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January 7, 2010
Exclusive – Oval Office Watch – Thursday, January 7
Exclusive – Oval Office Watch – Thursday, January 7
What Israel can teach us about security - HERE.
Why the Health-Care Bills Are Unconstitutional - If the government can mandate the purchase of insurance, it can do anything. GO HERE.
How Obamacare Will Cost Many Seniors Their Private Drug Insurance - SEE HERE.
A Sham Of A Process For A Sham Of A Bill
The Foundry, Heritage.org
Speaking at a town hall meeting on August 21, 2008, in Chester, Virginia, then-candidate Barack Obama promised the American people: “I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies … what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents … And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.” The participants around Obama’s fictional big table may have changed depending on where he was speaking, but throughout his campaign the essential promise was always there: “negotiations televised on C-SPAN.”
Of course, Obama already broke this promise to the American people months ago. According to PoliFact, the backroom deals Obama cut with drug companies and hospitals last July already violated this pledge. But those were just preliminary negotiations. Surely when it came time for the final health care bill passage in Congress, Obama and his allies would welcome some transparency into the process? No such luck.
Politico is reporting that President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will meet at the White House today - January 5 - (joined by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) via conference call) to set the parameters for reconciling the House and Senate versions of health care legislation. However, instead of proceeding with the usual public and open conference committee process, the White House is going to take a very active role in secret behind-closed-door meetings between the House and Senate. The Sunlight Foundation explains the implications for the American people: “Both House and Senate rules require that all conference committee meetings be open to the public unless a majority of conferees votes in open session to close the meetings. Senate rules require all conference committee reports be publicly available for at least 48 hours prior to a final vote. Without conference, there is no mechanism to provide for openness in the final discussions regarding the health care bill.”
And there is plenty of reason the American people should demand transparency in the final stages of the legislative process. Read article.
A little religion for the messiah
Wesley Pruden, Washington Times.com
Since it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, even downwind from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his deadly skivvies, we may owe a profound debt of gratitude to the Detroit underwear bomber.
He's the instrument, maybe, of Barack Obama getting a little religion, and if so it's not the stuff of Arabia, but real, heartfelt attitude-changing religion. The president has apparently decided that Islamic terror is real, and aimed straight at America. He's even calling terror "terror" (just like George W. Bush).
This was no doubt difficult for the messiah from Hyde Park, who arrived in Washington persuaded that "terrorism" was a figment of George W.'s benighted imagination, that misunderstandings between America and the Muslim world were all the fault of America. A few apologies, a bended knee, a deep head-banging bow to an Arab king would demonstrate that Americans understand at last what chauvinist pigs and imperialist dogs those founding fathers really were — Englishmen all, with their ignorant ideas about American "exceptionalism" and the idea that free men bow to none but the Almighty.
The president upset a lot of Americans with his Absolutely Grand Amalgamated and Contrite Apology Tour of the Middle East, promising to pluck the tailfeathers of the American eagle and show Americans how to behave to the standards of the Old (and the Very Old) World. This naturally pleased his liberal cult, accustomed through the decades of blaming America first for everything bad. We gloomily concluded that Jimmy Carter is back in the White House. Read article.
On the Obama River and Headed for the Falls
Harold Witkov, American Thinker.com
Did you ever imagine what it might be like to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel? How about going over the Obama Falls?
Life has many warning markers. Some of these markers represent points of no return: where one must make a commitment so forceful that there is no turning back. The phrase "point of no return" is a poignant characterization of what is taking place politically and economically in our country today.
President Obama and his Democrat Congress are presently attempting to do away with our free-market system and the personal liberties we enjoy. Via a head-spinning series of sweeping changes and fast-paced "emergency" bills, they are doing everything they can to get us beyond the irrevocable point of political and financial no return.
In case anyone has missed it, allow me to point out the obvious. President Obama and the Democrats are taking over the banks and the auto industry. They are one step closer to government-run health care. In their sights is cap-and-trade taxing and amnesty resulting in citizenship for those here illegally. Not too far down the road will be the elimination of conservative talk radio. We have a trillion-dollar deficit balloon that is expanding and ready to burst. Our enemies abroad grow stronger and ever bolder.
Some days I feel as though the die is cast and our nation has passed the point of no return. There I am, in a barrel on the mighty Obama River, headed for the Obama Falls, with its jagged rocks awaiting me below. Of course, it's not just me, but all of us. Read article.
Not as Planned
Jennifer Rubin, Commentary Magazine.com
Obama and the Left more generally expected the financial meltdown of 2008 and the resulting recession to undermine the public’s faith in the private sector. As they pushed the Great Depression narrative, they strived to make way for a new, New Deal, in which the public would be willing to accept (in what had heretofore been private-sector decision-making) a far greater degree of government intervention than had been attempted in decades. Government would be entrusted to seize car companies, regulate executive compensation, and direct lending practices. But the “cure” for what supposedly ailed the American economy would not be limited to economic matters or to financial regulation. Obama spoke of a “new foundation,” meaning that government would also seek to expand its reach into health care, as well as to regulate all industries’ carbon emissions. A larger government, higher taxes, and a shrunken realm of private decision making would ensue.
But the public remained stubbornly resistant to government power grabs. The increase in spending and massive accumulation of debt spooked them. The obvious inability of the government to “create or save” jobs and its scatterbrained rush to pass health-care reform (thus taking over a sixth of the economy) did not endear to the public the prospect of a bigger, more powerful government. After less than a full year of Democratic control, the public’s faith in big government is on the decline.
It is not only Tea Party protestors and town-hall attendees who have recoiled against the overreach of the Obama agenda. It is the mass of ordinarily nonpartisan independents who have looked upon the corrupt Cash for Cloture deals and the government spend-a-thon with unease. They may not be enamored of big business, but neither are they excited by the prospect of big government, let alone a big government in league with big insurance companies.
Then along comes the Christmas Day bombing plot. The Obama team stumbles about like hapless bureaucrats. First denial that anything much was wrong and then the acknowledgment that yes, they had failed to do their jobs. Read article.
2009 Chickens and Their 2010 Roost
Victor Davis Hanson, JWR.com
The Obama administration inherited a $500 billion deficit and expanded it threefold. Its planned mega-deficits may well grow the aggregate national debt over the next decade to over $20 trillion.
But the administration's 2009 calculations on how to service the growing red ink are based on continued cheap interest. Yet in 2010, it is likely we will see rising inflation, rising interest rates — and rising costs to the continual self-destructive borrowing.
We were given a financial break on energy prices in 2009. The worldwide recession sent oil down to about $50 a barrel. But America did little during the year's reprieve to rush into production newly discovered domestic gas and oil fields, to tap existing finds in Alaska, or to license new nuclear plants.
By year's end, oil was creeping back up to $80. If the economic upswing continues, in 2010 it may near its old high of nearly $150 a barrel. Soon we will wish we had done something concrete in 2009 rather than offering more stale rhetoric about wind and solar power.
In other words, 2009 may seem to have ended relatively quietly. But in our foreign relations, in the war against terror, in our massive borrowing, and in our energy policies, we created chickens that soon will come home to roost in 2010. Read article.
Angry Seniors Brace for Obamacare Cuts
NewsMax.com
Insurers constantly caution seniors that their Medicare Advantage perks such as hearing aids, dental payments and even gym memberships will fizzle if Democrats get their way and cut government subsidies for them.
But tens of billions of Medicare dollars funneled through insurers also pay for extras that never reach beneficiaries: multimillion-dollar salaries, executive retreats in Hawaii, Scotland and Cancun, and massive expenditures on marketing to lure more customers to the privately administered Advantage plans that serve as an alternative to government-provided Medicare.
Advantage enrollment has burgeoned, doubling to nearly 11 million people in the six years since Congress approved lucrative subsidies to insurers that allowed them to expand their reach. About one in four seniors are now on private plans.
Provisions were added to the Senate legislation to grandfather in beneficiaries in some areas and to provide emergency funds to others to avoid disruptions. The insurance industry still contends the majority of Advantage enrollees remain in danger.
"Seniors are going to lose many of the benefits that seniors like and rely on today," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry group. "And in some parts of the country, seniors will lose access to their Medicare Advantage plan altogether."
Private plans have existed under Medicare since the 1970s and many have persisted through previous cuts. Plans shuttered after reductions in funding during the Clinton administration. And changes approved by the Obama administration earlier this year are at least in partly responsible for the 18 percent fewer plans operating in 2010 and higher premiums system wide.
Neal Bulla, a 70-year-old retiree from a marketing job in Fort Wright, Ky., belongs to an Advantage plan through United Healthcare and receives a gym membership, vision and hearing coverage, and is immune to the prescription drug "doughnut hole" that plagues many seniors. He is so upset at AARP's support of Democrats' health care bills that he tore up his AARP membership card.
"It's the best insurance plan that I've ever had," he said. "They're going to ruin the best medical system in the world." Read article.
Modern Day Lunacy
Walter Williams, JWR.com
Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care, and Rep. Joe Courtney D-Conn., a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, have introduced the Pre-existing Condition Patient Protection Act, which would eliminate pre-existing condition exclusions in all insurance markets. That's an Obama administration priority. I wonder whether President Obama and his congressional supporters would go a step further and protect not just patients but everyone against pre-existing condition exclusions by insurance companies. Let's look at the benefits of such a law.
A person might save quite a bit of money on fire insurance. He could wait until his home is ablaze and then walk into Nationwide and say, "Sell me a fire insurance policy so I can have my house repaired." The Nationwide salesman says, "That's lunacy!" But the person replies, "Congress says you cannot deny me insurance because of a pre-existing condition." This mandate against insurance company discrimination would not only apply to home insurance but auto insurance and life insurance as well. Instead of a wife wasting money on costly life insurance premiums, she could spend that money on jewelry, cosmetics and massages and then wait until her husband kicked the bucket to buy life insurance on him.
Insurance companies don't stay in business and prosper by being stupid. Read article.
When We Fail to Learn Our Lesson
Ben Shapiro, Townhall.com
The last 10 years have taught us hard lessons. Lessons about what happens when airline security is so lax that Arab men enter airplanes with box cutters; what happens when immigration standards are so ridiculous that men with terrorist connections are left to wander around our country on expired visas; what happens when political correctness trumps obvious suspicions about radicalism.
Thousands of our dead attest to these lessons.
But President Obama has not learned these lessons. So even though we have faced the same threat for 10 years -- even though exactly 10 years after al-Qaida terrorists hijacked Indian Flight IC-814, an al-Qaida terrorist attempted to blow up an airliner headed to Detroit -- President Obama still wants to try the Clinton administration terror strategies. Strategies like civilian trials for terrorists. Strategies like shipping terrorists to American prisons. Strategies like reading terrorists their rights on the battlefield, outlawing harsh interrogation methods, blindly ignoring commonality of interest between terrorist groups and appeasing terrorists with the rhetoric of Western sacrifice.
Will it take another decade like the last decade to learn our lesson? Read article.
Reader Comments: Submit Your Comment (1) | Sign Up for FSM Updates!
Thanks for your unique perspective, almost copied word for word from FOX or Glen B. or Rush.
So as you are so updated on information, why is your photo for OVal Watch using a run from Bill Clinton, almost 10 years old? Cannot be a bit more updated... not only your views but also your photos.
posted by: greg
Thursday, January 7, 2010 at 04:49 PM
