Vocal Minority

El Rushbo Out of Hospital, Gives Press Conference

Late this morning Hawaii time, Rush gave a press conference recapping what happened to him over the past couple of days:

Not surprisingly (at least to me), Rush was appreciative of the health care system we currently have in this nation—although who knows for how much longer:

I feel very, very fortunate. I have been treated to the best health care the world has to offer, and that is right here in the United States of America.

*     *     *     *     *

The treatment I received here was the best that the world has to offer. Based on what happened to me here, I don't think there's one thing wrong with the American health care system. It is working just fine, just dandy. I got nothing special. I got no special treatment other (than anybody else that would have called 911) [the streaming video feed started to break up a little here]

God speed, Rush. Hope to hear you back on the air soon.

How Did Obama Fare in 2009? Don't Ask an Obamaniac!

A couple days ago I got in trouble with two Obama-loving (and Jewish) Facebook friends for calling their President Golden Calf “the worst president in American history.” They accused me of being petulant, partisan, vapid, and having gone off the deep end.

I disagreed, explaining that if anyone was those things, it was Obama himself. I also pointed out that I was far from the only one severely disappointed with the current president and his administration. Obama’s approval rating teetered around 50% since mid-July and has stayed below that since mid-November.

But if anybody wonders why so many Americans disapprove of President Hope&Change’s performance, Victor Davis Hanson counts the ways in a December 23 article …

• Constant apologies abroad for everything from slavery to Hiroshima
• Bows to Saudi royalty, the Japanese emperor, and Chinese autocrats
• The on-again/off-again Guantanamo shut-down mess
• The fight with the former CIA directors
• The public show trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed
• The reach out to Ahmadinejad Castro, Chavez, and assorted thugs
• The Honduras fiasco
• Czars everywhere
• The serial “Bush did it”/reset whine abroad
• The Queen of England/I-pod fiasco
• Gordon Brown gets snookered in his gift-giving
• Unceremoniously shipping back the Churchill bust
• The end of the special relationship with the UK
• The New York on-the-town presidential splurge
• Anita Dunn and her Mao worship
• Timothy Geithner/Tom Daschle/Hilda Solis and their taxes
• What ever happened to Gov. Richardson? 
• “No lobbyists” = gads of them
• The Podestas’ insider influence-peddling empire
• Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” chauvinism
• The Special Olympics silly quip
• Trashing Nancy Reagan
• The Skip Gates/police acting “stupidly” mess
• The get-Chicago-the-Olympics jaunt to Copenhagen
• Cap-and-trade boondoggle
• “Millions of green jobs” 
• Ignore gas, oil, coal, and nuclear power production
• Cash-for-clunkers
• The Joe Biden gaffe machine
• Jobs “saved” or “created” rather than references to the actual unemployment rates
• Van Jones, the racist and truther
• Desiree Rogers won’t testify
• The blowback from, and silence about, the Rangel/Dodd corruption
• The White House party crashers plan to take the 5th Amendment
• The ‘bipartisanship’ con
• The pork-barrel stimulus spoils
• The demonization of the Town-Hallers
• The Acorn Mess
• The Kevin Jennings/Safe School Czar embarrassment
• The SEIU direct access to the White House
• The Asian Tour comedown
• The politicization of the take-over of GM and Chrysler
• The Obama readjustment in the order of paying back car creditors
• Car dealerships closed on shaky criteria
• Obama as “Caesar” 
• The Emanuel “never let a serious crisis go to waste” boast
• The Black Caucus/Rangel/Waters bid to bail out the inner-city radio stations
• Yosi Sergant and the NEA
• $1.7 trillion deficit
• The planned $9 trillion added to the national debt
• New income tax rates; health care surcharge talk; and payroll tax caps to be lifted
• Rahm Emanuel’s promised payback to those states that trash the stimulus
• The supposed C-span aired health care debate
• The promised website posts of pending legislation
• Czechs and Poles sold out on missile defense
• Sermons to and finger pointing at the Israelis
• The failed ‘Putin helps to stop a nuclear Iran’ gambit
• Voting present on the Iranian reformers in the street
• Serial but empty deadlines to Ahmadinejad
• The good war/bad war twisting and turning on Iraq/Afghanistan
• The months-long dithering over Afghanistan
• Renditions, tribunals, Patriot Act, etc. once trashed, now OK
• Healthcare take-over
• The 2,000 page proposed new health code
• The embarrassing Nobel Peace Prize nomination
• The attacks on surgeons, Chamber of Commerce, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc. 
• The Islam mythologies in the Cairo Speech
• The al Arabiya “Bush did it” interview
• Obama’s TV “my Muslim faith” gaffe

Whew! That’s a lot of screw-ups for less than one year in the presidency. One might even say it’s the resume of the worst president in American history (or at least in the past 150 years; a history-buff friend reminds me that Andrew Jackson was a real bastard.)

What I find interesting about this list, which VDH points out isn’t even exhaustive, is how dutifully the mainstream media systematically whitewashed the scandals, missteps, gaffes, and lapses in judgment. Basically, unless you are a regular follower of Fox News or the conservative radio and/or internet circuit, you are likely to even be aware of most of the items on this list. (Yet there are those out there who know every tiny sordid tidbit involving Sarah Palin, whether it’s true or not.) Isn’t that pathetic?

Seriously, show this list to any liberal/Democrat and I would guess that they wouldn’t have heard of at least two-thirds of the items therein. (I’d test that theory myself, but I get the sinking suspicion that no liberal/Democrat friend of mine would read through a mere few items. At that point they’d accuse me of being petulant, partisan, mean-spirited, and making up lies to smear “the black man in the White House,” and then walk off in a huff. Like being confronted with the man-made global warming climate change hoax, they wouldn’t be able to handle the cold hard facts in front of them. As Ann Coulter has said, “The truth cannot be delivered with Novocaine.”)

VDH wasn’t done. Here is his analysis of Obama’s Nobel prize speech:

I listened to it this morning quite early and posted at NRO. Bottom line: an academic sermon on peace/war with the now accustomed Obama characteristics:

1) long again (4,000 words);
2) “I” or “me” 34 times: same old self referencing;
3) the inadvertent cosmic arrogance [“I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war.” = you think?];
4) straw men trope: some say this; others say that; but I uniquely say …;
5) reference to my own personal inspirational story;
6) trash my predecessor or his policies;
7) end with hopey/changey cadences.

That was pretty much it — a pulpit exegesis that could have been cut to 500 words. I would have done the speech in 10 minutes and used the extra time to have lunch with poor neglected King Harald. (Second recommendation: Obama should try to hire some speech-writers over 40. There are a lot of old pro Democrat wordsmiths around that might come in and offer something new other than the now tired boilerplate.)

Yup. You wanted hope and change? You got it. Ready for (at least!) three more years of this?

Listen & Learn: Mark Steyn on the Mental Disorder That Is Liberalism (12/23/09)

In Britain, government-licensed pall-bearers are sometimes required to carry coffins on shopping carts rather by hand, thanks to regulations from the Department of ’Ealth and Safety.

In France, people are conditioned not to pick up garbage they accidentally drop on the ground. It would steal work away from public street sweepers, complete with government-issued brooms.

In Hawaii, public schools are forced to be closed several Fridays out of the year, which means (because Wednesdays there are half days) children sometimes get 3½-day school weeks. Why? The state doesn’t have enough money to keep schools open every Friday of the school year.

A popular teddy bear company has created a new Christmas movie in which the holiday’s existence is threatened. This is because the North Pole is on the brink of melting away due to man-made global warming climate change.

And a priest in England informs his congregants that it’s OK to steal, as long as they do it at a big bad chain store and not at a small mom-and-pop establishment.

What do these stories have in common? They are all the natural consequence of the poison of liberalism: overregulation by bureaucratic busybodies; citizens being conditioned to abdicate personal responsibility; governments wasting the money of its own taxpayers that it can’t even perform the simple task of keeping public institutions open full time; pushing faux science alarmism to impressionable children; and squishy moral relativism.

These are some of the blood-boiling stories covered by Mark Steyn, who filled in for El Rushbo on December 23.

[Edited for commercial breaks, long silences, and any other extraneous talking]

Download Steyn2009-08-18_32Khz_80kbps.mp3

Download Steyn2009-08-18_32Khz_80kbps.mp3

Ways the Left Has Screwed Up My Country Today: What Else?

November 3, 2008 was the first nail in the coffin of the united States of America.

The second nail came December 24, 2009.

DECEMBER 24, 2009, 7:39 A.M. ET
Senate Passes Health-Care Bill
60-39 Vote Is Landmark in Effort to Expand Insurance Coverage
By GREG HITT and JANET ADAMY

WASHINGTON -- The Senate approved sweeping health-overhaul legislation on Thursday, a landmark moment for White House-led efforts to expand insurance coverage to more than 30 million Americans.

The bill, approved by a 60-39 vote, would deliver on a long-promised Democratic goal of extending coverage to nearly every American, and would represent the biggest expansion of the federal safety net since the 1965 creation of Medicare, the health-insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

Thursday’s vote was a victory for President Barack Obama, who made the issue his top domestic priority despite lingering divisions among Democrats and the fierce opposition of Republicans. And it was a validation of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to build consensus on his side of the aisle, rather than reach across party lines, a move that would have forced a lowering of ambitions.

Republicans said the bill would impose massive regulatory and financial burdens on taxpayers and businesses, and would dig the government even deeper in debt. Georgia Rep. Tom Price, a member of the House Republican leadership, said Senate Democrats delivered “Americans a cruel Christmas gift,” and accused them of ignoring growing voter concerns. “Party allegiance takes precedence over responsible representation of their constituents,” he said. ...

It’s all right, Rep. Price. They’ll learn the hard way in November.

The time is 8:00 AM. Do you know where your country is?

Why I Left Liberalism #19 - They Create America's Problems: Detroit ('Nuf Said)

Back in October I wrote a post about the Obama administration having thousands of poor (mostly black) Detroiters line up for what they thought was “Obama money,” to prevent them from becoming or staying homeless. In reality, officials were only handing out applications for the funding, which they ran out of! It was a scene right out of the former Soviet Union: People standing in line for several hours for a pair of government-issue galoshes, only to find when they finally made it to the front that they ran out of their size. (And these are the same people who are soon going to be in charge of your health care.)

For more about the city with the nation’s lowest graduation rate, as well as the highest crime and unemployment rate, see Steven Crowder’s latest PJTV video:

Points made my Crowder during the clip:

Detroit, as Crowder describes it, is the “poster boy for leftist policies at work.” Every single mayor since 1962 has been a liberal Democrat and Detroit has seen millions upon millions of funding for implementing every failed social and welfare policy in the Democrat playbook.

Detroit schools get $11,100 per student (national average: $9,600), yet a student here has a bigger chance of ending up in prison than graduating high school. The Detroit murder rate is 5 times the national average and 70% of murders go completely unsolved.

Coincidentally, Walter E. Williams has this piece out today on the criminally disastrous state of Detroit schools:

Black Education
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Detroit’s (predominantly black) public schools are the worst in the nation and it takes some doing to be worse than Washington, D.C. Only 3 percent of Detroit’s fourth-graders scored proficient on the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test, sometimes called “The Nation’s Report Card.” Twenty-eight percent scored basic and 69 percent below basic. “Below basic” is the NAEP category when students are unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level. It’s the same story for Detroit’s eighth-graders. Four percent scored proficient, 18 percent basic and 77 percent below basic.

Michael Casserly, executive director of the D.C.-based Council on Great City Schools, in an article appearing in Crain’s Detroit Business, (12/8/09) titled, “Detroit’s Public Schools Post Worst Scores on Record in National Assessment,” said, “There is no jurisdiction of any kind, at any level, at any time in the 30-year history of NAEP that has ever registered such low numbers.” The academic performance of black students in other large cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles is not much better than Detroit and Washington. [All run by liberal Democrats for decades, by the way. Coincidence? – ETR]

What’s to be done about this tragic state of black education? The education establishment and politicians tell us that we need to spend more for higher teacher pay and smaller class size. The fact of business is higher teacher salaries and smaller class sizes mean little or nothing in terms of academic achievement. Washington, D.C., for example spends over $15,000 per student, has class sizes smaller than the nation’s average, and with an average annual salary of $61,195, its teachers are the most highly paid in the nation.

What about role models? Standard psychobabble asserts a positive relationship between the race of teachers and administrators and student performance. That’s nonsense. Black academic performance is the worst in the very cities where large percentages of teachers and administrators are black, and often the school superintendent is black, the mayor is black, most of the city council is black and very often the chief of police is black.

Black people have accepted hare-brained ideas that have made large percentages of black youngsters virtually useless in an increasingly technological economy. This destruction will continue until the day comes when black people are willing to turn their backs on liberals and the education establishment’s agenda and confront issues that are both embarrassing and uncomfortable. To a lesser extent, this also applies to whites because the educational performance of many white kids is nothing to write home about; it’s just not the disaster that black education is.

Many black students are alien and hostile to the education process. They have parents with little interest in their education. These students not only sabotage the education process, but make schools unsafe as well. These students should not be permitted to destroy the education chances of others. They should be removed or those students who want to learn should be provided with a mechanism to go to another school.

Another issue deemed too delicate to discuss is the overall quality of people teaching our children. Students who have chosen education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any other major. Students who have an education degree earn lower scores than any other major on graduate school admission tests such as the GRE, MCAT or LSAT. Schools of education, either graduate or undergraduate, represent the academic slums of most any university. They are home to the least able students and professors. Schools of education should be shut down. …

How’s that hope & change workin’ out for ya?

Here’s some more fun facts about the Motor City: 

Unemployment is at 28%, nearly two and a half times the national rate. So what does Obama do? Make Michigan’s failed liberal Democrat governor Jennifer Granholm his economics advisor! It’s like the blind leading the blind. By the way, Obama, whom 57% of Michiganeh’s voted for, currently has a 44% approval rate. Granholm, who was elected in 2006 also with 57% of the vote, is down to a 29% approval rating.

How’s that hope & change workin’ out for ya?

The auto industry? We know how that’s going. Obama and his clueless politburo now run the company from Washington. And because the UAW hardly budged during negotiations, Government Motors is forced to pay workers an average of $74/hour in salary and benefits (compared to $26 in the private sector) and give seven (!) weeks of paid vacation each year. A UAW worker doesn’t ever get technically “fired,” but instead goes to a “job bank” where they don’t work but still get paid almost full salary. 

And people wonder why GM was collapsing. It’s still collapsing, but now it’s on our dime. But if Obama gets his way with all his policies, the entire country will look like Detroit.

How’s that hope & change workin’ out for ya?

Around the Web in 80 Minutes (12/22/09)

On the cult of personality that is President Golden Calf:

Commentary Magazine | December 21, 2009
A Political Earthquake
RICK RICHMAN

… In January, George W. Bush left office with a “Strongly Disapprove” rating of … 43 percent. It took Bush eight years to achieve that level of strong disapproval, despite how the mainstream media pummeled him for years. Obama has reached that level in 11 months, despite a media that for months could not use his name in a sentence without also adding “Lincoln” and “FDR.”

To appreciate the magnitude of Obama’s ratings fall, consider that after his first full day in office, his presidential index was positive 30. Today’s index of negative 17 reflects a swing of 47 points in less than a year.

A commenter at the Huffington Post today observes that Obama has “accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center.” The president has also unified the Republican party and created a tea-party movement that in some polls is more popular than both the Democratic and Republican parties. …

On government-run health (s)care:

American Spectator | December 21, 2009
Obama Doesn’t Care
By Andrew Cline

Obama’s damn-the-details, just-pass-anything approach has lost the support of the nation. Americans would rather Washington slow down and do health care reform right than pass some half-baked scheme.

But Obama doesn’t care. He insists on passing something—anything—before the 2010 elections, when he might lose the votes he needs to pass a plan that grants Washington enormous new powers and lays the groundwork for a single-payer system.

Republicans ought to be pointing out the dangers in rushing legislation into law. They can start with the story of last week’s spending bill. As Fox News has reported, the bill was supposed to allow Amtrak passengers to carry guns on the trains, as long as the guns were locked in a box. But that section was incorrectly worded. The law, which Obama signed last week, requires gun-carrying passengers to be locked in a box for the duration of their trip. (Yes, you read that right.)

There are 2,074 pages in Harry Reid’s health care bill. What surprises await? There’s no telling. The Democrats want to pass it within five days. Could you finish a 2,074 page bill, written by lawyers, in five days, and understand it? Can your senator?

This bill will entirely remake a sixth of the U.S. economy. It will, as Obama said last week, “touch the lives of nearly every American.” The consequences of getting it wrong are tremendous. And yet the president says, don’t worry about the details, just pass it. Comforting, isn’t it?

Pajamas Media | December 22, 2009
Arbitrary Power, Dictatorship, and Health Care
Is the essence of dictatorship — and its institutional foundations — now being built into federal law?
by John David Lewis

… Officials may gather whatever taxpayer information they decide is necessary. “The secretary shall collect such data as may be required to establish premiums and payment rates for the public health insurance option and for other purposes under this subtitle” (Sec. 321). Section 412 requires employers to submit “such information as the commissioner may require” to multiple federal agencies.

The bill institutionalizes such coercions by establishing over one hundred new commissioners, boards, committees, and programs, each with its own area of control. (For a list, see here.)

America is not a dictatorship. These bills are available for us to read, and we are able to discuss them openly, to agree or to disagree, and to speak and write about them in forums both public and private. But we will not be free to escape either the regulations which a faceless bureaucracy will write in order to enforce its edicts, or the decisions made by such bureaucrats over our lives.

If you are an employer, you will not escape punishment if a bureaucrat decides that your health plan is not “acceptable” and that you must be fined for your failure to meet his decision. If you are an individual who does not want to purchase full-coverage health insurance, but would rather buy catastrophic insurance that covers hospitalization only, your decision will not be “acceptable” and you may face a government audit and a new tax.

Do you have a serious disease? Does your doctor wish to readmit you to the hospital? A bureaucrat will decide whether or not you get treatment, based on a statistical analysis of the number of such readmissions by the bureaucrats: “excess readmissions shall not include readmissions for an applicable condition for which there are fewer than a minimum number (as determined by the secretary) of discharges for such applicable condition for the applicable period and such hospital” (Sec. 1151).

The scope of power here extends to the very definitions of terms within the law. This leaves the meaning of the law fluid and subject to the will of the bureaucrats. Section 1151 continues: “The term ‘applicable condition’ means, subject to subparagraph (B), a condition or procedure selected by the secretary among conditions and procedures for which (i) readmissions (as defined in subparagraph (E)) that represent conditions or procedures that are high volume or high expenditures under this title (or other criteria specified by the secretary).” …

On “post-racial” America:

American Thinker | December 21, 2009
Libs Scold Black Conservatives
By Lloyd Marcus

While in the supermarket checkout line, I saw Rev. Al Sharpton, the poster child of the “America Sucks for Blacks” campaign, on the cover of Ebony magazine. Gag me.

I searched the internet. Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have never been featured on the cover of Ebony. Think about that. Before the election of Obama, the two most powerful blacks in America (Rice was the also most powerful woman in the world) have never graced the cover of black America’s most prestigious magazine. Why? Because most black media outlets wish to keep the “blacks need liberals to achieve” thing alive. Rice and Thomas achieved their phenomenal success the old-fashioned way: They earned it.

Sharpton on the cover of Ebony magazine is typical of liberal black media’s betrayal. They have been feeding their people spin and untruths for years, all of which is designed to keep blacks on the government dependency plantation and voting for Democrats.

Imagine how empowering it would be for blacks if Ebony featured a self-made black conservative on its cover. When I say “self-made”, I do not mean without any assistance. No man is an island, and all who succeed had help along the way. I am talking about achieving through education, hard work, and doing the right things—as opposed to the demeaning liberal path to success, which is lowered standards, playing the victim card, and affirmative action.

Frustratingly, entrenched false paradigms are difficult to break. The Republican party was founded partly to end slavery. Historically and today, Republicans have proven themselves to be far greater friends to blacks than the democrats. And yet most blacks believe that Republicans are racists. Despite numerous mega-rich blacks and America electing a black president, most blacks mindlessly embrace the liberal lie that America has not changed much since the 1950s. Compassionately, I want to grab black America by the collar and slap it while yelling, “Wake up...snap out of it!” …

On political correctness and speech suppression:

Human Events | December 22, 2009
Politically Correct in ‘09
by Ted Nugent

Of the many self-inflicted problems that face our country, none is as dangerous to the survival of our nation as the curse of political correctness.

Political correctness is a cancer that many Americans, government institutions, businesses and even many individual citizens have willfully embraced and now serve as hosts who intentionally spread this horrible disease.

Let me be clear: political correctness is a form of cowardice that leads to brain damage. It concerns itself with feeling good instead of thinking clearly and actually doing good. It masks the truth because the truth is too uncomfortable for the intellectually and spiritually weak in our society. To others, political correctness serves as a useful smokescreen. Political correctness is ultimately about stepping on the throat of common sense and strangling the life out of it. Logic be damned. …

Until America returns to a policy of bold, unabashed truth, logic, honesty and common sense, the rest of our financial and social problems will continue to escalate. It is impossible to truly fix a problem by “feeling good” about fixing it. Only idiots go hunting with a “feel good” arrow in their quiver. I hunt with razor sharp arrows and I actually kill animals and then I eat them. If you have a problem with that you are stoned on weird and hopelessly addicted to denial.

On … I don’t know what:

Big Government | December 22, 2009
Obama: A Republican Plant?
by Bob Parks

Many of us had no idea the Republican Party had it in them, but to devise and implement such a plan was ingenious. Think about it; party leadership acting totally inept while a charismatic young Democrat presidential candidate captures the imagination of the normally lethargic youth vote, captures the senior vote, women, and even sends a thrill up the leg of the media.

And within a few short months after attaining the presidency, he conducts himself in a manner (personally and in office) that had not only invigorated his political opponents, but has them so energized they take to the streets and even march on The Capitol (more than once). One would have to conclude Barack Hussein Obama is either the most politically clueless president ever, or… is really a stealth Republican destroying the Democrat Party from within.

Is Barack Obama a Republican plant? …

Barack Obama is no accidental gift to the Republican Party. While he bows to every foreign leader possible, he’s really taking a bow for the GOP that secretly installed him as president to do what no Republican could ever get away with. Republicans owe a sincere debt to Mr. Obama who sacrificed many years of his life to prepare for the total (and willing) destruction of the Democrat Party.

And the best is yet to come.

Damn!

Liberal Fascism: Supermajority Will Be Required to Amend Death Panel Regulations

If this disgrace called a government-run health (s)care bill is so wonderful and necessary, why do Harry Reid and the Democrats need to violate multiple sections of the U.S. Constitution; hold closed-door meetings prohibiting Congressional Republicans, the media, and the American people, from knowing what’s going on; and violate over 200 years of several precedents in order to pass it?

Because when you’re a fascist liberal/Democrat, nothing gets in your way of amassing the power you crave.

All that needs to be said is explained by Erick Erickson at RedState:

We Are No Longer a Nation of Laws. Senate Sets Up Requirement for Super-Majority to Ever Repeal Obamacare
The Senate Democrats declare a super-majority of senators will be needed to overrule any regulation imposed by the Death Panels
Posted by Erick Erickson
Monday, December 21st at 10:15PM EST

If ever the people of the United States rise up and fight over passage of Obamacare, Harry Reid must be remembered as the man who sacrificed the dignity of his office for a few pieces of silver. The rules of fair play that have kept the basic integrity of the Republic alive have died with Harry Reid. Reid has slipped in a provision into the health care legislation prohibiting future Congresses from changing any regulations imposed on Americans by the Independent Medicare [note: originally referred to as “medical”] Advisory Boards, which are commonly called the “Death Panels.”

It was Reid leading the Democrats who ignored 200 years of Senate precedents to rule that Senator Sanders could withdraw his amendment while it was being read.

It was Reid leading the Democrats who has determined again and again over the past few days that hundreds of years of accumulated Senate parliamentary rulings have no bearing on the health care vote.

On December 21, 2009, however, Harry Reid sold out the Republic in toto.

Upon examination of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment to the health care legislation, Senators discovered section 3403. That section changes the rules of the United States Senate.

To change the rules of the United States Senate, there must be sixty-seven votes.

Section 3403 of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment requires that “it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.” The good news is that this only applies to one section of the Obamacare legislation. The bad news is that it applies to regulations imposed on doctors and patients by the Independent Medicare Advisory Boards a/k/a the Death Panels.

Section 3403 of Senator Reid’s legislation also states, “Notwithstanding rule XV of the Standing Rules of the Senate, a committee amendment described in subparagraph (A) may include matter not within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Finance if that matter is relevant to a proposal contained in the bill submitted under subsection (c)(3).” In short, it sets up a rule to ignore another Senate rule.

Senator Jim DeMint confronted the Democrats over Reid’s language. In the past, the Senate Parliamentarian has repeatedly determined that any legislation that also changes the internal standing rules of the Senate must have a two-thirds vote to pass because to change Senate rules, a two-thirds vote is required. Today, the Senate President, acting on the advice of the Senate Parliamentarian, ruled that these rules changes are actually just procedural changes and, despite what the actual words of the legislation say, are not rules changes. Therefore, a two-thirds vote is not needed in contravention to longstanding Senate precedent.

How is that constitutional? It is just like the filibuster. Only 51 votes are needed to pass the amendments, but internally, the Senate is deciding that it will not consider certain business. The Supreme Court is quite clear that it won’t meddle with the internal operations of the House and Senate. To get around the prohibition on considering amendments to that particular subsection of the health care legislation, the Senate must get two-thirds of the Senate to agree to waive the rule. In other words, it will take a super-majority of the people the citizens of our Republican elected to overrule a regulation imposed by a group of faceless bureaucrats and bean counters. ...

Jeez. And these liberal fascists used to say it was the Bush administration that was shredding the Constitution? It was George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who were fascists?You’ve got to be kidding me.

Let me tell my liberal/Democrat friends who loooove this government-run health (s)care idea something:

When your government sentences you to death because some nameless faceless bureaucrat in Washington D.C. decides you’re not worth saving, don’t you dare complain.

When you are dying of an illness that you could have survived were your doctor not hogtied by an unaccountable bureaucracy deciding what tests s/he can do and at what age, don’t you dare complain.

When your children (and if you survive that long, your grandchildren) are working their asses off just to cover the thousands of dollars in yearly health (s)care taxes or face prison, when they are unable to scrape up enough to pay their mortgage and other bills and when they are unable to put their children through college because the federal government is holding a regulatory gun to their heads … you better be able to look them straight in eye and tell them that you voted to cause all this to happen.

And when these things happen to me and my own children, I will be holding you personally responsible.

You voted for change?

You got it.

More here at the American Thinker.

Liberal Stupid-Ass Comment: Harry Reid and Sheldon Whitehouse Equate ObamaCare Opponents to Racists and Nazis

Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, ‘slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.’ If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said ‘slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough. When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn’t quite right. When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today.

— Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), December 7, 2009

“Voting ‘no’ and hiding from the vote are the same result. Those of us on the floor see it. It was clear the three of them who did not cast their yes votes until all 60 Senate votes had been tallied and it was clear that the result was a foregone conclusion. And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? All to break the momentum of our new young president.

They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one.”

— Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), December 21, 2009

Yup. This is how Democrats debate an issue: When your opponents disagree with you, call them racists and/or Nazis.

So in the mind of idiots like Harry Reid, those who filibuster (or threaten to do so) are akin to those who didn’t want slavery to end, women to vote, and minorities to have civil rights? Harry Reid, either himself ignorant of history or hoping the American people are, apparently doesn’t know that the persons who filibustered the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964 were Democrats. One of them—Robert Byrd (D-WV) sits in the Senate to this day! Who prevented slavery from being stopped? Democrats! By why let historical record get in the way of your selfish political agenda?

Reid also doesn’t know that the Senate is not supposed to move fast on legislation. James Madison conceived of it as an anchor, acting to slow government down. But Harry Reid probably never even heard of James Madison.

What about the filibuster of George W. Bush’s nomination of black female judge Janice Rogers Brown to the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia? That was carried out by Democrats too. Guess those racist Democrat friends of Harry Reid and Sheldon Whitehouse just couldn’t stand having a black woman preside over a courtroom. And when Republican Bill Frist tried to stop Democrat filibustering on Bush’s judicial nominations, guess who was there to get on his smarmy little soapbox with his smarmy little voice? You guessed it:

Democrats are refusing to forgo filibusters and say they will fight any effort by Frist to act unilaterally to end them for judicial nominations. They warn that it could poison the well for bipartisan cooperation on other issues in the upcoming Congress.

“If they, for whatever reason, decide to do this, it's not only wrong, they will rue the day they did it, because we will do whatever we can do to strike back,” incoming Senate Democratic leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said last week. “I know procedures around here. And I know that there will still be Senate business conducted. But I will, for lack of a better word, screw things up.”

But the most disgusting thing about comparing slavery, civil rights, and women’s suffrage to this health (s)care bill is that they are in fact incomparable. As Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge explains on his blog:

[H]ealth care legislation is fundamentally different than slavery and civil rights. In the latter, we are dealing with negative rights. Health care—to the extent it is meaningful at all to talk about it in rights terms—is a positive right. Reid’s thus comparing apples and oranges. The crusades against slavery and for civil rights were about freedom. Obamacare is about mandates, expanded government, higher taxes, and larger deficits. “The men who wrote the Bill of Rights were not concerned that government might do too little for the people but that it might do too much to them.” Jackson v. City of Joliet, 715 F.2d 1200, 1203 (7th Cir. 1983) (Posner, C.J.). Me too. Sadly, it’s not a concern Senator Reid shares.

Finally, in 1919 nearly twice as many Senate Republicans (36) voted for women’s suffrage than did Democrats (20) and over twice as many Democrats (17) opposed it than Republicans (8). 

So Harry Reid is either a dimwit or a libeling mud-slinger.

Whitehouse’s libelous comment is just as bad. Does it ever occur to this power-hungry ideologue that Senate Republicans—and a vast majority of the American people—simply don’t want the federal government engaging in an unconstitutional, fascist, liberty-destroying, wealth-stealing, and life-threatening takeover of one sixth of the U.S. economy? I really don’t think it does.

Nope. In their sick liberal universe, all opponents of liberal Democrats are simply for drowning kittens and puppies, keeping women and minorities down, and having a temper tantrum that a black man is in the White House.

These are the mental midgets who will soon have your income and your very life in their unworthy hands.

A staunchly liberal friend denounced Michael Steele when he criticized President Hope&Change’s undeserved receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, calling Steele “shameful.” No. What Harry Reid and Sheldon Whitehouse said is shameful. Denounce this.

Liberal Fascism: Reid Buys All the Votes He Needs for Health (S)care Bill

After the liberty-killing, wealth-stealing health “care” bill passed in the House, people said it will die in the Senate. My thoughts were: I’ll believe it when I see it. And, unfortunately, I was right: In the wee hours of the morning, the Senate got closer to Doomsday. 

The Wall Street Journal editorialized Sunday:

Change Nobody Believes In
A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve.

… The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that “reform” has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.

***

• Health costs. From the outset, the White House’s core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they’re sticking to that story. “Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn’t read the bills,” Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.

The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on.

These increases are solely the result of ObamaCare—above and far beyond the status quo—because its strict restrictions on underwriting and risk-pooling would distort insurance markets. All but a handful of states have rejected regulations like “community rating” because they encourage younger and healthier buyers to wait until they need expensive care, increasing costs for everyone. Benefits and pricing will now be determined by politics.

As for the White House’s line about cutting costs by eliminating supposed “waste,” even Victor Fuchs, an eminent economist generally supportive of ObamaCare, warned last week that these political theories are overly simplistic. “The oft-heard promise ‘we will find out what works and what does not’ scarcely does justice to the complexity of medical practice,” the Stanford professor wrote.

• Steep declines in choice and quality. This is all of a piece with the hubris of an Administration that thinks it can substitute government planning for market forces in determining where the $33 trillion the U.S. will spend on medicine over the next decade should go.

This centralized system means above all fewer choices; what works for the political class must work for everyone. With formerly private insurers converted into public utilities, for instance, they’ll inevitably be banned from selling products like health savings accounts that encourage more cost-conscious decisions.

Unnoticed by the press corps, the Congressional Budget Office argued recently that the Senate bill would so “substantially reduce flexibility in terms of the types, prices, and number of private sellers of health insurance” that companies like WellPoint might need to “be considered part of the federal budget.” …

Read the rest here.

But the health (s)care bill was oh-so important and popular and uncontroversial, that it enjoyed bipartisan support, right? Of course not. Not a single Republican voted for it (Thank God for small favors) and a gaggle of Democrat Senators were so uncommitted that the loathsome Harry Reid had to buy them off (i.e., bribe them) — with our hard-earned tax dollars. President Hope&Change seemed unoffended by this; so much for ending business as usual in Washington:

Payoffs for states get Reid to 60
By: Chris Frates December 19, 2009 07:56 PM EST

Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback,” as the GOP is calling it, got all the attention Saturday, but other senators lined up for deals as Majority Leader Harry Reid corralled the last few votes for a health reform package.

Nelson’s might be the most blatant – a deal carved out for a single state, a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, meaning federal taxpayers have to kick in an additional $45 million in the first decade.

But another Democratic holdout, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), took credit for $10 billion in new funding for community health centers, while denying it was a “sweetheart deal.” He was clearly more enthusiastic about a bill he said he couldn’t support just three days ago.

Nelson and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) carved out an exemption for non-profit insurers in their states from a hefty excise tax. Similar insurers in the other 48 states will pay the tax.

Vermont and Massachusetts were given additional Medicaid funding, another plus for Sanders and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Three states – Pennsylvania, New York and Florida – all won protections for their Medicare Advantage beneficiaries at a time when the program is facing cuts nationwide.

All of this came on top of a $300 million increase for Medicaid in Louisiana, designed to win the vote of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.

Under pressure from the White House to get a deal done by Christmas, Reid was unapologetic. He argued that, by definition, legislating means deal making and defended the special treatment for Nelson’s home state of Nebraska.

“You’ll find a number of states that are treated differently than other states. That’s what legislating is all about. It’s compromise," he said.

It was Nelson who proved that he who plays hardest to get, gets the most.

He forced Reid to redraft the bill’s restrictions on federal funding of abortion. And while most insiders were focused on that deal, Nelson was quietly ensuring that his state would never have to pay for the Medicaid expansion being written into the bill – an agreement that had been in the works for weeks. …

Here’s my favorite line from this Politico piece:

Republicans, meanwhile, expressed outrage at the wheeling and dealing, as if their party had never cut a legislative deal in its 150-year history.

Awww, what harm can a little editorializing in a news piece do? But the smarmy Frates misses the point: Sure Republicans have cut deals; that doesn’t make it right either to small-government conservatives like myself. And show me the last time Republicans paid off their buds with hundreds of millions of our dollars to push an unpopular bill through in the dead of night.

And now here come the unconstitutional amendments where these ignorant elitist fascists target capitalism and suppress the workings of the free market:

The amendment mandates that insurers spend no less than 80 percent of their premium revenues providing medical care. Currently, insurers spend about 70 percent of their premiums paying for health care. The bill also eliminates insurers’ ability to cap annual coverage amounts.

In brief remarks at the White House, President Barack Obama also highlighted some new provisions, including penalties for insurers who “arbitrarily jack up rates” and an immediate prohibition on insures’ ability to deny children coverage.

Obama, too, talked of the deals as just the cost of doing business in Washington.

“As with any legislation, compromise is part of the process,” Obama said. “But I’m pleased that recently added amendments have made this landmark bill even stronger.”

Obama, you’re an asshole, a lying, hypocritical, narcissistic asshole. Oh, sorry. Too mean-spirited? Too vitriolic? Tough. Go watch MSNBC or read the NY Times editorial pages. They’re just sooo civil and open-minded there.

Don’t ever let me hear a liberal/Democrat call conservatives/Republicans “fascist” again. This bill is fascism from beginning to end. It is liberal fascism. So much for the pro-abortion movement’s favorite slogan: Keep your hands off my body! This bill puts the federal government in charge of your body from top to bottom. And you fools think this is actually going to make health care better. Your nightmares are only just beginning.

Welcome to the future, suckers.

Listen & Learn: Mark Levin Rallies the Troops - Us (12/15/09)

The greatest sports coaches no doubt have the most inspiring pep talks before an important tournament, the greatest military generals the most motivational speeches before sending his troops into battle.

This, my friends, is Mark Levin’s speech to us, the American people, as we prepare to take our country back from the tyrannical Left who now run Washington. It is passionate, it is heartfelt, and it is truthful. It is also—as a caller subsequently said it—a Reaganesque monologue that should be printed out and placed on every seat at the next RNC convention.

Bookmark this page, dear friends. Download it and send it to Americans just as concerned as you are about the direction Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are taking this country. Listen to this 10¾-minute pep talk again and again. 

The year 2010 must be the year we make comeback. I’ll be doing all I can to contribute, even traveling outside of my own state if need be. 

Who’s with me?

[Edited for commercials, long pauses, and other extraneous content]
 

 

Download levin2009-12-15_80kbps.mp3

Adventures in Government-Run Health (S)care: Maternity Ward Madness

“In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false. Like every system, the National Health Service has problems, but over all it appears to provide quite good care …” 

— Paul Krugman, NY Times, August 17, 2009

Yesterday, flanked by Democrat leaders, President Golden Calf assured viewers—proudly—that they were on the precipice of passing the largest liberty-sapping, wealth-stealing, and life-threatening piece of legislation in U.S. history. The intelligent, historical, post-racial, post-American president was apparently so excited about this unconstitutional federal governmental power grab, that a few days ago he boasted to Oprah that he would have given himself an A– (instead of a “modest” B+) had a health-care bill already been signed.

Get ready for what we have to look forward to, as reported by today's U.K. Daily Mail [h/t Drudge]:

NHS maternity services in meltdown: A former midwife reveals how understaffed wards are sinking into chaos
By VERENA BURNS
16th December 2009

Clutching her husband's hand and with agony and exhaustion etched on her face, a young woman struggled into a room in the maternity unit where I worked.

She was in the early stages of labour with her first baby, she was terrified, in excruciating pain and desperate for any crumb of support.

Helpless beside her, her overnight bag in his hand, her poor husband looked equally traumatised.

My heart went out to them. But I knew there was little I could do. With five other pregnant women to care for at the same time, all with hugely different and complex problems, I was rushed off my feet and didn't have the time to look after her properly, to allay her fears or to hear about how she wanted the birth to unfold.

I longed to sit with this poor young woman, calm her and remind her gently to breathe deeply through each contraction.

Just half an hour of my time could have made all the difference. Instead, I put on my cheeriest smile and followed hospital procedure. 'Would you like a painkiller?' I asked.

Ten hours later, after she had been drugged to the eyeballs to dull the pain, I heard she'd given birth.

Her baby was healthy, but I knew I'd let her down.

As I watched her being wheeled into the ward, I felt eaten up with guilt. She'd effectively been ignored from the moment she turned up until the moment she gave birth.

Plonked on an antenatal ward until her time came, with no one to reassure her during what was most likely the most terrifying moment of her life.

No woman should have to give birth in these conditions - let alone in a modern hospital with professional staff at hand.

Welcome to the modern NHS maternity ward. A world of shoddy practice, poor hygiene standards and a shocking disregard for patients' individual needs.

When I read about newly qualified midwife Theresa Naish, who hanged herself in January after a premature baby died on her shift, I couldn't help wondering if she, too, was a victim of the over-worked and under-resourced labour wards I have experienced.

Her father Thomas told the inquest into her death: 'Like all NHS staff, she was over-worked, doing too many hours in a department that was understaffed.' Although the child had little chance of survival, poor Theresa spent weeks torturing herself that she was to blame, before killing herself.

I don't want to alarm people for, of course, the vast majority of babies are born healthy and safe, but I think it's time we admit what is happening in our hospitals.

Driven by targets and mired in red tape, our NHS maternity wards are becoming baby-producing factories where mothers' needs come very low on the agenda. ...

Look at it this way. Once a global one-child policy is imposed in order to “save the planet” from human overpopulation and man-made global warming climate change (as proposed last week in the Canada National Post), women giving birth will only have to go through this ordeal once.

Welcome to the future, suckers.

Joe Lieberman Is Either a Good Jew, Bad Jew, or Just Plain Stupid ...

... according to this piece in the left-leaning Politics Daily [h/t reader and occasional guest blogger Loud Lion]. It is a piece trying to determine whether Joe Lieberman’s position on government-run health (s)care makes him a “good Jew,” a “bad Jew,” or someone who’s just not that smart (you know: like a conservative). Columnist David Gibson just can’t understand what makes Lieberman tick, considering most Jews he seems to know and all the Jews he quotes in his article are in support the unconstitutional liberty-sapping and life-destroying piece of legislation.

Here are some of the “gems” from this piece.

Just like his foes, Lieberman sees his opposition as grounded in Jewish ethics, arguing that the health care proposals on the table would hurt America and would not help those who need it—although, as The Washington Post reported, his varying explanations of his varying positions have left various observers scratching their heads over his real reasons.

Gibson, I believe, is insinuating here that Lieberman’s opposition to the legislation currently on the table has a more nefarious explanation, e.g., being bought off by “Big Insurance.” Stay classy, David.

Whatever the motives, Lieberman is so committed to his political views and his religious traditions that he walked more than four miles to Capitol Hill from his Georgetown synagogue on a recent frigid Saturday to take part in a rare weekend health care debate—one of just two dozen or so times during his senate career that he has made that trek on the Sabbath, when strictly observant Jews do not drive. "I have a responsibility to my constituents, really to my conscience, to be here on something as important as healthcare reform," he told The Hill.

Such high-minded talk grates on many Jewish leaders,

What a BS phrase. Does Gibson think liberal politicians don’t make high-minded talk that grates on people? (Our own president does every time he opens his lying trap.)

who see passing health care reform as integral to the Jewish principal of tikkun olam, or repairing the world, which undergirds much of Judaism's longstanding tradition of social and political activism, mainly of the liberal variety.

Unless, like Lieberman apparently, you consider bankrupting the country three generations down the road for a 2000-page piece of socialism that’s going to worsen the quality, and duration of life for all Americans, while at the same time empowering an unstoppable capitalism-hating Democrat bureaucracy that will enslave every citizen not to be a good example of tikkun olam.

Other factors are at play as well: Jews are immigrants whose history of persecution and constant exile have made them especially sensitive to the plight of the marginalized, and as a minority they know that liberal social policies that protect the weak from the strong can help them, too;

Bzzzzzt. Sorry, Mr. Gibson, no. For 40+ years minorities have been conned into believing that liberal social policies protect the weak from the strong. What liberal social policies really do, as more and more people have woken up, is create a government-dependent slave class and very powerful rich Democrat politicians.

Jews also tend to be better educated and wealthier than most Americans, both markers of socially progressive views. (And something that makes the fierce band of neo-con Jews like Norman Podhoretz, author of the recent "Why Are Jews Liberal," even more furious than Lieberman's liberal critics.)

That’s rich; Gibson is calling right-leaning Jews of the Podhoretz school “fierce” and “furious.” Funny, I never witnessed such fierceness and fury. But when you’re a liberal writing for a liberal rag, why back up statements with facts? Just demonize your ideological opponent knowing your readers will buy it and move on. Notice it’s always right-wingers that are “fierce” and “furious” and “angry” and “violent”?

I wouldn’t call this piece anti-Semitic, but I still can’t help but wonder how liberals would react if some conservative publication criticized a Jewish public official in this disrespectful way.

Listen & Learn: El Rushbo on the Similarities Between AGW Hoax and ObamaCare (12/7/09)

Yesterday at the start of his show, Rush had a nice brief monologue about how any legislation stemming from the man-made global warming climate change hoax and ObamaCare are simply two manifestations of the same leftist strategy: they are both based on lies and cooked data, they unconstitutionally suppress individual liberty and expand the role, size, and power of government more than ever intended by the Founders, they will both undermine American prosperity and exceptionalism, they will both (possibly deliberately) bankrupt the nation, and more.

[Edited for long silences, commercial breaks, and extraneous talking]

(Download here)

Around the Web in 80 Minutes (12/4/09)

On “ClimateGate”:

December 3, 2009 | Wall Street Journal
Climategate: Science Is Dying
Daniel Henninger

… What is happening at East Anglia is an epochal event. As the hard sciences—physics, biology, chemistry, electrical engineering—came to dominate intellectual life in the last century, some academics in the humanities devised the theory of postmodernism, which liberated them from their colleagues in the sciences. Postmodernism, a self-consciously “unprovable” theory, replaced formal structures with subjectivity. With the revelations of East Anglia, this slippery and variable intellectual world has crossed into the hard sciences.

This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and “messy” as, say, gender studies. The New England Journal of Medicine has turned into a weird weekly amalgam of straight medical-research and propaganda for the Obama redesign of U.S. medicine.

The East Anglians’ mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming’s claims—plotting to shut them up and shut down their ability to publish—evokes the attempt to silence Galileo. The exchanges between Penn State’s Michael Mann and East Anglia CRU director Phil Jones sound like Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition.

For three centuries Galileo has symbolized dissent in science. In our time, most scientists outside this circle have kept silent as their climatologist fellows, helped by the cardinals of the press, mocked and ostracized scientists who questioned this grand theory of global doom. Even a doubter as eminent as Princeton’s Freeman Dyson was dismissed as an aging crank. …

December 4, 2009 | Real Clear Politics
We-Don’t-Want-to-Talk-About-It-Gate
By David Harsanyi

… “You call it ‘ClimateGate’; I call it ‘E-mail-theft-gate,’“ [Barbara “Call Me Senator”] Boxer clarified during a committee shindig. “We may well have a hearing on this; we may not. We may have a briefing for senators; we may not.” Boxer, as steady as they come, went on to put the focus where it belongs: on hackers. She warned: “Part of our looking at this will be looking at a criminal activity which could have well been coordinated. ... This is a crime.”

If this hacker(s) is unearthed on U.S. soil (or anywhere in the Middle East, actually), Boxer can jettison the guilty party to Gitmo for some well-deserved sleep deprivation. …

On the Seattle cop shooting:

December 4, 2009 | Town Hall
The War on Cops
by Michelle Malkin

… From where does the deadened and deadly callousness toward the thin blue line come?

How about years of cop-bashing rap from N.W.A.’s “F**k tha Police” and Ice-T’s “Cop Killer” to Dead Prez’s “Police State” (“I throw a Molotov cocktail at the precinct”) and The Game’s “911 is a Joke” (I ought to shoot 51 officers for the 51 times that boy was shot in New York”)?

Try the glamorization of poisonous anti-police domestic terrorist groups like the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. Add in the mainstreaming of anti-police demagogues Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (whose ex-wife and daughter were arrested last week after verbally abusing a Harlem cop and resisting arrest after running a red light). And toss in the global glorification of Death Row cop-killers Stanley “Tookie” Williams and Mumia Abu-Jamal by the Hollywood elite. …

President Obama—Chicago pal of police-targeting Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers and the convener of the national beer summit to indulge his race-baiting, police-bashing Harvard professor friend Henry Louis Gates—did not attend the service.

On how well that stimulus bill Democrat slush fund is going to “bring our economy back from the brink” and “save and create [fill in any politically-expedient number] jobs”:

Thursday, 03 December 2009 | Black Voices News
Black Unemployment Reaches Great Depression Levels
By Chris Levister –

… [Rep. Maxine “Fidel Castro is so intelligent and wonderful!”] Waters led a bloc of African American House Democrats angry and frustrated that the Obama administration is mired in heated partisan battles over healthcare reform, war troop levels and fixing Wall Street and is not doing enough to address the plight of Blacks and Browns on Main Street. The groups have been hit much harder than any other by unemployment.

The Black unemployment rate is officially 15.7 percent nationwide compared to 9.5 percent for whites. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are troubled by what they believe is the lack of response to the economic situation that is confronting them on the part of the administration and therefore do not feel that they could in deference to the various constituencies that they resent – vote for passage of Mr. Obama’s financial reforms. “This is an affront to the people we serve,” said one member.

“When it comes to addressing joblessness in our poorest neighborhoods, there are a lot of heads in the sand,” said another member.

Joblessness for 16-to-24-year old Black men has reached Great Depression proportions—34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population according to the Center for Labor Market Studies.

On government-run health (s)care:

Dec 4th, 2009 | Front Page Mag
The Pretense of Knowledge
by Walter Williams

… Congress has the complete knowledge to know exactly what’s best for you. The difference is that when individuals make their own trade-offs, say between purchasing health insurance or investing in a business, they make wiser decisions because it is they who personally bear the costs and benefits of those decisions. You say, “Hold it, Williams, we’ve got you now! What if that person gets really sick and doesn’t have health insurance. Society suffers the burden of taking care of him.” To the extent that is a problem, it is not a problem of liberty; it’s a problem of congressionally mandated socialism. Let’s look at it.

It is not society that bears the burden; it is some flesh and blood American worker who finds his earnings taken by Congress to finance the health needs of another person. There is absolutely no moral case, much less constitutional case, for Congress forcibly using one American to serve the purposes of another American, a practice that differs only in degree from slavery, which we all should find morally offensive.

Whether it is health care, education, employment or most other areas of our lives, I ask you: Who has the capacity to master all the complexity to make choices on behalf of others? Each of us possesses only a tiny percentage of the knowledge that would be necessary to make totally informed decisions in our own lives, much less the lives of others. There is only one reason for the forcible transference of decision-making authority over important areas of our private lives to elite decision-makers in Congress and government bureaucracies. Doing so confers control, power, wealth and revenue to society’s elite. What’s in the best interests of individual members of society, such as a person who’d rather launch a landscaping business than purchase a health insurance policy, ranks low on the elite’s list of priorities.

Liberal Media Bias: Malkin and Others Hit Back on Kristof's NYT Pro-ObamaCare "News" Piece

Earlier this week I posted how Michelle Malkin totally blew apart an emotionally-charged NY Times article by Nicholas Kristof called "Are We Going to Let John Die?". It was about a young man from Oregon who was expected to die from an illness because he couldn't afford the health care. Kristof also had an accompanying NY Times blog post called, "The Human Toll of Our Health Care System."

The article was such a fallacious piece of excrement from beginning to end, that by the end of the day not only conservo-pundits like Malkin deconstructing it, but the NY Times was bombarded by emails from readers, including doctors and other health care professionals. Here's Malkin's post on that.

Today Kristof responded to his detractors in the intellectually honest and professional fashion we all expect from the "newspaper of record" (NOT). Michelle takes apart this follow-up as well. Enjoy.

I think Nicholas Kristof deserves the Walter Duranty Award for the week.