The Democrats Want Your Kids

The Democrats Want Your Kids
Ashley Herzog
Wednesday, July 29, 2009

No, really. If you think I’m being hyperbolic, you need to read an article in the latest issue of Time magazine, titled “Summer School: What? No More Vacations?” If Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan has his way, your kids will be in government schools eight hours a day, twelve months a year.

Liberals will no doubt portray this as another altruistic “Save the Children” plan, as well as a taxpayer-funded babysitting service for low-income women and moms who have better things to do than raise their own kids. (“Mom isn't waiting at home at 2:30 with a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. That just doesn't happen in many American families anymore,” Duncan says in the article.) They’ll recite the pointless factoid that summer vacations are an outdated product of America’s farming culture.

Don't be fooled. There are two reasons Democrats want your kids to spend more time in public schools. First, it comports with their ideology that “the village” (aka government) should raise children. Second, it’s a political payoff for the Democrats’ greediest and most power-hungry constituency: the teachers’ unions.

It’s also nothing new. In her book Feminist Fantasies, the always-brilliant Phyllis Schlafly analyzed a similar liberal scheme from the early 1970s, which proposed government-funded daycare and public schooling for all children beginning at age three. The American Federation of Teachers explained that herding toddlers into government schools was “a vehicle to help teachers in a shrinking job market.”

Its proponents were also clear about their larger goal. “Day care is a powerful institution,” Democrats Walter Mondale and John Brademas wrote to constituents in 1970. “A day care program that ministers to a child from six months to six years of age has over 8,000 hours to teach him values, fears, beliefs, and behaviors.”

No wonder liberals have tried to criminalize homeschooling, as a California appeals court did last year. They want to make it illegal for parents—not teachers' unions and their political minions—to act as children’s authority figures.

And they’ll demand higher salaries to teach your kids a whole lot of nothing. In elementary school, American children hold their own in international comparisons. By ninth grade, having spent several more years in public school, they sink to the bottom. On the 2006 PISA exam, which measures the academic proficiency of students in 30 countries, American 15-year-olds ranked 21st in science and 25th in math.

That would concern teachers’ unions if academic achievement was their goal. It’s not. Their goal is to earn more money for shaping your kids’ “values, fears, beliefs, and behaviors.” This will no doubt include lessons in America-hating (in 2006, a Colorado tenth grader secretly taped his Geography teacher ranting about American terrorism for the entire class period), racial grievance-mongering (Seattle public schools have dictated that teachers present Thanksgiving as “a day of mourning for Native Americans”), and revisionist history (earlier this decade, the New Jersey Department of Education tried to erase any mention of Washington, Jefferson and Franklin from history classes).

Worst of all, if union shills get their way, you won’t even have the option of homeschooling your kids. For children whose parents can’t afford private schools—you know, the type Democrat politicians send their kids to—public education will be compulsory.

And they’ll demand you hand them over at age three.


Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Bully Boys: A Brief History of White House Thuggery

Bully Boys: A Brief History of White House Thuggery
Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Six months into the Obama administration, it should now be clear to all Americans: Hope and Change came to the White House wrapped in brass knuckles.

Ask the Congressional Budget Office. Last week, President Obama spilled the beans on the "Today Show" that he had met with CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf -- just as the number crunchers were casting ruinous doubt on White House cost-saving claims. Yes, question the timing.

The CBO is supposed to be a neutral scorekeeper -- not a water boy for the White House. But when the meeting failed to stop the CBO from issuing more analysis undercutting the health care savings claims, Obama's budget director Peter Orszag played the heavy.

Orszag warned the CBO in a public letter that it risked feeding the perception that it was "exaggerating costs and underestimating savings." Message: Leave the number fudging to the boss. Capiche?

Obama issued an even more explicit order to unleash the hounds on Blue Dog Democrats during his health care press conference. "Keep up the heat" translated into Organizing for America/Democratic National Committee attack ads on moderate Democrats who have revolted against Obamacare's high costs and expansive government powers over medical decisions.

Looks like there won't be a health care beer summit anytime soon.

The CBO and the Blue Dogs got off easy compared to inspectors general targeted by Team Obama goons. Former AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin was slimed as mentally incompetent ("confused" and "disoriented") after blowing the whistle on several cases of community service tax fraud, including the case of Obama crony Kevin Johnson. Johnson is the NBA star turned Sacramento mayor who ran a federally funded nonprofit group employing AmeriCorps volunteers, who were exploited to perform campaign work for Johnson and to provide personal services (car washes, errands) to Johnson and his staff.

Walpin filed suit last week to get his job back -- and to defend the integrity and independence of inspectors general system-wide. But he faces hardball tactics from both the West Wing and the East Wing, where first lady Michelle Obama has been intimately involved in personnel decisions at AmeriCorps, according to youth service program insiders.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, top Obama officials muzzled veteran researcher Alan Carlin, who dared to question the conventional wisdom on global warming. The economist with a physics degree was trashed as a non-scientist know-nothing.

Obama Treasury officials forced banks to take TARP bailout money they didn't want and obstructed banks that wanted to pay back TARP money from doing so. The administration strong-armed Chrysler creditors and Chrysler dealers using politicized tactics that united both House Democrats and Republicans, who passed an amendment last week reversing Obama on the closure of nearly 800 Chrysler dealerships and more than 2,000 GM dealerships.

At the Justice Department, Obama lawyers are now blocking a House inquiry into the suspicious decision to dismiss default judgments against radical New Black Panther Party activists who intimidated voters and poll workers on Election Day in Philadelphia. The DOJ is preventing Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., from meeting with the trial team in the case. Wolf has been pressing for answers on what communications Attorney General Eric Holder and his deputies conducted with third-party interest groups and other political appointees about the case. So far: radio silence.

In the mafia culture, bully boys depend on a code of silence and allegiance -- omerta -- not only among their brethren, but also from the victims. The victims of Obama thugocracy are no longer cooperating. Perhaps it won't be long until some of the enforcers start to sing, too.


Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

What They Really Want

What They Really Want
Bruce Bialosky
Monday, July 27, 2009

A business colleague of mine commented recently that he supported Communism. He stated it would be fine if he were at the top and thus in control of money and decisions. He mentioned Fidel Castro’s supposed $6 billion that he has in foreign bank accounts. This gentleman understands that not everyone has the same results under Communism.

I make this point to show that the goals of a communistic government were not to solve the problems of the masses as much as to shift control from the existing leaders to the new leaders of the country. The leaders of the former communist countries were not living under the same rules as those they were ruling.

This same principle applies to what we are experiencing in the debate about health insurance reform. The leaders of the movement who want the current bills in Congress to quickly pass are individuals who have a greater interest in shifting control of the health care system than they do in improving the health care system. As proof of this I would like to offer three simple points. Understanding these points makes clear what are the real objectives of the proposed reforms:

1. The fact that only a small portion of the uninsured will be covered by the new bill. Those campaigning for health insurance reform regularly cite that there are more than 45 million uninsured Americans. However, the plans in front of Congress will only insure about 15 million of those. Despite that there is no explanation of how the others will be covered.

2. The proponents say the plan saves money, but in reality it will cost $150 billion a year. It simply must baffle people that this reform is being pitched as getting health care costs under control, but it will increase the deficit by an estimated $150 billion per year over the next ten years. How does that add up? Actually, the head of the Congressional Budget Office (a Democrat) believes the negative impact will be higher. History tells us costs are underestimated at the inception of almost every new government program. When politicians state they are going to control costs by rooting out waste and fraud, you must begin to worry.

3. The proposed bill is 1018 pages. I just finished Ron Chernow’s book on Alexander Hamilton that was close to an 800 pages. It was challenging to read, but comprehensible. Take this book and put it in the terminology that was used in Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and you have the bill approved by the House Committee. This is over a thousand pages of legalese that would definitely challenge almost all who read it -- if anyone would actually commit to do so. In his press conference this past week our President stated this was not about politics. How can a bill over 1,000 pages not be about politics? At the beginning of the press conference he listed goals for the reform of health care. Since almost none of those goals are in the existing bill, Mr. Obama clearly has not read this behemoth either.

Combine these three factors; it will cost us a tremendous amount of money to cover only a relatively small portion of the uninsured in a bill that very few if any comprehend. The average American begins to ask why we are doing this. The answer can only be one thing: the current leaders want to take over the health care system.

The people who are attempting to ram this albatross down our throats have little clue of our circumstances. Most of the drafters have never been an employer or even an employee. They are government wonks who crave power and think they know better than the rest of us. For example, Henry Waxman has spent virtually his entire career as a U.S. Congressman and State Assemblyman. He has had superior government-provided health insurance with little cost to him and thus no concerns. Yet he feels he is eminently qualified to draft and dictate a policy on this issue. In the Senate, Ted Kennedy who has no sense of the struggles of the common man is the main designer of their bill.

Our President asserts his desire to improve the health care system, but why has he allowed Congress to draft such a monstrosity? He may earnestly wish to improve the system, but the evidence stands against him. He can dance around the issue all he wants to, but common sense says this is a naked power grab.

For those who doubt this to be true, please refer to the July 15th editorial in Investor’s Business Daily which speaks to their reading of the bill. It only took them to page 16 to find a clause that would outlaw anyone from taking on a new private policy once the public option is established thus forcing everyone into government-run health care. Anyone can guess what the remainder of the bill will hold for us.

There is a group of people in Congress who are convinced that our health care should be run through the federal government. They have believed this for years and have been waiting for the right majority in Congress and the right person in the White House to enact this legislation. They have ached for this moment. If they are able to capitalize on the moment, we will never be able to turn back the clock.

Certainly since the time of the Truman Administration and maybe FDR Administration the Democrats have been attempting to nationalize health care. Until this time they have succeeded in having 50% of health care dollars running through government hands. This is an attempt in one bold stroke to move the other 50% under government control.

I am convinced however that the average American will see through this charade for what it is and make sure the reasonable members of our Congress put a knife in the heart of this ill-conceived plan. People understand that should this pass, they will get inferior care at a higher cost while the designers of this plan will get superior care at no cost at all to them.

Do not mistake the fact that real reforms are not necessary to help control the costs we all bear. Republicans have made suggestions for real reform among them portability, interstate insurance sales and tort reform. Effective health insurance reform can be crafted. It is just that this current reform will not provide the needed result.

As my business colleague said, Communism is great if you make the laws and control the money. Unfortunately, you and I are going to be waiting in line while the people who stuck us with this will be getting their doctors making house calls.

Is There a Co-Pay with Forced Abortion?

Is There a Co-Pay with Forced Abortion?
Matt Barber
Monday, July 27, 2009

The president has more "czars" running around than Mother Russia. It's mondo bizarro. Kind of fitting, though; must be a communist thing.

Still, as the debate over Obama's multi-trillion dollar pet experiment in socialized health care reaches terminal velocity, one of his newest czars underscores – in permanent marker – the true depth of BHO's deep-seated radicalism. His choice of Harvard professor and self-styled "neo-Malthusian" John Holdren as "science czar" provides the latest and perhaps most troubling example of just how bad America really muffed it last November. It could give us a sneak-peak into the not-so-distant future should this Obamacare-health-scare become reality.

In the name of population control, Holdren has advocated both forced abortion and compulsory sterilization through government-administered tainting of the water supply. In a book he co-authored, entitled "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," Holdren calls for a "Planetary Regime" to enforce mandatory abortions and limit the use of natural resources.

He writes: "There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated. It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society."

Holdren further suggests that since "[a]dding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control," such an approach would have to "meet some rather stiff requirements; … be uniformly effective; … free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects;" and pass both PETA and AARP muster by having "no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock."

Czar Holdren further postulates that "a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable. The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits."

He concludes that "sterilizing women after their second or third child" may be more practical than sterilizing men, and proposes a "long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin" at puberty and then "might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.

"Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?" he asks, suggesting "that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution. [N]either the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce," observes the learned professor.

OK, so, by any reasonable standard this guy's an off-the-rails, helmet-for-his-own-safety, bona fide barking Moonbat. He makes Ward Churchill look like William F. Buckley. He's piggy Napoleon from Orwell's "Animal Farm" personified.

But that's not what's so unsettling. There are plenty of nuts in the world. In fact, Harvard alone accounts for a significant percentage of them. What's utterly horrifying is that our president – the leader of the free world – would even think, if only for a moment, "Hey, I just gotta have that Planetary Regime guy in my administration!" That says a lot more about him than it does Herr Holdren. Indeed "birds of a feather flock together," and these perching political pigeons look down upon our unique American freedoms only to see a newly washed windshield.

Obama's über-extremism continues to astound. The mainstream media can't cover it up much longer, and they're finally starting to get that. As the left pushes this monolithic socialized health care scheme (imagine going to the DMV for your emergency appendectomy), the American people are slowly beginning to grasp the radical nature of the minds and philosophies behind it.

I'm not saying that forced abortion and compulsory sterilization are an express part of Obamacare … yet. But once again, look who's baking. They've already mixed the batter, we've licked the spoon and it tastes like … well, see for yourself:

First, it provides a federal bailout for Planned Parenthood and the rest of the multi-billion dollar abortion industry through taxpayer funded abortion on demand; ostensibly to include reanimation of the horrific and currently banned practice of partial-birth abortion.

The bill requires – as Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski admitted – "any service deemed medically necessary or medically appropriate." This means that – with a loaded IRS to your head – you, me and every other taxpayer gets to be a moral codefendant in abortion homicide. Isn't "having the right to choose" wonderful?

Secondly, and as Obama has fundamentally admitted, it will, undeniably, necessitate "Animal Farm" style health care rationing for the elderly and infirm. Don't forget: "Some animals are more equal than others." Or as Obama put it, Grandma may have to forgo "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care. … Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller." (Got that? Sorry, Granny, you're 66 years old – no kidney transplant for you. Here's some morphine, now go lie down and die.)

But if all that's not enough, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee's official summary of the bill additionally authorizes a CDC-funded "Community Preventive Services Task Force … to improve immunization coverage of children, adolescents, and adults … through the use of evidence-based interventions," up to and including, "home visits."

Mom, Dad – decided against a potentially deadly Gardasil injection for your fourth-grade tween? Well, get ready for that needle-ready knock at your door from the government vaccination "task force." It's time for your "evidence-based intervention." I wonder: Do jackboots go well with scrubs?

So let's recap: We have taxpayer-funded abortion, health care rationing for the elderly and infirm, and vaccination interventions in your living room. I fit all that into one sentence. Obamacare is nearly 1,100 pages long, and even the president hasn't read it. I see no evidence anyone has.

But half the fun is in finding out what other gems it holds. Forced abortion? Compulsory sterilization? Well, maybe not yet, but is it really that much of a stretch? We already know it's on Holdren's Christmas list.

Suppose Obama's feeling jolly?

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Health care is also about values

Health care is also about values
Star Parker
Monday, July 27, 2009

"America, America, God shed His grace on thee."

Many demoralized souls felt over recent months that this famous appeal in "America the Beautiful" had been falling on deaf ears.

But we've had a miracle. The socialized medicine freight train, chugging down the track with seeming insurmountable inevitability, has been, for the moment, derailed.

And, miraculously, the derailment has occurred because of values as well as economics.

Conservative Democrats have parted company with their liberal colleagues because the health care legislation in process will bust our federal budget and deliver new federal abortion funding.

Subsidized health care delivered through a proposed government insurance plan would inevitably mean abortion funding in the standard benefits package. The only way around this would be explicit language to prohibit it.

Attempts by Republicans in three House committees to insert such language were defeated, despite a handful of conservative Democrats joining them.

Now a broad coalition of pro-life organizations has initiated a campaign to fight any health care legislation permitting new government abortion funding.

President Obama has called this an attempt to "micromanage" health care benefits. Planned Parenthood has echoed these sentiments.

Is the concern of these pro-life groups legitimate? You bet it is.

Pro-abortion forces have been forever calling abortion health care. Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, defines its business as providing "reproductive health care."

Or consider our president's thinking.

Then Senator Obama stated his disagreement with the Supreme Court decision banning partial birth abortion because it "departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women."

Partial birth abortion is a procedure in which a doctor kills an infant near birth by smashing its skull and sucking out its brains. The Supreme Court acted in 2007, thank God, to make this illegal. The decision permits the procedure if the life of the mother is danger.

Yet this is unacceptable to our president. He wants vaguely defined health considerations, beyond the question of the life of the mother, to permit what is essentially murder.

For pro-aborts, murder, if the victim is an unborn child at any stage of development, is health care.

So, yes, we can be sure that, without specific prohibiting language, legislation that directs new federal funding to individuals for health care will cover abortions.

There is particular irony that Obama and others championing health care reform insist that it's unrelated to abortion concerns.

We hear a lot of talk about eliminating waste and having more preventative health care. But the most powerful health care initiative we could get is the last thing they will propose: Traditional family values. The same values undermined by the liberal abortion regime and moral relativism they promote.

A wide array of studies shows married individuals physically and mentally healthier than singles.

Among the 47 million uninsured that we hear so much about, two thirds are unmarried.

And, according to a recent study on the uninsured published by the Employment Policies Institute, "lack of health insurance is not likely to be the major factor causing higher mortality rates among the uninsured." The higher mortality rates tie more closely to behavior that leads to poverty, such as poor education and dysfunctional lifestyles.

Let's capitalize on the miracle that has occurred with a truth initiative about our health care crisis.

New government bean counters, programs, taxes, spending, and subsidies are not the answer.

For those currently on private plans, we need less, not more government. More competition and health savings accounts.

For the uninsured, break the cycle of poverty with school choice and rebuilding families in poor communities.

Health care is not about bureaucrats but about individual human behavior. We should be talking about a culture of life and the traditional values that sustain it.

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Why Aren't Americans Obeying Obama?

Why Aren't Americans Obeying Obama?
Austin Hill
Sunday, July 26, 2009

Why are Americans disobeying President Obama?

Because in the United States, most adults don’t think of themselves as helpless children, and we don’t regard out President as one to be “obeyed.”

We entrust tremendous power to our President (although that power is not ultimate or without limits). We may admire, esteem, respect, and place our hopes in the office of the President, if not the occupant of the office. And we “follow” our President, however willingly or unwillingly, as he leads the nation over the course of time.

But we don’t “obey.” In The United States, our President is one of us. So why is President Obama seemingly so indignant that Americans have dared to question, doubt, and even disagree with his plans to take-over the American medical profession, and the American healthcare industry?

I’m not merely observing that Obama is arrogant - there’s nothing new about big ego’s in the White House. Even our second President, John Adams, thought he was such an obvious choice for the Presidency that he didn’t even campaign during his re-election bid, and was outraged when Thomas Jefferson un-seated him.

But in roughly seven months, President Barack Obama has demonstrated an unquenchable need to control the lives of private citizens, and the workings of private sector society, and his indignation is aimed at those who would question this. Two American car companies, multiple banks and financial institutions, the rates of salaries paid to business executives, the entire American medical profession and health care industry, even content on the internet - - Obama will control it all. He knows best in all circumstances, and our role is to simply comply.

Perhaps President Obama’s quest for control has something to do with his upbringing and family lineage. He likes to point out how important it is that he has lived overseas, how he understands the horrible ways in which Americans are perceived abroad (especially within the Muslim world), and how he is able to transcend our narrow, American points of view. But could it be that, despite his diverse, multicultural perspective, President Obama lacks a distinctly American perspective that is common among the several hundred million of us imperfect, limited, narrow people who actually grew up here? Could it be that President Obama perceives the very office that he occupies as being something different than what so many of us slow-thinking Americans perceive it to be?

Although our President barely knew the man, his father Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was, nonetheless a communist in the government of Kenya. The President’s Dad once theorized that it would be fine for the government to tax the wealthiest citizens in his country at a rate of 100%, so long as the “greater good” was served. Mr. Obama was eventually fired from his job in the Kenyan government, largely because Kenya was in the process of privatizing its economy, and he was severely out-of-step with his associates. But his ideas were nonetheless his, and Mr. Obama had a clear preference for the heavy hand of government, over the allegedly “greedy,” “selfish” tendencies of business owners.

In my previous writings about this matter, readers have been quick to tell me how rude, insensitive, and “racist” I am. But how many American Presidents, how many American citizens, have come from this kind of legacy? If one’s personal heritage has any impact on one’s present-day existence, surely President Obama’s family heritage of communism has, in some fashion, informed his view of the world today.

And what about our President’s early upbringing? It certainly contrasts sharply with mine. During my first through fourth grade years in an American public school, I experienced President Richard Nixon win re-election in a landslide, Vice President Spiro Agnew resign in scandal, Gerald Ford appointed to the Vice Presidency as Agnew’s replacement, Richard Nixon resign in scandal, and Gerald Ford ascend to the Presidency. They were tumultuous times. Yet those transitions of power happened peaceably, without gunfire or military engagement, and all according the United States Constitution.

But President Obama spent ages 6-10 in Indonesia, under the Presidency of Suharto, the second President of Indonesia who clung to power for over thirty years (1967-1998). Suharto was an anti-communist, and definitely a friend to the West during the Cold War. Nonetheless, Suharto built a strong, centralized, militaristic government around himself, and fought-off multiple coup attempts from the Indonesian Communist Party. Suffice it to say that the young Barack Obama spent some early and formative years in an environment where communism was alive and well. Might his perspective on the world be a bit different from yours or mine?

Americans will probably never “obey” President Obama the way he might like us to. The real question is whether Congress will simply “obey” the President - or provide a “balance” to his quest for power.

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

This is the Dawning of the Age of Nefarious

This is the Dawning of the Age of Nefarious
Doug Giles
Saturday, July 25, 2009

Did anybody else notice feces fumes coming off Obama’s head during his last presser? I think after that methane emission Obama owes Al Gore a few grand for carbon offsets. This guy has taken lies, hype and spin to an all-new human level. I hear Beelzebub is jealous.

Watching Barack work his voodoo last Wednesday was like watching Michael Jordan airwalk, or Michael Jackson moonwalk, or Gary Busey simply walk. Or maybe it was like watching Rosie O’Donnell devour a five-gallon bucket of bacon grease sprinkled with lizards and broken eggshells in 30 seconds flat.

It was truly amazing to behold B-HO lie his mocha-chino off to America about his Health Care Reform Bill or Health Insurance Reform Thing-a-ma-jig or whatever the heck it’s called now. His ability to misrepresent like that must stem from his Muslim upbringing; y’know, the whole “end justifies the means” mantra.

So, where did Barack bend the truth a skooch? Well, Spanky, I’m glad you asked. According to AP News it was stuff like the following:

1. Obama – “(this bill) will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you're happy with it.”

That sounds cool, except of course in this legislation, a commission appointed by the government would determine what is and isn't covered by insurance plans offered in a new purchasing pool, including a plan sponsored by the government. The bill also holds out the possibility that, over time, those standards could be imposed on all private insurance plans—not just the ones in the pool.

2. Obama – “You haven't seen me out there blaming the Republicans.”

Except, of course, in his first breath when he was bashing Jim DeMint. He said something like, “I've heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it's better politics to ‘go for the kill.’ Another Republican senator said that defeating health reform is about ‘breaking’ me.”

3. Obama – “I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it.”

That’s nice of him, ain’t it? The president has said repeatedly that he wants “deficit-neutral” health care legislation, meaning that every dollar increase in cost is met with a dollar of new revenue or a dollar of savings.

But some things are more neutral than others. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag told reporters this week that the promise does not apply to proposed spending of about $245 billion over the next decade to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients. Democrats and the Obama administration argue that the extra payment, designed to prevent a scheduled cut of about 21 percent in doctor fees, already was part of the administration's policy, with or without a health care overhaul.

Beyond that, budget experts have warned about various accounting gimmicks that can mask true burdens on the deficit. The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget lists a variety of them, including back-loading the heaviest costs at the end of the 10-year period and beyond.

4. Obama – “I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”

The facts are in dispute between black scholar Henry “Yo Mama” Louis Gates, Jr. and the white police sergeant who arrested him at his Cambridge, Mass. home when officers went there to investigate a reported break-in. But this much is clear: Gates wasn't arrested for being in his own home, as Obama implies, but for allegedly being belligerent when the sergeant demanded his identification. The president did mention that the professor was charged with disorderly conduct. Charges were dropped.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright would be so proud of his former disciple. Now, if that spin didn’t win you, never fear! He tried to lure you in with illustrations from the Matrix, red pill/blue pill, and if that didn’t work he said the planets were aligning in recognition of his divine bill.

Planets are aligning? WTH? Is the moon in the Seventh House? Is Jupiter aligning with Mars? Is this the dawning of the Age of Aquarius? Perhaps for some, but for this freedom-loving, finger-flying redneck it seems more like the age of nefarious vs. Aquarius because of the way Obama is dividing, lying, socializing and looting America. Even the democrats are beginning to see it!

Being the sensitive guy that I am, sometimes I can’t express how I truly feel about Obamaland without writing a song. Here’s my take on what I believe is happening to the good old USA.

The Age of Nefarious (to be sung to the tune of the Age of Aquarius).

When the moonbats are in the White House

And Deceiver is appointing czars
Then thieves will steal our nation
and socialism will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of Nefarious
The age of Nefarious
Nefarious!
Nefarious!

Disharmony and reparations
Blame shifting and spin abounding
No more transparency or integrity
Golden septic streams of drivel
Mystic liberal machinations
And the mind’s true incarceration
Nefarious!
Nefarious!

When the moonbats are in the White House

And Deceiver is appointing czars
Then thieves will steal our nation
and socialism will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of Nefarious
The age of Nefarious
Nefarious!
Nefarious!

Let the Thugs slime in.

Let the Thugs slime in.

The Thugs slime in.


Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

The Case Against Mortarboarding

The Case Against Mortarboarding
Burt Prelutsky
Friday, July 24, 2009

I have received a number of e-mails over the years from disgruntled parents griping about the left-wing indoctrination their kids are forced to undergo at colleges and universities all over America. One minute, it seems the kids are sane, or at least as sane as one can expect of 18-year-olds, and the next thing you know they’re parroting the likes of Ward Churchill, William Ayers and Noam Chomsky, bad-mouthing America and yodeling the praises of such left-wing troglodytes as Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers and Barack Obama.

I feel their frustration. Even if the little nincompoops can’t do long division or write a coherent sentence, parents feel like child abusers if they don’t pony up the dough to send their kids off for what is laughingly referred to as higher education.

If I were running things, most high school grads would enter trade schools. America will always need nurses, plumbers, carpenters, glaziers and mechanics. What nobody needs is some 21-year-old schnook who’s wasted four years and most of his inheritance majoring in black, Hispanic or lesbian studies. And then, to make matters worse, because like the Scarecrow of Oz, they have a sheepskin, they’re actually convinced they’re smarter than their parents.

One of my readers, Penny Alfonso, of Glendale, California, shared a conversation she had with her daughter. “I told her I won’t pay the tuition for any classes that end in the word “studies”. I have also told her that while I have no right to tell her how to think, if she comes home hating America and spewing the lies of the leftists, I will tell her I love her, and that she has the right to believe whatever she wants to believe, but I don’t have to pay for it. In the 20 years of her life, if she’s learned nothing else, she has learned that I am completely serious about this.”

If more parents adopted this attitude, the state of education would improve in a hurry. The lefty professors want to mold young minds, but the administrators just want your money. So use your clout where it counts. Adopt Mrs. Alfonso’s declaration as a Bill of Parental Rights.

Of course, the other thing I would promote is an end to the tenure system. The original idea behind it was to protect professors from being fired because of their unpopular political beliefs, but in 2009, conservatives aren’t hired in the first place, so the only people whose jobs come with a lifetime guarantee are those addlebrained morons, safely ensconced in the Humanities, espousing liberal claptrap.

Somebody recently took me to task for referring to Michael Jackson as a pedophile. This yutz pointed out that Jackson had never been convicted in a court of law, as if that proved anything. The fact remains that the King of Pap had paid out millions of dollars in hush money to keep a case from going to trial. And, by his own admission, he admitted he enjoyed sleeping with young boys. Where I come from, if it waddles, swims and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.

Whenever people use that court of law argument to make a point, I know they’re desperate. Heck, O.J. Simpson and Al Capone were never convicted of murder, and Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Idi Amin and Kim Jong-il, have never even been convicted of jay-walking.

Something else I always find irksome is when Obama’s liberal groupies, along with a few conservative commentators, deny that the President is a left-wing ideologue. All of his schemes, from gobbling up car companies and banks to nationalizing health care and redistributing wealth, show his true colors. As I say, if it waddles, swims and quacks like a duck, feel free to pop it in the oven and serve it with string beans and sweet potatoes at Christmas.


Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Just as Intended

Just as Intended
Dan Kennedy
Thursday, July 23, 2009

Twice in the past week or so President Obama has insisted that his $780 billion-and-then-some stimulus package is working “as intended” and “as anticipated.”

Apologists and defenders in his administration and in the media scurried to give him cover on this. Were it not for the stimulus, they insisted, things would be even worse. Since no one can point out any way in which it’s made things better, that’s the only argument they have. I can only imagine if an unpopular-with-the-media Republican (pardon the redundancy) was presiding over this mounting mess and claiming he’d intended it.

His words were very carefully chosen, so we should assume he meant them. It seems to me that leaves open only four possible conclusions, and I’m very curious which of the four those who voted for the President are willing to own. So please forward this column to any Obama supporters you know.

Option #1: He’s an ignoramus or a lunatic. Massive and still climbing unemployment, a deepening credit freeze, an impending commercial real estate crash that will bring banks to their knees a second time (CIT is the precursor), small businesses slashing jobs or closing altogether at blinding speed … if any of this was anticipated, he’d have to be a moron or a loon to proceed with his plans.

Option #2: He's a liar. He's back-pedaling now, claiming his was a 2-year plan all along, but that's not how he sold it. He was either lying then or he's lying now. Personally, I wouldn't want to be claiming I intended to create trillions of new deficits and debts, take over entire companies, create a gang of czars to usurp federal agencies' and Congress' power and be well on my way to doubling unemployment. His other choice is to admit he lied like a dog when selling this spending spree and power grab.

Option #3: He's up to something very, very sinister: actually intending all this destruction and devastation and more, as means of grabbing more and more control of more and more of the economy, drying up all private capital and killing as many private sector jobs as possible, in order to make virtually every citizen and every business dependent on the government. If this is his game plan, then he does have the right to sit there and smugly insist everything's going according to plan. And I guess he is to be congratulated by ... somebody.

Option #4: Some combination of some or all of the above.

Whichever option is true, it’s inarguable he’s dangerous.

Now he’s pushing for blinding-speed passage of hilariously labeled health care reform. In its House Bill form, over 1,100 pages of fine print creating a gigantic bureaucracy nobody understands, with an admitted cost of a trillion dollars. (Please don’t tell him there’s a number bigger than trillion.)

His lie is that it will be revenue neutral, a lie so blatant and outrageous no one believes it and no one can defend it. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Rebellious certainly couldn’t, under insistent questioning from the hardly-tough-as-nails David Gregory on “Meet the Press” this past Sunday.

If health care reform winds up working as well as his stimulus plan, he’ll be telling y’all it’s humming along as intended while hospitals close, doctors quit en-masse, insurance companies file bankruptcy and line up for bail-outs, and your access to Band-Aids and cotton balls is rationed. And unemployment tops the projection I’ve been making for a year of 16 percent, and leaps past the Great Depression high of 25 percent.

Why? Because the tax-the-rich schemes that purport to pay a big chunk of this cost are historically proven to freeze job creation, put even more private capital on the sidelines, roll back spending and slash charitable giving. If enacted in any semblance of the House’s package he has pushed, it will be the cement block that breaks the camel’s back. It may be that you’ll have some sort of guaranteed health care, but you’ll be out of a job, you’ll be taxed 67 ways from Sunday, and your dollar’ll be worth bupkus at the store.

Let’s see … Medicare, riddled with fraud, buried in losses, zipping towards bankruptcy. If all this money can be saved by the Amazing Ozbama’s computerization and efficiency, why not prove it there first, before gambling a trillion? Amtrak broke. Post Office, broke. Social Security, a Ponzi scheme worse than Madoff’s. Exactly what is the government running without racking up monster-sized inefficiencies and losses? Answer: nothing. The idea that this will be different is a lie.

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

I VOTE FOR OPTION #4 - THERE IS NO DOUBT IN MY MIND!

Ghoulish Science Plus Obamacare Equals Health Hazard

Ghoulish Science Plus Obamacare Equals Health Hazard
Michelle Malkin
Friday, July 24, 2009

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tried to reassure citizens in New Orleans this week that Obamacare bureaucrats will make sound medical decisions for all Americans. She failed. Under the government-run plan, she promised, a team of health care experts will recommend what should be covered: "I think it would be wise to let science guide what the best health care package is."

Gulp. It's the Obama administration's view of sound "science" that should send chills down patients' spines. Case in point: The president's prestigious science czar, John Holdren, refuses to answer questions about his radical published work on population control over the last 30 years.

Last week, I called the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to press Holdren on his views about forced abortions and mass sterilizations; his purported disavowal of "Ecoscience," the 1977 book he co-authored with population control zealots Paul and Anne Ehrlich; and his continued embrace of forced-abortion advocate and eugenics guru Harrison Brown, whom he credits with inspiring him to become a scientist.

After investigative bloggers and this column reprinted extensive excerpts from "Ecoscience," which mused openly about putting sterilants in the water supply to make women infertile and engineering society by taking away babies from undesirables and subjecting them to government-mandated abortions, the White House issued a statement from Holdren last week denying he embraced those proposals. The Ehrlichs challenged critics to read their and Holdren's more recent research and works.

Well, I did read one of Holdren's recent works. It revealed his clingy reverence for, and allegiance to, the gurus of population control authoritarianism. He's just gotten smarter about cloaking it behind global warming hysteria. In 2007, he addressed the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference. Holdren served as AAAS president; the organization posted his full slide presentation on its website.

In the opening slide, Holdren admitted that his "preoccupation" with apocalyptic matters such as "the rates at which people breed" was a lifelong obsession spurred by Harrison Brown's work. Holdren heaped praise on Brown's half-century-old book, "The Challenge of Man's Future," and then proceeded to paint doom-and-gloom scenarios requiring drastic government interventions to control climate change.

Who is Harrison Brown? He was a "distinguished member" of the International Eugenics Society whom Holdren later worked with on a book about -- you guessed it -- world population and fertility. Brown advocated the same population control-freak measures Holdren put forth in "Ecoscience." In "The Challenge of Man's Future," Brown envisioned a regime in which the "number of abortions and artificial inseminations permitted in a given year would be determined completely by the difference between the number of deaths and the number of births in the year previous."

Brown exhorted readers to accept that "we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that artificial means must be applied to limit birth rates." If we don't, Brown warned, we will face a planet "with a writhing mass of human beings." He likened the global population to a "pulsating mass of maggots."

When I pressed Holdren's office specifically about his relationship with Brown, spokesman Rick Weiss told me he didn't know who Brown was and balked at drawing any conclusions about Holdren's views based on his homage just two years ago to his lifelong mentor, colleague and continued inspiration, Harrison Brown.

Weiss lectured me rather snippily about the need for responsible journalism (he was a Washington Post reporter for 15 years). He then told me not to expect any response from Holdren's office to my question on whether Holdren disavows his relationship with a eugenics enthusiast who referred to the world population as a "pulsating mass of maggots" and championed a scheme of abortion and artificial insemination quotas. To date the office has maintained radio silence.

If this is the kind of ghoulish "science" that guides the White House, we can only hope that Obamacare is dead on arrival.


Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Magician Politics

Magician Politics
Thomas Sowell
Thursday, July 23, 2009

Distracting the audience's attention is one of the ways magicians pull off some of their tricks. President Barack Obama's televised news conference on medical care shows that he is something of a magician when it comes to politics.

The big trick for the president is to convince the public that he can add tens of millions of people to his government medical care plan without raising the costs. But an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office showed that Obamacare would in fact raise the costs and increase the deficit by billions of dollars.

With both common sense and economic analysis saying that Obama cannot expand government medical care without expanding the already runaway federal deficit, it is quite a trick to get the public to believe otherwise-- a big challenge requiring big distractions.

One of those distractions has been to blame current high costs on scapegoats whom the president can rein in. Talking about the high pay of the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies is one of those distractions.

In an industry where developing just one new pharmaceutical drug can cost a billion dollars, whether the head of a mega-billion-dollar pharmaceutical company is paid a million dollars a year, 20 million dollars or works free of charge is not likely to raise or lower the cost of the medicine you buy by one dollar.

But, if making the CEO's pay an issue can distract your attention from the impossible math used by Barack Obama and his supporters, then that is a trick worthy of Houdini.

Insurance companies are another distraction and a scapegoat because they do not insure "pre-existing conditions." Stop and think about it: If you could wait until you got sick to take out health insurance, why would you buy that insurance while you are well?

You could avoid paying all those premiums and then-- after you got sick-- take out health insurance and let the premiums paid by other people pay for your medical treatment.

That is not "bringing down the cost of health care." It is sticking somebody else with paying those costs. So is taxing "the rich." So is passing on those costs to your children and grandchildren through government deficit spending.

When Obama makes the insurance companies the villains for not insuring pre-existing conditions, that gives him another distraction and enables him to be another escape artist, like Houdini.

What is the point of government-controlled medical care if it is not going to lower costs but just shuffle them around, like a shell game?

The government does not have some magic wand that can "bring down the cost of health care." It can buy a smaller quantity or lower quality of medical care, as other countries with government-run medical care do.

It can decide not to spend as much money on the elderly as is being spent now. That can save a lot of money-- if you think having a parent die earlier is a bargain.

The idea of a "duty to die" has been making some headway in recent years around the fringes of the left. It is perfectly consistent with the fundamental notion of the left, that decisions should be transferred from ordinary citizens to government elites.

Liberals don't have to advocate it. But, once you have bureaucrats empowered to decide what treatments you can and cannot get, they may well decide that money spent keeping some 75-year-old grandmother alive for a couple of more years could be better spent politically by enabling ten younger people to have acupuncture or visit a shrink.

Even if her children or grandchildren are willing to spend their own money to keep grandma alive, when bureaucrats control the necessary technology or medication they may decide that it is not for sale.

Those pushing for government-controlled medical care say that you can keep your doctor. But bureaucrats in Washington will decide whether what your doctor prescribes will be allowed. Talking about your doctor is another distraction from the crucial question of who will actually have the power to decide, which can be the power of life and death.


Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Arrogance

Arrogance
John Stossel
Wednesday, July 22, 2009

It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August.

Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system".

Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system.

Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based on subjective value judgments and personal information as they delicately balance their interests, needs and wants. Who is in a better position than they to tailor those choices to best serve their purposes? Yet the politicians believe they can plan the medical market the way you plan a birthday party.

Leave aside how much power the state would have to exercise over us to run the medical system. Suffice it say that if government attempts to control our total medical spending, sooner or later, it will have to control us.

Also leave aside the inevitable huge cost of any such program. The administration estimates $1.5 trillion over 10 years with no increase in the deficit. But no one should take that seriously. When it comes to projecting future costs, these guys may as well be reading chicken entrails. In 1965, hospitalization coverage under Medicare was projected to cost $9 billion by 1990. The actual price tag was $66 billion.

The sober Congressional Budget Office debunked the reformers' cost projections. Trust us, Obama says. "At the end of the day, we'll have significant cost controls," presidential adviser David Axelrod said. Give me a break.

Now focus on the spectacle of that handful of men and women daring to think they can design the medical marketplace. They would empower an even smaller group to determine -- for millions of diverse Americans -- which medical treatments are worthy and at what price.

How do these arrogant, presumptuous politicians believe they can know enough to plan for the rest of us? Who do they think they are? Under cover of helping uninsured people get medical care, they live out their megalomaniacal social-engineering fantasies -- putting our physical and economic health at risk in the process.

Will the American people say "Enough!"?

I fear not, based on the comments on my blog. When I argued last week that medical insurance makes people indifferent to costs, I got comments like: "I guess the 47 million people who don't have health care should just die, right, John?" "You will always be a shill for corporate America."

Like the politicians, most people are oblivious to F.A. Hayek's insight that the critical information needed to run an economy -- or even 15 percent of one -- doesn't exist in any one place where it is accessible to central planners. Instead, it is scattered piecemeal among millions of people. All those people put together are far wiser and better informed than Congress could ever be. Only markets -- private property, free exchange and the price system -- can put this knowledge at the disposal of entrepreneurs and consumers, ensuring the system will serve the people and not just the political class.

This is no less true for medical care than for food, clothing and shelter. It is profit-seeking entrepreneurship that gave us birth control pills, robot limbs, Lasik surgery and so many other good things that make our lives longer and more pain free.

To the extent the politicians ignore this, they are the enemy of our well-being. The belief that they can take care of us is rank superstition.

Who will save us from these despots? What Adam Smith said about the economic planner applies here, too: The politician who tries to design the medical marketplace would "assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it."

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Take Two Aspirin and Call Me When Your Cancer is At Stage Four

Take Two Aspirin and Call Me When Your Cancer is At Stage Four
Ann Coulter
Wednesday, July 22, 2009

All the problems with the American health care system come from government intervention, so naturally the Democrats' idea for fixing it is more government intervention. This is like trying to sober up by having another drink.

The reason seeing a doctor is already more like going to the DMV, and less like going to the Apple "Genius Bar," is that the government decided health care was too important to be left to the free market. Yes -- the same free market that has produced such a cornucopia of inexpensive goods and services that, today, even poor people have cell phones and flat-screen TVs.

As a result, it's easier to get your computer fixed than your health. Thanks, government!

We already have near-universal health coverage in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' hospitals, emergency rooms and tax-deductible employer-provided health care -- all government creations.

So now, everyone expects doctors to be free. People who pay $200 for a haircut are indignant if it costs more than a $20 co-pay to see a doctor.

The government also "helped" us by mandating that insurance companies cover all sorts of medical services, both ordinary -- which you ought to pay for yourself -- and exotic, such as shrinks, in vitro fertilization and child-development assessments -- which no normal person would voluntarily pay to insure against.

This would be like requiring all car insurance to cover the cost of gasoline, oil and tire changes -- as well as professional car detailing, iPod docks, and leather seats and those neon chaser lights I have all along the underbody of my chopped, lowrider '57 Chevy.

But politicians are more interested in pleasing lobbyists for acupuncturists, midwives and marriage counselors than they are in pleasing recent college graduates who only want to insure against the possibility that they'll be hit by a truck. So politicians at both the state and federal level keep passing boatloads of insurance mandates requiring that all insurance plans cover a raft of non-emergency conditions that are expensive to treat -- but whose practitioners have high-priced lobbyists.

As a result, a young, healthy person has a choice of buying artificially expensive health insurance that, by law, covers a smorgasbord of medical services of no interest to him ... or going uninsured. People who aren't planning on giving birth to a slew of children with restless leg syndrome in the near future forgo insurance -- and then politicians tell us we have a national emergency because some people don't have health insurance.

The whole idea of insurance is to insure against catastrophes: You buy insurance in case your house burns down -- not so you can force other people in your plan to pay for your maid. You buy car insurance in case you're in a major accident, not so everyone in the plan shares the cost of gas.

Just as people use vastly different amounts of gasoline, they also use vastly different amounts of medical care -- especially when an appointment with a highly trained physician costs less than a manicure.

Insurance plans that force everyone in the plan to pay for everyone else's Viagra and anti-anxiety pills are already completely unfair to people who rarely go to the doctor. It's like being forced to share gas bills with a long-haul trucker or a restaurant bill with Michael Moore. On the other hand, it's a great deal for any lonely hypochondriacs in the plan.

Now the Democrats want to force us all into one gigantic national health insurance plan that will cover every real and mythical ailment that has a powerful lobby. But if you have a rare medical condition without a lobbying arm, you'll be out of luck.

Even two decades after the collapse of liberals' beloved Soviet Union, they can't grasp that it's easier and cheaper to obtain any service provided by capitalism than any service provided under socialism.

You don't have to conjure up fantastic visions of how health care would be delivered in this country if we bought it ourselves. Just go to a grocery store or get a manicure. Or think back to when you bought your last muffler, personal trainer, computer and every other product and service available in inexpensive abundance in this capitalist paradise.

Third-party payer schemes are always a disaster -- less service for twice the price! If you want good service at a good price, be sure to be the one holding the credit card. Under "universal health care," no one but government bureaucrats will be allowed to hold the credit card.

Isn't food important? Why not "universal food coverage"? If politicians and employers had guaranteed us "free" food 50 years ago, today Democrats would be wailing about the "food crisis" in America, and you'd be on the phone with your food care provider arguing about whether or not a Reuben sandwich with fries was covered under your plan.

Instead of making health care more like the DMV, how about we make it more like grocery stores? Give the poor and tough cases health stamps and let the rest of us buy health care -- and health insurance -- on the free market.


Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Barocky Road

Barocky Road

In honor of the 44th President of the United States, Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream has introduced a new flavor: " Barocky Road ."

Barocky Road is a blend of half vanilla, half chocolate, and surrounded by nuts and flakes. The vanilla portion of the mix is not openly advertised and usually denied as an ingredient. The nuts and flakes are all very bitter and hard to swallow.

The cost is $100.00 per scoop.

When purchased it will be presented to you in a large beautiful cone, but then the ice cream is taken away and given to the person in line behind you.

You are left with an empty wallet and no change, holding an empty cone with no hope of getting any ice cream.

Are you stimulated?

Americans Are Beginning to Understand the Left

Americans Are Beginning to Understand the Left
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, July 21, 2009

There is only one good thing about the Obama administration's attempts to nationalize most health care and to begin to control Americans' energy consumption through cap-and-trade: clarity about the left. These attempts are enabling more and more Americans to understand the thinking and therefore the danger of the left.

The left has its first president -- with the possible exception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- and for the first time controls the Democratic Party and both houses of Congress. In the name of compassion for the sick and the poor and in the name of preventing worldwide environmental catastrophe, it is attempting to remake America.

In so doing some principles of the left are becoming clearer to more Americans:

Principle One: The left, as distinct from traditional liberals, is not, and has never been, interested in creating wealth. The left is no more interested in creating wealth than Christians are in creating Muslims or Muslims in creating Christians. The left is interested in redistributing wealth, not creating it. The left spends the wealth that private enterprise and entrepreneurial risk-taking individuals create.

The left does not perceive that poverty is the human norm and therefore asks, "Why is there poverty?" instead of asking the economic question that matters: Why is there wealth? And the obvious result of the left's disinterest in why wealth is created is that the left does not know how to create it.

Principle Two: The reason the left asks why there is poverty instead of why there is wealth is that the left's preoccupying ideal is equality -- not economic growth. And those who are preoccupied with equality are more troubled by wealth than by poverty. Ask almost anyone on the left -- not a liberal, but a leftist like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi -- which society they consider more desirable, a society in which all its members were equally lower middle class or one in which some were poor, most were middle class, and some were rich (i.e., America today). And whatever they say, in their hearts, the further left they are the more they would prefer the egalitarian society.

Principle Three: The left everywhere seeks to make as big and powerful a state as possible. It does so because only the state can redistribute society's wealth. And because only a strong and powerful state can impose values on society. The idea of small government, the American ideal since its inception, is the antithesis of the left's ideal.

The cap-and-trade bill's control of American energy and the "ObamaCare" takeover of American health care will mean an unprecedented expansion of the state. Added to increased taxes and the individual becomes less and less significant as the state looms ever larger. Americans will be left to decide little more than what they do with vacation time -- just as Western Europeans do. Other questions are largely left to the state.

Principle Four: The left imposes its values on others whenever possible and to the extent possible. That is why virtually every totalitarian regime in the 20th century was left-wing. Inherent to all left-wing thought is a totalitarian temptation. People on the left know that not only are their values morally superior to conservative values, but that they themselves are morally superior to conservatives. Thus, for example, the former head of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, could say in all seriousness, “In contradistinction to the Republicans, we don't think children ought to go to bed hungry at night.”

Therefore, the morally superior have the right, indeed the duty, to impose their values on the rest of us: what light bulbs we use, what cars we drive, what we may ask a prospective employee, how we may discipline our children, and, of course, how much of our earnings we may keep.

It is dishonest to argue that the right wants to impose its values to anywhere near the extent the left does. This can be demonstrated to a fifth-grader: Who wants more power -- those who want to govern a big state or those who want to govern a small state?

The president of the United States and the much of the Democratic Party embody these left-wing principles. Right now, America's only hope of staying American rather than becoming European lies in making these principles as clear as possible to as many Americans as possible. The left is so giddy with power right now, we actually have a chance.

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Knee-Deep (and Getting Deeper)

Knee-Deep (and Getting Deeper)
Cal Thomas
Tuesday, July 21, 2009

"How high's the water, mama?

Two feet high and risin'..."

That old Johnny Cash song is a useful metaphor for an approaching disaster should the Obama administration's "flood" of new programs -- and spending on old ones -- continue.

Obama and his economic team predicted that if Congress failed to pass their "stimulus package," the unemployment rate, at 7.2 percent in the weeks before the president took office, would rise above 8 percent this year and peak at 9 percent in 2010. If Congress passed the stimulus, they said, unemployment would not be as high.

Last week, the Federal Reserve raised its unemployment forecast to a "higher than expected" 10.1 percent and forecast it to remain high through 2011.

The Department of Labor reports that unemployment topped 10 percent in 16 states last month and that Michigan surpassed 15 percent, the first time since 1984 any state has crossed that threshold.

"Three feet high and risin'."

The administration and Congress received more bad news from the Congressional Budget Office. In testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf said: "In the (health care reform) legislation that has been reported, we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs." Elmendorf added, "...the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run ... under any plausible scenario..."

He predicted continuing high debt would "cause substantial harm to the economy."

Utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer proposes a way to save money. In an essay for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Singer, who has said that "killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person" and that euthanizing people whose minds are judged inadequate would allow families to "move on," proposes putting a price tag on lives. Under such a proposal, bureaucrats could deny a kidney or new heart to someone because it costs too much and would not sustain "meaningful" life beyond a certain period.

In an environment that values human life above all other living things, such decisions could be made in ways that sustain that value. But in an increasingly anti-life culture in which babies can be aborted for any reason and as pressure increases for health cost reductions, we'll start with the extreme cases and once the precedent of euthanasia has been established (it will be called something else, of course), then "mercy killing" will proceed, whether it is for the ostensible purpose of ending physical suffering or monetary suffering.

"Four feet high and risin'."

The Obama administration, whose leaders have never run a business or met a payroll, plan to pay for this -- and not even most of it -- by taxing "the rich." Unfortunately, the rich have only so much money and so much patience with having the fruits of their labor taken from them. Investors Business Daily (July 17) debunks the claim of a health care "crisis," noting that 20 million of the 47 million uninsured can afford to buy insurance. "Most of the other 27 million are single and under 35, with as many as a third illegal aliens."

Conservative congressional Democrats, many of whom represent formerly Republican districts, are nervous about more spending and higher taxes. Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, reports that Rep. Bart Stupak, Michigan Democrat, opposes the health care reform bill in its current form and that he and other Blue Dog Democrats, and dissatisfied Republicans, have the votes to kill it.

"Well, the rails are washed out north of town

We gotta head for higher ground

We can't come back till the water comes down,

Five feet high and risin'."


Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Government health care plantation looms

Government health care plantation looms
Star Parker
Monday, July 20, 2009

What is now being billed as health care reform is but the latest chapter in a process I described in an earlier column as "Back on Uncle Sam's Plantation."

Rather than moving dysfunctional America off the welfare state, as we did with welfare reform in 1996, we are now moving the free, functioning, and once prosperous part of our nation onto the welfare state.

Bills out of committees in both the House and the Senate contain all the elements of President Obama's dream to get as many Americans onto the government health care plantation as possible.

We've got creation of the new government run insurance plan that supposedly will create new competition. We've got fines on employers who don't provide insurance and fines on individuals who don't buy it.

And we've got the trillions of dollars in new spending to subsidize insurance purchases for low to middle income Americans and expand Medicaid to get more low income Americans into it.

And, of course, we've got the massive new government bureaucracy to oversee it all.

Obama continues to tell the many millions of Americans currently insured through their employer not to worry, that "If you like your health care plan you can keep that..."

But we know this is a slight of hand. Many employers will gladly pay the fine and purge their employees into the government plan. And how will private plans possibly compete with the government plan when politicians can reach into taxpayer pockets anytime they want to keep on subsidizing it?

The Lewin Group estimates that a hundred twenty million Americans may be driven into the government plan.

And the idea that a government plan will keep, in the words of our president, "insurance companies honest"?

We've already got half the country on government health care through Medicare and Medicaid.

Harvard's Malcom Sparrow, a specialist in health-care fraud, estimates annual Medicare fraud at $85 billion.

The Government Accountability Office estimates Medicaid fraud at around $33 billion annually.

So that's $120 billion a year in government health care fraud! This is who will keep private companies ''honest?''

It defies logic and experience that we will save money and deliver better health care by expanding government control and spending.

Congressional Budget Office head Douglas Elmendorf confirms as such. CBO now estimates this proposed reform will require a trillion dollars in new expenditures and that rather than lowering the "cost curve", "the curve is being raised."

Despite all this, this horrible legislation may pass. Why?

We now have the political reality of decisive Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress and a Democrat president that wants this.

And whereas business fought Hillary care, they are now cooperating. With Democrats decisively running the show, they can buy political support with bribes and threats.

Pharmaceutical firms and insurance firms like the idea of new expanded taxpayer subsidized markets.

And doctors? The American Medical Association initially refused to endorse health care reform that included a government plan.

Now suddenly they are on board. The AMA has come out in support of the House bill with a government plan. What happened? The House agreed to get rid of planned cuts in doctor's Medicare reimbursements.

Halfway into 2009, Americans have turned more control of their lives over to government and politicians than ever before in history.

This proposed health care reform, through subsidies and expansion of Medicaid, would put tens of millions of new Americans on welfare. The result is predictable. Many more citizens with incentives to stay poor and dependent.

The rest of us will transfer a major part of our freedom to manage our own private lives over to bureaucrats.

I'm praying for a miracle that will wake up a slumbering nation.



Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.