Mandates Forever.
Strikingly hasty and insincere remarks (above) by POTUS on the most preliminary and vaguest of healthcare moves by half of the story on the Hill. POTUS says, "... at a price they can afford ..." This is a selling point? We are to examine all 2,733 pages on the Harry Reid-concocted stew of mandates and fixes and evasions in the bill and conclude that it makes healthcare available to small businesses and the uninsured "at a price they can afford"? No, it does not. It mandates that everyone breathing must purchase healthcare or else. Even the unemployed, even the self-employed, even the indifferent. Or else. Mandates forever. More, the bill is not a whole animal. It is a piece of a creature. The other piece of the creature is in the House, and that aspect contains some mighty potent threats about costs and taxes. What both sides of the creature do represent is higher taxes and higher taxes, and those taxes will begin well before anyone whose job was saved by the Stimulus package can line up in a clinic to receive mandated healthcare from collectivized workers about to unionize and strike for higher wages and shorter hours. What "at a price they can afford" means is that you can afford it if you can find it. Like Canada, shortages, rationing and blackmarketeering are the future under the creature called reform. (Also handouts: this bill can be described as an insurance company bail-out.)
Reid-Pelosi Creature.
The lone delusion Rahm Emanuel offers to explain the negatives on the healthcare fiasco is to say that the public will suddenly wake up and approve of the Obama administration again in such numbers that the POTUS rating climbs back to 60%. This is a genuine landmark delusion, and it is passed on by the White House's dutiful scribe, Ben Smith, at Politico. The scale of the prediction tells a deal about the scale of the fear for 2010 in the White House. Polling shows that the Independents oppose the healthcare bill by 57%. This will not improve as we go through conference in January and watch the Democrats alone in the room knit together the Senate and House bill. This is government by one-party fiat. It resembles a dictatorship in uncomfortable ways. John Avlon, DailyBeast.com, told me Sunday 20 that the Indies reject single-party government and very much favor balance and compromise. Only POTUS the other day finds compromise in a bill that is written by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, respectively, and passed by purchasing votes from Democrats in Red States who are fretting about their retirements (such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska).
This parliamentary maneuver by the Dems, if successful (and at this point it sure looks like it will be), will not only kill health care, but will bankrupt the country as well. Additionally, it spells the end of representative government and insures that Marxists (under guise of the banner of an ass) will be in charge of our impoverished landmass forever. No doubt, this has been a great victory for the Left
What the Dems are doing reminds me of any one of the latest Hollywood monster blockbusters in which bigger and bigger guns are brought out to kill the beast: stimulus; health care; cap and trade; immigration...
In this case, the beast is us; we, the American people. I'm not sure why the Left continues to be so unsure of itself. Wasn't the election of Obama enough to knock us out for the count? Apparently, they didn’t think so. We also needed stimulus and healthcare; suffocating taxes; dwindling services...
For some reason the town hall confrontations and the tea parties didn't spawn enough violence for an excuse to call out the troops and put the clamps on broadcasting. Has anybody ever wondered why we have empty prisons sitting out in the middle of nowhere? Is this possibly meant for people who might refuse to buy health insurance, pay their taxes, or send their kids to government schools?
The crackdown hasn't started yet. But when it does, it's good to know that the prisons stand ready. In the meantime, we can put the terrorist there until after their trials are over.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
The healthcare manueverings, especially in the Senate, amount to an object lesson in Chicago/Alinskyite/fascist politics. POTUS gives the major players a choice -- either live with his demonizing "social justice" criticisms or go along to get along and take a seat at the connivance table, but don't take too long to decide, or else . . . As a rule, corporate types haven't got the spine to refuse such a deal. It has worked like a charm with the banks, with two of the three auto companies, and now with the private health insurance companies, although they are obviously slated for eventual extinction, even under the Senate's Blue-Cross-meets-Frankenstein "health exchange" model. So it's up to We the People, as usual, to save what's left of the Republic, and we'd better take back both houses of Congress in 2010 if we have any hope at all of doing so. What really bothers me is that Benito Hoover Obama and his minions don't seem at all worried about this increasingly real possibility. Maybe they know something we don't -- that elections in this country have already been rendered meaningless, or soon will be.
HEALTH CARE IS MAKING ME SICK. LET'S TALK GLOBAL WARMING.
Yesterday, watched part of CNN specials about global warming. One part included an island in the Carteret Islands chain (off New Guinea), which is sinking because it's on a volcano caldera. Calderas are known to sink. Yet, the elder of the tribe, when asked why beaches and fields are being washed away, was sure the answer was global warming. No data was given to support the idea of rising sea levels. Also global warming was mentioned as being responsible for the bleaching and dying of the surrounding coral reefs. Pollution from the island was not even considered as a possibility for this.
This program also had Anderson Cooper in Africa talking to people in the various countries surrounding Lake Chad -- once one of the largest lakes in the world. Everyone in Africa is sure global warming is the causing the lack of rain in the area and, hence, the drying up of the lake. The fact that the lake is used for drinking water (people and animals) and used to irrigate crops in an area of exploding populations is mentioned -- but everyone is brainwashed into believing the real problem is global warming.
No wonder everyone throughout the world wants the US to pay them big bucks: No one is willing to take responsibility for his or her own bad decisions, lack of planning or, even, over population. Global Warming is so much easier to blame. And, of course, by Global Warming I mean the US. Let's blame success. Let's forget about the food the US provides the rest of the world.
I once saw a program about the dying coral reefs in the Caribbean. This program (from Nat Geo or the Discovery Channel) was a lot more scientific than CCN. Imagine that. It showed that the winds carrying sands and, I think, bacteria from the Sahara was responsible for killing the reefs. Perhaps, the people in Africa should pay the people of the Caribbean for destroying their coral reefs as well as for destroying the fish which used to live on the healthy coral reefs. But, maybe this isn't right. Could it be that the US is also responsible for creating the Sahara Desert?
One thing is certain: The coal that China burns today causes pollution throughout the Pacific and the US. One other thing: Paying people in developing countries to stop destroying their own tropical rain forests will never work. We should buy the rain forests and, then, pay people to protect these forests. This is done w/preserves in Africa. It also provides tourism. The lesson of Easter Island is that when the trees are gone civilization surely follows.
According to JB, the modern Democrat Party began w/ a Nebraskan giving the Cross of Gold speech in the 1896 election. The Great Populist Democrat Party of the Great Plains was ended last weekend by another Nebraskan, Ben Nelson. Trust me, you won't find a successful Democrat politician on the Great Plains from Dallas to the Bitterroot Valley. For years, they've been hanging on by their fingernails in the Great Plains w/ characters like Tom Daschle warbling about 'moderating' the Democrats. When Ben Nelson threw in w/ the East Coast and Chicago style shennanigans, he gave the Republicans all they needed to stick a fork in guys like the Kansas 3rd's Dennis Moore. Ya'll ought to be preparing for Senator Tihart. That's what's coming outta Kansas from now on.
Re Mike's review of the news program showing island sinking from "global warming."
A good place to bookmark and refer others to is sealevel-dot-colorado-dot-edu. That will show you the trend, which is 3mm rise per year. Really not very frightening. Maybe it will rise another foot in 100 years, just as it rose a foot in the last 100 years. We can adapt. For goodness' sake, how many feet did the seas rise coming out of the last ice age? (Which, geologically speaking, was not long ago.)
So much alarm, so little perspective.
Eric - Thanks for that info.
FYI: The History Channel had a program about what caused the Great Flood in the Bible. Yes, Global Warming -- though the program didn't say it. It showed that the Black Sea used to be a fresh water lake. The theory presented was that at the end of the last Ice Age, the rising water in the Mediterranean Sea broke the land bridge over the Bosphorus. This, then, caused massive flooding throughout the land surrounding the Black Sea -- about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.
A visual board for a commercial ad:
Chloe is browsing through the Daily Epithet while sipping her morning espresso when a headline and accompanying two paragraph story on page 93D catches her eyes. "Frank! It says here that the American people will absolutely run out of Healthcare by the year 2022. Did our agent tell us this when we signed over the equity in our home to the company in order to renew our policies?"
"Well, Chloe, everyone one knows that there are limits to our resources and just like any other commodity, as it gets scarcer and scarcer the costs go up and when the reserves are finally exhausted, then there won't be anyone who will have it," Frank replies while whisking away at the eggs he's preparing for omelettes.
"I understand how that might be the case for some things, but, when did medical care for people become a resource to be traded and bartered? And a finite one at that?" Chloe asked, perplexed.
"Darling, remember the story of the house fire that was spreading to other houses and the ones that weren't covered were purposely neglected while firefighters concentrated on the insured homes even though the flames were continuing to jump from the insured to the uninsured's? That's when it was first realized that a few uninsured who couldn't afford to buy protection really didn't matter as long as the people who could pay might be made to believe that fire doesn't really spread. Now, everyone has come to realize that no one cares if the neighbors house is burning as long as it doesn't burn theirs down."
"Oh Frank, it's times like these that I am reminded why I love you so much," Chloe sighed in comforting affirmation.
"So, aren't we fortunate to be living in the only house left on the block?" Frank asked. "Now, where's the cheese?"
What Frank and Chloe neglect to mention is that it was the government that went around and set the fires in the first place, so people would require their services.