the insurance industry.

The part I think I "love" the most is the part that Al Franken was bragging about on MPR today -- insurance companies MUST put 90% of premiums paid into payments for medical care. ONLY 10% can be spent on administration, management, advertising, etc. Isn't that sweet? So what incentive do we have here? Let's see, if I have $1,000 premiums today, I can make only $100, but if I get to $10,000 in premiums, I can make $1,000. Do you think the medical community would like to get that extra $9,000, or do you think they would turn it down?

Oh, I know, there will be a "government regulator" -- guess what, there always have been PLENTY of "government regulators" at SEC, HEW, USDA, etc, etc, and billions of dollars are wasted, skimmed or just flat out missing all the time. Did you hear of anyone at SEC losing their job over the Sub-Prime meltdown? A couple real high level guys at FANNIE and FREDDIE got canned, but they got picked up in the BO campaign. One needs a crisis before one can be sure it doesn't "go to waste". We are set up for a "crisis" a minute now.

The real purpose of this bill is to run up the cost of insurance for everyone as a prelude to government takeover. There isn't a lot left between this level of mendacity and cynicism and the gulag. Merry Christmas, Comrade.

Will On Climate Change

RealClearPolitics - The Climate-Change Travesty

A well written perspective on the fallacy of spending Trillions of dollars on something that is questionable enough that at least some scientists feel they must lie to defend.

Shoot Toto!

RealClearPolitics - We-Don't-Want-to-Talk-About-It-Gate

Remember in the Wizard of Oz when Toto was pulling the curtain back so you could see that "the great Oz" was nothing more than a machine being manipulated by an old guy behind the curtain? He spoke through the machine saying "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain", when it was obvious that there was no "Oz" -- only a big machine and a regular old guy manipulating it.

Thus, as some hackers have pulled the curtain back from the "The Great Global Warming Hoax", the MSM, the Democrats, and the Copenhagen grifters admonish us "pay no attention to it being a hoax".

Amazingly, most of the masses are gullible enough that even when they see the main perpetrators of this supposed "settled science" right in the act of silencing those with data that calls their hypothesis into question, and in some cases being forced to delete data and manufacture data to show what they could not show honestly, they are afraid to question the "Oz" of Global Warming.

Have we lost all ability to independent th0ught?

Will: Will Not End Well

RealClearPolitics - This Will Not End Well

A good one from George.

But after 11 months of graceless disparagements of the 43rd president, the 44th acts as though he is the first president whose predecessor bequeathed a problematic world. And Obama's second new Afghanistan policy in less than nine months strikingly resembles his predecessor's plan for Iraq, which was: As Iraq's security forces stand up, U.S. forces will stand down. 

Having vowed to "finish the job," Obama revealed Tuesday that he thinks the job in Afghanistan is to get out of Afghanistan. This is an unserious policy.

The BO View From Abroad

Opinion: Searching in Vain for the Obama Magic - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Whenever Bush would give a speech on matters of war, the MSM provided us with the obligatory "lack of respect from abroad" view. Gee, doesn't look like they would have any trouble finding that now if they looked a bit.

One wonders if cynicism has any limits. BO who was 100% against the Surge in Iraq, now takes credit for an "orderly exit" with no mention that it was the Surge that made that possible. He institutes his own "2nd Surge" (his first was in March) in Afghanistan, but rather than stand up and take the heat of "we are committed to objectives, not dates", he goes ahead and states a date where he will start withdrawal. It is hard to come up with the perfect analogy for committing troops for a specific duration. Men are being sent to fight and die when the enemy knows that if they just run and hide for 18 months, the US troops will be gone and they can mop up the Afghan forces at their leisure. Maybe getting married and promising to not have any other women for the next 18 months would be similar.

This quote is a good summary:

Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America's new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric -- and left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught.

The following is a rather breathtaking assessment. "The least truthful address" for BO gives one huge pause -- the mind reels to try to think of any that had even a mild sprinkling of truthful content, but indeed, this one is certainly in the running for most disingenuous.

One didn't have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon hearing Obama's speech. It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.

Crushing Legacy of Bush

A Crushing Legacy of Bush | The New York Observer

One reads through something like this and wonders at the thought process of the writer beyond "I hate  Bush".

Those events began with the inexplicable decision by officials of the previous administration to allow Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other ranking leaders of Al Qaeda to escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001. At the time, as a new Senate report on the battle of Tora Bora recalls, Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, and Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, decided not to augment the tiny force of special operations troops on the ground with sufficient force to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden and his deputies. They later claimed to be worried that “too many American troops in Afghanistan would create an anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency,” a rationale that can only evoke bitter laughter now.

No further recrimination is necessary; history will render sterner judgments than any that can be written now. But after eight years of incompetence and arrogance, how can the United States salvage what has become of the “good war”?

So the ONLY purpose of US troops being in Afghanistan was and is to capture Osama Bin Ladin and Mullah Omar? Even the rest of the article would seem to give the lie to that, is BO putting in 30K more troops for that reason? No. So if more troops is bad now, why was it not bad in '01? Only because then it would have been the evil Bush putting them in and now it is the savior of the world BO?

We live in a post 9-11 world where the threat of "asymmetric warfare" is almost guaranteed to be with us always and always increasing. How many guys does it take to comandeer an oil tanker and crash it into Manhattan and set it afire? How about a LNG tanker? Supposedly their explosive impact could equal a small nuke. We have seen planes. We know that the next use could be nukes, nerve gas or biological weapons. How secure are some of the control centers for our power grid? How about a small nuke on a SCUD producing an EMP explosion off the Eastern Seaboard? The list is endless, and the "unknown unknowns" are impossible to calculate.

So, we are faced with "Nation Building or Defeat". A very difficult problem. I'm not sure that Afghanistan and Iraq are close enough to the same to use the same strategies -- I think that is what got us in trouble in Iraq. What at least SEEMED to be working in Afghanistan in '01 and '02 was a "small footprint". That strategy was not right for Iraq, but I'm not sure that just because the strategy of a larger footprint worked in Iraq is any reason to assume THAT strategy is portable to Afghanistan.

Sowell Nuggets

RealClearPolitics - Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

I liked a bunch of these, here are my favorites:

In response to news of President Obama receiving the Nobel Prize for peace, an e-mail from a reader recalled a black classmate's comments upon graduating from high school many years ago. When asked to list the advantages and disadvantages of being black, the black student facetiously listed as an advantage "being praised for infinitesimal accomplishments."

I'd say the following is sort of the core value of the left -- show off with something clever as often as possible, but never even have a clue what wisdom is.

Some people are so busy being clever that they don't have time enough to be wise.

The next one is very sad, but very true -- maybe a lot of prayer will prevent it:

No one likes to admit having been played for a fool. So it will probably take a mushroom cloud over some American city before some Obama supporters wake up. Even so, the true believers among the survivors will probably say that this was all George Bush's fault.

I think everyone that has worked for their positions in life knows the next one from experience -- they stepped beyond their competence and learned about both their limits, the strength of others, and thus at least a little humility. Think about how hard this learning would be (is it possible) when you are used for "praise for infinitesimal accomplishments".

Stepping beyond your competence can be like stepping off a cliff. Too many people with brilliance and talent within some field do not realize how ignorant-- or, worse yet, misinformed-- they are when talking like philosopher-kings about other things.

Much as the media liked to say about Bush: "He started on 2nd and thought he had hit a double", when you follow the liberal mantra, you get home-runs for just showing up.

There has probably never before been as drastic a decline in the quality of vice presidents as there has been when Dick Cheney was replaced by Joe Biden. Yet the New York Times is lionizing Biden as a wise counselor to President Obama. When you support the liberal agenda, that makes you brilliant ex-officio in the media, whether or not you are vice president-- and whether or not you have even common sense.

Objectivity Is Out

Ferguson: How Economic Weakness Endangers the U.S. | Newsweek National News | Newsweek.com

Excellent article from NEWSWEEK! Ferguson is an extremely intelligent economist and author who is currently a professor of history at that bastion of conservatism - Harvard. The whole thing is well worth reading, but I find the quote from Krugman to be especially troubling. It seems that many of our supposed intelligentsia subscribe to the post-modern view that there are no facts, only human views of the world. How else can one claim that claim that deficits in the low 100's of billions are "irresponsible", yet applaud multiple Trillion deficits as far as the eye can see? Doesn't a Nobel Prize winning economist have to have SOME objectivity to be called "a professional"?

Now, who said the following? "My prediction is that politicians will eventually be tempted to resolve the [fiscal] crisis the way irresponsible governments usually do: by printing money, both to pay current bills and to inflate away debt. And as that temptation becomes obvious, interest rates will soar."Seems pretty reasonable to me. The surprising thing is that this was none other than Paul Krugman, the high priest of Keynesianism, writing back in March 2003. A year and a half later he was comparing the U.S. deficit with Argentina's (at a time when it was 4.5 percent of GDP). Has the economic situation really changed so drastically that now the same Krugman believes it was "deficits that saved us," and wants to see an even larger deficit next year? Perhaps. But it might just be that the party in power has changed.

A lot of the article is taken up by thoughts on what is likely to happen because of the entitlement and debt train wreck that we are in. The idea of hyperinflation is covered but amazingly (to me) dismissed. What he suggests is more likely is a rise in the real interest rate and inflation falls -- or, while he doesn't say this, goes negative into deflation. Deflation is what has already happened to the stock market, home values and gas prices. Maybe we are developing a trend?

So here's another scenario—which in many ways is worse than the inflation scenario. What happens is that we get a rise in the real interest rate, which is the actual interest rate minus inflation. According to a substantial amount of empirical research by economists, including Peter Orszag (now at the Office of Management and Budget), significant increases in the debt-to-GDP ratio tend to increase the real interest rate. One recent study concluded that "a 20 percentage point increase in the U.S. government-debt-to-GDP ratio should lead to a 20–120 basis points [0.2–1.2 percent] increase in real interest rates." This can happen in one of three ways: the nominal interest rate rises and inflation stays the same; the nominal rate stays the same and inflation falls; or—the nightmare case—the nominal interest rate rises and inflation falls.

I'm not sure I completely understand the reason for his 20% tipping point, but debt service rising from 8% to 17% of revenues by 2019 sounds bad enough to me anyway. It seems to me that people tend to grossly UNderestimate what we spend on entitlements and grossly OVERestimate what we spend on Defense and debt already -- as in I suspect that most folks would think for some reason that we spend over 20% of the budget on debt payment already. I'm not sure what they will think when it is reality, but no matter what they think, I really doubt it will be good.

Already, the federal government's interest payments are forecast by the CBO to rise from 8 percent of revenues in 2009 to 17 percent by 2019, even if rates stay low and growth resumes. If rates rise even slightly and the economy flatlines, we'll get to 20 percent much sooner. And history suggests that once you are spending as much as a fifth of your revenues on debt service, you have a problem. It's all too easy to find yourself in a vicious circle of diminishing credibility. The investors don't believe you can afford your debts, so they charge higher interest, which makes your position even worse.

BO Not god

How President Obama Can Take Back His Presidency -- New York Magazine

The Thursday before last, President Barack Obama came home from his eight-day trip to Asia and received a welcome even frostier than the subfreezing temperatures that had greeted him in Beijing. In the House of Representatives, the populist Democrat Peter DeFazio of Oregon was calling for the heads of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers on a pair of pikes. The Congressional Black Caucus was thwarting the progress of Obama’s financial-reform agenda, on the grounds that the economic policies of the first African-American president were callous toward African-Americans. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, furious about provisions regarding illegal immigrants in the Senate health-care bill, was casting blame on the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. The next morning, the front page of the Washington Post featured a story with the blaring headline “Angry Congress Lashes Out at Obama,” but which might as well have been titled “What a Difference a Year Makes.”

The lefties are all into trying to help their man BO "get back his mojo". It is very sweet, and much better than when there is a Republican in there and all they can talk about is leaks, investigations, lies, how stupid the man is, and maybe throw in something about the way he walks or smiles (smirks?). That is when the economy is growing and employment is good -- if there are ANY real problems they get VERY cranky!

It's way too long an article for what it says. BO ran on "hope and change", so nobody really knows what he is about. He let congress write all his major bills -- stimulus, cap and trade and health care. He never took real firm positions on what he wanted, and much of what he did take a firm position on -- change of direction in Afghanistan in March, stimulus would hold unemployment below 8.1% turned out to be glaringly wrong.

So, he isn't a god anymore -- in fact, his approval ratings are less than 50% and a lot of the folks on the left are disappointed. Boo Hoo, the real world isn't heaven -- talk about your major news flash!

Boo Hoo BO, Being President is Tough

RealClearPolitics - Obama's Thankless Thanksgiving

EJ is amazed that BO should be criticized by "right wingers". One reads this and realizes that because of the dominant media culture on the left sees a world where the hammering on Bush as being "appointed" from day one, the joy of Jeffords switching parties in the Senate, and the constant blathering about "war crimes" as just being reasonable.

How can people not be praising BO this T-day? Don't tell EJ that some folks believe there is a higher power than either BO or the MSM. He might not be able to handle it.

How Short the Memory

Report: 'Bin Laden was within our grasp' - CNN.com

Remember reports that the whereabouts of Bin Ladin were known in the late '90s and Billy C specifically decided against killing him? They made the MSM, but always with a lot of caveats and the "futility of 2nd guessing". Any thought that ANYTHING that Billy C did could have had ANYTHING to do with not protecting the nation on 9-11 -- other than of course the oft asserted that the Republican impeachment procedures took poor Billy's mind off his job, was always soundly rejected. Bush was supposed to have sniffed out the plot and taken action in his less than 8 months in office, no need to look back WHAT SO EVER at that time!

Now we have an absolute transparent move by the Democrats to try to get folks to focus on 8 year old history rather than BO making a failed but at the time much praised strategy change in March that has turned out to make things worse and dithering about a decision since August. I'm not sure that complaining about what might have been done 8 years ago qualifies as "leadership". It remains to be seen if the national sheep continue to figure out that this sort of discussion is a complete waste of time relative to our position in Afghanistan.

How Important is Health Legislation?

Obama is having the best first year of any president since Franklin Roosevelt. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine

One can argue long and hard about WHAT the effect of Federal Health legislation now floating through the Congress will be, but one thing is VERY certain -- it's effect on the basic fabric of American life will be HUGE:

We are so submerged in the details of this debate—whether the bill will include a "public option," limit coverage for abortion, or tax Botox—that it's easy to lose sight of the magnitude of the impending change. For the federal government to take responsibility for health coverage will be a transformation of the American social contract and the single biggest change in government's role since the New Deal. If Obama governs for four or eight years and accomplishes nothing else, he may be judged the most consequential domestic president since LBJ. He will also undermine the view that Ronald Reagan permanently reversed a 50-year tide of American liberalism.

Anyone fighting against the passage of a bill here is listed as some sort of a political obstructionist nut job at best, racist at worst. In fact, the left knows very well that this is the greatest power grab since LBJ! Anyone with even a hint of concern for liberty or productivity MUST fight aginst this as hard as possible!

Different Standards

RealClearPolitics - The Skeptics Are Vindicated

The US MSM's primary concern with the climate change e-mails seems to be "they were illegally obtained". Ah yes, how similar their concerns over classified Abu Girab information, "extraordinary rendition" and various cell phone intercept schemes. Naturally, since terrorists that have declared their intent to kill Americans at all costs are certainly a "clear and present danger" and leaking classified information aids and abets their case and should be prosecuted as treason, I'm certain our loyal MSM would be EXTREMELY concerned over how the information was obtained, right?

Not so much. Global Warming OTOH, if one believes the alarmists as one is told to do may make winters a couple of degrees warmer in MN and raise the ocean a centimeter or two in a century or so. How accurate have you observed that predictions of a "massive increase in huge hurricanes" has been since '05? This year's hurricane season is over -- not one of any category hit the US.

Speaking of accuracy. How many times did we hear that Bush (and everyone else) predicted that there would be WMD in Iraq, and there wasn't ... therefore, he LIED! Well, BO said that WITHOUT the stimulus, unemployment would go over 8.1%, but if we followed his leadership and spent $800 Billion, it would not. Last I checked it was 10.1%. Did he lie? I wonder what the difference is?

One has to go to the world press (or Fox News) to even hear about these e-mails. Here is what one of the leading Global Warming alarmists had to say about them as reported in a CANADIAN paper:

There is little doubt that the e-mails were real. Even so warmist a true-believer as George Monbiot led his column in the Guardian yesterday with: "It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow. The e-mails extracted ... could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them."

Anyone who is not such a media sheep that they believe what the MSM tells them rather than their own experience and good sense tells them is well aware it has been cooling for the last decade, and there isn't any "temperature hockey stick". It isn't like we really needed that information either -- it is well documented that there was a medieval warming period where the Vikings had a thriving civilization with crops and animals on Greenland for hundreds of years before it cooled. Then there is the "little ice age" in the 1800s. Were those due to "carbon"?

The bottom line -- as evidenced from our inability to make statements about weather a few months in advance, to our inability to predict the number and severity of hurricanes, to our lack of understanding of why some glaciers are advancing while others are receding just means that we have lots of science to do. Scientists ought to be happy with that -- but they bought into political warming in order to gain more grants, and once they became used to the flow of money, they became very afraid when they realized that what they said was "settled" wasn't settled at all. So they did a cover up.

There is nothing new about this ... this is human beings doing what human beings have always done. Making extravagant claims of knowledge that turns out to be not nearly as clear as what they thought when they first stumbled upon some tidy theory. What is somewhat new is the willfull suspension of disbelief from the media and the willingness of such volumes of sheep to shut off their brains rather than use what God has provided between their ears.

Everyone Wants Respect

US Foreign Policy: Obama's Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Seems that these days we need to go overseas to get any sort of rational evaluation of our supposedly grand president.

Upon taking office, Obama said that he wanted to listen to the world, promising respect instead of arrogance. But Obama's currency isn't as strong as he had believed. Everyone wants respect, but hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Interests, not emotions, dominate the world of realpolitik. The Asia trip revealed the limits of Washington's new foreign policy: Although Obama did not lose face in China and Japan, he did appear to have lost some of his initial stature.

"Everyone wants respect, but hardly anyone is willing to pay for it". Excellent comment on human nature -- everyone wants a lot of great benefits (health care, education, "living wage", etc) but hardly anyone wants to do the tasks required to earn those results, everyone wants a nice think waistline, but few are willing to push away from the table (I'm VERY guilty on this one!!). We are all human, but we don't all seem to accept that -- many believe that "someone else" ought to provide them "respect, income, health care, retirement, education ...." the list stretches on and on. Wants are infinite, means never are.

There are many indications that the man in charge at the White House will take a tougher stance in the future. Obama's advisors fear a comparison with former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, even more than with Bush. Prominent Republicans have already tried to liken Obama to the humanitarian from Georgia, who lost in his bid to win a second term, because voters felt that he was too soft. "Carter tried weakness and the world got tougher and tougher because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators, when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead," Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker in the House of Representatives, recently said. And then he added: "This does look a lot like Jimmy Carter."

How far the mighty have fallen -- Is BO more like Lincoln or FDR? or would he exceed both? That was the chorus from the left a year ago that was brayed loudly from the MSM. As Bush took office the MSM already had him locked as a "one term appointed president" -- BO was "historic". Now, at least in foreign lands, the media is starting to see the fact that BO is very much like Jimmy Carter -- without the experience of having been a governor, or the demonstrated combativeness against swimming bunnies!

Show Trial

RealClearPolitics - Travesty in New York

Krauthammer does a good analysis of the upcoming KSM trial in Manhattan.

So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) "do not get convicted," asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. "Failure is not an option," replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn't the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure -- acquittal, hung jury -- is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

Especially considering that the guys that attacked the Cole are getting a military trial, it is hard to see the decision to try KSM in NYC as anything but political. KSM was one of the very few (3?) people waterboarded in the now defunct "war on terror". We are no longer at war with the folks at war with us. Unilateral surrender, one of the things liberals excel at, has already been carried out. Trying the mastermind of 9-11 as a criminal is a great way of saying that OUR side of the war is over.

I strongly suspect that the BO administration has took a look around and reached a couple of conclusions:

1). Things aren't going well at all on any front -- economic, diplomatic, politically  or just plain "operationally" (as in they report "saved or created" jobs from congressional districts that don't exist).

2). Complaining about how hard the job that they ran for really is has started to wear thin. It kind of like an NFL QB complaining that the defense is big and fast, or a major league hitter observing that the pitchers throw stuff that is hard to hit. You don't say -- and how are we supposed to feel about voting in someone that didn't get that before they ran for the job?

So essentially, they realize that they are "becoming the show" and it isn't a very pretty show. Therefore, they have decided to "put on a show" and do all they can to get folks to remember "the bad old days" of that evil torturing Bush administration -- and oh, please watch that intently, we don't really want you paying any attention to the current parade of fools destroying your country all around you!