from Flopping Aces

She released her supporters but did not endorse Hoffman, the Conservative candidate!

SCOZZAFAVA SUSPENDS 23RD CAMPAIGN
SIENA POLL SUGGESTS REPUBLICAN CAN’T WIN
By JUDE SEYMOUR
Watertown Daily TimesSATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2009

Dede Scozzafava, the Republican and Independence parties candidate, announced Saturday that she is suspending her campaign for the 23rd Congressional District and releasing all her supporters.

The state Assemblywoman has not thrown her support to either Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate, or Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate.

“Today, I again seek to act for the good of our community,” Ms. Scozzafava wrote in a letter to friends and supporters. “It is increasingly clear that pressure is mounting on many of my supporters to shift their support. Consequently, I hereby release those individuals who have endorsed and supported my campaign to transfer their support as they see fit to do so. I am and have always been a proud Republican. It is my hope that with my actions today, my party will emerge stronger and our district and our nation can take an important step towards restoring the enduring strength and economic prosperity that has defined us for generations.”

Ms. Scozzafava told the Watertown Daily Times that Siena Research Institute poll numbers show her too far behind to catch up – and she lacks enough money to spend on advertising in the last three days to make a difference. Mr. Owens has support from 36 percent of likely voters in the poll, with Mr. Hoffman garnering 35 percent support. Ms. Scozzafava has support from 20 percent of those polled.

The Gouverneur resident said she thinks she will receive more than 20 percent of the vote, based on several factors, including her performance during a Thursday debate.

See the Watertown Daily Times’ “All Politics is Local” blog to read Ms. Scozzafava’s complete statement or for more information on today’s Siena poll.

Scozzafava didn’t have to make this statement today. It was an act of sacrifice more than it was an acknowledgement of reality. She should be commended for doing so.

also:

Pelosi’s Health Bill: 1990 Pages. Abortions, Death Panels and Trial Lawyer Protection All Included

House Committee sessions where these issues were voted on were nothing but a sham! The real work went on behind closed doors in direct contradiction to Obama’s promise for an open process!

Nancy Pelosi finally put her cards on the table this week. Meeting in secret She produced a bill which weighs in at a record 1990 pages (PDF). It’s a monster by every measure. The Congressional Budget Office puts the full cost of the bill at $1.28 trillion dollars:

According to a preliminary CBO estimate of the bill released Thursday, the cost of expanding coverage to an additional 36 million Americans under the House plan would total $1.055 trillion over the next decade, counting tax breaks for small businesses, subsidies for low- and moderate-income families and the largest expansion of Medicaid since its inception 40 years ago. Add a variety of other costs outside the coverage package — including the creation of a new innovations center to reform Medicaid and Medicare — and the total cost of the bill rises to nearly $1.28 trillion, according to calculations by other Democratic aides.

Pelosi and House Democrat leaders are trying to push the fiction that this won’t be a budget busting bill but members of her own party are not buying it. The famous Blue Dogs are rebelling again and demanding answers from the CBO on how much the bill will actually cost after all the smoke and mirrors are gone. As we all know, government programs typically cost far more than they are projected to.

The Crown Jewel of Socialism

Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-MN) calls Pelosi’s bill the “crown jewel of socialism” and warns that even this 1990 page monstrosity isn’t the final bill. Democrats are known for slipping in hundreds of pages of amendments at the last minute before a bill is voted on as they did with Cap and Tax legislation earlier this year. This Obamination is bad enough. Columnist David Harsanyi points out the word “shall” as in “must” or “required to” – appears over 3,000 times. Say good bye to your freedom.

What “shall” we be required to do? Pay for abortion funding, and be subjected to death panels. And if that weren’t repellent enough Pelsoi inserted a provision which would punish state governments who attempt any kind of law suit abuse reform that would impact lawyers fees. I’m sure trial lawyers, major contributors to the Dem Party are pleased.

So much for the promises that Obama made to a joint session of Congress on September 9, where he declared that abortion and death panels were a lie. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find that there is still no provision to enforce a ban on illegal aliens receiving benefits under this bill. Joe Wilson was RIGHT!

But then, after promising so much, Obama is prepared to sign a bill that does just the opposite!

Finally:

White House Visitor List Reveals Ayers, Other Terrorists and Radicals Not just Idle Acquaintances

You are unlikely to find a sorrier rogues gallery than Obama’s guest list!

Did you ever wonder who were the folks who got all those special invites to the White House since the Obama’s turned it into party central? The White House released the list. Here are some highlights…

• Two visits by William Ayers, the Weatherman terrorist whose group bombed the Pentagon and who said he wished he had done more. Remember Obama told us all that Ayers was “just some guy in the neighborhood” back in Chicago. What a liar! (more…)

From the PVRC

From the Americans for Prosperity:

On Friday November 6 th, AFP-Maryland’s county chapter chairs will be conducting face-to-face meetings with their Congressional district representatives. Our goal is to put forth thoughtful questions and get relevant answers – without the political spin.

We want to know the answers to such questions as: “Do you believe that a ‘public option’ is the best solution?” or “What is your plan to tackle the rising costs of health care?” – or even – “Would you support meaningful tort reform?”

One important part of AFP’s mission is to capture this type of information from the movers and shakers – the policymakers – and deliver it back to the membership at large. That is why we will be documenting all of the meetings and report back to you. In most cases this documentation will be in the form of a video or YouTube so that you will be able to experience the full event.

Regardless of the outcomes of the Congressional meetings, each county chapter chair will present the new information to you at their November meeting. I will also be linking any video to our YouTube page and our AFP-MD homepage so be on the look out!

The following are times of each meeting on November 6 th and the AFP members meeting with them:

District 1 – Rep. Frank Kratovil – 3:30pm – Steve Lind (AFP-Worcester)
*Joey Gardner (AFP-Somerset)

*Joe Collins (AFP-Wicomico)

*Julie Brewington (AFP-Wicomico)

*Donna Gildea (AFP-Queen Anne’s)

*Aaron Jones (AFP-Anne Arundel)

District 1 – Rep Frank Kratovil – 10:00am (11/9) – Joan Ryder (AFP-Harford)
*Joe Seehusen (AFP-Balto Co)

District 2 – Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger – 2:30pm (11/2)

District 3 – Rep. John Sarbanes – 10:00am – Steve Bailey (AFP-Balto Co)

District 4 – Rep. Donna Edwards – TBA

District 5 – Rep. Steny Hoyer – TBA – Phil Parenti (AFP-Southern Maryland) (Go Charles Lollar, My words, not AFP’s)

District 8 – Rep. Chris Van Hollen – 10:00am– Dan Grossberg (AFP-Montgomery)

By Dick Morris

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had two problems. How would he get the healthcare bill out of the Senate Finance Committee without revealing the glaring potential fissures in his party over the public option on healthcare? And how could he lend a veneer of bipartisanship to a one-party bill?

He couldn’t allow a vote on final passage out of the committee with a public option in the bill because he knew that he would lose Democrats and would have no GOP support. But real compromise was always out of the question. He wanted his public option. So he evolved a strategy where the only bill that would be voted on in committee would be one that did not have a public option, all the while planning for the final product to have one.

So he used the bait of a bill with no public option to hook moderate Democrats like Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and the gullible Republican Olympia Snowe (Maine).

When the bill emerged from Finance, by a lopsided 15-9 vote, it restored to healthcare reform the momentum that had stalled due to the public outrage so evident during the August recess.

Then the dexterous Reid capitalized on that momentum to put the public option back into the bill, reversing the commitment to compromise that allowed the bill to clear the committee in the first place.

This tactic of bait-and-switch offers a foretaste of what Reid will attempt on the Senate floor. He obviously hopes to replicate these tactics in getting the bill through the Senate.
(more…)

“As an American I am not so shocked that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize without any accomplishments to his name, but that America gave him the White House based on the same credentials.” – - Newt Gingrich

Can we get a bus full of patriots together to join Michele Bachmann in DC on Thursday 11/5? She will meet us on Capital Steps at 12noon and then walk us through the hall of congress to protest the Healthcare Bill.

If interested please email me at:

aflagofhonor@comcast.net

from Flopping Aces

Hope, Change and a Nobel Peace Prize don’t cut the mustard with the Mullahs!

It was supposed to be Obama’s first big achievement in foreign affairs. Michael Adler, who has been gushing about a new age of diplomacy and peace called it possibly “an “Audacity of Hope” moment in foreign diplomacy, a potentially transformative development.” That was 12 days ago. Thursday, the Iranians announced that they rejected the deal to ship uranium out of the country for processing and asked instead for a new round of negotiations which can have only one purpose: to stall for more time as Iran works to build a bomb.

Look back over the past nine months since Obama took office. He’s gone out of his way to be nice to the mad Mullahs who run Iran. He found it difficult to condemn Iran even as it was butchering it’s citizens in the streets of Tehran. He bashed his own countries “arrogance” and offered to reset relations with the world. All that hope and change with nothing to show for it.

The day before Michael Adler gushed about Obama’s “transformative development” Charles Krauthammer showed his prescience once again:

What’s come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its nuclear program.

What’s come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking human rights off the table on a visit to China and from Obama’s shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postponement, we are told)? China hasn’t moved an inch on North Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed, it’s pushing with Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

What’s come from the new-respect-for-Muslims Cairo speech and the unprecedented pressure on Israel for a total settlement freeze? “The settlement push backfired,” reports The Post, and Arab-Israeli peace prospects have “arguably regressed.”

And what’s come from Obama’s single most dramatic foreign policy stroke — the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.

But maybe not gratuitous. Surely we got something in return for selling out our friends. Some brilliant secret trade-off to get strong Russian support for stopping Iran from going nuclear before it’s too late? Just wait and see, said administration officials, who then gleefully played up an oblique statement by President Dmitry Medvedev a week later as vindication of the missile defense betrayal.

The Russian statement was so equivocal that such a claim seemed a ridiculous stretch at the time. Well, Clinton went to Moscow this week to nail down the deal. What did she get?

“Russia Not Budging on Iran Sanctions; Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart.” Such was The Post headline’s succinct summary of the debacle.

Note how thoroughly Clinton was rebuffed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that “threats, sanctions and threats of pressure” are “counterproductive.” Note: It’s not just sanctions that are worse than useless, but even the threat of mere pressure.

Yes, we even trashed politically difficult agreements with our Polish and Czech allies hoping for Russian help with Iran and we got nothing. It’s actually worse than nothing. We’re back to square one with Iran and we’ve squandered what little diplomatic and political capital we have while at the same time giving Iran’s rogue regime legitimacy through high profile negotiations in Geneva.

The Iranians know that Obama is a pussycat, or as Gerald Warner at the U.K. Telegraph describes him: “President Pantywaist: the new surrender monkey on the block.” Our allies know Obama won’t be providing the strong leadership which most of them complain about in public but demand in private (except in the case of the French President who demanded it at the UN Security Council in September). Strategic competitors like Russia and China know all they have to do is string the Obama Administration along all the while asking and most likely receiving gifts like the termination of the Polish/Czech missile deal while giving up nothing in return.

The Obama Administration demonstrates such naive incompetence on foreign policy that it’s actually making Jimmy Carter’s disastrous presidency look good by comparison. As an example of the idiocy which pervades Obama land, take that of Scott Gration, Obama’s envoy to Sudan:

“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration, who was
appointed in March. “Kids, countries, they react to gold stars, smiley faces,
handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.”!

Meanwhile, the Iranians proceed on their way to building an atomic bomb and the kiddies running the White House take a break from bashing Fox News and send Iran’s Ahmadinejad cookies and smiley faces!

also:

Anti- Free Speech Hate Crime Legislation Attached to the Defense Spending Bill

Matthew Shepard’s death was a tragedy. But I think it’s a shameful political hoax to make him the poster boy for the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

President Obama signed this into law Wednesday:

This year, with enlarged majorities in Congress, Democrats attached the hate crimes law to a $681 billion defense spending bill this month over GOP objections. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said the approach put “radical social policy” on the “back of our soldiers.”

The legislation extends provisions first passed in 1968 that make it a federal crime to target individuals because of their race, religion or national origin. Under the law, judges can impose harsher penalties on crimes that are motivated by such animus, and the Justice Department can help local police departments investigate alleged hate crimes.

I truly do not understand the redundancy of hate crime laws- especially at the federal level. Why punish the thoughts behind crimes rather than just the action of the crime itself?

But, it’s one of those things that make liberals feel good about themselves; that they are fighting the good fight. President Obama’s remarks:

Now, speaking of that, there is one more long-awaited change contained within this legislation that I’ll be talking about a little more later today. After more than a decade of opposition and delay, we’ve passed inclusive hate crimes legislation to help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray, or who they are. (Applause.)

I promised Judy Shepard, when she saw me in the Oval Office, that this day would come, and I’m glad that she and her husband Dennis could join us for this event. I’m also honored to have the family of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, who fought so hard for this legislation. And Vicki and Patrick, Kara, everybody who’s here, I just want you all to know how proud we are of the work that Ted did to help this day — make this day possible. So — and thank you for joining us here today. (Applause.)

So, with that, I’m going to sign this piece of legislation. Thank you all for doing a great job. All right.

I guess the Nobel Peace Laureate has now officially accomplished something this year. Still amounts to a big nothing for me, though.

Incidentally, also attached to the bill was a revival of military trials for Guantanamo detainees, expanding their legal rights, but not to the extent that the ACLU would have liked.

Update: This is a reprint of an article from Laryn on the same legistislation:

Democrats to Curtail Free Speech

by Laryn

Byron York blows the whistle on Democratic legislation, about to be enacted by Congress, which purports to partially repeal the First Amendment:

The [hate] crime bill — which would broaden the protected classes for hate crimes to include sexual orientation and “gender identity,” which the bill defines as a victim’s “actual or perceived gender-related characteristics” — passed the House earlier this year as a stand-alone measure. But it’s never had the votes to succeed by itself in the Senate. So over the summer Democrats, with the power of their 60-vote majority, attached it to the defense [appropriations] bill.

Republicans argued that the two measures had nothing to do with each other. Beyond that, GOP lawmakers feared the new bill could infringe on First Amendment rights in the name of preventing broadly defined hate crimes. The bill’s critics, including many civil libertarians, argued that the hate crimes provision could chill freedom of speech by empowering federal authorities to accuse people of inciting hate crimes, even if the speech in question was not specifically related to a crime.

Republican Sen. Sam Brownback offered an amendment saying the bill could not be “construed or applied in a manner that infringes on any rights under the First Amendment” and could not place any burden on the exercise of First Amendment rights “if such exercise of religion, speech, expression, or association was not intended to plan or prepare for an act of physical violence or incite an imminent act of physical violence against another.”

The Senate passed Brownback’s amendment. After that, several Republicans, their fears allayed, voted for the whole defense/hate crimes package, which passed the Senate last July. …

Then it was time for the House and Senate bills to go to a conference committee, where the differences between them would be ironed out. That’s where the real action began.

First, the committee — controlled by majority Democrats, of course — inserted the hate crimes measure into the House bill, where it had not been before. Then lawmakers made some crucial changes to Brownback’s amendment. Where Brownback had insisted, and the full Senate had agreed, that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights, the conference changed the wording to read that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights “unless the government demonstrates … a compelling governmental interest” to do otherwise.

That means your First Amendment rights are protected — unless they’re not.

Needless to say, the First Amendment does not contain a “compelling governmental interest” exception. Legally, of course, no statute can trump the Constitution. But that doesn’t mean the Democrats can’t try, and it doesn’t mean that Barack Obama’s intensely politicized Justice Department won’t try to bring criminal prosecutions against the administration’s political opponents. Indeed, that appears to be the destination the Democrats have in mind when they continually try to demonize opposition to left-wing policies as “hate speech.

New Federal Hate Crime Statute Still Allows Free Speech, to the Extent Government Deems It Prudent

They’ve attached new hate crime categories and penalties to a military budget bill, trusting that Republicans won’t vote against it, and if they do, they’ll have ads taken out against them for doing so.

To make sure that Republicans were damned if they do, damned if they don’t, our civil libertarians and First Amendment fans in the Democratic Party made sure they drafted the provisions as odiously and as unconstitutionally as humanly possible.

First, the committee — controlled by majority Democrats, of course — inserted the hate crimes measure into the House bill, where it had not been before. Then lawmakers made some crucial changes to Brownback’s amendment. Where Brownback had insisted, and the full Senate had agreed, that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights, the conference changed the wording to read that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights “unless the government demonstrates … a compelling governmental interest” to do otherwise.

That means your First Amendment rights are protected — unless they’re not.

Finally:

AP Uncovers Stimulus Jobs Created Are a Fiction

Associated Press confirms what we first reported a few days ago…

Stimulus jobs overstated by thousands
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and MATT APUZZO
Associated Press
Oct 29,2009

WASHINGTON (AP) – An early progress report on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.

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

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

For example:
(more…)

The link is here..

Here We Go Again

If you live in Minnesota, as I do, this story has a depressingly familiar ring: “Democrats Ask New Jersey Secretary of State to Ignore Mismatched Signatures on Absentee Ballot Requests.”

The state received about 150,000 absentee ballot applications this year. On about 2,300 of those applications so far, the signature on the request form did not match the signature on the voter’s registration forms with the state.

In a development that is depressingly predictable, the New Jersey Democratic Party is asking the state to provide provisional ballots for all these voters. Those ballots, could, presumably, be used to overcome any narrow lead by Republican Chris Christie over Democrat Jon Corzine on Election Day.

A mass distribution of provisional ballots, at the request of a political party, would represent a significant change from established law.

It’s a sad reality of our contemporary politics: If an election is close enough, the Democratic Party will steal it.

also:

Miscounting the Stimulus

Paul wrote a little while ago about the current jobless recovery and mentioned the role of the “stimulus” bill in that phenomenon. In my view, by any objective measure the stimulus package has been a miserable failure. The spending was not targeted in ways that could genuinely have helped the economy (e.g., infrastructure), it has gone disproportionately to supplement the budgets of state and local governments, most of the money still hasn’t been spent, and the results, as measured by the unemployment rate, are the opposite of what the Obama administration predicted.

In order to shore up their claims of success for the stimulus bill, Democrats have tried to count jobs “saved or created” by the legislation and have trumpeted the resulting numbers. The Associated Press did a little investigating, however, and found that the claims of job creation were wildly overstated if not deliberately misleading:

A Colorado company said it created 4,231 jobs with the help of President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan. The real number: fewer than 1,000.
(more…)

the link is here.

The Internet is a Frikkin Valuable Thing

by Caleb Howe

USA Today this week ran a shocking story which revealed just how easy it was to buy one’s way into cherry appointments, reporting that 40% of his top bundlers have been awarded administration posts. Moe Lane highlights all the other perks and benefits being showered on “the money” as well.

Today Big Government highlights something worth reiterating.

USA Today goes on to report that one top-level fundraiser apparently awarded with a plum job is Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski.

The paper reports that Genachowski raised more than $500,000 for Obama—which critics charge may have helped him “buy” a position that now puts him at the center of one of Washington’s most heated policy debates, namely that regarding net neutrality.

Genachowski, a strong proponent of the policy and a darling of far left groups like Save The Internet, has recently garnered criticism for what some see as an effort to ram net neutrality through with little to no debate. The proposed policy has recently become the focus of criticism and concern from everyone from internet service providers to groups typically regarded as Obama administration-friendly, such as the Asian American Justice Center, National Council of La Raza, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Urban League. 72 House Democrats and three Democratic Governors have also raised concerns about the proposed policy.

And Genachowski isn’t the only net neutrality proponent buying in.

Another big group of donors who purchased “broadband access” to the administration: Google. The powerhouse company is leading the charge on net neutrality. As Big Government reminds us:

The question is whether political support from net neutrality proponents like Genachowski and Google (whose CEO, Eric Schmidt, was a major Obama supporter and whose employees reportedly donated $562,000 to his campaign) has dictated or contributed to [President Obama's net neutrality position].

Obama is surrounded by net neutrality radicals, from his internet czar on down. How much of that is the result of Google’s peer-to-peer access?
(more…)

the link is here.

By Eric Richter

A soldier trapped in a foxhole during a fierce battle faces a profound paradox.

His survival instinct screams at him to hide in the bottom of his hole, not to rise up and shoot or attack. Yet if he obeys this survival instinct instead of his orders and training, and if the rest of the soldiers in his unit do likewise, then the whole unit will be annihilated as the enemy destroys each undefended position one by one.

But if he and his comrades overcome their individual survival instincts and attack together, then there is a good chance most of them will survive by defeating the enemy before the enemy can destroy them.

Political victory and survival also require overcoming the illusory instinct of individual self-preservation. A slate of candidates who fail to stick their individual ideological necks out on behalf of the movement will fail to provide cover for each other, and will cause defeat across the board.

But it seems like some GOP honchos think their job is to preserve warm bodies labeled “R” in particular district seats instead of winning the ideological war for the hearts and minds of a governing majority of Americans. So in the NY 23rd special election, the party supports a candidate like Dede Scozzafava, a woman who has little interest in attacking the enemy positions, while punishing the brave warrior Doug Hoffman.

The NRCC thinks that merely by occupying enough electoral foxholes they will win a governing majority. But failing to ideologically attack, while apparently providing momentary safety to the individual soldier, dooms the army at large.

Party hacks say that polls of moderates show that filling the foxholes with center-leftists like Scozzafava will help gain ground. But the GOP’s most successful president, Ronald Reagan, didn’t win his landslide — and the Cold War — by telling moderates he was just like them. He won by telling the moderates why his conservative positions were right and the Democrats’ and the Soviets’ positions were wrong. He didn’t follow the polls…he changed them.

A worthy party leadership would be training and encouraging the troops in the foxholes to attack together, not training them to hide in the local terrain. Some candidates on the edge might lose their seats. But many more would be protected by the covering movement of national momentum.

There has never been a better time to nationalize elections on conservative themes. The Democrat welfare state totters on the brink of collapse under unsustainable debt, spending, taxing, ineffectiveness, and failure. Increasingly, the party must rely on more bullying coercion to force compliance with the unworkable (e.g., “the IRS must force you to pay more for healthcare to save you money on healthcare”). Now Democrats are marching even farther onto vulnerable ground with Obamanomics and Obamacare.

The American Left today seems as invincible — but as internally rotten and rife with contradictions — as was communism when Reagan correctly labeled it a “sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written.” But liberty’s defeat of communism didn’t manage itself; it required Reagan’s leadership. Similarly, the defeat of Democrat socialism requires our leadership. Recruiting weak heads-down soldiers like Scozzafava, and punishing brave soldiers like Doug Hoffman, is not leadership; it is self-destructive surrender.

Flopping Aces has more:

Hoffman’s Numbers Rising While Newt Makes Huge Mistake

The news keeps getting better regarding the Hoffman, Scozzafava, Owens race. Scott Johnson from Powerline relates a conversation he had with a friend and “principal of the political consulting firm of Red Sea LLC and the polling firm Basswood Research,” Jon Lerner.

Following up on Rothenberg’s column, I called Jon to ask for his take on the congressional election. He made so many interesting points that I asked him to reiterate them briefly in a message for Power Line readers. Jon writes:
(more…)

By- Regina Sztajer

Obamacare is an abomination that can’t be overlooked. By the end of the year these people are going to try to ram a bill through. Members of Congress will not have limits on their health care so what do they care. They lie about everything without thinking twice. What happened to bipartisanship and transparency? Writing legislation behind closed doors is unethical.

They care not that there isn’t any public support to speak of for their healthcare plans. Do they worry about dire budget cuts and deficits? They are selling government health care with quackery and old fashioned peddling. Like snake oil peddlers of old…drink my bottle for a few pennies and die later. Obama is the biggest of all tall tales tellers.You like you doctor and insurance plan you can keep it!!! He’s got slick talking TV commercials deceiving the public while he hopes they fall for it and pay up. These radicals are forcing everything in our faces trying to ram it into our throats. They don’t want you to learn the details and they don’t even read the bills but plan on implementing the healthcare bill after Obama has the chance to win the election in 2012, when he will be politically safe from the publics wrath.

Deception and mandates you say? Try rationing, taxpayer funded abortion, physicians in opposition, prohibitive costs, no competition between public and private insurance and more. Truth is not forth coming from the mass media and is anyone of Obama’s people telling us the truth? I wrote to two of my Senators and a Congressman saying I don’t want socialized medicine. Their replies had sugar dripping from them basically saying we care about you but we’ll do what we want anyway. Yup, they think we are so stupid!!! We all must speak out loudly otherwise we’ll be forced into bad medicine. The kind that was sold by snake oil salesman of old!!!!

The GOP has got to speak up and vote present and representing us full fold. Obama wants to see how far he can push the lever before it gets stuck in neutral. How about pushing back on it and shoving it down the oppositions throats? Deficits in the trillions, unemployment skyrocketing, and a dollar we’ll be pushing around in barrels soon. Excuse me but America President Barack Obama is about freedom. patriotism, optimism and faith in a bright future. Your not for that? Then it’ll be bye bye in 2012. Public opinion of Obama is dropping like a rock. Ordinary citizens of all types all along our 50 states are standing up and saying we can do without you and your Democratic and radical friends. We disapprove of you and your talk meisters who we don’t believe for one minute. (more…)

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer –

WASHINGTON – House Democrats reached agreement Wednesday on key elements of a health care bill that would vastly alter America’s medical landscape, requiring virtually universal sign-ups and establishing a new government-run insurance option for millions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned a formal announcement Thursday morning in front of the Capitol. Lawmakers said the legislation could be up for a vote on the House floor next week.

The rollout will cap months of arduous negotiations to bridge differences between liberal and moderate Democrats and blend health care overhaul bills passed by three separate committees over the summer. The developments in the House came as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., tried to round up support among moderate Democrats for his bill, which includes a modified government insurance option that states could opt out of.

Reid met Wednesday with Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who faces a potentially tough re-election next year.

The final product in the House, reflecting many of President Barack Obama’s priorities, includes new requirements for employers to offer insurance to their workers or face penalties, fines on Americans who don’t purchase coverage and subsidies to help lower-income people do so. Insurance companies would face new prohibitions against charging much more to older people or denying coverage to people with health conditions.

Pelosi has also said the bill would strip the health insurance industry of a long-standing exemption from antitrust laws covering market allocation, price fixing and bid rigging.

The price tag, topping $1 trillion over 10 years, would be paid for by taxing high-income people and cutting some $500 billion in payments to Medicare providers. The legislation would extend health coverage to around 95 percent of Americans.

Republicans criticized the bill even before it was unveiled.

“Americans’ health care is too important to risk on one gigantic bill that was negotiated behind closed doors,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich. “The Medicare cuts will hurt seniors, the tax increases will kill jobs and the government takeover of health care will increase premium costs.”

One change expected to be revealed Thursday is that some of the provisions of the bill, which were set to take effect mostly in 2013, have been moved up so Americans would see the benefits of the legislation more quickly, according to Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami.

“I’m pretty confident that we’ve got the right pieces in place,” said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, one of the three panels involved in writing the bill. “We can quibble over parts of it, but the fact is when you’re taking a 60-year-old system that grew up in a rather haphazard fashion and you’re trying to bring some coherence to it, these are sort of the things you have to do at the beginning of that process.”

Plenty of work remains to be done before a bill could land on Obama’s desk — and there’s still no guarantee that Congress can complete the legislation before year’s end, as the president wants. If Obama does sign a health overhaul bill, he will have bucked decades of failed attempts by past administrations, most recently by former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

House leaders hope to finish the bill before Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11. The Senate is aiming to start debate sometime in the next several weeks.

Bills passed by the House and Senate would have to be merged before a final product could be sent to Obama, and there are a number of differences between the two chambers that would have to be reconciled. Among them are the different approaches to the public plan. The House does not include the opt-out provision for states, and it has more stringent requirements for employers. The Senate would use a tax on high-value insurance plans to pay for the bill, an approach that the House version doesn’t have.

In the end, Pelosi, D-Calif., and other House leaders were unable to round up the necessary votes for their preferred version of the government insurance plan — one that would base payment rates to providers on rates paid by Medicare. Instead, the Health and Human Services secretary would negotiate rates with providers, the approach preferred by moderates and the one that will be featured in the Senate’s version.

That marked a defeat for liberal lawmakers, who argued for months that a public insurance plan tied to Medicare would save more money for the government, and offer cheaper rates to consumers. Moderates feared that doctors, hospitals and other providers, particularly those in rural states, would be hurt, and in the end they looked poised to prevail, despite constituting a distinct minority in the 256-member House Democratic caucus.

Some liberals were prepared to accept the negotiated rate structure. Others were still withholding support, even while pointing to Reid’s inclusion of a government insurance plan in the Senate bill as a victory in itself.

“We were laughed at in August. Who would have thought that the Senate bill would have a public option?” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Woolsey was noncommittal about whether progressives would accept the negotiated rates. “This is not walkaway time and it is not acceptance time,” Woolsey said.

Members of the progressive caucus, along with lawmakers from the black, Hispanic and Asian-Pacific American caucuses, were scheduled to meet with Obama at the White House on Thursday, she said.

The legislation would set up a new purchasing exchange where small businesses and individuals without affordable health care options could shop for and compare insurance plans. The new public plan would be one offered in the exchange, and it would be optional; an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office of early versions of the bill said that the public plan would be expected to cover 9 million to 10 million people by 2019.

The House plan also envisions a significant expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for low income people.

Democratic leaders still faced disputes over prohibiting taxpayer money for abortions and health care for illegal immigrants, issues they hoped to resolve after the bill’s unveiling.

the link is here.

Flopping Aces goes further:

Sen. Reid’s Government Run Plan is a Stalking Horse for Real Plan

The real plan is bad enough!

What an actor! Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid presented his idea (we still haven’t seen the bill which he wrote in secret) for a government run health plan that had an “opt out” provision with a straight face. But the idea is such a joke, it’s difficult to see how anyone took the idea seriously. What state would consent to see their citizens taxed to pay for the health benefits in another state?
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from Flopping Aces

Just how dumb are Obama voters? Well…dumb enough to have elected a man to the highest office based upon the same credentials that “earned” him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

So what’s their excuse today, now that they are witnessing President Obama’s executive leadership in action? Well, for one, more Americans are discovering their inner conservative. If 8 years of President Bush in no small measure lost us the ’08 election and set the conservative movement one step back, President Obama in one year’s worth of governance will most likely cost the Democrats 2010 (actually, Dems in Congress who choose to ignore the voices of their constituency will lose seats) and propel conservatism two steps forward.

The other side of this is that Obama supporters might not have jumped ship yet, because they have not been keeping up on the issues, other than to read the latest DNC talking points and Kos misinformation. According to the latest Pew Research Center’s latest News IQ Quiz. Mary Katharine Ham blogs:

Under a section called “Partisan Knowledge Gap,” we find Republicans were more knowledgeable by a double-digit factor on four issues. Although the Glenn Beck question is naturally easier for Republicans, the other three issues are basic political knowledge— what “cap-and-trade” means, who’s in control of the House, and who the new Supreme Court Justice is (a question that should perhaps be easier for Democrats). Republicans also led Democrats on identifying the unemployment rate, Fed chairman, Dow level, Max Baucus’ position. Republicans correctly answered an Iran/Israel question and an Afghanistan question more often than Dems. Republicans and Democrats were even on identifying the “public option” as a health-care plan.

But take heart, Democrats: You lead Republicans by five points on a whopping one question.

Take it for what it’s worth, with a grain of salt. But still, a nice bit of irritant to rub under the skin of liberal Democrats.

also:

Justice Done In Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian Murders

Rob wrote about the murders of Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian back in 2007, which still gets many hits. People want to know about this case and find out if justice will be served.

Well it was today….with little media fanfare, unlike the Duke case which fit the particular narrative our media wants to present:

A Knox County jury today put torture-slaying alleged ringleader Lemaricus Davidson on the path to death.

With a sweeping set of guilty verdicts on all murder counts, the five-woman, seven-man jury set the stage for the state’s bid Thursday to seek Davidson’s life as punishment for the January 2007 deaths of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.

“The people of Knox County are the ones who took care of our kids today,” said Deena Christian, mother of Channon Christian.

“We finally have the justice our kids deserve,” said Mary Newsom, mother of Chris Newsom.

Jurors also found Davidson, 28, guilty of the kidnapping and robbery of the couple, rejecting defense claims the pair went willingly to Davidson’s Chipman Street house.

They also deemed him guilty of multiple rapes of Christian, 21. They were unable to conclude whether Davidson raped Newsom, 23, and instead returned lesser verdicts of facilitation of Newsom’s rape.

Never did hear Sharpton or Jackson come out in disgust about these murders….wonder why?

Finally:

Flying Imam Settlement Makes Us Less Safe

The case of the Flying Imams reached a settlement; and it favors political correctness and misguided views on profiling and religious sensitivities over common sense.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which represented the imams, said the settlement is “a victory for civil rights.”

“The six imams are pleased,” Hooper said. “Their rights were maintained by the settlement.”

This is no victory for civil rights. These imams gave reasonable cause for alarm, based as much upon behavioral profiling as much as religious and ethnic profiling. The settlement sends a message that favors stupidity over safety:
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From Michelle Malkin

Obama’s FCC, liberal churches, and the “media justice” mob

My syndicated column today (reprinted below) probes the FCC/left-wing church alliance to silence conservative critics of illegal immigration through “hate speech” regulation. Tip of the iceberg.

Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator first broke the story of how United Church of Christ officials met with kindred spirit/FCC Commissioner Michael Copps earlier this month before launching a nationwide campaign to pressure the FCC to crack down on cable TV and talk radio figures.

The motto of the “So We Might See” anti-”hate speech” campaign is: “Without media justice, there will be no social justice!” The same Marx-loving “social justice” crowd is behind the “media justice” mob — including George Soros’s Open Society Institute, Media Democracy Fund, and Media Matters; the Ford Foundation; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; etc., etc., etc. Their goal: government redistribution of media wealth. As “The Media Justice Fund” put it: The movement “is grounded in the belief that social and economic justice will not be realized without the equitable redistribution and control of media and communication technologies.” And there’s that phrase “transformative change” again:

* Media change of all kinds must expose and directly confront the mechanics of structural racism and systemic oppression.
* Leaders from historically marginalized communities must be developed as effective media activists and strategic movement communicators.
* Media policy advocacy and strategic communications are more effective when clearly relevant to the primary justice issues of the movement for racial justice, economic and gender equity, and youth rights.
* Compelling communications and media activism campaigns must be both rooted in critical issues and coordinated across issue, sector, and region for national impact.
* When justice sectors strengthen communications strategies, center the use of culture as a communications tool, employ winning frames and messages, and strengthen their influence over media rules and rights, the possibilities for transformative change skyrocket.

“Transformative change” = a media landscape purged of the Right’s most powerful voices.

The White House communications shop gives two thumbs up, no doubt.

***

How the FCC and liberal churches are scheming to shut you up
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

The war on conservative speech has moved from the White House to your neighborhood pews. Left-wing church leaders want the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on “hate speech” over cable TV and right-leaning talk radio airwaves. President Obama’s speech-stifling bureaucrats seem all too happy to oblige.

Over the past week, an outfit called “So We Might See” has conducted a nationwide fast to protest “media violence” – specifically, “anti-immigrant hate speech, which employs flawed arguments to appeal to fears rather than facts.” Their ire is currently aimed at Fox News and conservative talk show giants. But how long before they target ordinary citizens who call in to complain about the government’s systemic refusal to enforce federal sanctions on illegal alien employers or the bloody consequences of lax deportation policies?

The “interfaith coalition for media justice” is led by the United Church of Christ. Yes, that’s the same church of Obama’s race-baiting, Jew-bashing ex-pastor Jeremiah Wright. Other members include the Presbyterian News Service, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the National Council of Churches. (The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has denied being a part of the campaign, despite being listed as a coalition member. So has the Methodist church.) These religious liberals have partnered with the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which filed a petition in January demanding that the FCC collect data, seek public comment, and “explore options” for combating “hate speech” from staunch critics of illegal immigration.

Open-borders groups have sought to marginalize, criminalize, and demonize those of us who have raised our voices for years about lax immigration enforcement — and to impose an Orwellian Fairness Doctrine-style policy on illegal alien amnesty opponents. During the presidential campaign, the National Council of La Raza launched a “We Can Stop the Hate” project to redefine tough policy criticism from the Right as “hate.” La Raza president Janet Murguia called for TV networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves and argued that hate speech should not be tolerated, “even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights,” according to the NYTimes.

Now, the gag-wielders have a friend in the White House – and they won’t let him forget it. Their FCC petition calling for a crackdown on illegal immigration critics cites Obama’s own words in a fall 2008 speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Obama told his amnesty-supporting audience that he knew they were “counting on us to stop the hateful rhetoric filling the airwaves.”

Unsurprisingly, far Left billionaire George Soros’s money is backing the “So We Might See”/National Hispanic Media Coalition effort. And remember that the Soros-funded Center for American Progress has provided the Obama White House with its Fairness Doctrine-embracing “diversity czar,” Mark Lloyd.
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The link is here.

Just 4% Trust Reporters More Than Themselves on What’s Good for America

Most voters trust themselves more than either Congress or President Obama when it comes to the economy, but they have way more confidence in themselves when it comes to the news media.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 85% of U.S. voters trust their own judgment more than the average reporter when it comes to the important issues affecting the nation. Only four percent (4%) trust the average reporter more. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure.

Ninety percent (90%) or more of voters ages 40 to 64 trust themselves more than the average reporter.

In part, this is because just 23% of all voters say the average reporter is about the same as they are ideologically. Fifty-three percent (53%) think the average reporter is more liberal than they are, while 16% say more conservative.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

Two-out-of-three voters (67%) say most reporters when covering a political campaign try to help the candidate they want to win. Just 21% say most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage. These findings are identical to those found throughout last fall’s presidential campaign.

Just before last November’s election, for example, 68% of voters said most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, and 51% believed they were trying to help Democrat Barack Obama. Just seven percent (7%) thought they were trying to help his Republican opponent, John McCain.

Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party overwhelmingly say most reporters try to help the candidate they favor. Democrats are more closely divided: 32% say most reporters try to be unbiased, while 47% say they try to help the candidate they want to win.

Similarly, 79% of GOP voters and 59% of unaffiliateds believe most reporters are more liberal than they are. Democratic voters, are evenly split between those who say most reporters are more liberal or more conservative. A plurality of Democrats (44%) say reporters are about the same ideologically.

Three-out-of-four Americans (74%) trust their own judgment more than that of the average member of Congress when it comes to economic issues facing the nation.

But then 51% of voters say Congress is too liberal while 22% hold the opposite view and say it is too conservative. Fourteen percent (14%) say the ideological balance of Congress is about right.

Sixty percent (60%) of voters nationwide now trust their own economic judgment more than the president’s.

Seventy-four percent (74%) view the president as politically liberal.

Forty-three percent (43%) of Americans have a favorable opinion of journalists, while 54% view them unfavorably. Adults rank them fifth out of a list of nine professions that Rasmussen Reports periodically surveys on. Being a member of Congress is the least respected job. (more…)

From Flopping Aces

By Robin of Berkeley

I used to have a job that felt like Divine Grace. Since I was raised secular, it was as close to a religious experience as I had ever had.

I was fresh out of graduate school in my late 20s, working with black foster families and relatives in dicey areas of Oakland. Not a day went by that I didn’t cry — and not just because of the sorrowful plight of the kids.

I’d never been around people like this before, who loved God, who praised Jesus, who lived to serve him. In retrospect, I think my tears came because deep in my heart, I loved God too, but I didn’t know it yet.

These families were not raising your average kids. There were crack babies screaming in agony 24/7; molested kids who compulsively masturbated; children beaten and burned and now acting like hellions.

And yet these families just kept on going because, as they would tell me, they prayed, and Jesus wanted them to take care of the kids. Most days, I could barely make it back to my car before I started weeping.

Many of these folks made indelible impressions on my young soul. I remember a 22-year-old single mom living in an immaculate though tiny apartment. Since she had a toddler and worked full time, I felt bad even asking her if she would caretake her cousin’s newborn crack baby.

Without skipping a beat, she said yes, she’d take the baby in, and that her church friends would help. And then, of course, the tears started streaming.

Or the sheriff I interviewed who had a couple of kids but wanted to adopt another. She and her siblings were brutalized by an addict father.

I was rendered speechless when she told me, with arms outstretched, “My father would extend his arms like this and we’d be scared to death. I want my children to see my arms and run to me, knowing they’ll be given a big hug.”

When I started the job, I was a typical white liberal, out to rescue the poor. It took only a week on the job before a caregiver set me straight.

Visiting two kids in the roughest housing project in West Oakland, I brought gifts of coloring books and crayons. The girls’ grandmother took me aside and lit into me, “I can afford to buy them toys. I don’t need your charity.”

This grandma taught me a lesson in humility more salient than any class in school: I should leave my white guilt and condescension at the door. I surrendered my preconceived notions about minorities and instead let them teach me.

My experiences have left me utterly clueless — stupefied really — about why the Left has a colonial attitude toward blacks. Even though I bought into most aspects of progressivism, I rejected this one.

Leftists view themselves as the Great White Hope. They need to extend a helping hand and TLC to the disenfranchised. In contrast, conservatives don’t condescend. We desire a colorblind world where everyone has the opportunity for success.

Will the real racist please stand up?

While Obama fooled people with promises of a post-racial America, he and the Left are obsessed with skin color. They see nothing else.
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From Flopping Aces

Man, the lefties must really be hating Liebeman nowadays:

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

Lieberman did say he’s “strongly inclined” to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he’ll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn’t changed first…

“I can’t see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of a government-operated-run insurance company,” Lieberman added. “It’s just asking for trouble – in the end, the taxpayers are going to pay and probably all people will have health insurance are going to see their premiums go up because there’s going to be cost shifting as there has been for Medicare and Medicaid.”

Since that statement came out earlier today the Reid camp…or cheerleaders….have tried to spin it so it doesn’t sound as bad as it really is. I mean how can it be bad if Joe will vote to open floor debate on Reid’s bill? Of course they are leaving out the other vote…the one that closes debate and moves the bill to a vote. Joe says he will NOT vote for that if the public option is there.

Good for him.

RINO Snowe says she won’t vote for the public option either….at least today she is saying it:

Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe says she would vote with fellow Republicans to block the Democratic health care overhaul if changes are not made to the version Majority Leader Harry Reid outlined this week.

Karl at Hot Air thinks all this is leading to is Reid being able to say “I tried…but the evil empire struck me down” to his leftist loons.

Reid apparently does not have 60 votes lined up for the public option, though Reid thinks he will have them after the CBO scores it. This move was supposedly forced by the hardcore liberals in the Senate, though this could still be the kabuki by which Reid sheds responsibility for a later failure to include the public option. Either way, the ball is now in the moderates’ court.

But there is more trouble looming for Reid:

U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., said Tuesday she still can’t support a government-funded insurance option, a day after legislation was unveiled that would give states the choice of whether to participate in the program.

“Creating another government-funded option is not where we’re going. We don’t need to go there,” Lincoln told members of the Arkansas Farm Bureau during a video conference. “A government-funded option is something that I think is not the way to go.”

And Robert Laszewski at Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review doesn’t see 60 votes coming anytime soon and does a good job of describing why:

Reid is reportedly going to include a robust Medicare-like public option with a state opt-out. That means there would be a federal Medicare-like public plan but that a state could opt out. Opting out would mean that both houses of a state’s legislature and its governor would have to agree to opt out. That’s a pretty high hurdle and it is not going to appease the moderate Democrats in the Senate, or any Republicans including Snowe, who oppose a robust public option.

We could have a public option only if a “trigger” occurs. That is Senator Snowe’s general idea. OK, define that trigger. Do you think for one moment a liberal’s definition of a trigger will come close to a moderate’s definition of a trigger? It is the last week in October and we’ve been hearing about a trigger for months. Have you seen a definition of it yet?

Then there is the possible course in the House—a public option that has to negotiate with providers just like a private health plan does—“arms’ length negotiations.” For liberals, how is that different than a co-op and its inability to gain any real kind of traction? For moderate Democrats, it will likely be seen as the “wolf in sheep’s clothes.” Maybe a place to compromise but hardly the robust government plan its proponents are looking for and there is no evidence that this idea will attract those moderate Senate Democrats that don’t like the public option.

Then there is the state opt-in. The idea is that both the state’s legislative branches and the governor would have to agree to opt-in. This could well win moderate Democratic support because very few states would do it and it is attractive to states’ rights moderates who would like to see state experimentation. This is a possible place for compromise but hardly a robust public option.

As I have said many times before, there will not be a robust Medicare-like public option or any form of a thinly veiled Medicare-like public option.

And the GOP has found some a backbone:

But before that issue can be joined on the Senate floor, Reid’s first challenge is to gain 60 votes — the number needed to overcome a filibuster by Republicans — just to bring the bill up, a parliamentary maneuver so routine that a vote is rarely required.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, announced that in this case, members of his party will treat it as though it were “a vote on the merits” of a bill he said would “cut Medicare, raise taxes and increase health insurance premiums.” He suggested Democrats could expect campaign commercials next year on the basis of the vote, and recalled that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was ridiculed in his 2004 presidential campaign for having once said he voted for a bill before he voted against it.

For those leftist Democrats the threat means nothing because they were elected in strong leftist strongholds….but the moderates? I think this threat will be taken seriously and some idiot trying to change the name of “public option” won’t help one iota.

All in all, its good news today.

also:

“Public Option” by any other name….

What is it with Democrats always denying who they are and what they’re peddling? Liberalism has a negative stigma attached to it in conservative America; so Democrats now prefer you call them “progressives”. The word “socialist” is the new “N” word, but it describes President Obama’s instinctual gravitations and political inclinations. Why deny it? Why hide from the description? Democrats who revel in communist/Marxist/socialist doctrine should come out of the closet and bask in the transparency of who they are. Be proud! Don’t hide! Don’t obfuscate.

Yet the reason they have an aversion to such “labels”, no matter how descriptively accurate, is because in order to sell any of their bill of goods to the American public, they have to engage in deception. Can you say “stealth socialism”?

“Public option” is now politically damaged goods; so let’s give it a makeover, says Nancy Pelosi, even though poop by any other name still smells like poop:

A government-sponsored “public option” for health care lives, though it may be more attractive to skeptics if it goes by a different moniker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday.

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

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

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

?…..?……?!

Ah yes, the lure of the free lunch.

The speaker said the “competitive option” idea emerged during her closed-door roundtable at the Sunrise Senior Center with advocates of seniors and others who work with older populations. Wasserman Schultz suggested the term might be here to stay.

“I think she’s going to go up and test-drive it when she goes back to Washington,” Wasserman Schultz said. “It might stick.”

As for having the votes to pass such a measure, both women said a public option would survive. They wouldn’t get into numbers of congressional supporters, but said it was simply a matter of picking which type of public option to pursue.

Finally:

Pravda: America Turning to Socialism “Slowly but Surely”

The big sign indicating this shift was Obama’s decision to abandon Polish and Czech allies in missile defense pact! When the mouthpiece for world communism starts praising Obama, it’s time for a change!

America Moving from Kingdom of Cash to Socialism Slowly but Surely
Pravda
October 19, 2009

Obama’s decision not to build the Missile Defense System in Poland and the Czech Republic and his Noble Prize have not yet been comprehended from a philosophical viewpoint. It’s time to do it.

The last turning point similar to the current one happened approximately 400 years ago. The Western European society discovered a new hierarchy of values. Feudalism that valued service and chivalry was replaced with capitalism. Wealth became the measure of success, and everyone was to care about his own pocket only. The cult of money replaced all other values, including religious.
…
What does Obama’s decision not to build the Eastern European Missile Defense System have to do with all of this? Well, it means that it’s not capitalism that’s undergoing the crisis, but the belief in its high efficiency. And this, in turn, means that America, the bulwark of capitalism, is no longer the boss of the world. And if it’s not the boss any more, it has to be friends with everybody, including Russia. And it’s America’s turn to offer Russia to push the reset button. Or maybe it’s just tired of imposing its rules on others and felt that friendship is more valuable than money and power? If this is the case, we will soon witness another turning point in the world history.

Yeah, that’s right. The world would be such a better place if we returned to the feudal system where the great mass of mankind were treated as the slaves to a handful of rich aristocrats!

Hmmm… isn’t that what Obama is trying to do? Enslave us all to his big money friends like foreign born George Soros?

It could not happen to a nicer bunch of people.

CNN’s Ratings Falling Faster than Obama’s

from Powerline

CNN, which pioneered cable news, now rates dead last among cable news networks. Prime time ratings are down 68 percent since last year. Of course, much of that is due to 2008 being an election year, but CNN’s fall relative to the other news networks can’t be blamed on the election cycle.

Can some of CNN’s decline, at least, be attributed to the network’s liberalism in general and its attacks on and sniggering denigrations of, normal Americans? It’s hard to tell. But sniggerer-in-chief Anderson Cooper’s ratings are sliding into the toilet. (The midsummer blip was Michael Jackson’s death.):

CNN apparently has tried to market its on-air personalities by having them participate in the television show Jeopardy, thereby showing off their superior intelligence. That hasn’t worked out too well either. If the network really gets desperate, it could consider covering the news straight. But that isn’t likely: look how many newspapers have preferred to go bankrupt rather than abandon their liberal bias.

And the fun is not limited to the Communist News Network.

US newspaper circulation down 10.6 percent as rate of decline accelerates amid rising prices

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Circulation at newspapers shrank at an accelerated pace in the past six months, driven in part by stiff price increases imposed by publishers scrambling to offset rapidly eroding advertising sales.

Average daily circulation at 379 U.S. newspapers plunged 10.6 percent in the April-September period from the same six-month stretch last year, according to figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
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What if Bush had done that?

A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.

Snubbing the Dalai Lama.

Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.

Freezing out a TV network.

Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.

President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.

What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.

It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.

Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?

And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?

“We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,” former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. “The watchdogs are curled up around his feet, sleeping soundly. … There are countless examples: some silly, some serious.”

Indeed, Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. But it’s not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the president often gets kid-glove treatment from the press, fellow Democrats and, particularly, interest groups on the left — Bush’s loudest critics, Obama’s biggest backers.
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from Michelle Malkin

Doug Powers takes a closer look at Harry Reid’s state opt-out sop.

There’s no there there:

I haven’t seen this section of the bill, but one thing is certain: It will be easier to get Michael Moore through the eye of a needle that for states to opt out of Obamacare.

There will be countless additional funding measures attached so as to ensure that if states opt out, they’ll go even more broke than they already are.

Technically states can opt out of federal education guidelines and run their own public schools any way they see fit — as long as they don’t mind losing millions in federal funding that states have come to depend on.

Technically states can opt out of the federal drinking age and set their own legal age for the consumption of alcoholic beverages — as long as they don’t mind losing millions in federal highway funding.

Hospitals also receive plenty of federal money. Guess what’s going to disappear if your state “opts out” of Obamacare?

Some states are girding their loins:

Utah House Speaker Dave Clark (R) told the (Salt Lake City) Deseret News that “we already have a health-care system in Utah that is bottom three in cost for the nation. As I understand the latest version (of health care legislation) — always subject to numerous changes — I would recommend Utah opt out.”

Utah Senate Majority Leader Sheldon Killpack (R) also expressed skepticism; another Republican state representative, Carl Wimmer, said he will introduce a bill in January “that will get us out.”

Former Utah governor and U.S. Health and Human Services secretary Mike Leavitt, meanwhile, recently published an essay in which he contends that federal health-care legislation “perpetuates and accelerates a century-long emaciation of state governments,” the Deseret News notes.

Connie Hair at Human Events walks through the many unanswered questions about the “opt out” mirage:

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