A J Strata, Strata-sphere.com/blog

 

An interesting thought experiment is to think about Michael Jackson’s treatment under ObamaCare. We know a large group of doctors spent over an hour trying to resuscitate Jackson. Think of all that expense spent on trying to save a drug user. Under ObamaCare it would seem to be a waste of money. Think of how Jackson should be one of those who would be denied care because he partook in a dangerous life style.

 

Think about the world under ObamaCare. And realize Jackson is one of those special people we normal human beings would be subsidizing through our taxes.

 

BTW - I agree with Jonah Goldberg when it comes to Michael Jackson, is ‘icon’ days were over a couple of decades ago. Since then he has clearly been an example for people to avoid, not emulate or cherish. Read article.

Robert Klein Engler, Chronwatch-America.com

 

Until proof of U.S. citizenship is presented beyond a reasonable doubt, it is reasonable to say that Mr. Obama is probably a usurper to the office of President. Yet, for many Americans, this is irrelevant. They believe that holding the office is proof that one is qualified for the office.

 

Even if the Supreme Court declared upon the examination of the evidence that Obama does not meet the Constitution's qualifications to be President, what can be done? The chief justice of the court is not going to the Oval Office with a broom and sweep it clean.

 

The same can be said for many other American institutions. The people have voted. The man is popular. What Constitution? We prefer the thrill up our leg. These are some of the arguments put forward to support the current regime.

 

There is one American institution, however, that has a moral responsibility to support the U.S. Constitution. That institution is the U.S. military. The Constitution is the bedrock upon which military order and discipline is founded. Read article.

Ann Coulter, Human Events.com

 

On Iran, President Obama is worse than Hamlet. He's Colin Powell, waiting to see who wins before picking a side.

 

Last week, massive protests roiled Iran in response to an apparently fraudulent presidential election, in which nutcase Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner within two hours of the polls closing. (ACORN must be involved.)

 

Obama responded by boldly declaring that the difference between the loon Ahmadinejad and his reformist challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, "may not be as great as advertised."

 

Maybe the thousands of dissenters risking their lives protesting on the streets of Tehran are doing so because they liked Mousavi's answer to the "boxers or briefs" question better than Ahmadinejad's.

 

Then, in a manly rebuke to the cheating mullahs, Obama said: "You've seen in Iran some initial reaction from the supreme leader" -- peace be upon him -- "that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."

 

Did FDR give speeches referring to Adolf Hilter as "Herr Fuhrer"? What's with Obama? Read article.

Dick Morris, Vote.com

 

If only President Obama were a third as tough on Iran and North Korea as he is on Republicans, he'd be making progress in containing the dire threats to our national security these rogue nations represent. As it is, the president is letting the perception of weakness cloud his image. Once that particular miasma enshrouds a presidency, it is hard to dissipate.

 

If foreign policy issues actually involve war and the commitment of troops, they can be politically potent. But otherwise, the impact of international affairs on presidential image is largely metaphoric. Since foreign policy is the only area in which the president can govern virtually alone, it provides a window on his personality and use of power that domestic policy cannot.

 

When President Clinton, for example, dithered as Bosnia burned, he acquired a reputation for weakness that dragged down his ratings. It was only after he moved decisively to bomb and then disarm the Serbs that he shed that image. It took President George H.W. Bush's invasion of Iraq to set to rest concerns that he was a "wimp." Jimmy Carter never recovered from the lasting damage to his reputation that his inability to stand up to Iran during the hostage crisis precipitated.

 

So now, as North Korea defies international sanctions and sends arms to Myanmar and Iran slaughters its citizens in the streets, President Obama looks helpless and hapless. He comes across as not having a clue how to handle the crises. Read article.

Sher Zieve, CFP.com

 

Like Socialism, Communism, Fascism and other forms of totalitarian governments, Universal healthcare (for the USA it’s called ObamaCare) has never worked. Where it has been implemented, the quality of healthcare has sunk lower than pond scum and people are actually denied their lives (government decides who will live and who will die) on an almost daily basis. 

 

But, while these despotic governments are in place, the gutting of countries of their resources by an elite few occurs as all freedom and liberty is removed from the respective populations. Obama has now combined his totalitarianism (bear in mind Obama is effectively setting up his shadow government to soon officially replace the US Republic with Czars who now report only to him) and universal healthcare and told us that he will force ObamaCare through in 2009. No dissent from We-the-People will be considered or even allowed.

 

By the way, did you know that in Canada--where universal healthcare is in place--there is actually a pre-waiting list just to get on a doctor’s waiting list? But, then Obama is bound and determined to destroy the US healthcare system--a system that is the envy of the world. Before Obama and the leftist run government USA free enterprise was the envy of the world. 

 

Obama, with his growing number of Czars (again who report ONLY to him), is bound and determined to destroy it. And, as the number of his Czars grow--Dictator Obama need only appoint them--Obama’s power grows and begins to expand exponentially. Soon the Executive Branch of government--with no viable checks and balances from the other 2 branches--will be Supreme. The Legislative and Judicial branches are already close to becoming merely rubber stamps for the dictator who has already begun to defy any and all US Laws he does not like. Read article.

 

Ben Shapiro, Human Events.com

 

President Barack Obama's health care plan, we are told, will spend $1 trillion over the next 10 years. But since trillion is the new billion, Americans aren't supposed to worry about that.

 

Obama's health care plan will cause employers to stop providing private health insurance for millions of employees and instead shift employees to public care. But Obama says that government is the best arbiter of your health, so Americans aren't supposed to worry about that.

 

Obama's health care plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will add only 16 million of the 46 million uninsured to the rolls of the insured. But Obama says that's an improvement, so Americans aren't supposed to worry about that.

 

Here's something we should worry about: Who are the current uninsured for whom all of us are supposed to sacrifice our current health care plans? And should the other 300 million of us turn to government care just to help those 46 million? Read article.

 

Rich Lowry, NRO.com

 

Pres. Barack Obama knows health-care policy. Give him an hour and a half to hold forth, as ABC News obligingly did at a town-hall meeting, and he will invariably impress with his fluidity.

 

This makes it all the more remarkable that he often appears unable to understand how his health-care program threatens private insurance. At a recent press conference, Obama argued that the very notion of it doesn’t compute: “If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best-quality health care, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government — which they say can’t run anything — suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.”

 

This is exceptionally brazen sophistry. Private insurers are at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the federal government because they don’t have the power of the government to dictate prices to doctors and hospitals. That’s what Medicare does, and why it pays less for health services than private insurers.

 

Surely Obama understands the competitive advantage that this confers on the government. If the public option in ObamaCare underpays providers in a similar fashion, it will charge cheaper premiums than private insurance. Employers will dump their employees into the public plan, and a massive “crowding out” will occur. The respected health-care research firm The Lewin Group estimates as many as 119 million people could migrate from private insurance to the government plan, whether Obama considers it logical or not.

 

Since Medicare doesn’t pay hospitals enough to cover costs, they have to make up the expense by charging more to private insurers. According to Lewin, as Medicare hospital payments declined from 95 percent of costs in 2003 to 91 percent of costs in 2007, private-payer rates steadily increased. A massive new government plan that doesn’t pay its own way will augment this cost shift, making private insurance more expensive still and sending ever more people into the arms of the government plan. Read article.

 

L.E. Ikenga, American Thinker.com

 

Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa.

 

Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign "isms", instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.

 

The tropes of America's racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial. Read article.

 

Robert Stacy McCain, Spectator.org

 

Gerald Walpin has quickly become the most famous of the three inspector generals who've left their jobs in recent weeks, exposing what appears to be a pattern of pressure from the Obama administration.

 

In radio and television interviews, the silver-haired 77-year-old former AmeriCorps IG has certainly contradicted insinuations of senility that administration officials made in defending the quit-or-be-fired ultimatum that Walpin said he received on June 11. On Tuesday, Walpin released a letter signed by more than 140 allies -- including a former White House counsel to President Clinton -- attesting that they have never seen him "confused" or "disoriented," as the administration claims he appeared to be at a May 20 meeting.

 

Yet the investigations into President Obama's evident crackdown on IGs -- designated watchdogs who guard against waste, fraud and abuse in federal agencies -- are not about Walpin.

 

Those familiar with the investigations (and yes, that noun is plural) caution against personalizing or politicizing the situation. These sources are especially concerned that inquiries by Republican members of Congress should not be portrayed as a partisan "gotcha" game against the popular new president.

 

Similar words of caution are expressed by some members of the IG community, who note that Walpin had only been watchdogging the Corporation for National and Community Service for two years. An able attorney and certainly not the doddering incompetent that Obama officials portrayed him to be, Walpin hasn't been an IG long enough to have acquired "veteran" status, and some say he had a reputation as "arrogant" or "holier-than-thou."

 

Whatever Walpin's reputation, however, sources familiar with his dismissal believe it was no accident that he was shown the door immediately after getting into a dispute with Eric Holder's Justice Department over a program affiliated with Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, an enthusiastic political ally of Obama. And perhaps the most important fact of the case so far is that the FBI is now investigating an accusation that e-mails relevant to Walpin's work were deleted by Johnson or others. Destroying evidence in a federal investigation is a serious crime, no matter what the other circumstances of the case may be. Read article.

Warner Todd Huston, Publius Forum.com

 

The folks at HealthcareHorseRace.com have discovered an interesting inconsistency with Obama’s June 20 statements on his healthcare bill deadline and that posted in the “official” transcript on the White House website. As far as the White House website is concerned, the goal is to have a bill before the president by October. But in verbal statement reported by several media sources, Obama himself has said December and not October. So, what we have here is a hint that Obama might realize his bill is in major trouble and he is quietly trying to push back the expectations on his self-imposed deadline.

 

During the initial stages of the schedule that Obama was expecting to impose on the healthcare debate, he expected a bill to sign by October. This Fall deadline still appears on the White House policy page in its Briefing Room section where Obama comments are supposedly transcribed for the sake of “transparency.”

 

But, two sources — The Washington Post’s Ceci Connolly and ABC News‘ Chief White House Correspondent Jake Tapper — are reporting Obama’s verbal statement as positing a December deadline instead.

 

Here are the relevant sections of the announcement... Read article.

 

George Will, RCP.com

 

The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the U.S. president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating "green jobs" in "alternative energy" even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1 percent -- more than double the European Union average -- partly because of spending on such jobs?

 

Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report which, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration's green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it.

 

Calzada says Spain's torrential spending -- no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources -- on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada's report concludes that they often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies -- wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation -- sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency -- of capital.

 

And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation -- sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency -- of capital. Read article.

 

Thomas Frank, WSJ.com

 

The reason why those who see economic regulations as akin to tyranny often win policy debates is because they have a fiery argument with visceral appeal. Those who try to sell the virtues of the supervisory state tend to favor the passive voice. They don't do fire. They do law review.

 

The situation ought to be the reverse today. We have just come through the most wrenching financial disaster in decades, brought about in no small part by either the absence of federal regulation or the amazing indifference of the regulators.

 

This is the moment for a ringing reclamation of the regulatory project. President Barack Obama is clearly the sort of man who could do it. But in a white paper his administration released on the subject last week, the bureaucratic mindset prevails.

 

The report uses bland, impersonal explanations for the current crisis. Regulatory agencies were ill-designed, we are told. Their jurisdictions overlapped. They had blind spots. They had been obsolete for years.

 

All of which is true enough.

 

What the report leaves largely unaddressed, however, is the political problem.

 

It was not merely structural problems that led certain regulators to nap through the crisis. The people who filled regulatory jobs in the past administration were asleep at the switch because they were supposed to be. It was as though they had been hired for their extraordinary powers of drowsiness.

 

The reason for that is simple: There are powerful institutions that don't like being regulated. Regulation sometimes cuts into their profits and interferes with their business. So they have used the political process to sabotage, redirect, defund, undo or hijack the regulatory state since the regulatory state was first invented. Read article.

 

Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com

 

Even if the "stimulus" package doesn't seem to be doing much to stimulate the economy, it is certainly stimulating many potential recipients of government money to start lining up at the trough. All you need is something that sounds like a "good thing" and the ability to sell the idea.

 

A perennial "good thing" is education. So it is not surprising that leaders of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities have come out with an assertion that "the U.S. should set a goal of college degrees for at least 55 percent of its young adults by 2025."

 

Nothing is easier in politics than setting some arbitrary goal-- preferably based on numbers-- and go after it, in utter disregard of the costs or the repercussions. That is how we got into the housing boom and bust, by mindlessly pursuing ever-higher statistics of home ownership. The same political game can be played by making ever higher miles per gallon the goal for automobiles, ever more "open space," ever more-- you name it.

 

Sometimes these open-ended political crusades can be given some semblance of rationality by referring to other countries that have bigger numbers in whatever is the goal du jour. Read article.

 

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