Vocal Minority

Obama's Revenge: Day 13 (2/2/13)

"Vote! Voting is the best revenge." - Barack H. Obama, Nov. 2, 2012

"We have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it." 
- Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, March 9, 2010

CBS-TV's D.C. affiliate reports:

Medical Company Blames ‘Obamacare’ For Layoffs Of Nearly 100 People

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (CBSDC) — A medical company is blaming President Obama’s health care law for the layoffs of nearly 100 people.

Smith & Nephew says a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices in the “Obamacare” law caused the layoffs in the Memphis and Andover, Mass., offices.

“The nearly $30 billion tax on medical devices that took effect Jan. 1, 2013, has impacted a number of companies across the U.S.,” the company said in a statement to WHBQ-TV.

Joe Metzger, senior vice president of corporate communications for the company, tells the Memphis Business Journal that they were “not immune” to the tax burden.

“Unfortunately, and in order to absorb this cost burden into our business, this has meant less than 100 positions have been made redundant across various departmental functions in our Tennessee and Massachusetts sites,” Metzger told the Business Journal. “The company is providing the affected employees with a comprehensiveseverance package and outplacement support.”

The Business Journal reports that the company announced last February it would lay off 7 percent of its workforce worldwide.

The tax took effect on Jan. 1.

This is just 100 jobs from one company. But opponents of Obama(PretendsTo)Care have been warning about the nationwide damage the tax will create, such as American Action Forum:

But don't worry: Not all medical companies will be closing up shop due to this punitive tax on their products. Most of them will just pass the tax on to you, the consumer. Next time you buy medical supplies of any shape, size, or price, check the bottom of your receipt. It's been happening for a month already.

 

Adventures in Gov't-Run Health (S)care: Malnourishment, Bedsores, and Death, Oh My!

In case you didn't know, the beginning of October marked the point where, under Obama(Doesn't)Care Section 6001, physician-owned hospitals are banned from being started, existing ones prohibited from expanding. This improves our health care system how? It doesn't.

But just keep saying everyone's covered, covered, covered. We're all covered, covered, covered. Covered, covered, covered. Like a bunch of freaking sheep. Free colonoscopies! Free condoms! Free free free! Covered covered covered! Republican war on women! Ryan hates Grandma! Romney hates Big Bird! Free free free! Covered covered covered! 

Meanwhile, things aren't going terribly swimmingly in the U.K., whose utopian health care system was the envy of Obama administration members and other Democrats who crafted Obamacare:

Patients starve and die of thirst on hospital wards

"Forty-three hospital patients starved to death last year and 111 died of thirst while being treated on wards, new figures disclose today." ...

The death toll was disclosed by the Government amid mounting concern over the dignity of patients on NHS wards.

They will also fuel concerns about care homes, as it was disclosed that eight people starved to death and 21 people died of thirst while in care.

Last night there were warnings that they must prompt action by the NHS and care home regulators to prevent further deaths among patients.

The Office for National Statistics figures also showed that:

* as well as 43 people who starved to death, 287 people were recorded by doctors as being malnourished when they died in hospitals;

* there were 558 cases where doctors recorded that a patient had died in a state of severe dehydration in hospitals;

* 78 hospital and 39 care home patients were killed by bedsores, while a further 650 people who died had their presence noted on their death certificates;

* 21,696 were recorded as suffering from septicemia when they died, a condition which experts say is most often associated with infected wounds. ...

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said the statistics were a grim and shaming reflection of 21st century Britain.

"These are people's mothers, fathers, and grandparents," she said. "It is hard enough to lose a loved one, but to find out that they died because they were not adequately fed or hydrated, is a trauma no family should have to bear."

Michelle Mitchell, Charity Director of Age UK, described the figures as "deeply distressing" given that such deaths were avoidable.

There are more dire statistics in the rest of the article.

Rick Moran at AT asks: Under Obamacare, it will never get this bad, will it? Umm, probably. 

So everyone ask your Obama(Doesn't)Care supporting friends:

Q: What do the 43 British hospital or home care patients dead from starvation, 326 from malnourishment, 661 from dehydration, 884 from bedsores, and 27,796 from septicemia (blood poisoning from infected wounds) all have in common?
A: They were all covered by government-run health care!

As Papa Josef Stalin said: One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic. FORWARD!

Adventures in Gov't-Run Health (S)care: 'Death pathway' for inconvenient elderly

From James Lewis at AT and Liz Klimas at the Blaze on the U.K's very active death panel.

Liberal Media Bias: NY Times' Almond Laments Right-Wing Media Hate, etc.

Oy, what a glutton for punishment I am. I’m about to do something that’s painful but necessary: deconstruct an article published in the Magazine of this past weekend’s NY Times. Its author Steve Almond is given this valuable real estate to recycle the oft-argued claim that Fox News and the conservative talk radio are poisoning the political debate in this country. He then takes the argument one step further by saying he and his poor fellow liberals have been getting suckered into empowering and legitimizing them, and urges them should stop.

As we go through this article, you will surely find it, as I did, to be a nauseating combination of self-pity and self-congratulation, as well as a case study in liberal Projection, hypocrisy, arrogance, sophistry, and disconnect all rolled into one. All throughout the piece, Almond constantly does what he accuses his ideological opponents of doing. It is for all these reasons why I felt compelled to take the time to break it down.

Well, here goes …

Liberals Are Ruining America. I Know Because I Am One.

In the spring of 2006, I quit my job as an adjunct professor at Boston College to protest the school’s selection of Condoleezza Rice as commencement speaker. My resignation letter, published online by The Boston Globe, went viral. Over the next few days, I received hundreds of e-mails, evenly divided between praise and condemnation, along with numerous invitations to appear on cable television.

The most tempting offer came from “Hannity & Colmes.” As I viewed it then, Sean Hannity represented the bane of American civic life: a blow-dried blowhard paid to vilify his enemies and incite his imbecilic fans. I leapt at the chance to confront him on live TV.

A producer promised me 10 minutes of airtime, during which I would be free to voice my objections to Rice, the former secretary of state. As it turned out, my interview ran just over three minutes, much of which I spent trying to fend off Hannity’s insistence that I voted for John Kerry. Not what I’d envisioned, but I managed to outlast his bullying and even launch a few zingers before my mike was cut. I was immensely pleased with myself, and I happily accepted kudos from fellow lefties.

Over the past few years, I’ve come to view my appearance as somewhat less heroic. I hadn’t spoken truth to power or caused anyone to reassess Secretary Rice’s record. I merely provided a few minutes of gladiatorial stimulation for Fox News. In seeking to assert my moral superiority, I enabled Hannity.

OK, first of all, to paraphrase one of many commenters to this article, how would one describe a professor who quits his job because he disagrees with the politics of the commencement speaker? A extreme partisan, that’s how. A left-wing fanatic. This guy was so anti-Bush and so anti-Iraq war that he actually quit his job in protest of a single guest from the administration.

Secondly, when I read Almonds hateful depiction of Hannity as a “a blow-dried blowhard paid to vilify his enemies and incite his imbecilic fans” and the herioc depiction of himself during the interview, my Bravo Sierra alarm went off. I assumed that as a liberal Almond has paltry analytical and critical thinking skills and knows only to argue by emoting, and that Sean, to be sure a blunt straight-shooter, kicked his ass and left Almond embarrassingly shocked and awed.

Sure enough, based on the written transcript (a video wasn’t available), I was right: The reason Sean kept asking Almond to admit he was a John Kerry supporter—a question Almond dodged and never answered—was because Kerry made the exact same case for the Iraq War that Condi Rice did, and if he and his liberal ilk were to call Rice a liar then he should consider Kerry a liar too.

This, to be blunt, is the tragic flaw of the modern liberal. We choose to see ourselves as innocent victims of an escalating right-wing fanaticism. But too often we serve as willing accomplices to this escalation and to the resulting degradation of our civic discourse. We do this, without even meaning to, by consuming conservative folly as mass entertainment.

No, Mr. Almond, your tragic flaw and that of most of your brethren is that you are so deprived of facts and logic you are unable to make compelling arguments with your conservative interlocutors. And so you do what, again, many liberals do: resort to name-calling.

And that is, sadly, a recurring theme and tactic in this piece: Calling Sean Hannity and others he disagrees with (i.e., the Fox News Channel in general and Rush Limbaugh) “right-wing fanatics”. But the problem is—and some of you will disagree with me—Hannity, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh are not right-wing fanatics. They have been falsely and deliberately branded that way by left-wing fanatics like Almond and most NY Times writers in order to delegitimize and marginalize them.

Disagree with me if you want, but there’s a reason Fox News gets quite a lot of Democrat and independent viewers. There’s a reason Rush Limbaugh’s audience is constantly growing larger and ever more diverse. Yes, Sean and Rush hold staunch conservative views, but that doesn’t make someone a “fanatic.” So, every time Almond uses this term to describe his ideological opponents, he exposes either a lack of self-awareness at best and blatant hypocrisy at worst. It is he, I’ve already argued, who’s the fanatic. (Again, only a left-wing fanatic would have such a problem with a very moderate Republican like Condi Rice that he would quit his job in protest of her visit.)

So let’s posit the following definition: Almond uses “fanatic” (fanaticism) and “extremist” (extremism) as pejoritives to describe a staunch conservative unashamed by his conservativism and can cogently argue his position based on the facts.

If this sounds like a harsh assessment, trust me, I’m among the worst offenders. Yes, I’m one of those enlightened masochists who tune in to conservative talk radio when driving alone. I recognize this as pathological behavior, and I always make sure to switch the station back to NPR before returning the car to my wife. But I can’t help myself. I take a perverse and complicated pleasure in listening to all the mean, manipulative things those people say.

Wow, what a freakin’ martyr you are, Mr. Almond. I can relate, because right now I am going through the mean, manipulative things you are saying.

Of course, not all right-wing pundits spew hate. But the ones who do are the ones we liberals dependably aggrandize. Consider the recent debate over whether employers must cover contraception in their health plans. The underlying question — should American women receive help in protecting themselves from unwanted pregnancies? — is part of a serious and necessary national conversation.

That’s another tired meme permeating this article: That the conservative pundits are “spewing hate.”

So we’re to believe that Almond detests hate-spewing, yet writes for a newspaper that ...

• for eight straight years verbally destroyed George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condi Rice,
• smeared the troops with either endless stories about Abu Ghraib, Haditha massacre, and every other perceived setback in the “War on Terror,”
• pilloried Bush officials with particularly vicious bloodlust by pushing the non-story of the non-leaking of non-secret operative Valerie Plame,
• give the likes of Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, not to mention special guests like Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin, free reign to spew hate daily on their editorial pages,
• gave MoveOn.org a special deal to print their full-page “General Betray Us” ad,
• hurl invective at Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Michelle Bachmann, John Boehner, and any other prominent Republican who get in the way of their hero Obama’s ultraleftist agenda,
• smear Americans with legitimate concerns about the radical ultraleftism of President Obama and his policies as irratiaonal racists who simply “don’t like it that there’s a black man in the White House,”
• smear Americans with legitimate concerns about Islamic terrorism as haters who are creating an epidemic of Islamophobia against poow poow Muswims wiving in ouw countwy, when no such epidemic exists,
• smear Americans with legitimate concerns about illegal immigration and its destructive consequences as Nazi-esque xenophobes who hate people who look different than them,
• has depicted the Tea Party as a bunch of racist, extremist, violent, selfish rednecks
• perpetuated the Democrat lie that Republicans are waging a “war on women” and other victims groups?

Sure, whatever.

Let me make this clear: When a liberal says a conservative is “spewing hate,” what they’re saying is that the conservative is winning the argument. Period.

Second, give that complete mischaracterization of the contraception issue, it is no wonder Almond and his leftist ilk end up spewing hate at the conservative opposition. The underlying question is and always was not whether American women should receive help (read: stuff for free). The underlying question is whether an employer whose religious faith forbids them to provide such items should be forced by the federal government to do so.

Any hope of that conversation happening was dashed the moment Rush Limbaugh began his attacks on Sandra Fluke, the young contraceptive advocate.

No, it didn’t! There was never any hope of that conversation because the Obama-worshiping left like the NY Times never wanted one! All Limbaugh did with his ill-advised “slut” remark was distract everyone from the main issue. And since the left was losing the argument on ideas, they grabbed the opportunity to use Limbaugh as a convenient scapegoat to gain favor from independents and other people not paying much attention to the issue.

Oh, by the way, Sandra Fluke was not a “young contraceptive advocate.” She was an 30-year-old well-seasoned left-wing activist used by the Obama team as a sympathetic pawn in their war against religious freedom. She was not “advocating for contraception”; she was appearing before Congress to demand that they unethically and unconstitutionally force someone else to pay for what she and she alone should be responsible for buying!

The left took enormous pleasure in seeing Limbaugh pilloried. To what end, though? Industry experts noted that his ratings actually went up during the flap. In effect, the firestorm helped Limbaugh do his job, at least in the short term.

Oh, trust me, Mr. Almond: it will be in the long term too. I’ve watched Rush’s popularity soar since following the whole Fluke kerfuffle (in the form of Facebook likes). Popular opinion seems to be still very much on his side. And, by the way, when it was made clear by Rush’s supporters that Bill Maher spews more hate at women and others in one show than Rush has in his 25+ years, what did Almond’s employer the NY Times do? Give Maher his own spot to editorialize on the issue!

But the real problem isn’t Limbaugh. He’s just a businessman who is paid to reduce complex cultural issues to ad hominem assaults. The real problem is that liberals, both on an institutional and a personal level, have chosen to treat for-profit propaganda as news. In so doing, we have helped redefine liberalism as an essentially reactionary movement. Rather than initiating discussion, or advocating for more humane policy, we react to the most vile and nihilistic voices on the right.

Well, folks, you don’t get a much better example of leftist Projection, hypocrisy, and disconnect than that!

I seriously doubt Mr. Almond has ever listened to more than three seconds of Rush Limbaugh (aside from what Media Matters clips out of context), because what Rush does—and this is why he is so damn successful at what he does!—is not reduce complex issues to ad homimen assaults. That’s what you on the left do, including the very NY Times for which you write.

It is not Limbaugh and Hannity that are “for-profit propaganda as news”—and incidently, Limbaugh and Hannity are commentators so their shows are not news to begin with!—That’s what you on the left do, including the very NY Times for which you write.

It is not the conservative shows that fails to initiate discussion, advocate more humane policy(???), or react to the most vile and nihilistic voices on their side! That’s what you on the left do, including the very NY Times for which you write. How exactly is depicting Paul Ryan as some unfeeling monster throwing grandma over the cliff in her wheelchair initiating discussion, advocating for more humane policy, or not reacting to the most vile and nihilistic voices on the left? Or painting Sarah Palin as a geographically illiterate dimwit who wants her local library to burn books??? Or the Tea Party as a bunch of racist rednecks who spit at black Congresspeole coming out of the Capitol building initiating discussion??? You are so full of s**t, Almond, it’s oozing out of every pore and orifice!

Media outlets like MSNBC and The Huffington Post often justify their coverage of these voices by claiming to serve as watchdogs. It would be more accurate to think of them as de facto loudspeakers for conservative agitprop. The demagogues of the world, after all, derive power solely from their ability to provoke reaction. Those liberals (like me) who take the bait, are to blame for their outsize influence.

Even programs that seek to inject some levity into our rancorous political theater run on the same noxious fuel. What would “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” be without the fulminations of Fox News and the rest of the right-wing hysterics?

Well, isn’t this (Frank) rich. Almond is actually citing hysterical left-wing hate-spewing media outlets like MSWTF, HuffPo, “The Daily Show,” and “The Colbert Report” as objective, non-partisan watchdogs of right-wing news outlets, and whose existence is thanks to “right-wing hysterics”? Yet again, it’s just the other way around! It is shows like Limbaugh and Hannity that exist because of the left-wing hysterics of the very mainstream media in which Almond is entrenched. Talk about a lack of self-awareness!

All right, deconstructing the first half of this insufferable article has been …, well, insufferable. Part 2 to come soon.

Related reading: Moe Lane at Red State: The Startlingly Unconscious Bigotry of NYT's Steve Almond

Liberal Media Bias: Networks Completely Ignore Nationwide Anti-HHS Mandate Protest, Cover Much Smaller Pro-ObamaCare Rally

The latest press release from the MRC. It is a must-read!

 

Networks Spike 164 Religious Freedom Rallies Against Obamacare Mandate

 

More than 1,000 people gathered Friday in front of the federal building in downtown Detroit to protest the Obama administration’s HHS mandate.

Alexandria, VA –  The three television broadcast networks completely ignored tens of thousands of Americans who participated in more than 160 coordinated noontime rallies in support of religious freedom across the United States this past Friday, according to a new Media Research Center analysis. The networks didn’t commit a single second of coverage on either their morning or evening broadcasts to the widespread dissent against the anti-religious freedom Health and Human Services mandate.

By comparison, CBS News dedicated four separate on-air segments between May 30 and June 1 to the supporters of a group of left-leaning Catholic nuns. CBS correspondent Wyatt Andrews boasted that, "hundreds of Catholics have rallied behind the sisters," and that "protests in support of the nuns have been held in almost 50 cities,” a fraction of the size and scope of the rallies held in opposition to the Obamacare mandate created to restrict religious liberty.

MRC President Brent Bozell reacts:

"The bias beat goes on, and it's getting more obvious as outrage against Obama and his mandate spreads to every corner of America. To ignore these coordinated protests across the country is bad enough. But then to hype what a few über liberal nuns and their hundreds of supporters - hundreds! - are doing to dissent against the Vatican's supposed 'inquisition' is unbearable. 

"This disgraceful decision by the networks to deliberately ignore this national demonstration in support of religious freedom comes only weeks after these same networks deliberately and shamefully ignored the largest legal action ever taken against the government by the Catholic Church in the history of this Republic. CBS committed only 19 seconds of a single nightly newscast to those lawsuits while NBC and ABC gave the story ZERO coverage. This is a pointed and deliberate message from the liberal media directed at the millions of Americans who believe in our constitutionally protected freedom of religion.

"Let there be no mistake. These so-called 'news' networks only cover stories that are helpful to Barack Obama and will not broadcast anything that hurts his chances of re-election this November. The networks have shown their hand, and they are not on the side of freedom."

Some New Vids: The Great One and a Great American

Everyone should watch this video taken at the Reagan Library last Friday. It is Mark Levin at last Friday's book signing -- Levin's last for his latest book "Ameritopia."

There is also this young up-and-coming great American by the name of Kira Davis. She's the one whose "Apology" video went viral last month. Here she is again doing a "Smart Phone Smart Minute". Go get 'em, Kira!

Listen & Learn: El Rushbo Destroys Obama's SOTU STFU Speech (1/25/12)

"This was a mass of confusion, hypocrisies, lies, and distortions, and a failed attempt by a failed president to attach himself to America's greatness when he wouldn't recognize it if it slapped him upside the head!"

That pretty much sums up Rush's analysis of President Hope&Change's SOTU STFU speech on Tuesday:

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

(Download clip here)

(Download clip here)

Score for Senate GOP: Donald "The Mad Doctor" Berwick to Leave Post

Wow, here's a major surprise: One of the scariest human beings picked by Obama is relinquishing his post following pressure by Senate Republicans.

Medicare/Medicaid head Donald Berwick, a wealth-distribution and health-care-rationing nut, will be stepping down December 2, according to AP [h/t Daily Caller]:

A major supporter of the president’s health care reform law will be relinquishing his post as head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid to his number two in command after Republicans successfully prevented his confirmation to the post.

Harvard professor Donald Berwick — who once explained that “excellent health care is, by definition, redistribution” — will step down Dec. 2 officials confirmed to the Associated Press on Wednesday.

To learn more about the "mad doctor," listen to this clip from the Mark Levin show from May, 2010. Thank goodness this dangerous person will soon be gone.

 

Cain Corner (9/24/11): Surging? [UPDATE: Hells Yeah!]

According to the blogosphere and punditry, Thursday's GOP debate in Orlando seemed to have hurt everyone but Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. Everybody else seemed to have shot themselves in the foot in one way or another. Poor Rick Santorum. He (and the rest of the candidates plus the entire freaking audience!) can't get any break with the gay soldier question. It's not that he botched it; it was just another opportunity for the leftosphere -- that includes the mainstream media -- to bash him and all Republicans as homophobes. (I even tried to discuss the incident with an uber-liberal lesbian friend of mine. Forget it -- Waste of time!)

But it was Cain who really seemed to benefit both in pundit-pinion and poll-wise.

For instance, Erick Erickson at Red State, in a blog post titled "Herman Cain Won the Debate," wrote even before the debate officially ended:

The winner is Herman Cain. The audience loved him. Other than his question on Israel, Cain’s answers really were out of the park awesome. He provided the most uplifting moments and the most memorable lines, with substance included.

Also, following the debate, Ann Coulter and Dick Morris both tweeted positive things about Cain. Ann said he "crushed" (I'm assuming that's a good thing.)

Finally, Byron York writes this today in today's Washington Examiner:

ORLANDO -- There's no scientific polling, but talks with dozens of delegates who will vote in today's Florida straw poll suggest that many are making last-minute decisions to vote for Herman Cain.

What seems to be happening is this: A lot of delegates came to Orlando planning to vote for Rick Perry.  But Perry's poor performance at Thursday night's Fox News-Google debate gave them pause and re-opened the question of whom they will support.  And many of the conservatives who were attracted to Perry will, when asked for a second choice, naturally gravitate to Cain, who, it just happens, had a particularly good debate on Thursday.  So with Perry not commanding the loyalty he did just 48 hours ago, Cain appears to be picking up support.

It's not an exaggeration to say that everybody likes the Georgia businessman.  The question is whether delegates view him as an actual contender for the Republican nomination. At the moment, his support is at 5.6 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, putting him in sixth place in the race, behind Perry, Romney, Paul, Bachmann and Gingrich.  Not exactly a juggernaut.

Given that, it is not at unusual at all for delegates here to say, "I love Herman Cain, but I just don't think he can win."  And that, to committed Cain supporters, is a source of great frustration. "Because of the people who say they love him but he can't get elected, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy," says a man named Jimmy from Wilbur-By-The-Sea, Florida.  "If they would all just love him and support him and not say, 'Well, can't get elected so I'm going to pick Romney or Perry' -- if they would all just love him and get behind him, he'd be the guy."

Could Cain actually win?  It seems unlikely, but it's an outside possibility.  Cain's fortunes depend on whether the delegates here decide to vote strategically -- to support the candidate they consider the most likely to win the Republican nomination and go on to general-election victory -- or to vote their principles and let practical matters work themselves out later.  If the delegates go the latter route, a lot will choose Herman Cain.

This is all good news for us Cainiacs!

I hear too many people tell me: I love Herman Cain; I just don't think he can win. Well, what if all these people actually support him rather than just talk about liking him but doubting he can win? Then he will have a chance to win the candidacy, won't he!?

UPDATE: Linked from Drudge: Hermain Cain trounced the competition in the Florida straw poll. 37% of the 2,600-member vote! Second place Perry had less than half that at 15%. Way to go, Herm!

Adventures in Gov't-Run Health (S)care: In U.K. 100K Terminally Ill Don't Get Proper Care

Welcome to our future, suckers. This is humane?

100,000 terminally ill 'do not get proper palliative care'

Almost 100,000 terminally ill people do not get proper care, according to a Government review which concluded that a new funding system would save millions of pounds and better serve individuals.

A national payment structure would cut variation around the country in what the state pays for and what it does not, and support far more people to be cared for in their own homes, it said.

Experts behind the report say the move could reduce deaths in hospital by up to 60,000 a year by 2021, translating into savings of £180 million annually.

At the moment, the amount primary care trusts (PCTs) in England spend on end-of-life care varies widely, from £186 per patient in one area to £6,213 in another.

Access to services, including round-the-clock nursing care, also depends on where people live.

Far more people die in hospital than wish to, and experts estimate that more than 90,000 people are not having their palliative care needs met. ...

 

Listen & Learn: Mark Levin Destroys Time's Stengel on Constitution Article (6/23/11)

Meant to post this one sooner but, you know, summer, kids, family, etc.

Anyway, I had hoped that The Great One would deconstruct the disastrously flawed main article from the upcoming issue of Time magazine. Sure enough, he spent last Thursday addressing it part by part.

The article in question was about whether the Constitution is relevant anymore and was written by Time's managing editor who, despite his having been the CEO of something called the National Constitution Center, is amazingly ignorant of one of the nation's seminal documents. I posted about it too on Friday, after it appeared on-line

These 24 minutes are crucial to absorb for those who are battling clueless Constitution-hating leftists who use it only to enslave, not liberate, Americans from the yoke of big government. There is a war out there, my friends. We need to be properly armed.*

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

Download clip here

Download clip here

* It's a metaphor, brain-dead liberals. Get over yourselves.

The ABC’s of Barack Obama’s Complete and Utter Stupidity (Part II)

Part I here

When you add up all the mistakes [Obama has] made—not slips of the tongue, but real errors in statements and speeches he could read from the ubiquitous teleprompter—they make quite a number.
— El Rushbo, June 24, 2011.

And with that, we continue our ABC’s of Obama gaffes and epic fails:

N is for nittaly lions, which is what President Genius called Penn State’s mascot. (It’s supposed to be nittany lions.)

O is for Olympics. President Genius took the time to fly himself and his massive ego to Copenhagen in order to personally make a pitch for Chicago as the site of the 2016 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee was apparently so impressed that Chicago didn’t even make the final cut. How do you say “egg on face” in Danish?

P is for profit and earning ratios. That is what the smartest president evah said at a meeting with British PM Gordon Brown in March, 2009. What he presumably meant to say was “price to earnings (P/E) ratio.” It is Econ 101 and if George W. Bush or Sarah Palin said this it would be national news for weeks.

This is the man in charge of the economy of the entire nation, folks. It would almost be like thinking the U.S. Constitution contains the right to abortion, the separation of church and state, and the ability to impose government-run health (s)care via the commerce clause.

Oh, wait ...

Q is for quantative easing (and Q.E. 2!), which has been argued to be a disastrous dollar-destroying idea. Among the most prominent economists against Q.E. was Nobel-Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. Q.E.2 was even less popular.

Q is also for cinco de quatro. This was the phrase uttered by the nation’s most brilliant president—who chastises Americans for supposedly being averse to learning foreign languages—when trying to say in Spanish “Fourth of May”.

R is for Otto Raddatz, an Illinois businessman whose name The One invoked while pushing government-run health (s)care in September, 2009. According to Obama, Raddatz had died earlier that year because his insurance company denied life-saving treatment and pulled his coverage. In truth, while Mr. Raddatz’s treatment (a stem stell transplant) was delayed, the insurance company never dropped him. The treatment he did receive extended his life another three-and-a-half years. So either President Brilliant got all his facts wrong and misspoke or he misrepresented the facts like a sleazy lawyer in order to sell his Obama(doesn’t)Care. You decide.

S is for Sanford and Son. A week before The One was elected he referenced the 70’s black sitcom “Sanford and Son.” Attempting to channel Foxx’s character Fred Sanford having one of his famous fake heart attacks, Obama yelled, “I’m comin’ to join you, Weezy.” Umm, that would be Elizabeth, genius. Weezy is from “The Jeffersons.”

How in the world can a black guy mix up “Sanford and Son” and “The Jeffersons”!? If a white Republican like Sarah Palin made that error, they would accused not only of stupidity but also of racism for not knowing enough about black sitcoms. I could just see Maureen Dowd at her little word processor at the NY Times building typing: “To Sarah Palin, all those black T.V. shows look the same to her.”

T is for Teleprompter, without which Obama’s shows his inability to string together two complete sentences. It is also an electric mask without which Obama’s radical America-hatred, Marxism-socialism, terrorist-sympathizing anti-Semitism is exposed for all the world to see.

T is also for tornado. While campaigning in May 2007 he said, “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died—an entire town destroyed.” The actual death count: 12.

U is for umbrella. Cue the picture:

Nuf said. Imagine if this was Bush?

V is for The View. Every morning on ABC TV viewers are treated by three ultra-liberal women (and one quasi-conservative—you know, for balance) gushing like giddy schoolgirls about the smartest president the universe has ever known. When it comes to their treatment of Sarah Palin, however, suddenly they’re the bitches from “Mean Girls.” Seriously, almost nowhere on TV is there such uninformed, unfettered hate and vitriol. But for some strange reason these cackling hens are feted by the media and Hollywood.

W is for wee-wee’d up. Nobody ever really made a big deal about this, but think about it: What the &*#$ is this phrase supposed to even mean???

Sorry, don’t have anything for X, Y, Z, but if you have any ideas, please share!

Scrutinize the president, not Palin (M. Welch)

To CNN's credit, here is a piece by Matt Welch criticizing the mainstream media for its continued anal exam of Sarah Palin, and its continued incuriosity about President Hope&Change.

Hyper-Regulation Costs U.S. (= us) About $1.75 Trillion per Year

Explains Mark Steyn in his latest piece. Highlights are mine.

... [I]n New York City, applying for the "right" to open a restaurant requires dealing with the conflicting demands of at least 11 municipal agencies, plus submitting to 23 city inspections and applying for 30 different permits and certificates. Not including the state liquor license.

Recognizing that this could all get very complicated, the city set up a new bureaucratic body to help you negotiate your way through all the other bureaucratic bodies.

And, for every little victory, there are a zillion crankings of the government vise elsewhere. Plucked at random from the ObamaCare bill: "The Secretary shall develop oral healthcare components that shall include tooth-level surveillance."

"Tooth-level surveillance"? Has that phrase ever been used before in the entirety of human history? Say what you like about George III, but the redcoats never attempted surveillance of Gen. Washington's dentures. Why not just call it "gum control"?

The hyper-regulatory state is unrepublican. It strikes at one of the most basic pillars of free society: equality before the law. When you replace "law" with "regulation," equality before it is one of the first casualties. In such a world, there is no law, only a hierarchy of privilege more suited to a sultan's court than a self-governing republic.

If you don't want to be subject to "tooth-level surveillance," you'd better know whom to call in Washington. Teamsters Local 522 did, and the United Federation of Teachers, and the Chicago Plastering Institute. And as a result they've all been "granted" ObamaCare "waivers."

Rule, Obama! Obama, waive the rules! If only for his cronies. Americans are being transferred remorselessly from the rule of law to rule by an unaccountable bureaucracy of micro-regulatory preferences, subsidies, entitlements and incentives that determine which of the multiple categories of Unequal-Before-The-Law Second-Class (or Third-Class, or Fourth-Class) Citizenship you happen to fall into. ...

Amen.

Mark concludes that the decline resulting from this freedom-sucking overpaid bureacratic class is not inevitable; it is a choice:

As my fellow columnists Charles Krauthammer and Victor Davis Hanson like to point out, decline is not inevitable; it is a choice. The voters of New York's 26th District chose it just the other day, presumably on the basis that it will be relatively pleasant, as it has been in certain parts of Continental Europe.

But genteel Franco-Italian decline is not on the menu. As those numbers suggest, the scale of American decay is entirely different: $1.75 trillion in regulatory costs, $1 trillion in college debt, $4.5 billion spent by Washington every single day that we don't have, 70% of which the U.S. government "borrows" from itself because nobody else wants to lend it to us — and a governing party whose Senate leader boasts about not passing a budget and whose Medicare plan is not to have a plan at all and whose crusading regulatory reformer's greatest triumph is getting Daisy the cow moved out of the same federal classification as the Exxon Valdez. ...

 

 

 

Adventures in Government-Run Health (S)care: More and More Brits Waiting 4+ Months for Care

Here’s the latest news story [h/t Drudge] from the land whose collapsing government-run “health” (s)care system is the inspiration for the geniuses who brought you Obama(S)care:

Doctors are blaming financial pressures on the NHS for an increase in the number of patients who are not being treated within the 18 weeks that the government recommends.

New NHS performance data reveal that the number of people in England who are being forced to wait more than 18 weeks has risen by 26% in the last year, while the number who had to wait longer than six months has shot up by 43%.

Eighteen weeks is the guvmint’s threshold? That’s over 4 months for anyone counting. Do you want to wait 4 months or longer for essential treatment? Well, you’re gonna! ‘Cuz you live in the land of Hope&Change now. The Marxist-socialist utopia is here!

In March this year, 34,639 people, or 11% of the total, waited more than that time to receive inpatient treatment, compared with 27,534, or 8.3%, in March 2010 – an increase of 26% – Department of Health statistics show.

Similarly, in March this year some 11,243 patients who underwent treatment had waited for more than six months, compared with 7,841 in the same month in 2010 – a 43% rise.

Despite rising demand for healthcare caused by the increasingly elderly population and growing numbers of people with long-term conditions, the NHS treated 16,201 fewer people as inpatients in March 2011 compared to March 2010, the latest Referral To Treatment data disclose.

The British Medical Association said the longer waits and fewer treatments were inevitable: "Given the massive financial pressures on the NHS, it was always likely that hospital activity would decrease and waiting times would increase," said a spokesperson.

"The capacity of hospitals has been limited by staffing freezes, and commissioners of care are under pressure to ration surgical procedures considered to be of low value. As well as the personal impact on individual patients, there is a potential long-term consequence for NHS hospitals, which are at risk of being financially destabilised as they lose income." …

What’s that? Ration, you say? But don’t worry, America. If the Democrat-media complex hasn’t mentioned that word, it must not exist in the forthcoming Obama(S)care being foisted upon us poor rubes not well-connected enough to get a waiver.

And with regard to staffing freezes and scarcity of hospital beds, I’m sure not a single person who helped push Obama(S)care over the finish line will be inconvenienced in the least. They will automatically go to the front of the line. Because they’re special. They’re smarter than you. And they just know better.

Labour claimed the figures proved that the NHS was declining as a result of the coalition's health policies. "Another month, another breach of the treatment waiting times target. This is further evidence of the NHS going backwards again under the Tories," said John Healey, the shadow health secretary. "Instead of ploughing on with a wasteful top-down reorganisation of the NHS, David Cameron and Andrew Lansley should now apologise to those patients having to wait longer for treatment."

Katherine Murphy, the director of the Patients Association, said it had heard from people whose hip or knee replacement had been postponed once or twice without them being offered a new date, leaving them in pain and with their independence compromised.

Postponed once or twice. Now this rings a bell. Back in March there was this story about a former NHS director who died because a stomach operation she needed was postponed four times over nine months.

When I posted this story on Facebook, I got responses from two Obama-worshiping liberals. One, a doctor herself and a British native who lives in NYC, said not to belive anything I read in the Daily Mail.

The other liberal suggested maybe there was a valid reason why her surgery got postponed; we didn’t know all the facts. Perhaps. But four times? Nine months? And this was a guvmint health apparatchik, not a worthless plebe.

Is it just a coincidence that there are two stories about Britains crumbling government-run “health” (s)care system that mention operations being postponed twice or more? I don’t think so.

The DH said: “Waiting times go up and they go down, but this data shows that waiting times remain broadly stable. On average, admitted patients waited 7.9 weeks for treatment in March 2011, compared to eight weeks in March 2010. For outpatients it is just 3.7 weeks, compared to 3.8 weeks in 2010.”

Oh, how nice, only 2 months to wait for treatment. As Obama’s NHS-loving Medi-whatever chair Donald Berwyck says, “Britain, you chose well.” NOT.

As they see it, fewer people alive = less money spent. How progressive. How tolerant. How compassionate.

So keep drinking that Kool-Aid. Keep falling for that Marxist-socialist utopian “Hope&Change” bullsh*t that your Golden Calf has been spoonfeeding you since 2004.

And while you or one of your precious friends or relatives lay dying because of the inhumanity of our newly imposed government-run “health” (s)care, just keep saying over and over again: “Everyone will be covered ... 40 million uninsured ... Everyone will have access to health care. Not gonna let those eeeevil insurance companies make a profit at the expense of the poor! Everyone will be covered ... 46 million uninsured ... Everyone will have access to health care. Not gonna let those eeeevil doctors make a profit at the expense of the poor! Everyone will be covered ... 50 million uninsured ... Everyone will have access to health care. Not gonna make those eeeeevil hospitals make a profit at the expense of the poor!”

Repeat until dead. And then after you or your loved one dies, under “cause of death” make sure they write “Hope&Change.”

Welcome to the future, suckers.

Nearly 20% of New Obamacare Waivers Are in Nancy Pelosi's District

What. The. &$#@? From the Daily Caller:

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.

That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.

Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers.

Other common waiver recipients were labor union chapters, large corporations, financial firms and local governments. But Pelosi’s district’s waivers are the first major examples of luxurious, gourmet restaurants and hotels getting a year-long pass from Obamacare. ...

This is the woman who cackled like a witch and walked among the angry throngs with her undeserved Speaker gavel after shoving gov't-run health (s)care down our throats? 

This is the woman who when asked where in the Constitution is gov't-run health (s)care allowed, answered simply "Are you kidding? Are you kidding?"

This is the woman who said Congress has to pass the gov't-run health (s)care bill first so we can see what's in it?

And 20% -- twenty freaking percent -- of the people getting out of having to participate in this travesty are in Pelosi's own district???

That's just as bad, if not more so, than Obama giving waivers to hundreds of unions -- all of whom supported him for president and supported the passing of this tragic bill.

This is worse than an outrage.

Reason #47354 I Will Never Rejoin the Reform Movement: Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss

Let me preface this post by emphasizing that I know URJ president Eric Yoffie personally. Although we are friends, we are quite aware of each other’s political differences. This post is in no way an attack on his character but merely a strong disagreement with his positions and, by extention, those of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ). Likewise, although I do not know his presumptive successor Rabbi Jacobs personally—we might have met once a few years ago—I’m sure he is a decent human being and my issue is with his positions and not his character. That said …

From where I stand, the Reform Movement has been in need of a change. Even the NY Times admits that the movement was “facing a recent decline in numbers and an uncertain future despite its stature as the largest movement in American Jewry.”

I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I’m sure some of that decline is due to the continuing secularization of today’s youth, as well as the long-standing problem of Jews marrying non-Jews and their subsequent abandonment of the faith. But I have a sinking suspicion that there is another reason membership in the Reform Movement is dwindling.

Ever since the URJ took a public stand opposing George W. Bush’s War in Iraq in 2005, I’ve been amazed how many right-leaning (and Bush-supporting) Reform Jews have come out of the closet to speak their mind. And ever since the new Moshiach was elected president in 2008, those numbers have climbed even more.

Then there’s the conservative Reform Jews who have “come out” to me personally, but not to the public. With still school-aged children needing religious education and the requirements to become a Bar/Bat Mitzvah (at age 13), they begrudgingly remain members, paying dues to a synagogue that in turn pays its own dues to a national organization that promotes positions 180 degrees opposed to your own.

Other Jewish righties I know have in fact left our local Reform synagogue, chosing to educate their children at a local Chabad, or keep Jewish learning in the home. Myself, I left the Reform Movement over a year ago, with no intention of returning anytime soon. Not a month goes by where I witness this and other Reform synagogues are awash with left-wing/Democrat programming and propaganda.

Oh, Reform clergy, educators, and committee-people will insist that they’re apolitical, open-minded, and tolerant of all views.

Really? Visited the website of the URJ’s Religious Action Center (RAC) lately? Pick an issue: environ-mental-ist issues, abortion (excuse me, “women’s rights”) environ-mental-ist issues, oil, environ-mental-ist issues, government-run health (s)care, environ-mental-ist issues, 2nd Amendment rights, environ-mental-ist issues, welfare and poverty programs, environ-mental-ist issues, radical Islamism (oh, did I mention environ-mental-ist issues?). Every one of these topics is—coincidence of coincidences—identical to that of any far-left Democrat Party member. If it didn’t threaten their 501c3 status, they probably could just link to the DNC’s website and get it overwith.

Start 'em young!

This is not what I signed up for. If I wanted to teach my children to be good little lefties and walk in unswerving lockstep with the Democrat Party agenda, then the nearest Reform congregation is for you. If you want to meet Al Gore, far-left Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz [Would you believe the very day after I wrote this blog post, Wasserman Schultz was appointed by Obama as DNC chair!], and any liberal Jewish Hollywood celebrity, then the RAC is the place to be.

But if you want to hear from Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, David Horowitz, Aaron Klein, Caroline Glick, Congressmen Eric Cantor or Michelle Bachmann, forget it! At this Centre of tolerance and open-mindedness, non-lefties need not apply.

So, with more and more righty Reform Jews being bothered by the URJ’s political agenda, who do they choose to replace outgoing President Rabbi Eric Yoffie? Meet Rabbi Richard Jacobs from Westchester County, NY. I’m sure Rabbi Jacobs is a very nice, decent fellow. But what are the main priorities of the incoming president of the nation’s largest Jewish organization?

For Jacobs, that means embracing environmentalism, helping in places like Darfur and Haiti, and speaking out in support of the Islamic center near Ground Zero in Manhattan. He speaks with pride of his synagogue’s green initiatives, noting that its Ner Tamid, or Eternal Flame, is solar powered. He is chairman of the New Israel Fund’s pluralism grants committee, which promotes religious and social pluralism in Israel. He is a board member of the American Jewish World Service, with which he visited Darfur refugees in Chad in 2005. He wears a green Darfur bracelet on his wrist.

Darfur nad Haiti? Wonderful. Religious and social pluralism in Israel? Of course, I get it.

But environmentalism? Green initiatives? Going solar? (I actually know a Conservative temple that is going solar, so it’s not just the Reform movement). This is a priority? Oy vay. I’m all for conservation and recycling, but the man-made global warming climate change hoax has completely taken over this movement!

Supporting the mosque near Ground Zero? Oy! Why don’t we just surrender to all the world’s radical Muslims and cut off our own heads? Dhimmitude on display, brought to you by the URJ. 

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

List of health reform waivers keeps growing

The number of reasons ObamaCare is a nightmare waiting to happen has climbed to 1,168. From the The Hill's Healthwatch:

The number of waivers the Obama administration has awarded for a provision of the year-old healthcare reform law grew by 128 in March.

With the new waivers, that means 1,168 businesses, insurers, unions and other organizations have received one-year exemptions from a healthcare reform provision requiring at least $750,000 in annual benefits. 
 
The administration says the temporary waivers are granted to help stabilize the insurance market until a fuller package of reforms takes effect in 2014, but the growing number of waivers have exposed the White House to heavy criticism from Republican opponents of the law.

“The fact that over 1,000 waivers have been granted is a tacit admission that the healthcare law is fundamentally flawed,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) last month. Upton is one of three House committee chairmen who has used new oversight powers to investigate the annual limit waivers.  ...

The bottom line is this, if ObamaCare is so important, so wonderful, and so necessary, there would not be a single waiver issued to companies or states. 

Make no mistake: This is government-controlled selection of winners and losers. The winners are the ones who prop up this corrupt banana republic administration. The losers are the rest of us peons, who will go broke before we die from this centralized bureaucratic hell on earth.

Obama Issues GW Rules in Jan., Gives GE Exemption in Feb.

It's good to be the king. It's also good to KNOW the king: Bush (supposedly) took care his "oil buddies." Here's Obama taking care of his energy buddy Immelt.

From Timothy Carney at the Washington Examiner:

Last month, the Obama EPA began enforcing new rules regulating the greenhouse gas emissions from any new or expanded power plants.

This week, the EPA issued its first exemption ...

It's the same shtick he's pulling with all the ObamaCare exemptions, 40% of which are unions. A sitting president is picking winners and losers based on political connections and ideology. If this isn't despotism, I don't know what is.

What say you?

White Political Ralliers Call for Lynching of Black Justice (Sorry MSM, No Tea in this Blend)

Christian Hartsock at Big Government has this disturbing video of a rally in Palm Springs.

These left-wing rallyers, comprised of members of Common Cause, Code Pink, Greenpeace, and other usual suspects, were dissatisfied of the SCOTUS's Citizens United decision. In fact, they are so dissatisfied, many were happy to go on camera and express their desire to hang or lynch Justice Clarence Thomas and even "send him back to the fields." The other right-leaning justices are threatened with physical violence as well, as are Glenn Beck, Fox News, etc.

Hartsock quips:

In post-Tucson America, where for the past few weeks a chorus of voices on the left have amplified their attacks on the “racist tea party,” “racist conservatives,” “racist Republicans,” and their “violent, irresponsible rhetoric” to the degree of accomplice-to-murder accusations, I figured a left-wing rally such as this would also be a demonstration of the left’s ideal, self-proclaimed rhetorical composure.

And having done extensive video coverage interviewing demonstrators in over fifty tea parties in forty-five cities in twenty-five states yet finding a total of zero instances of the “racist” and “violent” stigmas the left relentlessly assures us are true, I certainly didn’t expect to find almost every imaginable instance at one single “progressive” rally. ...

Not only that, but there was really nothing different there than what we saw at "peace" rallies during the Bush years. With posters and with spoken word, opponents of the liberal protesters were asked to be shot, hung, beheaded, tortured, you name it.

But that was when a Republican president was in office. That was when saying such things was celebrated, even patriotic.

The rules changed at 12:01 on January 20, 2009 when the same crowd that boo'ed the Bushes as they exited the White House began their campaign to label the slightest critic of the Obama agenda as racist, uncivil, inciting violence, blah blah blah.

Here's another thing: There are SCOTUS decisions that each "side" will disagree with. G0d knows there are plenty that the right could have done without. Roe v. Wade, anyone? Yet I can't recall a time when anti-abortionists demanded the violent deaths of the Justices who supported that decision.

You might be thinking: Yeah, but what about all the abortion doctor murderers!? I can say right at the onset that I do not in any way condone such vile acts, but I still wouldn't conflate a handful of extremist abortionist killers with crowds numbering in the thousands inciting this kind of violence.

Soooo, how much you want to bet that not one mainstream media outlet will air this racist, uncivil, and violence-inciting event?