House Passes Pelosicare--For Your Own Good

Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House

Congratulations, Democrats. You passed a bill that liberals hate, feminists hate and all Republicans hate. We all know you're gonna strip out all the provisions about not using taxpayer funds to cover abortions. You want taxpayers to pay for abortions, because if the taxpayer isn't footing the bill, it's not a "choice," don't you know.

I'm curious how you're going to make going to jail for being uninsured sound like anything other than penalizing people for not having insurance. This would be a first in our country. From Just One Minute:

Those penalties won't affect the long-term unemployed, who are heavily subsidized in any case. However, someone who works from January to June and is then laid off had better arrange for insurance - over the tax year, the person will show plenty of income, even if take-home cash flow is scarce from July to December. This person's actual income in the second half of the year may be zero, but if they don't have insurance they will owe a 2.5% penalty on their earnings from January to June.

Does that sound like a tax on the middle class? Hey, it's for our own good.

Tom goes on to point out that the bill is a job killer with a link to Steven Pearlstein.

Economists agree that in the long run, however, the increased cost for employee health benefits would be passed on to the employees themselves in the form of lower wages and salaries. That's what happened economy-wide in recent decades, as average wages stagnated while the cost of health insurance skyrocketed. If the same holds true for small businesses, then requiring them to provide health insurance should result in no job loss at all.

No job loss at all! Of course, the fact that you can't get a job in this economy doesn't count. Sorta like the government accounting where giving a few people a raise counts as "jobs saved."

So, see, the middle class will still be paying for this monstrosity, be forced to buy insurance they may not want, and face jail time if they can't afford it. But remember, it's for your own good!

The Shoe on the Other Foot

Several of my left-leaning friends are having an unpleasant awakening of conscience these days, concerning their criticism and mockery of George W. Bush. The awakening comes in watching a president they like and admire, Barack Obama, be treated to the same sort of unrealistic standards that they themselves were only too happy to place on a Republican president.

The most recent incident concerns President Obama's response to Major Hasan's jihad at Fort Hood. Obama had his own"My Pet Goat" moment that earned him the derision of the right, even as the left tried valiantly to claim that it wasn't the same thing at all.

Indeed, one could argue that President Obama's nonchalance at the killing of 13 American soldiers is worse than President Bush's deer-in-the-headlights look at the moment he was told about the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. We weren't permitted to see President Obama's initial reaction to the news from Fort Hood, but we can conclude from his speech, in which it was a higher priority to praise politics than get right to a statement about Fort Hood, that he didn't consider it a high enough priority.

But I digress.

My liberal friends have been feeling decidedly uncomfortable given President Obama's behavior in the wake of these events and the way he has been criticized for it. Take this story on the fact that President Obama doesn't plan to attend celebrations in Germany commemmorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is taking aim at President Obama's decision not to travel to Germany next week to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the latest in a string of conservatives to criticize Obama's decision to skip the ceremony on November 9...

While the president had originally planned to be on hand for the event, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs confirmed earlier this week scheduling conflicts and preparation for his impending 10-day trip to Asia have instead caused Obama to stay in Washington.

I have to admit that not going to Berlin to remember the end of communism is peculiar for any sitting American president. And because of "scheduling conflicts" and the fact that he "needed to prepare" for his trip to Asia? We were promised that this oh-so-smart president could basically do everything. Call him the male version of the old Enjoli ad. It's no wonder people are starting to grumble.

It's tough when your guy is running the country, no doubt. It should make liberals pause before bashing the next Republican president. But it won't.

CBO: Pelosi's Bill Costs $3 Trillion $2.4 Trillion Over 10 Years

Commenter Perry thinks the $1.05 trillion price tag for Obamacare is just ducky, cuz besides believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, he also thinks it will cut the deficit. I pointed out to him that the plan doesn't even have any benefits until 2013 or 2014. But the price tag of Obamacare for 10 years when there are benefits (as well as raping you in taxes) is a shocker: $3 trillion.
We can't afford this monstrosity. It would be cheaper to buy a catastrophic plan for 45 million people.

UPDATE: Via Hot Air, the CBO puts the cost at $2.4 trillion.

Democrats Don't Believe in Representative Democracy

Bill Owens is the latest example.

The New York Times is reporting that in his pep talk to the Democrats in Congress this morning, President Obama acknowledged that he and newly elected NY-23 Democratic Congressman Bill Owens have pulled a fast one on the voters in that district.

The Times reported the President's comments about Bill Owens today in the context of the overall pending Health Care bill vote:

The president also singled out Representative Bill Owens, the newly-elected Democrat from a historically Republican district in New York, who was sworn into office just on Friday. Mr. Obama noted that Mr. Owens would support the health care bill even though it might not be popular at home.

I'd bet that at least some of the people who voted for Owens don't want Obamacare. But hey, Democrats don't believe in allowing people to make their own decisions.

The Fort Hood Shooting and Radical Islam

We now know that Major Nidal Hasan was a member of a radical mosque in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was an American citizen, yet, apparently, couldn't bring himself to do simple things like be photographed with women. He sympathized with Muslims fighting his fellow soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he yelled, "Allahu Akbar" while mowing down American citizens.

Yet the MSM has tried very hard to downplay the influence his Muslim faith had on Hasan's murderous behavior. For example, on NPR's Way With Words yesterday, host Michel Martin led a roundtable discussion of Hasan which was long on PSTD speculation and very, very short on any discussion of Hasan's radical Islamic views. There were plenty of comparisons with Timothy McVeigh, as if McVeigh's actions were based on his Christian faith (McVeigh was not a Christian, but still, as a white guy, he must've been a radical Christian, right? They're so violent in this country!). But the roundtable just couldn't bring themselves to discuss how Wahhabism influenced Hasan's behavior.

I'm not advocating that we fingerprint all Muslims or round them up and put them in concentration camps, but it seems like Hasan's weird and creepy behavior was noted repeatedly by colleagues and supervisors, yet no one did anything to stop him. Was there simply no way to do more than "watch" Hasan before he decided to kill other soldiers?

Pelosi's Bill Will Stifle Medical Innovation

Shutting off the miracle-drug spigot

Pelosi's bill may cost pharmaceutical companies $150 billion over a decade -- nearly double the amount they conceded when they cut a White House-approved deal with Sen. Max Baucus this summer.

The Pelosi bill is a prescription for fewer new life-saving drugs. By stifling innovation, it would hurt not only industry, but also all of us who'd benefit from new-drug development.

Democrats in Washington are out to cut health-care costs at the expense of the research-intensive (as opposed to generic) pharmaceutical industry. Yet drugs often improve the span and quality of life in a remarkably cost-effective way...

Nor are the drug companies the only target. The Pelosi bill has $20 billion in "user fees" (read: taxes) on medical-device manufacturers. New devices such as artificial joints, pacemakers and insulin pumps are often developed by small startup companies -- those least capable of paying these punitive up-front regulatory expenses. And the working Senate bill aims at $40 billion from the industry.

Democrats treat medicine as if it is static, as opposed to dynamic. Creating fewer incentives for innovation is counterproductive and un-American.

The Death of Conservatism...NOT

From Charles Krauthammer.

Unemployment Hits 10.2%

The last time unemployment was this high, I was a sophomore in college, editor of my junior college newspaper, wearing pink oxford shirts and pipestem jeans.

The jump into the realm of double-digit joblessness — from 9.8 percent in September — provided a sobering reminder that, despite the apparent end of the Great Recession, economic expansion has yet to translate into jobs, leaving tens of millions of people still struggling.

“The guy on the street is going to ask, ‘What recovery?’ ” said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at the PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh. “The job market is still in reverse.”

Until the unemployment rate starts going down significantly, it won't matter to average Americans what the GDP is. For them, we'll still be in a recession and Democrats will pay the price for the Obama recession.

The "Purge" Begins

7 Hardin County officials switch to GOP

Seven Democratic Hardin County elected officials announced Wednesday they will become Republicans.

Sheriff Ed Cain, who confirmed his switch earlier this week, was joined at Wednesday’s formal announcement by County Judge Billy Caraway, Precinct 4 Commissioner Bobby Franklin, County Attorney Rebecca Walton, Precinct 5 Constable Wayne McDaniel, Precinct 4 Justice of the Peace Kent Walker and Precinct 5 Justice of the Peace Butch Cummings.

As each of the officials spoke, they repeated the same theme — their beliefs and values have stayed the same, but are no longer reflected by the Democratic Party.

In addition, several said that when they first ran for office, they knew they would not be elected if they didn’t run as a Democrat.

CBO: Republican Plan Would Reduce Premiums, Cut Deficit

Cuts the deficit by $68 billion, btw.

According to CBO, the GOP bill would indeed lower costs, particularly for small businesses that have trouble finding affordable health care policies for their employees. The report found rates would drop by seven to 10 percent for this group, and by five to eight percent for the individual market, where it can also be difficult to find affordable policies.

The GOP plan would have the smallest economic impact on the large group market that serves people working for large businesses that have access to the cheapest coverage. Those premiums would decline by zero to 3 percent, the CBO said...

The CBO put the price tag for the GOP plan at $61 billion, a fraction of the $1.05 trillion cost estimate it gave to the House bill that lawmakers are set to vote on this weekend. And the CBO found that the Republican provision to reform medical malpractice liability would result in $41 billion in savings and increase revenues by $13 billion by reducing the cost of private health insurance plans.

Hmm, $61 billion versus...$1.05 trillion??? Gee, who'd athunk it was possible to reform health care for less than a trillion bucks?

"How Does My (Gay Marriage, Cohabitation, Out of Wedlock Birth) Affect Your Marriage Anyway?"

Whenever conservatives defend traditional marriage, you will invariably be asked why you care about somebody else's gay marriage (or living to gether or out of wedlock birth). After all, it's not going to affect your marriage, right?

The answer, of course, is that not everything has to affect you directly to affect you in the long run. These trends can affect your children's attitudes about marriage.

Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker report back with findings that raise challenges for the future of marriage as an institution...

Regnerus and Uecker note, among other findings, that the “majority of young adults in America not only think they should explore different relationships,” including sexual intimacy, “but they believe it may be foolish and wrong not to.” This belief has much to do with their ideas regarding sexual chemistry, which emerging adults tend to think of as a form of spontaneous combustion rather than smoldering possibility. Such concepts as the preservation of independence and “being your own person” combine with the belief that marriage is about finding the perfect “soul mate” to persuade emerging adults that a period of trial-and-error with various prospects is necessary to find the best fit for the permanent oasis of marriage.

Chemistry and biology are not necessarily compatible in this course of self-fulfillment. Most of the emerging adults the researchers studied desire to have children (albeit they are seen as drags on such perceived imperatives as career selection and travel), but to postpone that particular life change until later. While the findings the researchers excerpted for the Heritage conference did not address this factor directly, the reality that female fertility declines as a woman reaches age 30, and sharply so after age 35, does not seem to have impressed itself upon emerging adults as a prime consideration. Moreover, the potential impact of having multiple premarital sexual partners for comparison’s sake on the health of a later, permanent relationship, where such comparisons may hamper sustained intimacy and happiness, is a question that can be deferred but not avoided.

The sociological result is that the age at first marriage in the United States is rapidly rising, to 26 for women and 28 for men. In addition, the out-of-wedlock birth rate is approaching 40 percent for all U.S. births and is at 60 percent for the age group that Regnerus and Uecker studied. These changes follow both experiential disappointment with marriage (children watching their parents’ struggles) and cultural devaluation and deinstitutionalization of marriage. Such phenomena as no fault divorce, cohabitation, and same-sex marriage may not be altering the marriages contracted 20 years ago, but each may be playing a role in affecting the marriages not yet contracted and the families not yet formed. We are learning more, rapidly, about premarital sexual activity, with much more to learn about the hopes and hazards for post-sexual-activity marriages.

As attitudes about sexual activity change, it affects the society as a whole. In this case, it causes a delay in marriage and delay in having children (or just not having them). You might think that's acceptable. After all, it's their "choice." But as a society, should we be encouraging a lifestyle that ensures the destruction of the traditional family?

I'm not really talking so much about gay marriage here, but more about heterosexual relationships (or lack thereof). I bring up gay marriage simply because I've frequently heard the title charge when arguing about gay marriage. But where heterosexuals are concerned, this narcissistic worldview that put career and self-actualization ahead of family can and will lead to disaster. How? Because our retirement systems, particularly Social Security and Medicare, are dependent on generations after ours footing the bill. And, more practically, we will need those younger people to help take care of the old folks. What will the world look like when young people don't have children?

Contrary to Every Account

A Democrat held the NY-23 seat from 1979 to 1993. Republicans had not held the seat "since the Civil War."

Lessons from NY-23

When the RNC pours nearly a million bucks into the campaign of a liberal Republican, it can't help but end badly for the party.

Conservatives owe NY-23 candidate Doug Hoffman immeasurable gratitude. He overcame impossible odds (single digits just a month ago) to come within two points of defeating Democrat Bill Owens. Hoffman had zero name recognition. National Republican Party officials dumped nearly $1 million into the race on behalf of radical leftist GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava, who then turned around, endorsed Owens and siphoned off 5 percent of the vote with her name still on the ballot after she dropped out.

It is truly remarkable that Hoffman very nearly won. As I've said repeatedly, third party candidates tend to act as spoilers, weakening the strongest candidate and allowing the weaker one to prevail. In this case, it became Scozzafava who played spoiler.

The good news in NY-23 is that conservatism in some form or fashion won. Both Owens and Hoffman were more conservative than Scozzafava, and having the voters represented by someone closer to their values is always better.

Election Night

Don't believe 'em when they say it's not a referendum on Democrats and President Obama. People still like BO personally, but his policies suck.

From Hot Air:

He won by six points in Virginia last year, remember. Two thoughts here. One: You would think that a guy who appeared multiple times on the trail in two states that he carried just a year ago could generate enough excitement that the number who voted to show some support for him would exceed the number who voted to show opposition. But you would be wrong, wouldn’t you? Two: The problem with asking whether Obama was a factor in someone’s vote is that there’s a disconnect between the man himself and his policies.

Obama's personal popularity will make him harder to unseat in 2012. Republicans will have to ensure that he is tarred with his policies.

UPDATE: McDonnell and Christie both win, and Hoffman loses. Via Hot Air:

Points to take away from the loss: (1) PPP’s last poll was way, waaaay off; (2) Scozzafava’s endorsement must have had some impact on her supporters, as it erased the five-point lead Hoffman held in the last Siena poll after she dropped out; (3) third-party challenges, while sometimes warranted, are a very risky proposition (attention Glenn Beck!); (4) the win in New Jersey, where The One staked his own political capital in campaigning for Corzine, was huge compared to the loss here; and (5) as I said over the weekend, the actual result of this race is unimportant. The point in torpedoing Scozzafava and swinging the GOP behind Hoffman was to send a message to the Republican leadership that only fiscal conservatives will be tolerated henceforth, and that message has been sent even with Owens winning a squeaker. The loss is disappointing but it’s a detail on an otherwise great night.

As I said before, voting for third party candidates is almost always a throw-away vote. The system is set up to handle two parties, regardless of how everybody feels about it. There is the point to be made here, however, that pressure from Hoffman and his supporters made a difference, and there's no shame in losing in this case. One place I visited noted that those voting a straight party Republican ticket (like I typically do) could have inadvertently voted for Scozzafava rather than Hoffman. Oh, the irony!

When We Talk about Media Bias...

This is the kinda thing we're talking about.

One year after he won a historical presidential election, a slight majority of Americans approve of the job Barack Obama's doing in the White House.

Fifty-four percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday approve of how Obama is handling his duties as president, with 45 percent saying they disapprove.

Is that really what the CNN poll shows? Well, Not really.

In an otherwise unremarkable poll of adults, as opposed to voters or likely voters, this result stands out, especially after the Obama administration’s attempts to both spin the numbers and blame George Bush for the economy. Fifty-four percent of respondents to the latest CNN poll disapprove of Barack Obama’s performance on the economy, a 17-point swing in six weeks. That isn’t the worst of the poll, either; 57% now disapprove of Obama’s performance on health care, a 19-point swing in that same time...

Another item missing from the poll and its report: the party split in the sample. The CNN/Opinion Research poll does not include any data on its survey respondents on party identification, a rather unusual omission for a political poll. Of course, that does allow CNN to skirt the issue of skewed samples, but it also makes the final report a lot less reliable, since we cannot test for sampling bias.

You'd think a 17-point swing in opinions in six weeks would be the lede. But, amazingly, that's not what CNN took away from its own poll. Of course, we have to wonder, yet again, if this were George W. Bush, what would the lede look like?

This story is a great example of how placement of information in a story (or leaving it out all together) affects the perceptions of readers. Anyone merely reading CNN's story wouldn't know that 57% of Americans disapprove of Obama's performance on healthcare, or that 54% disapprove of his performance on the economy. Why? Because CNN chose to focus on the vaguely worded "performance as president," versus his performance on specific issues.

Now, why would they do that?

NY-23 Is Rockin'

Liberals are complaining that it's getting ugly out there. All because some Doug Hoffman supporters got rowdy.

"We've gotten reports that people are standing there, covered with Hoffman stickers and yelling anti-choice stuff at voters," said O'Neill, a St. Lawrence native who has been running the party's GOTV effort for Bill Owens in NY-23.

"Apparently, there's some woman claiming to be a commissioner," O'Neill continued. "Commissioner of what, I don't know. She's from Texas, I think, and she won't leave."

"This is not the way we roll in the North Country."

Sooo, people are yelling things and that's intimidation? It's not like we got big black guys with nightsticks standing in front of the polling place.

It sounds like some Democrats are starting to cry, and that means they have to try to change the rules. Too bad.

The Non-Existent Fight for the Soul of the Republican Party

Stories like this one must be written by people who never experienced political swings before.

In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.


Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.


But their success in Tuesday’s upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined...

These high-stakes primaries, pitting the activist wing of the party against the establishment wing, stand to have a profound impact on the 2010 election landscape since they will create significant problems for moderate candidates recruited by the national party precisely because they appear well-suited to win in places that are not easily — or even plausibly — won by conservative candidates.

ZOMG! You mean the primaries aren't just locked up by some establishment candidates??? Who would have thought that voters determine who their party's candidate for the general election will be in the primaries???

Seriously, did these reporters have to take civics (or some variation thereof) to graduate from high school (let alone college)?

Primaries always have several candidates with a variety of views. Voters pick from among the candidates which one best matches their own values and beliefs. Then everybody votes on the party candidates in a general election. This idea that some Republicans are going to pull a Scozzafava and vote for Democrats because--gasp!--the Republican candidate doesn't support ACORN is nonsense. Or that independents aren't going to vote with the GOP because the indies think they have just too much money and want the government to have more of it.

These are nutty ideas that Democrats wish were true.

Election Day!

Vote Republican.

Democrats Pull Dirty Tricks?

Why, I thought only Republicans were in the dirty tricks business. and it ain't the Republicans.

The Democratic State Committee now admits paying for a robocall to Somerset County voters that slams Republican Chris Christie and promotes independent gubernatorial candidate Christopher Daggett.

A Democratic spokeswoman says the party’s chairman, Joe Cryan, was not aware of the robocalls when he denied that the state committee had anything to do with them yesterday afternoon.

Cryan, who told PolitickerNJ.com yesterday afternoon that the Democratic State Committee had “absolutely” nothing to do with the call, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The call angered Republicans and further fueled conspiracy theories that Daggett is in cahoots with the Corzine camp. A disclaimer at the end says it was paid for by Victory ’09, “a project of the NJDSC” (Democratic State Committee), and gave the committee’s Trenton address.

Daggett, for his part, disavowed the call.

“Voters hate robocalls. This is just another instance of the dishonest ways Democrats and Republicans use to win campaigns and to fool voters,” he said in a statement this afternoon. “It is little wonder more and more voters are rejecting these kind of desperate dirty tricks and turning to my campaign for a positive message about how to make New Jersey more affordable and competitive.’’

Before the Democrats owned up to it, Daggett media advisor Bill Hillsman said the call might be a Republican trick to generate a sympathetic newspaper story.

Is it any wonder normal people accuse Democrats of inflating voter rolls, voter intimidation and generally stealing elections?

UPDATE: More on stealing elections.

Plenty of reasons exist for suspecting absentee fraud may play a significant role in tomorrow's Garden State contests. Groups associated with Acorn in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York appear to have moved into the state. An independent candidate for mayor in Camden has already leveled charges that voter fraud is occurring in his city. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party in New Jersey is taking advantage of a new loosely written vote-by-mail law to pressure county clerks not to vigorously use signature checks to evaluate the authenticity of absentee ballots, the only verification procedure allowed.

The state has received a flood of 180,000 absentee ballot requests. On some 3,000 forms the signature doesn't match the one on file with county clerks. Yet citing concerns that voters would be disenfranchised, Democratic Party lawyer Paul Josephson wrote New Jersey's secretary of state asking her "to instruct County Clerks not to deny applications on the basis of signature comparison alone." Mr. Josephson maintained that county clerks "may be overworked and are likely not trained in handwriting analysis" and insisted that voters with suspect applications should be allowed to cast provisional ballots. Those ballots, of course, would then provide a pool of votes that would be subject to litigation in any recount, with the occupant of New Jersey's highest office determined by Florida 2000-style scrutiny of ballot applications.

The disenfranchisement argument is starting to wear thin.

A Fitting Tribute

USS New York, built with steel from Twin Towers, sets sail on maiden voyage

The USS New York, a new battleship built with steel from the World Trade Center, sailed into New York harbour today on its maiden voyage and delivered a 21-gun salute near Ground Zero.

The $1 billion US Navy assault vessel, whose bow includes 7.5 tonnes of steel recycled from the 2001 terror attack, will be officially commissioned in its namesake city on Saturday.

Health Care News Round-Up

Bunches of interesting stuffs here.

--Nancy Pelosi pushes for vote on Pelosicare Thursday. I call it "Pelosicare," since it doesn't really seem to be what we will end up with, other than taxpayer-funded abortions, huge tax increases, and cuts in the care you can get. This is even taking into account the CBO estimates that the bill would cut the deficit (by not providing any benefits for the first three years, then steamrolling in the costs for the last seven), a dubious claim, at best.

--William Kristol argues that Pelosi may fail.

First of all, the new Rasmussen survey finds 42 percent favoring the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats -- down a bit from a week ago. 54 percent of the public is opposed. 23 percent of all voters strongly support the plan, with 44 percent strongly opposed.

Second, there are elections tomorrow. In Virginia and New Jersey, the Democratic candidates for governor will run 15 to 20 points behind Obama’s showing a year ago (in 2008 Obama won Virginia by six, New Jersey by 16). This is a pretty stunning one-year swing in two not-insignificant states. And many of the voters who are swinging are similar to voters who live in the competitive congressional districts Democrats picked up in 2006 and 2008.

So Virginia and New Jersey alone could give a fair number of Democratic congressmen reason to pause before they walk the plank in the House for Nancy Pelosi's health care plan.

Elections tomorrow play a big role in how moderate Democrats will approach Pelosi's plan. If Republicans (and I'm including Hoffman in that) win all three races, I can't imagine moderate Dems jumping into Pelosi's meat grinder. The writing on the wall will be plain to them.

--Ezra Klein points out that the difference in health care costs between the U.S. and other countries is because we pay more per unit. But Klein doesn't go into an important component of why our care costs so much more: consumers rarely know what the cost of each treatment, drug or procedure is. Why? Because the doctor or hospital talks to the insurer (be it private or government) and then patients get the bill for what the insurer doesn't pay. So the patient never sees the actual cost.

Here's a real world example. My husband attended a company meeting today where the CEO discussed a variety of things, including the fact that health care reform is necessary. At this company, which is pretty large, the costs of insurance have risen 10% for several years. And why are the prices going up? Because, as the CEO put it, we demand more and never check the prices. He said he'd had some numbness in his hand and went to the doctor, who did an electrical pulse procedure on it. When he went to pay for the visit, the person at the desk said, "That will be $25."

"How much does that procedure really cost?" he asked.

"$25."

"No, really. Not my co-pay. What is the cost of that procedure?"

"$2,300."

The man was astounded. He said if he'd known it would cost $2,300 for the procedure, he would have lived with the numbness. But how many procedures do we all have done without knowing the costs or, really, having much choice in what we pay?

--Orrin Hatch says Obamacare will destroy the two-party system.

Hatch asserted that the health bills, which he believes represent a "step-by-step approach to socialized medicine," will lead to Americans' dependence on Democrats for their health and other issues.

"And if they get there, of course, you're going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody's going to say, 'All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party,' " Hatch said during an interview with the conservative CNSNews.com.

"That's their goal," Hatch added. "That's what keeps Democrats in power."

Hatch is correct that handing out the goodies is what keeps Democrats in power. That's why they like pointing to popular programs like school lunches, Social Security and Medicare. What they don't want to point to is that dependence on the government is no more freedom than any other tyranny. It's a soft boot on your face as opposed to a spiked one.

--More food for thought about closing the deficit. Top earners would pay 95.2%. Even the bottom sixth would pay more than a quarter of their earnings in wages. I don't see anyone proposing this any time soon.

--Even if Obamacare fails--and the closer we get to 2010 without a law, the better that prospect looks-- Democrats can cheer each other for enacting important legislation that makes killing a person for being a woman less of a hate crime than killing the same woman for being a lesbian.

LOL of the Day

"Let me be clear: at Iowa Liberal, we have a feisty spirit but a respect for the principles of logic and intellectual honesty. We really dislike dishonesty and try our best not to practice it ourselves."

"I just thought I can't do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that's it,"

Planned Parenthood director quits after viewing ultrasound

Planned Parenthood has been a part of Abby Johnson's life for the past eight years; that is until last month, when Abby resigned. Johnson said she realized she wanted to leave, after watching an ultrasound of an abortion procedure...

She handed in her resignation October 6. Johnson worked as the Bryan Planned Parenthood Director for two years.

According to Johnson, the non-profit was struggling under the weight of a tough economy, and changing it's business model from one that pushed prevention, to one that focused on abortion.

"It seemed like maybe that's not what a lot of people were believing any more because that's not where the money was. The money wasn't in family planning, the money wasn't in prevention, the money was in abortion and so I had a problem with that," said Johnson.

Johnson said she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions, something the Episcopalian church goer recently became convicted about.

There's a reason pro-choicers don't want mandatory ultrasounds before abortions.

Of Course They're All Partisan

If Fox Is Partisan, It Is Not Alone

In audience surveys from August 2000 to March 2001, Fox News viewers tilted Republican by 44.6 percent to 36.1 percent. More narrowly — 41.4 percent to 39.4 percent — so did the audience for MSNBC. The audiences of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central leaned Democratic.

Four years later, amid the Iraq war and President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, the audience data had shifted. Fox News viewers had become 51 percent Republican and just 30.8 percent Democratic, while MSNBC viewers leaned Democratic by 41.7 percent to 40.4 percent. Viewers of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central grew slightly more Democratic.

By 2008-9, the network audiences tilted decisively, like Fox’s. CNN viewers were more Democratic by 50.4 percent to 28.7 percent; MSNBC viewers were 53.6 percent to 27.3 percent Democratic; Headline News’ 47.3 percent to 31.4 percent Democratic; CNBC’s 46.9 percent to 32.5 percent Democratic; and Comedy Central’s 47.1 to 28.8 percent Democratic.

The idea of an objective press is a 20th Century anomaly. From the beginnings of the U.S., the press was highly partisan, and it was that partisanship that was enshrined in the First Amendment idea of freedom of the press. The idea that it wasn't "news" because there was a slant was unprecedented.

In an age where more people have more access to news and opinion outlets and are better educated than at any time in our history, the pearl-clutchers are oh-so worried about disinformation. We should give people more credit for being able to figure out what's true and what isn't, what matters and what doesn't, and whether the immediate effects of this policy or that outweighs the longterm consequences of a particular action. The only people desperate to silence dissent are those desperately clinging to power.

So Much for Her Endorsement

Hoffman Leads Big

Doug Hoffman has a commanding lead in the special election for New York's 23rd Congressional District.

In a three way contest with Democrat Bill Owens and Republican Dede Scozzafava Hoffman leads with 51% to 34% for Owens and 13% for Scozzafava. In a head to head contest with Owens Hoffman holds a 54-38 advantage.

Looks like Scozzafava's spoiler status doesn't matter.

Judge-Shopping or Necessary Clarification?

Congress Set to Take Aim at Judicial Recusals

Congress is preparing to wade into one of the most sensitive of issues for the federal judiciary: when a judge should step aside in a case and who should make that decision.

The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., is planning a hearing on federal recusal guidelines amid controversies that have swept through state court systems in recent years, culminating in a U.S. Supreme Court decision five months ago that tightened the recusal requirements for elected state judges.

The Judiciary Committee's interest marks the first time Congress has flirted with recusal guidelines since a high-profile scrap in 2004 between congressional Democrats and Justice Antonin Scalia. In a debate that broke along partisan lines, Democrats said that Scalia should have recused in a case involving then-Vice President Dick Cheney because he and Cheney were part of a group that went duck hunting in Louisiana while the case was pending. Nonprofits seeking records from Cheney's energy task force eventually lost, 7-2.

The gist of the argument is that belonging to an organization and attending the events where you might be socializing with potential plaintiffs is grounds for recusal. You have to wonder how far this sort of argument could be taken and how Republicans could best use it to eliminate liberal judges from cases.

Best Headline of the Day

Obama makes Bush his blame czar

Scozzafava Endorses Owens

This race just gets nastier and nastier.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., was among those who urged Dierdre K. Scozzafava to endorse Democratic congressional candidate William L. Owens, the senator's spokesman said Saturday.

The spokesman, Maxwell Young, said the senator called a number of north country political leaders after Ms. Scozzafava suspended her campaign and had more than one conversation with the Republican candidate ahead of her announcement. He said the senator also called other Democratic leaders about the situation, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

The moonbatsw are ecstatic, calling Bill Ownes a "conservative Democrat," and saying that if Republicans lose the seat, it will have "national significance." Don't believe that whistling in the dark for a moment.

Instead, I have to agree with Robert Stacy McCain that what it really shows is that Scozzafava isn't really a Republican when the going gets tough. I don't mind her arguments about local issues being important (Hoffman is clearly not as well-versed on them), but endorsing the Democrat is just sleazy.

Typically, I would judge a campaign by its enemies, and this one is no different.

And just for Perry, here's a link to Frank Rich's column where he calls conservatives Stalinists for having the audacity to disagree with party leaders!

Political groups other than MoveOn spending money to sway the electorate? Why, it’s Stalinism.

Can't have those little people expressing an opinion on their candidates, don't you know. That would mean we're not the mind-numbed robots Democrats believe.

The Rock in Your Trick or Treat Bag

Democrats Push for Plan to Cut Deficit

The administration has not signaled what specific proposals it might make, but Mr. Orszag’s challenges are formidable: the chief sources of significant deficit reductions — savings in government health programs and tax increases on the rich — will have been tapped to offset the cost of a health care bill if it is enacted.

Health care taxes won't just hit "the rich," as we well know. Everyone will pay them. And savings in government health programs is a pipe dream. Basically, we have an administration that has gone on a spending spree over the last 10 months and wants to jam an overpriced, underproducing health care "reform" package down the collective American gullet, then argue how we need to increase taxes and suck it up to pay for the "inherited" financial crisis. Most reasonable people aren't going to buy this argument anymore, as Obama's slipping approval rating indicates.

The place to save will be cutting services, something Democrats are loathe to do, since their entire base is made up of leeches desperate to suck the blood out of everyone else.

The laugher in this silly article comes here:

Mr. Conrad favors something like the successful commission to close military bases, another decision that lawmakers found difficult to make because of parochial and political considerations.

What successful commission to close military bases? The one that has politicized base closings, punishing bases located in the opposition's territory? As someone who lived through the closing of Carswell A.F.B. (which was reopened as a Joint Naval Reserve Base), I can tell you that the effects on the local economy can be devastating. And back in 1995, President Bill Clinton bragged about taking a base off the closing list more than a month before the list was supposed to be released. There are clearly political considerations in base closings and I don't think that it is the process to look at deficit reduction.

Playing the Spoiler

Scozzafava suspends 23d campaign
Scozzafava can't win and is acting as a spoiler to Doug Hoffman, who could. Originally, I was against Hoffman being in this race because third parties are typically a waste and it's more important to get Republicans--any Republicans in Congress. True, this is party politics, but as I've said before, conservatives can forget getting any legislation passed that they want as long as Democrats control Congress.

But now that Hoffman has a reasonable chance of winning, Scozzafava should have bowed out more than a week ago, when polls showed her trailing both Hoffman and Democrat Bill Owens. At this point, her campaign suspension does nothing to help Hoffman at all. Which may have been the point.

Sorry for using military in Iraq but there was no choice: Bush

Gotta love this:

Justifying his decision on Iraq, former US President George W Bush today said dislodging of the "brutal dictator" Saddam Hussain was a necessity after 9/11 attacks but regretted that military had to be used to do so as there was no other "choice"...

Describing Hussain as a "brutal dictator" who posed a danger to the US, he said it had become more important for America to remove him after the 9/11 attacks.

Removal of Hussain was important as it was "felt" that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction and the then President was not allowing IAEA inspectors in, Bush said while addressing the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit here.

"My hope was to disarm Saddam peacefully... I am sorry we had to use military but there was no choice," the former US President said.

Explaining the necessity of using force, he noted that the UN Security Council had passed 17 resolutions calling for disarming of Hussain but the Iraqi ruler was not cooperative.

As Orrin Judd notes, the problem is that George W. Bush was the only world leader who took the U.N. seriously when it passed resolutions.

It's So Fun Watching the Left Explode

Read virtually any post at Iowa Liberal in the past week and you'll see what I mean.

You can start with this whinging from Jeromy Brown that Republican pundits manage to find good news in the Democrats' inability to pass legislation with a veto-proof majority in the Senate. He uses the dubious "60% of Americans approve a public option" number (gimme a different poll and I can give you different results) as, somehow, proof positive that Republicans iz stoopid.

For eight years we were governed by an idiot in thrall with conniving corporatists and narcissistic neocons, and any mention of his continuous blundering was More Bad News For Democrats (Possessed by Bush Hatred). Straining to present anything Bush ever did right, special attention had to be paid to making sure that everybody recognized Republicans Are Real Americans and that all logic aside, Bush had to be feared and respected because he was President.

Now we’ve had ten months of Death Panels, StaliNaziFascism, ZOMG Czars!, Birthers, Beck’s tears, Limbaugh worship, and the most popular Republican politician, Sarah Palin, undergoing continuous meltdown as she strives to make a quick buck off the sucker base. It’s been terrible, terrible news for Republicans every day. Which is, of course, Good News for Republicans. After all, bad publicity is still publicity! THEY HAVE CONTROLLED THE NEWS CYCLE. Continuous filibustering? ZOMG DEMOCRATS CAN’T GET THINGS DONE THEY HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME!

That's chockful of some crazy there. It's tough being a liberal these days when you don't have George W. Bush to blame for every crack in the pavement. And it's especially galling when your party has run the legislative branch of government for more than 2 1/2 years and has run the entire government for 10 months and still can't get any legislation (other than the pork barrel variety) passed. Gee, as dumb as George Bush was, he'd at least managed to pass tax cuts, No Child Left Behind, and created the Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives by this this point in office. But I guess we're just supposed to take that as more examples of the Nazi-like quality of Republicans. Or something.

After you whet your appetite with that goody, move on to this luscious course of crying about Joe Lieberman, the John McCain of the Democratic party.

But that doesn’t stop Joe Lieberman, who acted like a Republican until Obama came into office, minded himself, and waited for the perfect moment to declare himself the most powerful person in the country.

Lieberman doesn’t have a response to the facts, in that the public option will save money according to the CBO. He’s got his “gut,” on this, so there’s little arguing.

Let's not confuse the dears with the fact that (a) the bill in question was only a "vapor bill" without real legislative language for the CBO to scrutinize, (b) that the CBO bought into the fiction that this bill saved money by not paying out any benefits in the first five years or that (c) the CBO numbers have ever been right on its predictions about the costs of any government program. That would be problematic. The real beef here is that a Democrat with a 15.96 lifetime rating by the American Conservative Union would actually agree with Republicans on anything. Because that's what Democratic civility and bipartisanship means to the Dems: you agree with us or you're--*gasp*--not a real Democrat!

After that main course of sweet, salty tears, move on to the dessert: a post complaining because President Obama just isn't sufficiently emasculated to get rid of rendition. Now, admittedly, it's fun to bash Democrats over the head with the fact that their guy, who promised a whole new War on Terror Overseas Contingency Operations, has actually had to realize we can't feed bad guys milk and cookies and expect them to talk. It just makes me all giggly.

It's been a while since I'd had a good laugh, but Iowa Liberal just never fails to entertain.

Regardless of the Number of Jobs This Administration Claims to Have "Saved," The Unemployment Rate Is Still Almost 10%

The White House is laughably trying to claim that it has "saved" 640,000--er, make that 1 million jobs, but has to admit to a lot of fuzzy math to get to that figure.

The White House argues that the actual job number is actually larger than 640,000 -- closer to 1 million jobs when one factors in stimulus jobs added in October and, more importantly, jobs created indirectly, such as "the waitress who's still on the job," Vice President Biden said today.

Now, is that the waitress who has a job today but has already been told that she's being let go at the end of the week? I guess that's above Biden's paygrade to assess. Lots of people have survived layoffs to this point but who are in line to get cut by, say, January.

And more to the point, even if we credit the Obama administration with "saving" 1 million jobs, those jobs come at the cost of $160,000 a piece.

Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that "calculator abuse."

He said the cost per job was actually $92,000 -- but acknowledged that estimate is for the whole stimulus package as of the end of 2010.

$92,000 for a waitressing job? That's an accomplishment only the echo chambers at Delaware Liberal could love.

It's true that GDP was up 3.5% for the quarter, but as long as unemployment stays around 10%, the Obama recession isn't going to be over in most people's minds. And don't bother with the "unemployment is a lagging indicator" meme. If you just won the layoff lottery, you aren't too interested in lagging or leading indicators.

White House Transparency?

Frankly, I'd be more impressed with White House transparency if Teh One kept the promise about health care debates being on C-SPAN and all of us getting to participate (without being called un-American and Nazis), but that's just me. Instead, we're left with a White House that thinks it should be praised for doing what the candidate promised: not to hide stuff.

The list of White House visitors contains some obvious hoaxes such as Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright showing up on the rolls. As Allahpundit notes, neither of those guys is going to show up and sign their names in the White House guest book. I'm sure President Obama can call them any time he wants.

Who is on the list? Why, the most frequent visitor is SEIU head Andy Stern. Which makes sense, since he had to set up all those non-thuggish, grassroots protests protesting protesters last August.

No Wonder Democrats Aren't Interested in Tort Reform

Pelosi health care bill blows a kiss to trial lawyers/

The health care bill recently unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over 1,900 pages for a reason. It is much easier to dispense goodies to favored interest groups if they are surrounded by a lot of legislative legalese. For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers (page 1431-1433 of the bill):

Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.

Malpractice insurance is a factor in health care costs, but Democrats are too far up the asses of trial lawyers to really care.

Most Ethical Congress Has Dozens of Democrats Under Investigation

One of the things that brought down Republicans in the 2006 mid-terms was a series of ethical violations that had been covered up or just not dealt with. Democrats brayed that they would run the "most ethical Congress EVAR," but we knew that wouldn't be true. How do we know that? Because dozens of Democrats are under investigation for violations.

House ethics investigators have been scrutinizing the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July.

Before Perry decides to tell us that the fact that dozens of Democrats are under investigation is evidence of how uber ethical Democrats are, let's remind the readers that Democrats have, in fact, have tried to avoid investigating wrongdoing by fellow Dems. Transparency, indeed.

Shocker! White House Overstates Jobs "Saved" or "Created"

Overstates is a nice word for "lies," but let's not go there. Let's go here.

The government's first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

It's amazing that the same people who can't do math are supposed to be trusted with our health care.

The Non-Partisan War in Afghanistan

I wasn't going to say anything about President Obama photo-opping visiting the military dead in Delaware where the bodies are returned from Afghanistan. I thought the skepticism might be too, shall I say, political.

But that was before the liberal idiots decided it was one more chance to try to slime President George W. Bush.

Puh-lease. President Bush met with families in private without cameras. He didn't attend funerals or pose for pics because it distracted from the person these events are supposed to be about. Namely, the soldier.

But liberals think snapping a salute for a camera makes President Obama look serious or presidential or something. I'd rather he took seriously the casualties of the necessary war, the casualties that mount as he hems and haws.

Instead, we're treated to Firedoglake, of all jerks, trying to sound all jingoistic or something.

UPDATE: Blackfive says it better than I ever could.

Pelosi Unveils Mis-Named "Affordable Health Care for America Act"

Perhaps that name should just be the LOL of the Day.

House health-care reform bill to include public option

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will unveil a health-care reform bill on Thursday that includes a government insurance option and a historic expansion of Medicaid, although sticking points in the legislation involving abortion and immigration remain unresolved.

Pelosi's bill backs off using Medicare reimbursement rates, which would have been been a deal-breaker, but there's plenty here to still kill it.

Ending the Medicare reimbursement rates will certainly gain Pelosi some votes, but that sounds fishy. The bottom-line number didn’t change from last week to this. How did the House bill calculate the costs of negotiated rates as opposed to the Medicare rates they used in their earlier calculations? How did that not increase the overall cost of the bill?

The answer, as Ed Morrissey goes on to explain, is that Pelosi passes the costs on to states to do her dirty work.

Well, it turns out that Pelosi & Co have decided to shift more of those costs onto the state. Earlier versions had people at 133% of the poverty line eligible for Medicaid, the costs of which states largely have to bear. The new version hikes that to 150% of poverty line, forcing more people onto state rolls rather than federal. That allows Pelosi to claim some cost savings, but the public burden felt by taxpayers will increase, thanks to unfunded mandates on the states.

The bill is chockful of the usual lies and statistics, trying to hide the true costs of this monstrosity by not offering benefits for the first five years, then using that savings to cover the deficit this plan will run.

That doesn't bother Amanda Marcotte at all, who is clapping her hands like someone actually asked her on a date.

In general, the bill is exactly what most of us thought it would be. The big thing is the Health Insurance Exchange that would allow people who aren’t covered for whatever reason to buy insurance through the exchange, which would increase competition and drive down prices. There’s also a mandate, which is uncomfortable but should help drive down costs.

Amanda really should get paid for using the Dem talking points this blatantly. I mean, "increase competition and drive down prices" sounds really nice, but I've yet to see a liberal spell out how, exactly, prices are going to go down (as opposed to going up) when insurers are required to cover every person, regardless of when that person gets insurance. But Amanda just keeps swallowing the Kool-Aid.

One big thing the bill does that will help a lot of people out is it not only bans denials based on pre-existing conditions, but it also bans premium increases. This was a major concern of mine, because simply mandating that insurance companies cover everyone doesn’t really help that much, if they just jack the rates up on the people with pre-existing conditions. The elimination on caps will also help people with catastrophic illnesses.

Emphasis mine.

How are insurance companies supposed to stay in business if premiums can't be raised? Even someone in the comments asked this question, but I doubt thumb-sucking Amanda wants to think that far ahead. She's just clapping her hands that everybody gets free ice cream.

What makes reading this summary of the bill really exciting is that not only did the House make sure to get the minimum basic decency standards covered, but they threw in a bunch of goodies on top of the necessities:

# Guarantees that every child in America will have health care coverage that includes dental, hearing and vision benefits.
# Provides better preventive and wellness care. Every health care plan offered through the exchange and by employers after a grace period will cover preventive care at no cost to the patient.
# Increases the health care workforce to ensure that more doctors and nurses are available to provide quality care as more Americans get coverage.

I hate being such a party pooper (well, no, I really don't, but I feel obligated to pretend I do), but these "goodies" bring up a lot of unanswered questions--at least Amanda doesn't answer them.

1. Doesn't providing "dental, hearing and vision benefits" increase the costs of health care?

2. Who pays for the preventive and wellness care if it is "at no cost to the patient?" Are doctors and hospitals and health care providers just going to work for free?

3. How does this bill "increase the health care workforce"? Are we just going to start calling nurse's aides nurses or something? Or is there going to be some required public service for everyone to work in the hospital now?

Of course, I'm being slightly facetious about the public service part, but I fail to see what in the billwill " ensure that more doctors and nurses are available to provide quality care," given that 45% of doctors would consider quitting if Obamacare passes.

I know it's a downer to keep asking how we're supposed to pay for all this, in the land of sunshine and lollipops, but somebody has to be the adult here. The truth is, insurance premiums will skyrocket under any of the proposed bills, people will have to pay more in taxes and there will be new taxes on things (such as wheelchairs) that have never been taxed before. All this to still not insure millions of Americans. But don't tell Amanda that. She'll just stick her fingers in her ears and sing "LALALALALALA!"

You'd think, since Pelosi is so proud of the bill, that she'd want to exhibit some of that transparency Democrats promised during last year's election. Not so.

House Democrats blocked the public from attending the unveiling ceremony of their health-care bill Thursday morning, allowing only pre-approved visitors whose names appeared on lists to enter the event at the West side of the Capitol.

The audience at the crowded press conference included Hill staffers, union workers, health care providers and students, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who thanked them for attending.

Mrs. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders announced the chamber's long-awaited version of a health care overhaul, which would expand insurance coverage to 36 million uninsured Americans, costing less than $900 billion over 10 years.

The West side of the Capitol - the area where President Barack Obama was inaugurated - is traditionally open to the public. But the entrances were blocked off Thursday morning by metal fences, with Capitol police officers standing next to staff members holding clipboards with lists of approved attendees.

This administration looks more and more like Animal Farm.

UPDATE: Here is a comprehensive list of the taxes in Pelosicare.

Quote of the Day

"It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Now, You Can't Even Watch Your Own Children at the Playground

...because you might be a pedophile.

This is in the U.K. Thank God we haven't gone quite this nutty here.

Parents are being banned from playing with their children in council recreation areas because they have not been vetted by police.
Mothers and fathers are being forced to watch their children from outside perimeter fences because of fears they could be paedophiles.
Watford Council was branded a 'disgrace' yesterday after excluding parents from two fenced-off adventure playgrounds unless they first undergo criminal record checks.

Children as young as five will instead be supervised by council 'play rangers' who have been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Councillors insist they are merely following Government regulations and cannot allow adults to walk around playgrounds 'unchecked'.

Another Duh! Moment: Under Obamacare, Private Insurance Prices Would Triple

And we now have the study to show it.

At the request of Congressional delegations worried about their constituents—call it a public service—WellPoint mined its own actuarial data to model ObamaCare in the 14 states where it runs Blue Cross plans. The study therefore takes into account market and demographic differences that other industry studies have not, such as the one from the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans, which looked at aggregate national trends.

In all of the 14 states WellPoint scrutinized, ObamaCare would drive up premiums for the small businesses and individuals who are most of WellPoint's customers...

In fact, what distinguishes the Wellpoint study is its detailed rigor. Take Ohio, where a young, healthy 25-year-old living in Columbus can purchase insurance from WellPoint today for about $52 per month in the individual market. WellPoint's actuaries calculate the bill will rise to $79 because Democrats are going to require it to issue policies to anyone who applies, even if they've waited until they're sick to buy insurance. Then they'll also require the company to charge everyone nearly the same rate, bringing the premium to $134. Add in an extra $17, since Democrats will require higher benefit levels, and a share of the new health industry taxes ($6), and monthly premiums have risen to $157, a 199% boost.

Meanwhile, a 40-year-old husband and wife with two kids would see their premiums jump by 122%—to $737 from $332—while a small business with eight employees in Franklin County would see premiums climb by 86%. It's true that the family or the individual might qualify for subsidies if their incomes are low enough, but the business wouldn't qualify under the Senate Finance bill WellPoint examined. And even if there are subsidies, the new costs the bill creates don't vaporize. They're merely transferred to taxpayers nationwide—or financed with deficits, which will be financed eventually with higher taxes.

These estimates are devastating to the argument that everybody would get better care for less money.

I Remember When War Casualties Were Terrible

Back in 2005, it seemed like the New York Times, Washington Post and every leftwing blogger was horrified at the casualties our troops suffered in Iraq. It was part of the "We support the troops but not the war" shtick, which was difficult to swallow, but they kept insisting that they were really, really concerned about troop casualties, and that's why they wanted to end the war!

Yeah,I didn't buy it either, and I sure don't buy it now that casualties are rising dramatically in Afghanistan and the left seems way more concerned with Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the public option than the lives of our soldiers.

Obama has simply failed to act on Afghanistan and as a result more troops have died than in any other year of the war. Obama criticized Bush for not being aggressive enough in Afghanistan, but when it is his turn to get tough he can't make up his mind.

Dana has a nice post posing the question, Is President Obama’s foreign policy making a difference yet? I would say, yes, it is making a difference, but not a difference for the better. We're seeing more casualties and chaos. Shouldn't the Left, who argued repeatedly over the last four years that Afghanistan is the "necessary war," be putting more pressure on President Obama to win?

We Had Different Expectations for GWB

What if Bush had done that?
Well, we know what would have happened, don't we?

Valerie Jarrett Attacks Fox News Then Has to Backtrack

It's tough for the Obama White House to keep attacking Fox News, knowing that, as they do so, it makes the cable network more popular. So, instead, we're treated to Valerie Jarrett attacking Fox News, then weaseling out.

To the question of whether Fox News is biased, Jarrett replied: "Well, of course they're biased. Of course they are."

But when Brown followed up by asking Jarrett if she thinks MSNBC is biased, she quickly downplayed her original remark. "Actually, I don't want to generalize all of Fox is biased or that another station is biased. I think what we want to do is look at it on a case-by-case basis," she said. "When we see a pattern of distortion, we're going to be honest about that pattern of distortion....

"We're actually calling everybody out. So this isn't anything that's simply directed at Fox. We just want the American people to have a really clear understanding," said Jarrett.

Oh, yeah. BO and his minions have been sooooo tough on, say MSNBC. Riiight.

This is obviously in response to the skyrocketing ratings Fox News has enjoyed since the Obama administration declared war on it. The war hasn't worked for Obama, and that explains this change in communication strategy.

Ha Ha Ha Joe Lieberman Says He'll Filibuster Harry Reid's Health Care Bill

This is sweet.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.

Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid has said the Senate bill will.

"We're trying to do too much at once," Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now."

This essentially kills the public option, which will infuriate the left, but which is a deal killer for anyone who was interested in reform of some sort. From Hot Air:

(W)hile the left will beat him up for not being able to buy 60 votes via horse-trading, isn’t Reid actually helped a bit by Lieberman taking the lead among the opposition? So deeply do progressives despise Joementum that the storyline here will be his betrayal and obstructionism, not Reid’s idiocy, which is a huge help to Dingy Harry. As scapegoats go, you can’t do better than a guy who lost a primary to a nutroots-supported liberal three years ago and then endorsed John McCain.

Joe Lieberman is no conservative, but he clearly understands the risks in a new government program with questionable funding at a time of economic uncertainty. But this does make one wonder what health care reform will look like without a public option.

UPDATE: Keith Olbermann is so pissed off, he wonders if Lieberman is on the take.

Fox News' Ratings Way Up Since White House Declared War on It

Oh, the irony. Or maybe not. I could have predicted that the flap would be a ratings booster for Fox News. People who never watched the channel would be wondering what all the fuss was about, and those who occasionally watched Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity are probably more regular. Anecdotally, I'd never watched Glenn Beck's show until Color of Change declared war on him.

From Hot Air:

It’s a nine-percent bump in the two weeks since Anita Dunn’s whine heard ’round the world — in terms of overall audience. Among the coveted 25-54 demographic? A 14-percent bump. Good work, Barry. People keep telling me that this PR offensive by the White House benefits both sides but I don’t see how that’s true. If the goal is to contain Fox by framing the stories it breaks — Van Jones, ACORN, etc — as somehow illegitimate, then every tenth of a point that Fox’s ratings go up undermines that goal. There will come a point where other news nets will follow Fox’s lead simply for business reasons, ideology or no ideology; follow the link, eyeball the list of top 20 news shows, and ask yourself how far we are from that point, really. To put it in perspective: “Red Eye,” at 3 a.m., is beating Campbell Brown at 8 p.m. on CNN in the demo. (Worse, perhaps: Anderson Cooper is getting beat by... re-runs of Nancy Grace.)

It's clear that people prefer the opinion shows on Fox News as well as MSNBC (whose ratings are nowhere close to Fox News') to the staid, straight news programs on CNN and HLN. And why not? The straight news shows are on all day long on all four cable networks, and there's also the nightly news programs on the broadcast networks. IOW, there are plenty of places to watch the straight news. But Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity or Keith Olbermann bring an entertainment value that is obviously attracting eyeballs on a nightly basis. That must be worrisome to the White House, if they didn't want people watching or listening to Fox News.

What Enemies List?

Obama's Enemies List.

So Much for that "Death of Conservatism" Stuff

Conservatives maintain edge as top ideological group.

Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009, confirming a finding that Gallup first noted in June. Forty percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. This marks a shift from 2005 through 2008, when moderates were tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group.

Health Care News Round-Up

--Harry Reid says Dems have a health care bill in the Senate and it contains the lie of an "opt out" public option for states. The reason this is a lie is that everyone has to pay into this boondoggle whether their state accepts Obamacare or not. This leaves no incentive not to be in Obamacare, which will lead to everybody in the not-public option. Which, of course, is the plan, after all.

--The health care system wastes $800 billion per year, largely because of unnecessary care:

such as the overuse of antibiotics and lab tests to protect against malpractice exposure makes up 37 percent of healthcare waste or $200 to $300 billion a year.

Oddly enough, Democrats don't want to include tort reform, since their pockets are overflowing with trial lawyer money. So much for the idea they actually want to fix anything.

Next on the list was fraud, which syphons off $200 billion a year. If you want to see how it works, watch Steve Kroft's expose of Medicare fraud in South Florida on 60 Minutes. According to that story, Medicare fraud costs $60 billion per year in Florida. And Medicare only treats about 46 million Americans. Think about this when Democrats tell you Obamacare can be paid for by policing fraud. They can't even police the fraud in systems we already have, let alone those not set up yet.

--Nancy Pelosi thinks the only reason people don't like the public option is the name.

In an appearance at a Florida senior center, the Democratic leader referred to the so-called public option as "the consumer option." Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., appeared by Pelosi's side and used the term "competitive option."

Both suggested new terminology might get them past any lingering doubts among the public—or consumers or competitors.

"You'll hear everyone say, 'There's got to be a better name for this,'" Pelosi said. "When people think of the public option, public is being misrepresented, that this is being paid for with their public dollars."

I think the reason people don't like the public option is that they know it's a great big lie and should be called the "you'll pay for everybody" option. It would at least be more truthful.

--Another excellent take on why health care costs so much was presented on This American Life, in a series of three stories about doctors, patients and insurance companies. Not your usual INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE EEEEVILLLLL AND WANT YOU TO DIE CUZ THAT'S HOW THEY MAKE MONEY!!!11!!11!! story.

--Congress' health care bills leave millions uninsured

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates 17 million Americans would remain uninsured under the Senate Finance Committee's 10-year, $829 billion health care bill. Health experts such as Rowland say that number would include families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to pay for insurance.

Wasn't the point to make everybody insured?

The White House Doesn't Want Us To Know What His Czars Do

White House to Keep Obama’s ‘Czars’ from Testifying Before Congress
Among the czars Congress wanted information on:

-- Energy and Environment Czar Carol Browner (whose official title is Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change)

-- Health Czar Nancy Ann DeParle (Counselor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform)

-- International Climate Czar Todd Stern (Special Envoy for Climate Change)

-- Guantanamo Closure Czar Daniel Fried (Special Envoy to Oversee the Closure of the Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay)

-- Urban Affairs Czar Adolfo Carrion Jr. (White House Director of Urban Affairs);

-- Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg (Special Master on Executive Pay)

-- Afghanistan Czar Richard Holbrooke (Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan)

-- Auto Recovery Czar Ed Montgomery (Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers)

-- Car Czar (Manufacturing Policy) Ron Bloom (Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury)

-- Domestic Violence Czar Lynn Rosenthal (White House Advisor on Violence Against Women)

-- Economic Czar Paul Volcker (Chairman of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board)

-- Senior Director for Information Sharing Policy Mike Resnick

-- WMD Policy Czar Gary Samore (White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control)

-- Great Lakes Czar Cameron Davis (Special advisor to the U.S. EPA overseeing its Great Lakes restoration plan)

-- Central Region Czar Dennis Ross

-- Border Czar Alan Bersin (Special Representative for Border Affairs and Assistant Secretary of State for International Affairs)

Two of the positions – the Green Jobs Czar and the Cybersecurity Czar -- are unfilled. Van Jones, who was first appointed to the Green Jobs post, resigned recently under fire.

Remember when Barack Obama promised transparency and open government?

Voters Trust Republicans More

According to this poll.

For the first time in recent years, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. The GOP holds double-digit advantages on five of them.

Republicans have nearly doubled their lead over Democrats on economic issues to 49% to 35%, after leading by eight points in September.

The GOP also holds a 54% to 31% advantage on national security issues and a 50% to 31% lead on the handling of the war in Iraq.

The poll shows voters giving Republicans higher marks on issues Republicans typically do well on, but neither party scores well on ethics and corruption, which should be a concern to both sides.

Bogus Mortality Statistics on Health Care

By now, you should know that anyone touting "health care reform" (i.e., Obamacare) is lying about who dies due to lack of insurance. The reason they lie is because there's no verifiable way of tracking whose death is actually caused because they "couldn't" (as opposed to wouldn't) go to the doctor because they didn't want to pay the office visit.

Michelle Malkin has a terrific post up addressing the problems and outright lies associated with the "studies" on this subject, starting with the fact that the authors are not impartial scientists bent on discovering the truth about the uninsured, but lobbyists who want Obamacare.

Worse, though, is the shoddy research and questionable methods used in these studies to come to conclusions they want.

Two of the co-authors, Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, are avowed government-run health care activists. Himmelstein co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program, which bills itself as the “the only national physician organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to implementing a single-payer national health program.” Woolhandler is a co-founder and served as secretary of the group.

Sounding more like a MoveOn.org organizer than a disinterested scientist, Dr. Woolhandler assailed the current health reform legislation in Congress for not going far enough: “Politicians are protecting insurance industry profits by sacrificing American lives.”

So, how did these political doctors come up with the 44,000 figure? They used data from a health survey conducted between 1988 and 1994. The questionnaires asked a sample of 9,000 participants if they were insured and how they rated their own health. The federal Centers for Disease Control tracked the deaths of people in the sample group through the year 2000. Drs. Himmelstein, Woolhandler, and company then crunched the numbers and attributed deaths to lack of health insurance for all the participants who initially self-reported that they had no insurance and then died for any reason over the 12-year tracking period.

At no time did the original researchers or the single-payer activists who piggy-backed off their data ever verify whether the supposed casualties of America’s callous health care system had insurance or not. In fact, here is what the report actually says:

“Our study has several limitations,” the authors concede. The survey data they used “assessed health insurance at a single point in time and did not validate self-reported insurance status. We were unable to measure the effect of gaining or losing coverage after the interview.” Himmelstein et al. simply assumed that point-in-time uninsurance translates into perpetual uninsurance – and that any health calamities that result can and must be blamed on being uninsured.

Another caveat you won’t see on Rep. Grayson’s memorial to the dubious dead: The single-payer advocate-authors also conceded in their study limitations section that “earlier population-based surveys that did validate insurance status found that between 7% and 11% of those initially recorded as being uninsured were misclassified. If present, such misclassification might dilute the true effect of uninsurance in our sample.”

To boil it all down in plain English: The single-payer scientists had no way of assessing whether the survey participants received insurance coverage between the time they answered the questionnaires and the time they died. They had no way of assessing whether the deaths could have been averted with health insurance coverage. A significant portion of those classified as “uninsured” may not have even been uninsured, based on past studies that actually did verify insurance status. But the Himmelstein team just took the rate of uninsurance from the original study (3.3 percent), applied it to census data, and voila: more than 44,000 Americans are dying from lack of insurance.

I've discussed the bogus 18,000 people die per year due to lack of insurance figure, as well, pointing out that the death toll includes people who have longterm diseases like diabetes or heart disease, things which don't kill you just because you don't have a HumanaCare plan. These shills have to inflate the number of people harmed because they don't have insurance, since the realy "death toll" would be considerably lower. The fact that they are including in the uninsured anyone who's ever been uninsured, whether it's for a month or 20 years, also shows their desperation. But as with Democrats hellbent to push through a public option, the ends justify the means for these people.

This Is Shocking

Top employees leave financial firms ahead of pay cuts

The Historic Presidency

Barack Obama sees worst poll rating drop in 50 years

His current approval rating – hovering just above the level that would make re-election an uphill struggle – is close to the bottom for newly-elected president. Mr Obama entered the White House with a soaring 78 per cent approval rating.

This is hardly surprising. Voters elected an empty suit and have now discovered it.

Olbermann as "Pet Media"

This sums it up very well.

H/T: Olbermann Watch.

Is MSNBC a real news organization? More from Gibson.

White House Tries to Exclude Fox News from Interview

Hard to see how even Media Matters can defend this.

The only way to read this is that the administration was lying when it said White House officials would be available for interview by Fox News. Fortunately, as Allahpundit points out, the WH press corps closed ranks to support Fox News, not just on principle, but to ensure their own access when a Republican sits in the executive mansion.

Again, the more Obama's administration attacks Fox News, the more Fox News's stature grows and Teh One's diminishes.



Cassandra at Villainous Company notes,

The press did the right thing ... behind closed doors. But as of the time of this posting I don't see ABC, MSNBC, or CNN have any plans to inform their readers of today's events.

This is an outrage that Americans should be concerned about. During the George W. Bush administration, we were constantly told that he wanted to "stifle dissent" and shut down the press. Now, we have a president who actually wants to do these things.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

UPDATE: Anderson Cooper compares Obama with Nixon.

UPDATE x2: Moderate Democrats are concerned about the backlash against them from the White House's all-out push against critics. The strategy is doomed to failure; criticism of the President, any President, is normal. Expending one's energy attacking the critics makes the White House look petty and small. Remember, this President promised to bring "a different tone" to Washington and to listen to critics. Stunts like this, as well as bashing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, rightfully concerns voters who thought they were getting something different.

UPDATE x3: Interesting view of this at Balkinization.

In the long run, it will probably be better for the Administration and future Administrations not to say that Fox and its successors are not "legitimate" journalists, but that they are not actually objective journalists; instead they are members of a new party or partisan press. That model of the press may be legitimate in the twenty-first century, but politicians have obligation to treat it as they treated an earlier model of journalism.

This isn't wholly true. "Objective journalism" has been a source of debate for first-year journalism students since the Dark Ages. This idea that reporters check their biases at the White House door is bogus, as the fawning coverage of Teh One during last year's campaign illustrates. And more to the point, the President of All of Us has an obligation to answer critics, not shut them out. Remember, the purpose of newspapers--and journalism in general-- is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

"Yelling Is the New Spanking,"

So says Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions.

“This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do. They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don’t work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again.”

We've been told that spanking is abusive. Is yelling abusive? And if so, how do you get two kids to stop picking, poking and irritating each other in the backseat of the car without yelling at them?