SIGN UP - IT'S FREE!
SEARCH FSM
| National Debt Clock |
A million seconds pass in 12 days.
A billion seconds pass in 31 years.
A trillion seconds pass in 31,688 years!
December 15, 2009
Exclusive – Oval Office Watch – Tuesday, December 15
What is the U.S. Constitution? - GO HERE.
Hovering on the Edge of Tomorrow - HERE.
Will Europe Put its Foot Down? SEE HERE.
Video - Mitt Romney: Obama has lost his way in Afghanistan - HERE.
You WILL Lose Your Private Health Insurance
Robert Tracinski, RCP.com
Before Thanksgiving, the Senate voted to opening debate on President Obama's health-care bill, and that debate has begun in earnest this week.
Well, if they want a debate, let's let them have it. But let's not get distracted by the sideshows Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has planned for us.
Let's get straight what the real essentials of the bill are-and how disastrous they are.
Three provisions constitute the vicious heart of the Democrats' health-care overhaul.
The first is "guaranteed issue" and "community rating." This is the requirement that insurance companies have to offer coverage to people who are already sick, and that they be limited in their ability to charge higher rates for customer who pose a higher risk. The extra expense to the insurance companies of covering people with pre-existing conditions will get passed on to existing customers in the form of higher premiums. But why spend years paying these inflated premiums for insurance you're not using, when you can get exactly the same benefits by waiting until you actually fall ill? The obvious result is that million of people, especially healthy young people, will quickly realize that there is no reason to buy health insurance until they get sick.
When you understand what this bill does, you can see why the Democrats would be happy to compromise and drop the public option-for now. This bill so comprehensively wrecks private health insurance that pretty soon a "public option" will seem like the only alternative, and they will already have put into place one of the new taxes needed to pay for it. If the left's goal is to impose socialized medicine in America, this bill does it in the most callous and destructive way possible. It smashes private health care-then leaves us stranded in the rubble, at which point we will be expected to come crawling back to the same people who caused the disaster and ask them to save us. Read article.
Can Republicans Retake the Senate in 2010?
Karl Rove, WSJ.com
Democrats began the year as masters of the political universe, winning the White House and increasing their majorities in Congress. But the year is ending badly for them. Their top initiative, health care, is deeply unpopular. Congress's approval rating is 26%, Speaker Nancy Pelosi's is 28%, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's is an anemic 14%.
Political currents are running against the party of Barack Obama. Democrats now trail Republicans by four points in Gallup's generic ballot poll. In 1994, the year the GOP took control of Congress, it wasn't until March that Republicans took the lead in that poll—and then only by one point and for a short period of time.
With a good environment this election cycle, Republicans have recruited competitive candidates who could turn otherwise close contests into runaway victories, likely defeats into wins or at least close contests that, if things break right, tip to the GOP.
Today, there are only 40 Republicans in the Senate. In January 2011, there could be 44, 46 or more if the party runs strong campaigns in contests that haven't jelled yet, or if some Democrats retire instead of risking defeat.
One feature giving Republicans an edge is that several senate seats are up for grabs because the politicians who were elected to fill them are now serving in the Obama administration. This includes seats formerly held by Mr. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Read article.
Misleading the Republic: Obama at the Helm
David A. Eisenberg, Pajamas Media.com
Impartial observers looking for reasons to oppose Obama’s candidacy were not found wanting. Anyone capable of transcending the partisan pettifoggery with which the campaign, unexceptionally, was rife, would have been able to adduce a number of arguments why Obama was not fit to assume the nation’s highest office.
Perhaps the most prominent of these was his lack of experience. While not without weight, the argument was largely misguided. Experience, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. While there exists a strong correlation between experience and competence, the former is no guarantee of the latter. Publius Quinctilius Varus was not without experience when he lost three Roman legions, to say nothing of his own life, in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.
The inverse is no less true, and more relevant to the matter at hand. Nature engenders prodigies in all walks of life whose concomitant want of experience and prodigious ability rightly garner the astonishment not only of their contemporaries but of their antecedents for generations to come. Alexander the Great — who at the age of 20 succeeded Phillip II as king of Macedon and went on to become the pharaoh of Egypt, shah of Persia, and king of Asia by the age of 25 — serves as no trifling testament in this regard.
Obama availed himself of neither approach. Instead, while implicitly conceding the value of experience, he adopted the rather dubious position that his lack of it was inconsequential because he possessed the judgment to lead.
Better to possess sound judgment and little experience than sound experience and little judgment, so the argument ran. That the claim was suspect at best could be gleaned from the fact that the basis for it was his Iraq War opposition, which was promulgated as a state legislator in Illinois’ overtly liberal 13th district. Parroting the sentiments of your constituents hardly is a measure of leadership. Read article.
'There is no normal anymore'
James P. Gannon, USAToday.com
Americans are living with daily angst because, from the economy to health care to foreign policy, our nation is spinning out of control.
In a recent episode of ABC's new sci-fi drama V, about an alien invasion of "Visitors" seeking to conquer Earth by posing as peace- loving people, there was a scene with a line of dialogue that hit me as one of those "Aha!" moments.
The lead character, FBI anti-terrorism agent Erica Evans, is talking to a young Catholic priest, Father Jack Landry, who shares her conviction that the Visitors are evil. They cannot trust anyone because the Visitors have taken on human form and could be everywhere. "I am taking your advice," the priest says to the FBI agent. "You said to go home and act normal."
She responds: "There is no normal anymore."
That statement, it seems to me, goes a long way toward explaining why so many Americans are angry, confused and worried today. Polls show that 58% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, suffering an economy that's sick, a politics that's broken, a culture that is growing more violent, coarse and scary, and a government that's out of control. They want things to get back to normal but increasingly feel that there is no normal any more.
Nearly every aspect of American life seems to have veered off course into uncharted territory with unforeseeable consequences. Read article.
Obama for World President?
David Guttman, FrontPageMag.com
Rookie Democratic congressmen are reportedly afraid that Obama will stubbornly press ahead with his unpopular plans for Health Reform, even if they, his unwilling Kamikazes, get voted out of office in 2010 as a result. As a dedicated Obama watcher, I for one am not surprised by this development. In fact, I am now betting even money that our president is not particularly concerned about his own re-election in 2012, and that he will enact as many of his programs in health reform, energy conservation, arms reduction and income redistribution as he can before his current term expires, and then try for higher goals. My hunch is that he is already getting restless in his present job, and that he seeks a promotion to an even greater status.
My sensitivities, sharpened by years of Obama watching, take note of the following pieces of evidence, and have gone to Condition Red:
Obama’s seeming restlessness is a matter of record. Until recently he was routinely charged with throwing outworn sponsors, including his old mentor the Rev. Wright, “under the bus.” And as a Chicago politician, he used wealthy, influential backers (mainly women), discarding them as better prospects hove into view.
Just four years ago he was a backbencher in the Illinois legislature, but since then he has served a partial term in the U.S. Senate, where he spent most of his tenure campaigning for the next giant step in his upward mobility, to the Oval Office. He has never in any office run for re-election, but has instead used any current position as a boost platform for his next installation.
Observers of his presidency have been puzzled by the continuing pattern: Obama is still in campaign mode, spending a good deal of time giving major policy speeches, not only in the states, but around the globe. “What office is he running for now?” One can ask. Read article.
“It’s the Economy, Stupid”
Colonel Bob Pappas, (USMC, Ret.), Gulf1.com
When Bill Clinton said, “It’s the economy, stupid,” Obama must have been in one of his cocaine stupors.
At the recent White House “Jobs Summit” Obama said, the leading question of the day is "how do we get businesses to start hiring again?" The question on its face is earth shaking. Please recall that this is the campaigner who told Americans that he was going to “totally change the country,” “totally change the economy.” Whereas one can hold the view that there is much that could stand to be changed, “total change” implies moving to a totally different economic system.
(Lesson for Obama: Businesses will begin hiring again when there is sufficient demand for a business product or service to make a profit and pay for the additional help required to run or expand the business.)
Given that America became the most prosperous nation on earth incident to a quasi-free market, capitalist system, a ‘total change” from that would be to move to a system that is not free and one that is not based on individual investors. Combine Obama’s “total” change rhetoric and his “spread the wealth around” vision, and Viola! Enter totalitarian socialism/Marxism. In plain English, total dictatorial control over the lives of every American. It could be said that it is a form of Islam.
There are more than a handful of people, in and out of Congress who believe that government is the source and arbiter of all things. Where the latter has some validity, the former is fallacious. Governments, that’s any Government has no inherent resources unless it usurps (steals) those resources. Read article.
House of Debt
Vasko Kohlmayer, FrontPageMag.com
The announcement by the Dubai State Corporation that it was unable to pay interest on its debt sent shock-waves through global markets. Stocks and weak currencies dropped as traders and investors feared that this could usher a new episode in the world’s economic travailing.
One reaction in particular offered a revealing insight into just how uncertain things really are. Reported the UK Times:
Nervous traders transferred the focus of their anxieties from the risk of companies failing to the risk of nation states defaulting. Investors owed money by Mexico, Russia and Greece saw the price of insuring themselves against default rocket.
This should tell us much about the fragility of the world’s financial system. The debt of the Dubai’s state-owned corporation is approximately $80 billion. Even though it is a substantial figure, it is not very large in the grand scheme of things. To give a sense of proportion, Dubai’s debt comes roughly to one tenth of President Obama’s stimulus package.
And yet the possibility of default by Dubai World immediately sent investors scrambling to insure themselves against default by whole countries. Their fears even extended to nations such as Russia, a country which in a comparatively good position thanks to its large energy revenues. This shows how little confidence the international financial community has in the system. The world’s money people fear that even a relatively small event can set off a chain reaction that would bring down nation states.
This shows how little confidence the international financial community has in the system. The world’s money people fear that even a relatively small event can set off a chain reaction that would bring down nation states. Read article.
Reader Comments: Submit Your Comment (1) | Sign Up for FSM Updates!
Somebody mentioned Currently, a 60-year-old likely would pay five or six times more for private medical insurance than someone in his twenties but it may not be true always check http://bit.ly/7bwEx2 for lower price coverages
posted by: lynnelevi
Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 04:02 AM
