The Truth Behind Obama’s Healthcare Reform Rhetoric

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In Defense of The Second Amendment of the Constitution

The Second Amendment to the Constitution, the right to bear arms, should not require much interpretation yet it has been challenged on numerous occasions. It is shocking that circuit court judges and even Supreme Court Justices provide variant interpretations. The fact that the Supreme Court decision in the Heller v. District of Columbia case in 2008 regarding Washington’s strict gun prohibition was overturned by only a 5 – 4 margin, should give pause to freedom loving Americans.

Our freedoms can be ephemeral – they can be taken away in a flash. The “progressives” and the far-left in our country are relentlessly attacking our innate rights and freedoms, often in incremental and stealth ways. The Second Amendment not only allows us to protect ourselves from others who aim to harm us but as Thomas Jefferson noted, it also is what can protect us from a tyrannical, overreaching government.

We must be ever vigilant in protecting and defending these rights and freedoms.

'Right To Bear Arms' Means Just That
Investors Business Daily   03/03/2010

Gun Rights: Otis McDonald, 76, an Army vet who lives in a high-crime area of Chicago, thinks the Constitution gives him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife as he protected his country. We think so too.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on behalf of four Chicago residents led by homeowner McDonald, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association to overturn Chicago's three-decade-old ban on owning handguns.

In a 5-4 decision in 2008, Heller v. District of Columbia, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia's draconian, 32-year-old ban on the private ownership of handguns. Scalia wrote that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

The joy of Second Amendment defenders was short-lived. A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, led by Judge Frank Easterbrook, rejected subsequent suits brought by the National Rifle Association against the city of Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park, Ill.

According to Easterbrook, the Revolution was fought and independence won so that the Founding Fathers could write a Constitution with a Bill of Rights that applied only to the District of Columbia.

"Heller dealt with a law enacted under the authority of the national government," he wrote, "while Chicago and Oak Park are subordinate bodies of a state."

We're all for federalism, but the U.S. Constitution is the U.S. Constitution. Surely he can't be serious.

Alan Gura, the Alexandria, Va., lawyer who won the Heller case, has expanded the argument to include the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868 to prevent infringement on constitutional rights by states and others concerned about newly freed slaves owning firearms.

Introducing the 14th Amendment to Congress, Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan referred to "personal rights" such as "the right to keep and bear arms, " explaining that his amendment would compel the states "to respect these great fundamental guarantees."

In 2008, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed an amicus brief on behalf of 32 states that also challenged the constitutionality of the D.C. ban. Now he represents a group of 38 states fighting the Chicago ban. "The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is a critical liberty interest, essential to preserving individual security and the right to self-defense," Abbott explained.

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass wrote in 2008 that in Chicago only two classes of people can possess firearms: "The criminals and the politicians."

City politicians, he noted, used their influence to "become deputized peace officers so they can carry" or "often go around surrounded by armed bodyguards on the city payroll."

Otis McDonald wants the same right to defend himself and his family. To deny him that right, city officials argue that repealing the ban will bring carnage in the streets. Yet in the forthcoming third edition of "More Guns, Less Crime," John Lott points out that the Windy City's murder rate fell relative to America's other 50 largest cities before the ban and rose afterward.

In an essay Monday for FoxNews.com, Lott noted that after the D.C. gun ban was ruled unconstitutional, murders in Washington plummeted 25% from 2008 to 2009. D.C.'s murder rate, he reports, is down to 23.5 per 100,000 people, its lowest since 1967.

More guns do seem to mean less crime. And as Mr. McDonald insists, those who gave us liberty gave us the means and the right to defend it.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522844

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Where Obama Wants To Take This Country…

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We Must Stop Obama and Democrats in Congress From Passage Of the Healthcare Reform Legislation!

As predictable as the sun rising in the east, Obama will pursue reconciliation in order to facilitate passage of his radical bill which will steal our freedom and rights, fiscally bankrupt our country and destroy the best healthcare system in the world.

We must stop Obama and his radical, elitist minions from this government take over of our healthcare system that a large majority of Americans oppose ... and which Obama and Congress will never have to be subject to.

We urge you to call and email your Senators and Representatives, voicing your vehement opposition to this legislation.

Unreconciled
Investors Business Daily  03/03/2010

Health Reform: As promised, the White House has unveiled the latest tweaks in its plan to take over the U.S. medical care system. Both parties in Congress should beware: You vote for it, you own it.

Survey after survey, including our own IBD/TIPP Poll, shows that Americans firmly oppose more government control over health care. Yet President Obama's new reform plan does just that.

He and other Democratic leaders seem willing to ignore both the voters and the well-founded doubts of opponents to ram a plan down our collective throats — making the grand bet that Republicans, even if they retake Congress in November, will have neither the political clout nor the guts to undo the damage.

Worse, they cynically manipulated us into this situation. Last week, at the much-ballyhooed health care "summit," the president pretended to take ideas from Republican foes to "improve" his wildly unpopular plan. But it was just window dressing.

On Wednesday, the president made clear he'll use the budget reconciliation process to get his radical plan through with as few votes as possible. In short, he'll pass a bill that takes control of 17% of the economy without any GOP support.
So much for bipartisanship.

Worse still, this requires the House to vote up or down on an already-passed Senate bill, with only a vow from the Senate and Obama that they'll go back later and "fix" all that's egregiously wrong with the measure.

So, neither House members nor the citizens they represent will really know what's in the bill until after it's passed. Is this what the White House and Democratic leaders meant last year when they repeatedly promised "transparency" in health reform deliberations?

Still more troubling, no one seems to know the plan's true cost. Obama puts it at $1 trillion over 10 years. But just this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed a "much smaller" bill, while Majority Leader Steny Hoyer insists there is no "scaled-back" version.

Who's right? We'll just say this: Because of accounting tricks that front-load costs but delay benefits, the real price of ObamaCare is more like $2.5 trillion over a decade. This will require massive tax hikes on the middle class, rationing of care by government bureaucrats and deep cuts in Medicare.

The president also said on Wednesday: "The proposal I've put forward gives Americans more control over their health care by holding insurance companies more accountable." Not true.

Americans will be forced to buy health insurance — something we believe is unconstitutional. By adding 31 million new buyers to the health care market and requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions, private insurance prices will inevitably soar. That will force businesses to drop coverage for millions of workers.

"I don't know how this plays politically, but I know it's right," Obama also said. But he knows darn well his scheme is highly unpopular, and that resorting to reconciliation is the only way he'll get the main item on his presidential agenda passed — even if it ends Democrats' control of Congress.

Surely moderate Democrats and Republicans won't be swayed by talk of joining in a "historic opportunity." Their constituents clearly see the flaws in this government takeover of the best health care system in the world, and a vote in favor of it will likely bring their political careers to a sudden end.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522847

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Data, Evidence and Experience Overwhelmingly Refute Benefits and Political Assertions of Government Controlled Healthcare

Obama and many Congressional Democrats aim to pass government run healthcare no matter what the cost, financially or politically. They are arrogantly and relentlessly pursuing this despite the vehement opposition of a large majority of Americans. In fact, both they and the fifth column news media have added the contemptuous tactics of calling Americans who oppose it dumb, ignorant, and too stupid to understand the complexities of the bill. Of course, they have made many other derogatory claims.

As we have mentioned numerous times, THIS IS NOT TRULY ABOUT HEALTHCARE. Obamacare is a crucial piece in the puzzle that will further co-opt the individual’s rights and transfer it to an all powerful and controlling central government. It is a confiscation by legislation of an additional 16% of our economy which would mean that nearly 50% of it is directly owned and controlled by the government.

Have you noticed how many czars and other officials selected by Obama ardently support communism? This is not by accident. It is part of the overall plan.

The rhetoric of Obama and select Democrats regarding healthcare reform are complete lies. There is no cost savings with this plan. In fact, their claimed costs probably underestimate the total 10 year costs by well in excess of three to four trillion dollars.  Look at estimates of other federal programs and check out how they turned out. Most were off by a factor of three to ten times.

Unbelievable!

The following expose by Thomas Sowell eloquently and cogently examines the relevant issues and information regarding government controlled healthcare, truths, facts and political motivations.

Other Nations' Health Systems Are Overlooked
By Thomas Sowell   03/03/2010

What is most like Alice in Wonderland in medical care reform is the fact that it is being discussed in the abstract, as if there are not already government-run medical care systems in this country and elsewhere.

Yet there seems to be remarkably little interest in examining how government-run medical care actually turns out — medically and financially — whether in Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration hospitals in this country, or in government-run medical systems in other countries.

We are repeatedly being told that we need to have a government-controlled medical care system because other countries have it — as if our policies on something as serious as medical care should be based on the principle of monkey see, monkey do.

By all means look at other countries, but not just to see what to imitate. See how it actually turns out. Yet there seems to be an amazing lack of interest in examining what government-controlled medical care produces.

While our so-called health care "summit" last week was going on, British newspapers were carrying exposes of terrible, and often deadly, conditions in British hospitals under that country's National Health Service. But this has not become part of our debate on what to expect from government-controlled medical care.

Such scandals are an old story under the National Health Service in Britain, one repeatedly producing fresh scandals that their newspapers carry but ours ignore.

In addition to a whole series of National Health Service scandals in Britain over the years, the government-run medical system in Britain has far less high-tech medical equipment than there is in the United States. Neither in Britain and Canada nor in other countries with government-run medical care systems can people get to see doctors, especially surgeons, in as short a time as in the United States.

It is not uncommon for patients in those countries to have to wait for months before getting operations that Americans get within weeks, or even days, after being diagnosed with a condition that requires surgery. You can always "bring down the cost of medical care" by having a lower level of quality or availability.

But again, you may never learn any of this by following most of the American mainstream media. It is not that they don't make comparisons between medical care in different countries. But they tend to feature news that will promote government-controlled care.

One of the statistics they spin endlessly is that life expectancy in some countries with government-controlled medical care is higher than in the United States. What they don't tell you is that, in some of these countries, all the infants that die are not included in infant mortality statistics, as they are in the United States.

More important, both political and media supporters of government-controlled medical care consistently confuse medical care with health care.

Much, if not most, of health care depends on what individuals do in the way they live their own lives — including eating habits, alcohol intake, exercise, narcotics and homicide. A study some years ago found that Mormons live a decade longer than other Americans. But nobody believes that Mormons' doctors are that much better than other doctors. When you don't do a lot of things that shorten your life, you live longer. That is not rocket science.

Americans tend to have higher rates of obesity, narcotics use and homicide than people in some other countries. And there is not much that doctors can do about that.

If those who make international comparisons were serious, instead of clever, they would compare the things that medical science can have a great effect on — cancer survival rates, for example. Americans have some of the highest cancer survival rates in the world, and for some particular cancers, the very highest.

When you can get to see a doctor faster, and get treatments under way without waiting for months while the cancer grows and spreads, you have a better chance of surviving. That, too, is not rocket science.

But it is also something that you are not likely to see featured in most of the media, where people are promoting their own pet notions and agendas, instead of giving you the facts on which you can make up your own mind.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522833

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It Would Be In America’s and the Republicans’ Interests To Start From The Beginning For Healthcare Reform – Or It Will Be Disastrous For All.

Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster. There is nothing that Republicans can do to transform this abominable plan into a prudent and fiscally responsible one. If they attempt to do so, it will be calamitous for all!

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Portrait of Our “Representative Government” Officials

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Obama Is A Clear And Present Danger To Our Constitutional Rights

By action and words on myriad occasions, Obama has indicated that the Constitution cramps his style. Exuding arrogance and narcissism, he readily indicates that he will blatantly disregard its restraints and promulgate whatever legislation he so desires, whether it be the Federal government takeover of healthcare, industries or even firearm and munitions restrictions.

Obama has shown particular disdain for and has challenged with legislation the First, Second, Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments. We, the American people, need to be eternally vigilant and vigorously oppose his each and every attempt to abrogate our Constitutional rights and freedoms.

Obama must be stopped!

Obama vs. the 10th Amendment
by Chuck Norris 03/02/2010

Not surprisingly, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released last Friday revealed that 56 percent of Americans think the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to their rights and freedoms.

Particularly apropos here is the feds' health care violation of the 10th Amendment, which is part of our Bill of Rights and was ratified Dec. 15, 1791. The amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Thomas Jefferson explained the pre-eminence of this amendment in 1791: "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."

The point is that based on the 10th Amendment, when it comes to legislating and controlling our health care, the federal government doesn't have a constitutional leg to stand on. And even its past violations of the 10th Amendment by implementing government health care services have proved to break more national legs than they have to mend them. The proof is in the pudding. How many times does it have to be pointed out to Washington? Medicare is going bankrupt. Medicaid is going bankrupt. Case closed.

The government is inept to run America's health care system. And now it wants to expand its programs (its health care business) to oversee what equates to one-sixth of the gross national product? What rational board anywhere in the world would rightly appoint a CEO who had a string of miserable business failures and major corporate bankruptcies in his dossier?

I agree with Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University Medical Center, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who put it best in their article a few months back, titled "Alternatives to government health takeover." They said this: "We think it's critical that power shifts to the American consumer and away from government, employers and insurers, as evidence shows medical care prices come down when patients pay directly.
Government should offer tax relief, such as refundable tax credits, to encourage private health insurance purchasing -- especially for low-income families. Similar ideas, like those in the Patients' Choice Act ... are important for Americans to consider. We would do well also to consider creative ideas such as changing federal payments to state-based medicaid plans to individual vouchers or expanding health savings accounts, as has been done in South Carolina."

Returning the onus of solving health care issues to families, local communities and states would not only return a balance of power to our federal government but also help with America's economic recovery and build up communities at the same time.

The abuse of federal political power to intervene in areas such as Americans' private health care could exist only in a nation that no longer holds its leaders accountable to its constitution and that has governmental leadership that regards itself as above its people and its constitution. Sadly, I was listening to an interview the other day in which President Barack Obama described the U.S. Constitution as "an imperfect document ... a document that reflects some deep flaws ... (and) an enormous blind spot." He also said, "The Framers had that same blind spot."

In so doing, the president established a rationale and justification for disregarding the Constitution. Even worse, he placed himself above the Constitution and those "blind Framers," who just couldn't see the big picture as he does today. After all, he's the constitutional scholar, and the Framers were just, well, the creators of the document!

Our 44th president would do well to learn from America's third president, Thomas Jefferson, himself a source greater than any living constitutional lawyer. Imagine Jefferson sitting there at the health care summit, a ripe sage at roughly 80 years of age. After listening to all the clamoring of both Republicans and Democrats, he politely but sternly utters these words, which he also wrote to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson in 1823: "The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers. They (did not learn from the past), nor (were they) aware of the slipperiness of the eels of the law. I ask for no straining of words against the General Government, nor yet against the States. I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by the constitution for the limitation of both; and never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold as at market."

It couldn't be any clearer or wiser than that.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35858

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Obama Will Lie, Deceive and Misrepresent In Attempts To Pass Obamacare

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Obama on Healthcare Reform: Out of Touch With Reality and the American People

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Obama and Pelosi Will Use The “Nuclear Option” In Attempting To Pass Obamacare Against The Will of The American People

Quite consistent with their arrogant and imperious rhetoric, it appears that Obama and Pelosi will pursue the “nuclear option” in attempting to pass Obamacare. This, of course, is in direct opposition to the preferences of the majority of Americans and lucidly illustrates that this is not truly about healthcare as they ostensibly claim. It is about the government repealing the rights and freedoms of the individual American to make their own decisions about healthcare and instead granting full control to the Federal government. It is an ideological power play that will be a suicide mission if they go forth with their plans.

Voters should remember this come Election Day and dethrone all these Democrats.

White House: Simple up-or-down vote on health care
By Jim Kuhnhenn                Mar 1, 2010

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House called for a "simple up-or-down" vote on health care legislation Sunday as Speaker Nancy Pelosi appealed to House Democrats to get behind President Barack Obama's chief domestic priority even it if threatens their political careers.

In voicing support for a simple majority vote, White House health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle signaled Obama's intention to push the Democratic-crafted bill under Senate rules that would overcome GOP stalling tactics.

Republicans unanimously oppose the Democratic proposals. Without GOP support, Obama's only chance of emerging with a policy and political victory is to bypass the bipartisanship he promoted during his televised seven-hour health care summit Thursday.

"We're not talking about changing any rules here," DeParle said. "All the president's talking about is: Do we need to address this problem and does it make sense to have a simple, up-or-down vote on whether or not we want to fix these problems?"

DeParle was optimistic that the president would have the votes to pass the massive bill. But none of legislation's advocates who spoke on Sunday indicated that those votes were in hand.

"I think we will get to that point where we will have the votes," predicted Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a member of the Senate Democratic leadership. "I believe that we will pass health care reform this spring."

In a sober call to arms, Pelosi said lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public. "We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."

Pelosi said it took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, "and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill."

It's unclear whether Pelosi's remarks will embolden or chill dozens of moderate House Democrats who face withering criticisms of the health care proposal in visits with constituents and in national polls. Republican lawmakers unanimously oppose the health care proposals, and many GOP strategists believe voters will turn against Democrats in the November elections.

Pelosi, from San Francisco, is more liberal than scores of her Democratic colleagues. But she generally walks a careful line between urging them to back left-of-center policies and giving them a green light to buck party leaders to improve their re-election hopes.

Her comments seemed to acknowledge the widely held view that Democrats will lose House seats this fall - maybe a lot.
They now control the chamber 255 to 178, with two vacancies. Pelosi stopped well short of suggesting Democrats could lose their majority, but she called on members of her party to make a bold move on health care with no prospects of GOP help.

"Time is up," she said. "We really have to go forth."

Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-ranking Republican leader in the House, made it clear Republicans see a Democrats-only bill as an election-year issue.

"If Speaker Pelosi rams through this bill, through the House ... they will lose their majority in Congress in November," he said.

The White House is redoubling efforts to remind voters that the Senate passed an Obama-backed health care bill in December with 60 votes. Every Republican voted against that bill. A Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts in January, however, left Democrats one vote shy of the number necessary to overcome GOP filibusters.

As a result, a new plan would call for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama. The Senate would then use budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats. Those rules prohibit filibusters.
Exactly what the legislation would look like remained a matter of negotiation within Democratic ranks. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, "is working with his caucus, the White House and the House leadership on strategy and next steps," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Sunday.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky renewed his party's demand that Obama and the Democrats start over and write a bipartisan health care bill. He said that while the reconciliation process has been used to pass legislation in the past, it should not apply to health care legislation.

"There are a number of other Republicans who do not think something of this magnitude ought to be jammed down the throats of a public that doesn't want it through this kind of device," McConnell said.

Pelosi said that "in a matter of days" Democrats will have specific legislative language on health care to show to the public and to wavering lawmakers. She predicted voters will warm up to the bill once they understand its details.

"When we have a bill," she said, "you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell."

At that point, added House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, top Democrats will make their pitch to their members.

"Within the next couple of weeks we're going to have a specific proposal and start counting votes to see whether or not those proposals could pass," he said.

Pelosi appeared on ABC's "This Week" and CNN's "State of the Union." DeParle and Cantor were on NBC's "Meet the Press," Hoyer was on CBS'"Face the Nation," while Menendez appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and McConnell spoke on CNN.
---
Associated Press writer Charles Babington contributed to this article.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100301/D9E5L41G1.html

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A Synonym For Obama’s Failed Ideology

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Some Simple and Simplifying Suggestions For Healthcare Reform

Americans don’t need a government controlled, bureaucratic, bloated, corrupt, inherently inefficient and unnecessarily costly healthcare system. And that’s not even considering Obamacare. There are many relatively simple solutions that can make the whole system less costly, complex and more efficient for everyone.

The only problem is that these possibilities may remove some of the potential to promulgate corrupt deals and legislation by Obama and Congress.

A Modest And Effective Health Reform
By Benjamin Zycher

Notwithstanding the election outcome in Massachusetts last month, efforts inside the Beltway to "reform" the health insurance system — that is, to centralize the rules and outcomes of health coverage — will continue, and still may prove successful if the drumbeat for "compromise" with fatally flawed ideas is heeded.

This centralization would be a disaster because government does not have patients. It has interest groups, an eternal truth that casts a shadow long and dark in the context of a federal takeover of the health insurance market.

Decentralization — a reduction in the role of government — is the only path that can lead toward reduced cost pressures and increased choices for patients with vastly heterogeneous needs and preferences.

One straightforward reform that could be adopted quickly is the implementation of a nationally available "entrepreneurs" health coverage policy freed from the many benefit mandates imposed upon the health insurance market.

State governments, responsible for regulating health insurers, for years have required health insurance policies to cover particular services and categories of providers. This means that individuals must pay for such mandated coverage even if they otherwise might choose not to do so.

The average state imposes about 35 such mandates, and a conservative estimate of the marginal cost of each is about 0.3% of premiums. Premiums thus are forced up by about $1,294 per year in the average state for a group (employer-based) family policy, ranging from $260 per year in Idaho, the state with the fewest mandates (8), to $2,486 per year in Rhode Island, the state with the most mandates (62).

The specifics of coverage policies freed from such mandates would be determined by competition in the market. But premiums incontrovertibly would fall.

A new study from the Pacific Research Institute shows that these policies would enroll about 13.6 million individuals now covered by private insurance, and, very conservatively, about 3.2 million of those now uninsured. This represents about 8% of those insured privately or uninsured for the U.S. as a whole, ranging from about 1.6% for Idaho to about 11.9% for Rhode Island.

By eliminating the many benefit and provider mandates now imposed by state laws, entrepreneurs' coverage would reduce the degree to which consumers treat health insurance as a way to shift known costs onto others, rather than as a way to pool the risks of future adverse health events.

This would be an important step toward restoring health insurance as protection against catastrophic events rather than prepayment for anticipated medical services, and so would strengthen incentives to economize on the use of health care resources.

More generally, such a reform would be driven by market forces — the preferences of consumers and the costs faced by insurers — and so would decentralize and depoliticize the system.

Because representative democracy is the art of wealth redistribution, and because resources are limited always and everywhere even (or especially) for the federal government, a system of health coverage centralized in the Beltway inexorably would be transformed into a massive tug-of-war among groups seeking both increased allocations for the treatments in which they are particularly interested, and a shift of costs onto others.

Merely consider the tempest over breast mammograms that erupted late last year. Mammograms, of course, are hardly the only medical service for which there is a constituency, and enactment of centralized "reform" legislation would be the beginning rather than the end of such interest-group competition.

Thus would insurance coverage — and therefore the delivery — of various medical procedures increasingly come to be politicized over time.

A new public policy allowing individuals and groups to escape the constraints imposed by state benefit mandates would have the opposite effect, and thus would represent real reform.

Other important reforms include:

• Elimination of the tax preference that now favors coverage purchased in the group (employer) market over the non-group market.

• A rollback of the rules and tax preferences that induce groups and individuals to purchase expensive coverage with low deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket maximums.

• An end to the regulatory restrictions that prevent interstate competition in health insurance.

In greater and lesser degrees, such sensible reforms would decentralize decision-making and unleash the competitive processes that offer consumers expanded choice among myriad alternative insurance contracts, thus improving the efficiency of resource use in the health care sector, and restoring the doctor-patient relationship as the final authority with respect to medical decisions.

• Zycher is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.

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Obama Can Learn A Few Lessons From Indonesia Regarding Fighting Terrorism

Indonesia was once a hot bed for Islamic terrorism; in fact, one of the top locales in the world. But no more. What happened? The people elected a President with a military background who promised to resolutely and relentlessly fight the terrorism problem.

And he did, and the country’s citizens didn’t have to sacrifice their rights. Now they are much freer from terrorist attacks.

Obama has a lot to learn. Maybe he should start by bowing to the Indonesian leader in deference to his persistence, success and accomplishing what he promised to do in order to protect and “free” the country’s citizens.

Indonesia Cuts Terror
Investors Business Daily    02/18/2010

Terrorism: Indonesia has fallen off the map of the most-terror-prone places on Earth, corporate intelligence forecasters say. How did that happen in a nation once plagued by Bali's bombers? By annihilating the enemy.

This week, Britain's Maplecroft group, an assessor of corporate risk, dropped Indonesia from its top 10 nations most likely to experience a mass-casualty terrorist attack. The group bases its Terrorism Risk Index entries on frequency and intensity of terror attacks and a nation's history.

Likewise, the Swedish National Defense College has concluded that there's a diminishing threat in Indonesia.

If that sounds academic, consider that Indonesian and U.S. officials said no significant security risks threaten President Obama ahead of his weeklong trip to Indonesia next month.

Now, to be sure, terrorism isn't completely gone from Indonesia. But there's been a lot of silence recently from that island country on the terror front. For a nation that experienced some fearsome terror attacks in past years, each quiet month is a sign of victory.

The reason isn't hard to recognize:Last September, Indonesian commandos blew away a Malaysian terrorist named Noordin Mohammed Top, who had a hand in every major Indonesian terror attack since the first Bali bombing of 2002.

It says something that getting rid of a single terrorist kingpin could have such an impact on Indonesia's outlook. But it did.

That offers a reminder of what it takes to win a war on terror. Miranda warnings, civilian trials and shaking down blue-haired ladies at airports don't do it. Hunting and killing terrorists do.

That's important because some analysts, such as Jakarta-based senior adviser Sidney Jones of Crisis Group International, have claimed Indonesia's progress is a result of turning the war on terror into a police action. She explained in a January interview with Voice of America that civilian trials helped win public trust.

She's not completely wrong, but to look at what Indonesia did suggests more of a militarization of its police forces than trust in the routine civilian mechanisms of police action. Indonesia treated terrorism with the urgency of warfare, even if its police took the lead.

That was possible only because of strong leadership and big public backing. Both reflect Indonesia's democracy and growing political freedom, which studies show repel terror. And no, the country didn't turn into a military state by treating terror as war.

Indonesians set the actions into motion by electing a military man, Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono, as their president in 2004 and by reelecting him in 2009. The Indonesian general ran on a tough anti-terrorist platform and kept his word on that.

The tone set, Indonesians threw out Islamic extremist parties in National Assembly elections last May, in what was seen as a surprise blow to the terrorists' most sympathetic fellow travelers.

After that, the country got help from abroad. The U.S. provided military training to Indonesian cops, who became commandos capable of zeroing in on Top and his violent network.

From there, the commandos employed counterinsurgency tactics, winning the hearts and minds of ordinary Indonesians to draw in a stream of tips from villagers informing on terrorists wherever they went. The tips came so fast and thick, Top and his small band of terrorists ran out of places to hide.

The takedown raid on Top was military in character, too. Quietly, the police evacuated 20 families in the neighborhood where Top hid to ensure no civilian casualties. They circled Top's hideout, giving him a chance to emerge with his hands up. When he didn't, they flattened the house in a barrage of firepower.

The operation made enough difference in the terror landscape in Indonesia to define it as a victory, not just a routine police action.

That says a lot about the importance of calling a war a war and treating it as one.

The result is Indonesians can savor peace and give the rest of the world an example of how a terror war is won.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=521570

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Cause and Cure?: Spending Beyond Ability To Pay

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MSNBC News Is, Well … Imbalanced

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Liberal Democrats and the News Media Are Viciously and Contemptuously Attacking Americans

The news media and “our” liberal politicians see themselves as so elitist and righteous that they are resorting to attacking the American people who disagree with their policies. They disparage us as ignorant or benighted simply because we are exercising our Constitutional (and inherent) rights to oppose their far-left positions. Democracy has suddenly become an inconvenience for them as it has made passage of their various bills which would further restrict and control our rights and freedoms and plunder more of our hard earned wealth, nearly impossible.

This is also exactly why they are viciously attacking and denigrating the Tea Party Movement, a grass roots movement that represents an angry middle America. We are sick and tired of politicians imperiously foisting expensive and irresponsibly solutions on us, ransacking ever increasing amounts of the fruits of our labor, and destroying our economy, jobs and freedoms yet they live by another set of rules (including their gold plated healthcare plan), corruptly aggrandize themselves with our tax dollars and evince a general antipathy toward the people who are suppose to be their bosses.

This must stop. These despicable, arrogant, corrupt politicians must be voted out of office ASAP!

As for much of the news media, a boycott of their products and programs can be quite effective. In the following article alone, several of these are quoted from that excoriate Americans that we can place on this list:

Times Magazine, Newsweek, New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker

To this we can add other far-left media like: MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS

Money, or the lack of it, talks. Let’s be quite loud on this issue!

Blame Americans First
Democrats lose patience with democracy.
By Matthew Continetti     March 1, 2010

What’s the clearest sign the Obama agenda is in trouble? That’s easy: the string of jeremiads in the pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets of fashionable opinion. Unable to tout the administration’s successes, and worried about Republican ascendancy, liberals have assigned responsibility for the mess they’re in neither to their program nor to their methods but to larger, structural faults in American politics and society. Beginning with you.

You aren’t too bright, for one thing. After all, opines Jacob Weisberg in Newsweek, the “biggest culprit” behind “our political paralysis” is the “childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.” You simply do not know what’s good for you. “On many issues these days,” writes the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein, “the American people are badly confused.” “The people may have spoken,” writes the New -Yorker’s James Surowiecki. “It’s just not clear that they’re making any sense.” In a blog post titled “Too Dumb to Thrive,” Time magazine’s Joe Klein cuts to the chase: “It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.”

The problem, as Weisberg sees it, is that America “simultaneously demands and rejects action on unemployment, deficits, health care, and other problems.” Note the myopia. For Weisberg, the only conceivable “action” on any issue is limited to the policy preferences of liberal Democrats. No other options spring to mind.

This is nonsense. Just because the public says the economy is important does not necessarily mean it has to support a stimulus measure that has added massively to the debt without much benefit. Just because the public is concerned with rising health care costs does not mean that it has to support a bill that could alter existing health care arrangements and increase costs in the long-term. Steven Pearlstein writes that Americans “want to do something about global warming.” No they don’t. Global warming came dead last in a recent Pew survey of public priorities.

The reason health care, cap and trade, and the other blocks of Obama’s New Foundation are unpopular isn’t public ignorance. It’s that the public sees them as counterproductive—and in many cases beside the point. The people’s representatives have responded to a variety of signals, from falling poll numbers, to town hall protests, to GOP victories in -Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Which is precisely how democracy is supposed to function.

And that’s the problem, says Kurt Andersen in New York magazine. “American democracy has gotten way too democratic.” The “thoughtful, educated, well-off, well-regarded gentlemen” who designed our Constitution “wanted a government run by an American elite like themselves.” But the “populist impulse” abroad in the land today has scared legislators into obeying the people’s demands.

It was not always thus. “In the old days,” Andersen laments, “the elite media really did control the national political discourse” and “presidents and congressional leaders could pretty well manage the policy conversations” without the public trying to butt in. But there’s no going back now; “maybe our republic’s constitutional operating system simply can’t scale up to deal satisfactorily with a heterogenous population of 310 million.”
This liberal uneasiness with democracy is not new. In 2003, in The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria made the case against too much public involvement in government. In 2008, in Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Thomas Friedman dreamed of America becoming “China for a day” so that he could impose his environmental agenda on a truculent populace. In a 2009 New York Times column, Friedman wrote that a dictatorship, “when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today,” has “great advantages” over democratic systems. In the Atlantic Monthly, James Fallows writes that “whatever is wrong with today’s Communist leadership [in Beijing], it is widely seen as pulling the country nearer to its full potential rather than pushing it away.” Nevertheless, the Democrats probably aren’t going to run on “Communist China Does It Better.”

What makes the liberal jeremiads confusing is that they work at cross purposes. On one hand, you’ve got the attacks on the people’s intelligence and representative government. On the other, you’ve got the attacks on American institutions for not being representative enough. Which is it? Are the people the problem, or is their government? According to Fallows, it’s the latter: “Our government is old and broken and dysfunctional, and may even be beyond repair.”

The culprit is the Senate, which gives equal say to states with small populations and requires 60 votes to pass legislation. Fallows says these minority rights have turned the Senate “into a deep freeze and a dead weight.” “America is not yet lost,” Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times, “but the Senate is working on it.” In a Huffington Post blog, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, writes that special interests are “using the filibuster to stop legislation that would benefit the little guy,” whether the little guy likes it or not.

You can make a persuasive argument that the filibuster has been deployed too frequently in recent years, especially when it has prevented presidents, Republican and Democrat, from staffing their administrations. Nevertheless, the Senate and the filibuster are there for good reasons: to defuse momentary passions that could have unintended and harmful consequences for the country.

The system is designed to ensure broad consensus before Congress enacts major reforms. Such consensus existed during the New Deal and Great Society. And there was consensus behind certain elements of Reagan’s and Bush’s and Clinton’s programs, as well. That was not the case when George W. Bush attempted to overhaul Social Security, however. The public agreed with Bush that there was a problem, but it did not like his solution. It has had the same reaction to Obama’s proposals.

The liberal program is in disarray because liberals have failed to establish general agreement. They have found that simple majorities do not automatically translate into programmatic success. And when they are met with public opposition and institutional resistance, they do what comes naturally. They blame Americans first.

Matthew Continetti is associate editor of The Weekly Standard and the author, most recently, of The Persecution of Sarah Palin (Sentinel Books).

http://weeklystandard.com/articles/blame-americans-first

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Even Hell Is Freezing Over For The Global Warming Movement

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Intellectual Dishonesty and Immorality Permeates Even The Highest Levels Of Our Society

We have come to expect as routine, duplicitous politicians who want to “have it both ways” when dealing with different elements of their constituencies. It is a sad commentary but infinitely true. Unfortunately, like an aggressively metastasizing cancer, this wanton lack of integrity and sincerity has increasingly invaded other areas of our culture that had previously been somewhat respected.

Most recently, we have witnessed the global collusion of numerous scientists involved in the Climategate scandal, manufacturing or cherry picking data in order to fraudulently substantiate their flawed, perverted beliefs and ideologies. If their schemes hadn’t been uncovered, it could have cost this country tens of trillions of dollars and strangled our economy and standard of living.

In the past, you might have figured a Nobel Laureate should be worthy of respect, a person who has achieved so much in their field and who, by definition, has made supreme contributions to the world or society.
No more! It has largely become a sham with many of these individuals possessing the same ethics as your white collar criminal though on a more grandiose scale.

To wit: Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and Yassar Arafat all receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. And let’s not forget the epitome of corruption and a vacuum of morals, Al (Global Warming) Gore.

There is another member of this pantheon of corrupt and dishonest intellectuals: left wing economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

It is most evident that in the world we live today, we are forced by circumstances to teach our children to be infinitely cynical, trust no one, and that “facts” including “scientific discoveries” may just be fiction. We can’t believe our Government and have witnessed far too much egregious behavior, absence of integrity, and intellectual dishonesty to trust our teachers, scientists, clergy, etc.

Bush's Deficit Bad, Obama's Deficit Good: So Sayeth Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate
By Larry Elder                       02/11/2010

Left-wing economist, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman hates deficits in tough economic times — when the president of the United States is named George W. Bush.

In a November 2004 interview, Krugman criticized the "enormous" Bush deficit.

"We have a world-class budget deficit," he said, "not just as in absolute terms, of course — it's the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world — but it's a budget deficit that, as a share of GDP, is right up there."

The deficit in fiscal 2004 was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product.

Back then, a disapproving Krugman called the deficit "comparable to the worst we've ever seen in this country. ... The only time postwar that the United States has had anything like these deficits is the middle Reagan years, and that was with unemployment close to 10%."

Take away the Social Security surplus spent by the government, he said, and "we're running at a deficit of more than 6% of GDP, and that is unprecedented."

He considered the Bush tax cuts irresponsible and a major contributor — along with two wars — to the deficit. But he also warned of the growing cost of autopilot entitlements:

"We have the huge bulge in the population that starts to collect benefits. ... If there isn't a clear path towards fiscal sanity well before (the next decade), then I think the financial markets are going to say, 'Well, gee, where is this going?'"

Three months earlier, Krugman had said, "Here we are more than 2 1/2 years after the official end of the recession, and we're still well below, of course, pre-Bush employment."

In October 2004, unemployment was 5.5% and continued to slowly decline. At the time, Krugman described the economy as "weak," with "job creation ... essentially nonexistent."

How bad would it get? If we don't get our "financial house in order," he said, "I think we're looking for a collapse of confidence some time in the not-too-distant future."

Fast-forward to 2010.

The projected deficit for fiscal year 2010 is over $1.5 trillion, or more than 10% of GDP. This sets a post-WWII record in both absolute numbers and as a percentage of GDP. And if the Obama administration's optimistic projections of economic growth fall short, things will get much worse.

So what does Krugman say now? We must guard against "deficit hysteria." In "Fiscal Scare Tactics," his recent column, Krugman writes:

"These days it's hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we're told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world.

"These claims generally aren't stated as opinions, as views held by some analysts but disputed by others. Instead, they're reported as if they were facts, plain and simple."

He continues: "And fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction."

Krugman believes Bush lied us into the Iraq War. Just as people unreasonably feared Saddam Hussein, they now have an unwarranted fear of today's deficit.

Questions:

• Didn't Krugman, less than six years ago, call the deficit "enormous"?
• Wouldn't he, therefore, consider a $1.5 trillion deficit at 10% of GDP mega-normous?
• Didn't he describe the economy with 5.5% unemployment as "weak"? Isn't the current economy, at 9.7% unemployment, even weaker?
• If the 2004 deficit was "comparable to the worst we've ever seen in this country," wouldn't today's much bigger deficit cause even more heartburn?

Nope. Now a huge deficit is actually a good thing: "The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do. If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs."

The deficit "should be bigger"?!

Long term, Krugman says, we've got concerns about revenue and spending. But as for now:

"There's no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade."
In 2004, Krugman warned that without a "clear path towards fiscal sanity" before "the next decade," we faced a "crunch."

Presumably, we now have this "clear path."

Let's review. In 2004, an unhappy Krugman criticized Bush's "weak" economy and "miserable" job creation. Running an "enormous" deficit was a bad thing. Times were awful — "by a large margin" the worst job crash and performance since Herbert Hoover.

Today the deficit is four times as large in an even weaker economy with much higher unemployment. Times are awful. Now, though, the deficit is a good thing and should be even bigger.

Krugman's flip-flop on the deficit demonstrates a modern economic equation. Hatred of Bush + love for Obama = intellectual dishonesty.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=520924&Ntt=

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Ann Coulter’s Speech At CPAC

The following is Ann Coulter’s presentation at the Conservative Political Action Conference. It is both witty and entertaining and covers important issues in a humorous fashion.It is worth watching.

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Conservatives versus Liberals

Conservatives versus Liberals

The Individual is the solution versus Big Government


Freedom and rights versus Restrictions for all based on the beliefs of a few


Self reliance, productivity and motivation versus dependency, laziness, and irresponsibility

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An Utter Outrage: At Least Nine Obama Dept. of Justice Officials Performed Legal Work For Terrorists

Just when you thought that you heard it all regarding the “hijacking” of our government or “coup” by the Obama Administration that seems to be working for the other side (our enemies), now comes word from Attorney General Holder that nine Obama appointees in the Justice Department have previously represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the Justice Department.

Are you kidding? This is an absolute outrage that should not be tolerated by the American people! Where is the media to expose such blatant, corrupt, and perfidious actions by the Obama Administration? This isn’t the first time that Obama and Holder have acted to protect and aid our enemies while trying to usurp the rights and freedoms of the average American.

And some people wonder why millions of Americans feel that Obama is acting against rather than in support of the United States?

Obama’s mentor for at least 20 years, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, would repetitively proclaim from his pulpit in church: ”Goddamn America!”

Obviously, despite his denials, Obama was listening and is a full fledged believer.

Holder admits nine Obama Dept. of Justice officials worked for terrorist detainees, offers no details
by Byron York     Chief Political Correspondent   02/19/10

Attorney General Eric Holder says nine Obama appointees in the Justice Department have represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the Justice Department. But he does not reveal any names beyond the two officials whose work has already been publicly reported. And all the lawyers, according to Holder, are eligible to work on general detainee matters, even if there are specific parts of some cases they cannot be involved in.

Holder's admission comes in the form of an answer to a question posed last November by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. Noting that one Obama appointee, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, formerly represented Osama bin Laden's driver, and another appointee, Jennifer Daskal, previously advocated for detainees at Human Rights Watch, Grassley asked Holder to give the Senate Judiciary Committee "the names of political appointees in your department who represent detainees or who work for organizations advocating on their behalf&hellipthe cases or projects that these appointees work with respect to detainee prior to joining the Justice Department&hellipand the cases or projects relating to detainees that have worked on since joining the Justice Department."

In his response, Holder has given Grassley almost nothing. He says nine Obama political appointees at the Justice Department have advocated on behalf of detainees, but did not identify any of the nine other than the two, Katyal and Daskal, whose names Grassley already knew. "To the best of our knowledge," Holder writes,
during their employment prior to joining the government, only five of the lawyers who serve as political appointees in those components represented detainees, and four others either contributed to amicus briefs in detainee-related cases or were otherwise involved in advocacy on behalf of detainees.

Holder says other Obama appointees, like Holder himself, came from law firms which represented detainees but did no work on behalf of the terrorist prisoners. But other than Katyal and Daskal, Holder does not reveal any names of any Obama appointees, nor does he mention the cases they worked on.

And what are they recused from, anyway? Very little. Holder writes that Katyal has not worked on any Guantanamo detainee matters but has participated in litigation involving detainees who continue to be detained at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan and in litigation involving [Ali Saleh Kahlah] al-Marri, who was detained on U.S. soil." As for Daskal, "she has generally worked on policy issues related to detainees," Holder writes. "Her detainee-related work has been fully consistent with advice she received from career department officials regarding her obligations."

As for everyone else, Holder lists no names and no cases, but in a paragraph filled with modifiers, he makes it clear that all the lawyers who had advocated for detainees are free to work on general detainee matters.

The senior Department officials referenced above, like other political appointees who are similarly situated, have recused from particular matters regarding specific detainees in which their former firms represent the detainee or another party and from decisions relating specifically to the dispositions of particular detainees represented by their former firms. These recusals pertain to decisions relating to particular matters involving specific parties who are or have been represented by their former law firms within the relevant time period. However, as noted above, these senior officials have been authorized to participate in policy and legal decisions regarding detainee matters, in particular matters regarding specific detainees whom their prior employer did not represent, and in decisions relating to the disposition of such detainees. [emphasis added]

Finally, it is possible that there are more than nine political appointees who worked for detainees. Holder tells Grassley that he did not survey the Justice Department as a whole but instead canvassed several large offices within the organization.

Bottom line: Holder revealed no names beyond the two already publicly known. He revealed no cases from which Justice political appointees recused themselves. The letter, which will likely be interpreted on Capitol Hill as a thumb-your-nose statement, is sure to anger Republican senators more than satisfy them.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Holder-admits-nine-Obama-Dept-of-Justice-officials-worked-for-terrorist-detainees-offers-no-details-84799487.html

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The Price To Pay When Leaning Too Far To One Side

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Obama, Jay-Z and Black On White Racism

No matter from which angle you look at it, racism is reprehensible and should never be condoned. Period!

Yes, racism was endemic decades ago, most notably against blacks and Jews. Though it will never entirely disappear because of human nature, only a very small percentage of Americans adhere to such hatred. However, you would never know it if you listened to the newscasts of the “mainstream” media where it still sounds like an epidemic.

What they also absolutely refuse to acknowledge yet seemingly condone as being understandable is the far more prevalent, increasing and vitriolic black on white or Hispanic racism. Do you hear many newscasts excoriating famous and influential black athletes, actors and actresses, music stars or even politicians spewing racial hatred against Whites? Of course not! But if there was one mentally deranged white person walking around in Podunk, Idaho wearing the KKK garb it would saturate the news.

We vehemently and resolutely feel that a major impetus for the rise is due to Obama and his election to the Presidency, his racially charged attitudes and the atmosphere of black entitlement at the expense of other races. How could have he attended sat in his Black nationalist church for 20 years and accept the racist, hateful rantings of Reverend Wright and others unless he agreed? Or exalt and revere the contemptuous, despicable Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam?

Many blacks ignorantly and contemptuously parrot their mantra “It’s our time now!”

Really? We don’t think so. No one should have priority over anyone else based on race, religion, etc. (We will save our polemic against affirmative action for another time which distilled to its essence is government facilitated and condoned racism of black over white.)

The following articles illustrate this continued pattern but even more insidiously, it yet again reveals our American President, Obama, not denouncing such behavior of this black on white racism.  Reverend Wright made sure that he stayed the course and remained a faithful black nationalist.

What is this all about? Though we know little of Jay-Z, he recently and unequivocally revealed himself to be a racist, refusing any white people entrance to his reception though blacks were freely admitted. Apparently, he and Obama are friends and he has been to the White House on several occasions.

Have you heard any denunciations of this behavior by Obama? Of course not! Zero. Yet, he had no problem last year insinuating himself in a Cambridge, Mass police matter, claiming racism, when his belligerent, disorderly black professor friend was appropriately arrested by a white police officer.

Obama’s silence on this matter once again speaks volumes on his racist underpinnings, continues to reveal his ineptness and lack of impartiality and prudence and why he really isn’t the President for all Americans.

The following two articles will further elucidate this situation.

Jay-Z bash ignites race controversy
By WENN.COM

Rapper Jay-Z has been caught up in a race scandal following allegations security at his BRIT Awards afterparty on Tuesday banned white people from entering the VIP area.

The 99 Problems superstar threw a lavish bash at Merah nightclub in London following his Best International Male Solo win at the ceremony.

But the night descended into chaos after fights broke out amid people scrambling to get close to the star.

And the atmosphere turned even nastier after security personnel working on the doors of the VIP room allegedly refused to allow any white people into the area, while letting black partygoers straight through, according to Britain's Daily Star newspaper.

The publication's music reporter Kim Dawson writes, "I've been to countless showbiz bashes but never have I met meatheads like those at the Jay-Z do (party). Jay-Z is a megastar and yet it was clear white people were not welcome in his VIP area. While the red rope was lifted for black guests to breeze through, let's just say it stayed down if your face didn't fit. I have never felt so intimidated. It left me feeling like a mauled dog."

Meanwhile, black pop star Alesha Dixon, who attended the party, was also left disgusted at the way the bash was organized.

She reportedly told the newspaper at the party, "My friends have been getting knocked about and no-one seems to care. I need to get out of here. What a horrible end to the night. I was having a blast at my record label party and now the mood is soured. I wish I'd never come."

The publication claims the rapper's representative insisted the security was hired by the club, but the venue's bosses state they had no idea of any problems.

URL   http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/2010/02/18/12925501-wenn-story.html

Jay-Z: President Obama Was Playing The Blueprint When I Called Him
'I've been invited to the White House a couple of times,' Hov tells the BBC.
By Jayson Rodriguez

Jay-Z has dropped Barack Obama's name in his rhymes, and Obama referenced Jay's lyrics when he dusted his shoulder off during a campaign appearance before he ascended to the White House. But it turns out the pair have more than just a passing appreciation for rhetorical flourishes.

In an interview with Jonathan Ross airing on the BBC Friday (February 19), Jay-Z revealed that the president has invited the rapper to the White House a number of times since Obama's inauguration.

"I've been invited to the White House a couple of times," Hov told Ross, although he said he hasn't taken up the president on the offer just yet. "Hopefully we'll keep him in for eight years, so I'll have time to get there."

The Brooklyn MC was an avid supporter of Obama during the presidential campaign and referenced him in a series of lyrics, most notably for Young Jeezy's hit "My President."

"Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk/ Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run/ Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly," he raps on the track. "So I'mma spread my wings/ You could meet me in the sky."

"It's just the progression. ... You sat, you walked, you ran, you ran to fly," Jay told MTV News about his Obama rhyme last year on the eve of the inauguration. "You know, just the progression and how far we've come as a nation. It feels good to say that, 'cause I never had that type of feeling to say 'as a nation,' like I was part of the American dream. And I believe a lot of people didn't feel like a part of the American process for so long."

Although Obama has professed a love for an eclectic playlist of music that includes Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan, he also said he is a fan of Jay-Z.

Jay-Z confirmed Obama's admiration when he told Ross the president was playing one of the rapper's albums when answered a phone call from Hov.

"Barack loves hip-hop," Jay said. "When I called him he was playing [The] Blueprint in the gym."

URL   http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1632296/20100219/jay_z.jhtml

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Maybe Obama Will Also Apologize To The Rest Of The World For Our Olympic Successes

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Information About Obama That We Suspected – Is Revealed

Some very interesting information is available about Obama’s past both before and during his Presidency. For understandable reasons, the liberal “mainstream” media has conveniently elected not to publicize this information lest they cast an unfavorable light on their Messiah. Of course, anyone else who is sentient could have rather easily surmised this just from his behavior and policies.

If you have some time, check the video and audio clips out. He is far more radical than most people are willing to concede which translates into greater threats to our rights and freedoms as we have already seen this first year. He disguises his nefarious intentions with lies and duplicitous rhetoric.

The upshot of this all is manifest: Obama can’t be trusted!

We all must be vigilant and vocal and relentlessly fight threats to our rights.

Some of Michelle Obama's  books on socialism that are sitting on the bookshelves in the White House Library:

Michelle Obama stocked the White House Library with books on socialism.

From: http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/02/figures-michelle-obama-stocked-white-house-library-with-books-on-socialism/


Obama Admits He Is A Muslim

College Acquaintance: Obama Was 'Pure Marxist Socialist'

Link:

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Democrats’ Rhetoric For Greater Government Regulation of the Economy Is Eerily Reminiscent of the Old Soviet Union

The big, centralized government rhetoric of the Democratic Party is eerily reminiscent of that of the old Soviet Union which doesn’t bode well for the country or economy. Adding to the problem is the sinister brainwashing of our children to believe in the virtues of a large, powerful centralized government and denigrate capitalism and free choice.

Inexplicably, those who have the most to lose such as American Jews, are actually the most ardent supporters of these far left ideologies.

Perspectives Of A Soviet Immigrant (No. 6)
By Svetlana Kunin

There was an old Soviet saying: If you need to find food to fill your refrigerator, plug it into the microphone of a party leader giving a speech.

Today in America, if we plug a refrigerator into our leader's teleprompter, I suspect the refrigerator will stop working.

Democratic party leaders speak incessantly of limiting profits and regulating salaries.

It brings back to memory another Soviet line: You pretend you are paying us salaries, and we pretend we are working. If bureaucrats predetermine the value of your work, there is no incentive to be productive. This is the quickest way to kill a dynamic economy.

I never expected to hear this kind of rhetoric in the USA. Today, the American educational machine teaches exactly the same points the Soviets taught.

It idealizes Socialist societies and denigrates America, especially its economic system.

American students are brainwashed to despise economic freedom and to yearn for a big government state.

Freed from their parents' control, but intimidated by the relentlessly negative portrayal of America, young Americans look for politicians to show them the way.

As someone who experienced real government-approved anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, I am amazed by the obliviousness of American Jews, the most fervent supporters of left-wing politics.

They support a party that is obsessed with pitting one group against another, and that incessantly plays on envy and hatred for bankers, rich people, big business and doctors.

They fail to notice that the success of Jews, as well as other minorities, in the sciences, business and arts is directly correlated to their freedom from oppressive, centralized control. American Jews who support big government do not understand what their ancestors escaped from.

Persecutions of Jews throughout history all have one thing in common: a centralized power that manipulates and directs people's anger away from themselves onto an easy target.

No matter how much Jews align themselves with the power structure and work for noble causes, they will remain an easy target.

As they said in the Soviet Union pertaining to Soviet Jews: They don't beat your record; they beat your face — meaning that no matter how much you try to assimilate, no matter how many good deeds you do, the centralized power can direct populist anger toward you and crush you when it suits them.

When the Bolsheviks took power after the 1917 proletarian revolution, their first steps were to take control of the banks and the media.

Of course, it is not fair to compare our current American democratic leaders with the Bolsheviks.

Yes, they both use the same slogans in their speeches.

Yes, they both stir up envy and class warfare to distract from their failures.

Yes, both political movements sought control of the banks as the foundation for their new egalitarian vision.

And yes, they are both opposed to free speech, as was made clear by the reaction of American leftists to the recent
Supreme Court decision.

But you would never find a Czar anywhere in the Soviet government.

• Kunin lived in the Soviet Union until 1980, working as a civil engineer. She is now a retired software developer living in Connecticut.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=519899

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Growth Of Small Businesses Is Needed To Turn The Economy Around

The recession keeps dragging on despite close to a trillion dollars in stimulus money and other focal incentives wasted by the federal government. What is happening?

Small businesses, the real engines of our economy, are extremely worried about present conditions and future prospects including massive government regulations and more than 2 trillion dollars of proposed tax hikes that would destroy thousands of businesses. Consequently, they are being advisably circumspect, prudent and conservative, trying to protect the viability of their businesses rather than take aggressive actions that could jeopardize their survival.

For starters, we would all benefit from a massive across the board decrease in taxes, major reduction in government spending, and abolishing useless and costly regulations...

A Real Cure For What Ails Small Biz
Investors Business Daily    02/09/2010

Jobless Recession: Small business has been a key part of plans to stimulate the economy from the very start of the Obama presidency. So why is this crucial job-creating sector of our economy doing so poorly?

The latest soundings from small business are not reassuring. In its annual poll of 2,114 members, for example, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) found that "small-business owners entered 2010 the same way they left 2009 — depressed." Meanwhile, the ADP Small Business Report for January shows companies with fewer than 50 workers shed an additional 22,000 jobs.

These are the businesses that account for 48 million jobs, or 44% of all private nonfarm employment — and two-thirds or more of all employment growth in recent years. But despite efforts by government to "fix" their problems, they've only grown worse. The programs were ineffective or never got off the ground.

Last year, amid much hoopla, the White House announced plans to give tax credits to "green" energy companies. As a result, according to reporter Renee Schoof of McClatchy Newspapers, the U.S. installed a record 9,900 megawatts of wind-power generating capacity last year — enough to power 2.4 million homes.

A boon for conservation jobs? Hardly. Indeed, the American Wind Energy Association reports the industry cut 2,000 jobs last year, in part because some of the wind energy equipment is made overseas.

Then there was the program unveiled in March to spend $15 billion to "unlock" lending to small businesses. That grew to a $30 billion program later in the year after TARP funds were added to the mix. But as noted by ABC News reporter and blogger Jake Tapper, this is a "phantom" jobs program.

Even Neil Barofsky, head of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, admitted as much. As of Dec. 31, he wrote recently, "the details of the initiative under this program had not been announced and no funds had been disbursed."
In short, the White House talked about $30 billion in aid to small businesses, but never did anything about it.

Meanwhile, President Obama announced a sweeping small-business aid program in his State of the Union. He knows this is key to the economy's recovery, if only because he hears it all the time from Democrats and Republicans.

Among the president's new proposals for small business are a $5,000 tax credit to hire new workers, elimination of capital gains taxes and new incentives to invest in plants and equipment. Will anything come of it? Based on recent history, we doubt it.

Congress, correctly interpreting its sinking poll numbers, has also jumped on the jobs bandwagon and is eagerly crafting another big-time jobs stimulus — this one rumored to be $80 billion in size.

Some of Obama's ideas aren't bad. But even if passed, they likely wouldn't help much. The problems that small businesses have aren't about small businesses per se; they're about the economy.

Small businesses have the same doubts as the rest of us. Besides all these "jobs programs," they see a failed $862 billion stimulus, a $700 billion TARP program that has turned into a politicized auto and bank bailout fund, Cash for
Clunkers, attempts in Copenhagen to impose massive taxes on America to stave off global warming, a $1 trillion health care overhaul, new "responsibility fees" on banks, and worry for our economy's future.

Worse, the new budget contains $2 trillion in tax hikes over a decade, mostly on multinationals and successful entrepreneurs. These taxes undo all the good the White House and Congress would do with their "incentives" and "credits" and whatnot.

Washington thus has it wrong. Businesses aren't awaiting more "stimulus." As the NFIB suggested, they're clinically depressed, seeing the government's dead weight lying across the economy for years to come in all its spending, taxing and ad hoc rule-making.

What sensible entrepreneur would commit his wealth to a money-making project in such a high-tax, high-regulation environment — one in which those who make profits are routinely demonized?

This is a problem with a solution, and the solution is the same one that's worked in the past: Cut taxes across the board — for business big and small — and look for ways to cut regulations, not add more. At the same time, pull back on the insane surge in government spending.

By unlocking our nation's entrepreneurial spirit and reviving growth across the economy, we can put an end to this nightmare and help all Americans regain prosperity. Then small businesses can get back to doing what they do best: create lots of jobs.

URL   http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=520675

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Obama’s Offshore Drilling Duplicity

Continuing his perpetual pattern of deceptions on a multitude of issues, Obama appears to be both for and against offshore drilling for oil and natural gas. You can also substitute the words “nuclear energy”, “taxes on the middle class”, “fiscal responsibility”, etc. and discern the same pattern. During his campaign and first year in office, he was overtly and adamantly against drilling for energy nearly everywhere, has fought Republicans on this issue and is at odds with the sentiment of the majority of Americans. However, if you listened to his State of the Union address, you might have believed that, alas, he has reformed his position and seen the truth.

Wrong!

Obama is being duplicitous and playing both sides of the issue in order to garner more public support for his policies and increase his approval ratings. His words, like virtually always, stand for nothing.

Drillgate: Internal Emails Shows Obama Team Lying to Public
Vince Haley   February 9, 2010

If you’re the President of the United States or one of his political appointees and you’re ideologically opposed to new oil and natural gas development offshore, what do you do when the public registers its overwhelming support for new drilling in public opinion polls?

You dance, delay, and deceive. You speak melodious words about seeking the wisdom of the public in making these decisions and then ignore evidence of the public will when you get it, or worse, you hide it.

First came the dance.  In August 2008, after soaring gas prices and a dramatic shift in public opinion caused President Bush, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain to reverse their positions on offshore drilling, then-Senator Obama also changed. The Democratic presidential nominee reversed his own position and that of his party, saying he was open to offshore drilling as part of an overall energy plan.  The Democratic Congress followed a month later by quietly dropping the 25-year Congressional ban on offshore drilling.

Then came the delay. In January 2009, President Obama inherited a draft five year offshore drilling plan prepared by the outgoing Bush administration.  The plan was already receiving public comment as part of the elaborate rule making process followed by federal agencies.  Ken Salazar, Obama’s new Secretary of Interior, determined the decision about new offshore drilling was so important that he ordered a six-month extension to the comment period.

Third comes the dishonesty.

In April of 2009, during a discussion about offshore exploration in San Francisco, Salazar said that President Obama directed him to “to make sure that we have an open and transparent government” and that “these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors.” Salazar went on to say that President Obama wanted to make sure that DOI was “maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do.”

Yet, more than four months after the comment period ended, the Department of the Interior has failed to make any public announcement about the results, even though sources have told American Solutions for months the comments show a 2-1 advantage in support of offshore drilling.

It took American Solutions almost four months and the power of the Freedom of Information Act to finally uncover indirect confirmation that, out of over 530,000 comments submitted, pro-drilling comments outnumbered anti-drilling comments by a 2-1 margin.

In an email dated October 27, 2009, Liz Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service, informs other Interior officials that a preliminary tabulation of the results of the comment period had not yet gone to Secretary Salazar, adding “[s]o the Secretary can honestly say in response to any questions that he’s [SIC] has not yet seen the analysis of the comments – staff is still working on it. I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split that these guys [at American Solutions] are emphasizing.”

When a public employee is on record condoning purposeful deception of the American people, the taxpayer should no longer have to fund his or her job.  Secretary Salazar should immediately fire Liz Birnbaum for purposefully deceiving him, and in turn, the American people.  It’s not possible for the Secretary to honor pledges of openness, honestly, and transparency in government if his staff is going to deliberately undermine such pledges.

Public opinion polls already measure near 70% support for offshore drilling, so the results from a public comment period that reflect the same public sentiment should not be surprising.  But after all this talk of wanting the public’s input, Secretary Salazar and his team must find it a real stumbling block to have to explain all their anti-energy development actions in light of the comment period results to which they previously attached such great importance.

This newly gained insight into the anti-energy exploration mindset within the Department of the Interior allows a new perspective of President Obama’s mention of offshore development in his recent State of the Union address.  Here is the one paragraph in which the President described offshore development:

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.  It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.  It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies.  And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.

To the passive listener, it sounded like President Obama expressed at least rhetorical support for offshore drilling.

But the President only says we must make “tough decisions” on offshore drilling, deliberately refusing to apply that standard to other decisions on energy.

But tough for whom? Certainly not for the public that overwhelmingly supports more offshore drilling.

Indeed, the only person facing a tough decision is the President since an important part of his political base is opposed to new American energy development.

Bucking public opinion would indeed be a tough decision for this President, but he has shown himself quite comfortable with bucking public opinion to pursue stunningly unpopular policies on health care and cap and trade.

In short, it’s a fair conclusion that the tough decisions the President identified in his State of the Union was his intended decision not to pursue any new offshore oil and gas development. The actions by Salazar and his team are entirely consistent with that conclusion.

What makes all of this dispiriting, especially this month, is that with 15 million Americans out of work and with the President’s recently submitted budget projecting trillion dollar annual deficits for the next ten years and a near tripling of the national debt by 2020, the President is throwing away a golden opportunity over the next three decades to create millions of new jobs [6] and generate more than $270 billion in annual economic growth from new oil and gas development, including $54 billion annually in federal tax receipts that could help lower the federal deficit and the national debt.

These extraordinary benefits of job creation and economic growth – all without requiring any federal spending – are, sadly, not on President Obama’s agenda, notwithstanding all the phony rhetoric to the contrary.

Indeed, we can look forward to the President’s continued strategy of dance, delay, and deceive.

URL   http://biggovernment.com/vhaley/2010/02/09/drillgate-internal-emails-shows-obama-team-lying-to-public/


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Obama’s Position On Global Warming Reveals an Out of Touch, Arrogant and Resolute Idealogue

Is Obama so incredibly out of touch with reality? Or is he an arrogant, elitist, pertinacious ideologue who doesn’t give a damn what the American public thinks or what the facts are. Unfortunately, this is a rhetorical question - we know the answer. He evinced this same reaction and response with Obamacare.

Despite the spectacular worldwide implosion of the global warming movement’s scientific basis from interminable revelations of research fraud and data manipulation, verified data actually showing slight global cooling, and snowstorms breaking all time records, Obama still insists that there is global warming. In fact, as seen in the above video, he wants to establish a federal office that will study global warming. If this is his way of addressing the unemployment rate, he can do better!

We suspect that the abundance of verbal hot air present in Washington is being recorded by the disproportionate number of temperature probes intentionally placed there, skewing the results. Probably, the best and least costly solution for America would be for him and many of his Democrat cohorts to leave town … permanently!

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Spendaholic Obama Doesn’t See Himself As The Problem

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A Concise History On The Evolution of Liberals and Conservatives

History 101- Liberals and Conservatives

For those that don't know about history and never were taught this in school - here is a condensed version:

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel . The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:

1. Liberals, and

2. Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement .

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, "yakking" and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement .

Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood, and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, members of the military, airline pilots, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America . They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Conservative include such greats as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Paul Revere.

Counted among Liberals are Franklin Roosevelt, Barney Frank, Jimmy Carter and .... Barack Obama (socialist/communist?)

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Politicians Too Often Legislation While In A Fantasy Land

It doesn’t take a genius to soon realize that America would be far better off if Congress and the President would just keep out of the “peoples’” business. Far more often than not, when the Federal government gets involved, it spells trouble so the less they deal with, in general, the better. A vast majority of the laws or legislation that they pass are either not the right solutions, or the most prudent, efficient or cost effective ones.There are many reasons for this too numerous to list but common ones include their own ignorance of the issues and their consequences, rigid ideologies, acquiring political capital, not either having to personally pay the bill to any significant extent, or being exempt from having to adhere to the legislation (Obamacare).

With trenchant insight and skillful description, Thomas Sowell reveals many important and practical examples of this “Alice in Wonderland” attitude of our politicians and the inimical consequences that result. As he states: “…there is no free lunch…”.

Politicians Live In Wonderland: Do Not Disturb
By Thomas Sowell      02/01/2010

There was a recent flap because three different members of the Obama administration, on three different Sunday TV talk shows, gave three widely differing estimates of how many jobs the president has created.

That should not have been surprising, except as a sign of political sloppiness in not getting their stories together beforehand. They were simply doing what Barack Obama himself does — namely, just pulling numbers out of thin air.
However, being more skilled at creating illusions, the president does it with more of an air of certainty, as if he has gone around and counted the new jobs himself.

The big question that seldom — if ever — gets asked in the mainstream media is whether these are a net increase in jobs. Since the only resources that the government has are the resources it takes from the private sector, using those resources to create jobs means reducing the resources available to create jobs in the private sector.

So long as most people do not look beyond superficial appearances, politicians can get away with playing Santa Claus on all sorts of issues while leaving havoc in their wake — such as increasing unemployment, despite all the jobs being "created."

Whatever position people take on a health care overhaul, there seems to be a bipartisan consensus — usually a sign of mushy thinking — that it is a good idea for the government to force insurance companies to insure people whom politicians want them to insure, and to insure them for things that politicians think should be insured.

Contrary to what politicians expect us to do, let's stop and think.

It's Free For Politicians

Why aren't insurance companies already insuring the people and the conditions that they are now going to be forced to cover? Because that means additional costs — and because the insurance companies don't think their customers are willing to pay those particular costs for those particular coverages.

It costs politicians nothing to mandate more insurance coverage for more people. But that doesn't mean the costs vanish into thin air. It simply means that buyers and sellers of insurance are forced to pay costs that neither of them wants to pay.

Because soaring political rhetoric leaves out such grubby things as costs, it sounds like a great deal.
Not just costs are left out. So are consequences in general.

With all the laments in the media about skyrocketing unemployment among young people, and especially minority young people, few media pundits even try to connect the dots to explain why unemployment hits some groups much harder than others.

Yet unusually high unemployment rates among young people is not something new or even something peculiar to the U.S.
Even before the current worldwide recession, unemployment rates were 20% or more among workers under 25 years of age in a number of Western European countries.

Less Demand, Less Money

The young have less experience to offer and are therefore less in demand. Before politicians stepped in, that just meant that younger workers were paid less.

This is not a permanent situation because youth itself is not permanent, and pay rises with experience.

Enter politicians. By mandating a minimum wage that sounds reasonable for most workers, they put a price on inexperienced and unskilled labor that often exceeds what it is worth. Mandated pay rates, like mandated insurance coverage, impose on buyers and sellers alike things that they would not choose to do otherwise.

Workers of course prefer higher wage rates. But the very fact that the government has to impose those wage rates means that workers were unwilling to risk not having a job by refusing to work for less than the wage rate that has been mandated. Now that choice has been taken out of their hands, with the hidden cost in this case being higher unemployment rates.

It is of course no secret that there is no free lunch. It is just an inconvenient distraction that gets left out of political rhetoric.

URL    http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=519737

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Predatory Government Practices

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Obama Has His Priorities and Policies Reversed When It Comes To Terrorists and Our Intelligence Agencies

Obama recently declared in a meeting with the GOP that “he is not an ideologue. Really!”

Really?

With regard to terrorism, Obama’s ideology and that of his radical left adhere to a policy that places our intelligence agencies on the defensive and their agents at legal risk while jeopardizing the security of our country. Meanwhile, they steadfastly remind us of the “inherent” rights of terrorists including Mirandizing them and even providing them with taxpayer funded attorneys.

Unbelievably, the Obama Administration has made it a priority to question a few of our CIA agents about some issues arising a few years ago yet could not find the time to address the far more important matter of implementing  the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) which would allow us to interrogate terrorists and extract vital information.

Obama administration takes several wrong paths in dealing with terrorism
By Michael V. Hayden January 31, 2010

In the war on terrorism, this country faces an enemy whose theory of warfare ends the hard-won distinction in modern thought between combatant and noncombatant. In doing that for which we have created government -- ensuring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- how can we be adequately aggressive to ensure the first value, without unduly threatening the other two? This is hard. And people don't have to be lazy or stupid to get it wrong.

We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day. We allowed an enemy combatant the protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is not "an isolated extremist." He is the tip of the spear of a complex al-Qaeda plot to kill Americans in our homeland.

In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?

When questioning its detainees, the CIA routinely turns the information provided over to its experts for verification and recommendations for follow-up. The responses of these experts -- "Press him more on this, he knows the details" or "First time we've heard that" -- helps set up more detailed questioning.

None of that happened in Detroit. In fact, we ensured that it wouldn't. After the first session, the FBI Mirandized Abdulmutallab and -- to preserve a potential prosecution -- sent in a "clean team" of agents who could have no knowledge of what Abdulmutallab had provided before he was given his constitutional warnings. As has been widely reported, Abdulmutallab then exercised his right to remain silent.

In retrospect, the inadvisability of this approach seems self-evident. Perhaps it didn't appear that way on Dec. 25 because we have, over the past year, become acclimated to certain patterns of thought.

Two days after his inauguration, President Obama issued an executive order that limited all interrogations by the U.S. government to the techniques authorized in the Army Field Manual. The CIA had not seen the final draft of the order, let alone been allowed to comment, before it was issued. I thought that odd since the order was less a legal document -- there was no claim that the manual exhausted the universe of lawful techniques -- than a policy one: These particular lawful techniques would be all that the country would need, at least for now.

A similar drama unfolded in April over the release of Justice Department memos that had authorized the CIA interrogation program. CIA Director Leon Panetta and several of his predecessors opposed public release of the memos in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on the only legitimate grounds for such a stand: that the documents were legitimately still classified and their release would gravely harm national security. On this policy -- not legal -- question, the president sided with his attorney general rather than his CIA chief.

In August, seemingly again in contradiction to the president's policy of not looking backward and over the objections of the CIA, Justice pushed to release the CIA inspector general's report on the interrogation program. Then Justice decided to reopen investigations of CIA officers that had been concluded by career prosecutors years ago, even though Panetta and seven of his predecessors said that doing so would be unfair, unwarranted and harmful to the agency's current mission.

In November, Justice announced that it intended to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several others in civilian courts for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The White House made clear that this was a Justice Department decision, which is odd because the decision was not legally compelled (other detainees are to be tried by military commissions) and the reasons given for making it (military trials could serve as a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda, harm relations with allies, etc.) were not legal but political.

Even tough government organizations, such as those in the intelligence community, figure out pretty quickly what their political masters think is not acceptable behavior. The executive order that confined interrogations to the Army Field Manual also launched a task force to investigate whether those techniques were sufficient for national needs. Few observers believed that the group would recommend changes, and to date, no techniques have been added to the manual.

Intelligence officers need to know that someone has their back. After the Justice memos were released in April, CIA officers began to ask whether the people doing things that were currently authorized would be dragged through this kind of public knothole in five years. No one could guarantee that they would not.

Some may celebrate that the current Justice Department's perspective on the war on terrorism has become markedly more dominant in the past year. We should probably understand the implications of that before we break out the champagne. That apparently no one recommended on Christmas Day that Abdulmutallab be handled, at least for a time, as an enemy combatant should be concerning. That our director of national intelligence, Denny Blair, bravely said as much during congressional testimony this month is cause for hope.

Actually, Blair suggested that the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), announced by the administration in August, should have been called in. A government spokesman later pointed out that the group does not yet exist.

There's a final oddity. In August, the government unveiled the HIG for questioning al-Qaeda and announced that the FBI would begin questioning CIA officers about the alleged abuses in the 2004 inspector general's report. They are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway.

(The writer was director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012903954.html

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Obama’s Priorities Are Disordered

Obama is clearly bothered by the Supreme Court’s abrogation of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Legislation. He has attacked the decision with vehemence numerous times including during this State of the Union address with the Supreme Court Justices sitting right in front of him. Is he that afraid of allowing unfettered free speech in our democracy? Absolutely!

Too bad he has not displayed such vigor and attention to the real important issues facing the American people like jobs, the economy, and terrorism.

Is Freedom Of Speech Really An Emergency?
By Thomas McArdle       Investors Business Daily   01/26/2010

A full year into his presidency we suddenly discover what it takes to get Barack Obama all worked up.

Not terrorism.

In the president's estimation, a near repeat of the Lockerbie bombing Christmas Day wasn't worth remarking on until three days later.

Not the risk of a fiscal doomsday.

Only after 12 months of joint one-party rule to secure his place as the biggest-spending president in history does he call for a bipartisan spending-restraint commission and a spending freeze. Both the commission and the freeze don't come along until the fall at the earliest, if they materialize at all.

But when the Supreme Court nullifies congressional incumbents' legislative attempts to suppress the threat of political speech via modern means of communication, he runs to the microphone as if it were a national emergency.
"With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special-interest money in our politics," he declared, promising swift action. "We are going to talk with bipartisan congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision."

Millions of Americans are suffering from double-digit unemployment. And now the nation has been assessed by the congressionally mandated Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation as being unprepared for a biological terrorist attack. The panel slapped the Obama administration with a failing grade on its readiness and response plans to combat the use of deadly viruses or bacteria by an enemy.

Yet what does the president devote his radio address to last Saturday? Accusing the high court of the land of issuing a ruling that "strikes at our democracy itself."

Most Americans may be under the misapprehension that terrorists such as underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are the people to keep from striking at our democracy. Uh-uh. According to the president's priorities, the real threat to our democracy comes from Justice Anthony Kennedy and his warped view that American citizens should be able to use "their financial clout to directly interfere with elections by running advertisements for or against candidates in the crucial closing weeks."

The president says, "I can't think of anything more devastating to the public interest" — not $12 trillion in federal debt; not an abysmal 26% of teens working (a record low since statistics began being kept in 1948, according to a report by Northeastern University); not the terrorist state of Iran on track to building nuclear bombs.
Let's look at that Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which our chief executive considers a calamity of such historic proportions that "When this ruling came down, I instructed my administration to get to work immediately with members of Congress willing to fight for the American people to develop a forceful, bipartisan response to this decision."

Kennedy is viewed by liberal Democrats as the most reasonable of the five conservative justices; he was co-author with former Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter in their joint Casey opinion reaffirming the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Kennedy's 5-4 decision abrogating McCain-Feingold pointed out that under that law, "skits on YouTube.com" satirizing politicians too close to Election Day are a felony "solely because a corporation, other than an exempt media corporation, has made the 'purchase, payment, distribution, loan, advance, deposit, or gift of money or anything of value' in order to engage in political speech."

Before posting that YouTube video with corporate funding, of course, McCain-Feingold lets you ask Uncle Sam's (specifically the Federal Election Commission) permission.

As Justice Kennedy's ruling notes: "If parties want to avoid litigation and the possibility of civil and criminal penalties, they must either refrain from speaking or ask the FEC to issue an advisory opinion approving of the political speech in question."

Then, "government officials pore over each word of a text to see if, in their judgment, it accords with the 11-factor test they have promulgated."

As he and the four justices joining him recognize, "This is an unprecedented governmental intervention into the realm of speech."

Yet it is this victory for free speech last week that requires, according to Obama, "a forceful, bipartisan response" — not the whole myriad of more pressing challenges facing our country, ranging from the fiscal time bomb of out-of-control entitlement programs to our dangerously porous borders.

Blasting the Citizens United ruling may set the stage for another successful Supreme Court nomination for the Obama administration. But it won't restore the public confidence a president needs at a time of serious economic troubles and a continuing global war on terror.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=519165

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“Let Us Be Clear”: You Are An Arrogant, Narcissistic Idealogue!

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Disdainfully, Pelosi Intends To Defy Overwhelming Public Sentiment Against Obamacare and Pass It By Whatever Means Possible

The unabated arrogance and contemptuousness that Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid display toward the American people is unparalleled. They are completely dismissive of the public's negative sentiments regarding Obamanocare and are scheming to pass it come hell or high water. This disdainful attitude was clearly displayed by Obama during his State of the Union address.

In the following video, there is a short clip of Nancy Pelosi voicing her plan to pass the bill by whatever means possible.

Pelosi Says She’ll 'Poll Vault' Obamacare Through Congress

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We Must Vigorously Continue To Expose the Global Warming Scam – If We Don’t Want The Impostion of Additional Taxes and Restrictive Legislation

It may seem tiring and redundant to continue to hear and read about the global warming fraud but in the end if we don’t fight hard enough to figuratively “bury” the issue, the all too willing corrupt and ideological perverted Congressional Democrats and Obama will “bury” us instead with massive taxation and severe restrictions of our choices and activities at all levels. A majority of Americans recognize this political and scientific scam for what it is … and there is surely an over abundance of incriminating evidence.

The following outlines some additional and important revelations regarding this malfeasance.

Climate Flimflam Flaming Out
Investors Business Daily 01/25/2010

Environment: The United Nations makes a claim that can't be supported by science, and U.S. researchers ignore temperature data from frigid regions. The crack-up of the global warming fraud is picking up speed.

With so much of the science behind climate change coming under attack, especially among scientists, it's been a harsh winter for the global warming crowd:

• In late November, thousands of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia were leaked to the public. The evidence strongly suggests that researchers colluded to prove the global warming scientific "consensus" by rigging, burying and destroying data that ran counter to their political agenda.

• Last week, the public learned that claims made by the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change were not based on science, but on speculation. Specifically, the IPCC's 2007 report said the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 due to man-made global warming.

The claim, used at the U.N. Copenhagen climate change conference in cold and snowy December to rush through a restrictive greenhouse-gas-emissions treaty, was not based on a scientific study. It was based on a telephone call that a reporter had with a scientist who was speculating.

The IPCC has withdrawn the claim. Murari Lal, the scientist who included the contention in the U.N. report, admitted that he knew it wasn't based on peer-reviewed scientific research.

• Also in the last week, it was revealed that U.S. researchers working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are excluding temperature data from cold regions for a database used by the U.N. in its global warming scare campaign.

Canwest News Service, a Canadian agency that also owns a chain of newspapers, reported Friday, "In the 1970s, nearly 600 Canadian weather stations fed surface temperature readings into a global database assembled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Today, NOAA only collects data from 35 stations across Canada.

"Worse, only one station — at Eureka on Ellesmere Island — is now used by NOAA as a temperature gauge for all Canadian territory above the Arctic Circle.

"The Canadian government, meanwhile, operates 1,400 surface weather stations across the country, and more than 100 above the Arctic Circle, according to Environment Canada."

Canwest also reports that Americans Joseph D'Aleo, a meteorologist, and E. Michael Smith, a computer programmer, say that the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies has "reduced the total number of Canadian weather stations in the database" and has "cherry-picked" the stations.

The NASA agency uses data from "sites in relatively warmer places, including more southerly locations, or sites closer to airports, cities or the sea — which has a warming effect on winter weather."

In a paper published on the Science and Public Policy Institute Web site, D'Aleo and Smith say the "NOAA ... systematically eliminated 75% of the world's stations with a clear bias toward removing higher-latitude, high-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler.

"The thermometers, in a sense, marched toward the tropics, the sea and to airport tarmacs."

• Then, just last weekend, we find that same 2007 IPCC report included another phony claim: that "the rapidly rising costs" of natural disasters since the 1970s is linked to global warming.

British newspapers reported Sunday that that assertion was neither peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific paper when the IPCC report was issued. When the paper that the claim was based on was published in 2008, its authors said:

"We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Now the IPCC says it is "reassessing the evidence."

All threads of fiction unravel eventually, and the deterioration flies out of control as the end nears.

Is this what we are seeing with the contention that man-made greenhouse-gas emissions are causing the planet to overheat?

We can't see into the future, but this myth has taken so many hits from the truth that its survival is in doubt.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=519049

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Obama’s Promises Are Irrelevant As Action Speaks Louder Than Words

Obama’s actions and policies on terrorism belie his meaningless rhetoric and that was reinforced again in his State of the Union address. Actions speak louder than words so until we see some concrete changes, his words should be considered irrelevant.

Liz Cheney Ad Knocks Obama on Terror

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