http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/
this is great!! show your kids. (and your less than informed adult friends)
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Unlevel Playing Field.
So, when liberals burn American flags, smear the military and compare Bush to Hitler, it's free speech.
When conservatives protest excessive taxation & govt spending its offensive.
Got it.
When conservatives protest excessive taxation & govt spending its offensive.
Got it.
Karl Rove is RIGHT (and correct too)!
Flip-Flops and Governance
Our president isn't quite as advertised.
By KARL ROVE
Barack Obama inherited a set of national-security policies that he rejected during the campaign but now embraces as president. This is a stunning and welcome about-face.
For example, President Obama kept George W. Bush's military tribunals for terror detainees after calling them an "enormous failure" and a "legal black hole." His campaign claimed last summer that "court systems . . . are capable of convicting terrorists." Upon entering office, he found out they aren't.
He insisted in an interview with NBC in 2007 that Congress mandate "consequences" for "a failure to meet various benchmarks and milestones" on aid to Iraq. Earlier this month he fought off legislatively mandated benchmarks in the $97 billion funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama agreed on April 23 to American Civil Liberties Union demands to release investigative photos of detainee abuse. Now's he reversed himself. Pentagon officials apparently convinced him that releasing the photos would increase the risk to U.S. troops and civilian personnel.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama excoriated Mr. Bush's counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, insisting it could not succeed. Earlier this year, facing increasing violence in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama rejected warnings of a "quagmire" and ordered more troops to that country. He isn't calling it a "surge" but that's what it is. He is applying in Afghanistan the counterinsurgency strategy Mr. Bush used in Iraq.
As a candidate, Mr. Obama promised to end the Iraq war by withdrawing all troops by March 2009. As president, he set a slower pace of drawdown. He has also said he will leave as many as 50,000 Americans troops there.
These reversals are both praiseworthy and evidence that, when it comes to national security, being briefed on terror threats as president is a lot different than placating MoveOn.org and Code Pink activists as a candidate. The realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning.
We are also seeing Mr. Obama reverse himself on the domestic front, but this time in a manner that will do more harm than good.
Mr. Obama campaigned on "responsible fiscal policies," arguing in a speech on the Senate floor in 2006 that the "rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy." In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he pledged to "go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work." Even now, he says he'll "cut the deficit . . . by half by the end of his first term in office" and is "rooting out waste and abuse" in the budget.
However, Mr. Obama's fiscally conservative words are betrayed by his liberal actions. He offers an orgy of spending and a bacchanal of debt. His budget plans a 25% increase in the federal government's share of the GDP, a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a near tripling of it in 10 years.
On health care, Mr. Obama's election ads decried "government-run health care" as "extreme," saying it would lead to "higher costs." Now he is promoting a plan that would result in a de facto government-run health-care system. Even the Washington Post questions it, saying, "It is difficult to imagine . . . benefits from a government-run system."
Making adjustments in office is one thing. Constantly governing in direct opposition to what you said as a candidate is something else. Mr. Obama's flip-flops on national security have been wise; on the domestic front, they have been harmful.
In both cases, though, we have learned something about Mr. Obama. What animated him during the campaign is what historian Forrest McDonald once called "the projection of appealing images." All politicians want to project an appealing image. What Mr. McDonald warned against is focusing on this so much that an appealing image "becomes a self-sustaining end unto itself." Such an approach can work in a campaign, as Mr. Obama discovered. But it can also complicate life once elected, as he is finding out.
Mr. Obama's appealing campaign images turned out to have been fleeting. He ran hard to the left on national security to win the nomination, only to discover the campaign commitments he made were shallow and at odds with America's security interests.
Mr. Obama ran hard to the center on economic issues to win the general election. He has since discovered his campaign commitments were obstacles to ramming through the most ideologically liberal economic agenda since the Great Society.
Mr. Obama either had very little grasp of what governing would involve or, if he did, he used words meant to mislead the public. Neither option is particularly encouraging. America now has a president quite different from the person who advertised himself for the job last year. Over time, those things can catch up to a politician.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
A Typical Email to conservOpunk!
Warm thanks to those on the Left who for the last 6 years undermined our national security efforts by screaming at the top of their lungs that we must close Gitmo without thinking about the consequences (for 2 of those years we heard this from the Left's Cheerleader in Chief while as a naive candidate - Hilary's words, not mine).
I am so glad that for 6 years we had to endure derision from the elites and their cohorts claiming that arguments about the importance of certain measures furthering national security were simply "talking points from the knuckle-dragging neo-cons" and that according to them there was no substance to a reasonable debate about the issue - nope, only yelling was allowed - yelling at those of us who understand the threat posed by these terrorists picked up on foreign soil.
Well, this admission by the administration may be called "practical" and "well thought out" by the press - but let's be honest. The Gitmo policy and the tribunals and warrantless wiretapping of foreign commo from known terrorists into the US worked and that's why Obama has not dumped them. And if Obama's practical side thinks they work now and will in the future, then this is an admission by extension that Bush policies did IN FACT keep us safe for the last 6 years (which is a far cry from the string of terror attacks we endured in the 90s under Clinton - since looking back at what previous administrations "inherited" is so in vogue now).
So, now that Gitmo is no longer the political whipping post for the Bush administration, maybe cooler heads will prevail - but the emboldening of our enemies and the lasting damage to our CIA agents' and Gitmo soldiers' morale by those who attacked them from the Left incessantly for 6 years will not go away so soon.
Even if the detention center at Gitmo is eventually closed (which is doubtful because no one wants trained terrorists pulled from a battlefield in their backyard), the Left has no leg left to stand on and scream from regarding this issue.
Hopefully the Left will now stop playing politics with national security. Coming next...Senator Harry Reid (D-We Lost) will retract his 2007 statements that the Iraq war was lost (made before the surge even started) - hah! not really, like those Japanese soldiers found in caves on Pacific Islands in the 80s who thought WWII was still ongoing, Harry (Reid) still thinks we lost the Iraq War.
---------------------------------------
Oh, and a quick 2d topic - just today a federal judge made a ruling, the AP reports:
In his opinion, Bates said he agreed with the Bush administration that "the president has the authority to detain persons that the president determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for those attacks.
"The president also has the authority to detain persons who are or were part of Taliban or al-Qaida forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed (i.e., directly participated in) a belligerent act in aid of such enemy armed forces," Bates wrote.
But he said the Bush administration went beyond the law of war by including in its definition those who "supported" enemy forces.
Oops, my bad, I accidentally changed the President's name, it should read this way:
In his opinion, Bates said he agreed with the Obama administration that "the president has the authority to detain persons that the president determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for those attacks.
But he said the Obama administration went beyond the law of war by including in its definition those who "supported" enemy forces. (OMG - the ACLU, Moveon.org, Jon Stewart, et al better march on DC now, wearing those orange jumpsuits of course - that warmonger is overreaching and shredding the Constitution!!!!!! Oh, wait, it's Obama, so I'm sure they're okay with it)
(On a personal note: I thought about tempering some of what I say here - but no, I, and other like thinkers, had to sit back for 6 years and get yelled at by every quarter of our society, and what I have in this email comes no where near the verbal grenades that were tossed at those of us who support the troops and the mission and the policies)
5/21/09
Thursday, April 30, 2009
OH... MY... GOD... Facts about Obama from the AP!
FACT CHECK: Obama disowns deficit he helped shape
WASHINGTON (AP) — "That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One.
It actually was him — and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years — who shaped a budget so out of balance.
And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.
Obama met citizens at an Arnold, Mo., high school Wednesday in advance of his prime-time news conference. Both forums were a platform to review his progress at the 100-day mark and look ahead.
At various times, he brought an air of certainty to ambitions that are far from cast in stone.
His assertion that his proposed budget "will cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term" is an eyeball-roller among many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits and economic calamity that the government is negotiating.
His vow that the recovery plan will "double the supply of renewable energy" will require a congressional mandate that won't be easy to achieve.
And he promised vast savings from increased spending on preventive health care in the face of doubts that such an effort, however laudable it might be for public welfare, can pay for itself, let alone yield huge savings.
A look at some of his claims Wednesday:
OBAMA: "Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit.... That wasn't me. Number two, there is almost uniform consensus among economists that in the middle of the biggest crisis, financial crisis, since the Great Depression, we had to take extraordinary steps. So you've got a lot of Republican economists who agree that we had to do a stimulus package and we had to do something about the banks. Those are one-time charges, and they're big, and they'll make our deficits go up over the next two years." — in Missouri.
THE FACTS:
Congress controls the purse strings, not the president, and it was under Democratic control for Obama's last two years as Illinois senator. Obama supported the emergency bailout package in President George W. Bush's final months — a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.
To be sure, Obama opposed the Iraq war, a drain on federal coffers for six years before he became president. But with one major exception, he voted in support of Iraq war spending.
The economy has worsened under Obama, though from forces surely in play before he became president, and he can credibly claim to have inherited a grim situation.
Still, his response to the crisis goes well beyond "one-time charges."
He's persuaded Congress to expand children's health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more. He's moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion.
___
OBAMA: "I think one basic principle that we know is that the more we do on the (disease) prevention side, the more we can obtain serious savings down the road. ... If we're making those investments, we will save huge amounts of money in the long term." — in Missouri.
THE FACTS: It sounds believable that preventing illness should be cheaper than treating it, and indeed that's the case with steps like preventing smoking and improving diets and exercise. But during the 2008 campaign, when Obama and other presidential candidates were touting a focus on preventive care, the New England Journal of Medicine cautioned that "sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention, however, are overreaching." It said that "although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not."
And a study released in December by the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing preventive care "could improve people's health but would probably generate either modest reductions in the overall costs of health care or increases in such spending within a 10-year budgetary time frame."
Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Uh Oh. good John Lott piece
April 27th, 2009 10:31 AM Eastern
JOHN LOTT: Uh Oh…Team Obama Claims Americans Use TOO MUCH Health Care
By John R. Lott, Jr.
Senior Research Scientist, University of Maryland/Author, “Freedomnomics”
“If you got health insurance, then you can keep it . . . and we won’t do anything about that,” at least that was what President Obama promised during the campaign last year. Well, add that to a very long list of broken campaign promises, including: cutting government spending, reducing the deficit, and “no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.”
Just as bad, on Friday it was revealed that Obama and the Democrats have no problem pushing through Senate votes on these radical health care changes that strip away normal procedural protections for those who oppose such changes.
Last Sunday on “Meet the Press,” Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, let the cat out of the bag on health care. In explaining why universal health care wasn’t going to increase the deficit, Summers said that people are just getting too much unnecessary care. Summers claimed: “whether it’s tonsillectomies or hysterectomies . . . procedures are done three times as frequently [in some parts of the country than others] and there’s no benefit in terms of the health of the population. And by doing the right kind of cost-effectiveness, by making the right kinds of investments and protection, some experts that we — estimate that we could take as much as $700 billion a year out of our health care system.”
This sure seems like rationing. Total health care expenditures in the United States in 2008 came to $2.4 trillion, implying that Summers believes that the proper government regulations can cut health care expenditures by almost 30 percent. That would cut back health care a lot. Summers softened the blow by saying that right now the government wouldn’t have to cut expenditures by more than a third of that $700 billion.
Tonsillectomies have primarily been done because of acute or chronic throat pain. Where different people are willing to draw the line between pain and surgery is a choice that we have traditionally left up to patients, but unless you know something about the patient’s preferences it is hard to claim that a surgery was a “mistake.”
The selective use of statistics by Summers and others in the Obama administration is startling. In 2000, New York had 501 abortions per 1,000 live births, Wyoming had 1. New York had 31 abortions per 1,000 women, Wyoming had fewer than 1. Abortion procedures rarely involve the health of the mother. Yet, presumably, Summers wouldn’t argue that these gaps, which are 10 to 167 times greater than the 3-to-1 ratio that so upsets him for other procedures, imply that abortions should be rationed.
It’s strange that the Democratic Party, a group that doesn’t think the government should intervene between a doctor and a woman when it comes to determining whether or not to have an abortion, appears to have no problem in telling doctors whether they can perform “tonsillectomies or hysterectomies.”
Ironically, the Obama administration isn’t confident enough that they can simply explain to people what medical procedures they should have. If people are getting costly, unnecessary procedures, don’t you think that the insurance companies would already have learned about it? For anyone who thinks that insurance companies are too stingy, the Obama administration has a news flash: insurance companies have been paying for too much health care.
But the Obama administration apparently doesn’t think that they can simply convince people of the value of their advice. Sadly, Summers and the rest of the Obama administration have no problem forcing people to do what they think best.
Yet, not only is Obama going to break his promise on interfering with these decisions, he has no problem with forcing this change on people. Democrats have apparently figured out a way to pass health care legislation without mustering the 60 votes normally needed to pass things in the Senate. To do this, health care won’t be voted on as a separate piece of legislation, but as part of the budget. The proposals also won’t be voted on in the Senate when the budget legislation is first brought up, but only after the final budget bill has gone through the process of “reconciliation” with the House.
Possibly Americans should ask Canadians and Brits –- people who have long suffered from rationing — how happy they are with central government decisions on eliminating “unnecessary” health care.
John Lott is a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland and the author of Freedomnomics. John Lott’s ree pieces for FOX News can be found here and here.
Friday, April 17, 2009
All for AMERICA song
All for
The butcher and the baker the biker and the Quaker
Soldiers, Lawmakers “Of thee I sing”
Collectivism left behind for Free Markets & Free Minds
It was the blessing for all mankind: “Let Freedom Ring”
Much to their surprise
We held our fire ‘til the whites of their eyes
We tore at tyranny’s disguise
Now finally we realize
We did it all for
The Constitution’s not a “living thing”
Fought till everyone heard freedom’s ring, and individual’s rights
Reject oppressive policy. The Truth is never easy
Wrap yourselves in
God they did beseech
Thought of their mother’s when they took that beach
Freedom’s still not out of reach
It takes more than a pretty speech
They did it all for America
It’s God’s Will
To be the “shining city upon the hill”
Until we all fulfill
the promise on the dollar bill
We are all for America
© 2009 Tony O’Donnell
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
