Archive for September, 2009

Dan Calabrese

Well, this has the potential to get interesting.

Apparently, Americans for Limited Government sent out a fairly run-of-the-mill media alert calling for the defunding of ACORN. One of the recipients of the media alert was one Jane Stone, a producer at NBC’s Dateline. The sender of the e-mail was ALG’s Alex Rosenwald, although he was sending the e-mail on behalf of ALG’s president, Bill Wilson.

Oy.

At any rate, Ms. Stone received the e-mail on her Blackberry and was not too favorably inclined toward it, prompting her – according to ALG – to send Rosenwald the following reply:

“Bite me Jew boy!”

So! Guess she told him.

Read the rest of this entry »

Herman Cain

There’s an old saying that there are three kinds of people in the world. There are people who make things happen, people who watch things happen and people who ask what happened. The latter group will wake up in the not-too-distant future and ask what happen to the United States of America if they just sit there.

Uh, dude . . .

The big government tax-and-spend liberals are happy with this irrefutable government power grab of our liberties, while too many conservatives at heart are just sitting on the couch. And since the mainstream media is not connecting the dots about what is really happening, here are some recent examples:

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Bob Maistros

In the wake of the controversy raised by the so-called Goldstone Report by the United Nations Human Rights Council – which accused Israel of a range of violations of international law resulting from its assault on Gaza from December 2008 to January of this year – a new round of charges has been forwarded by the investigating panel.

An addendum to the report alleges that the Israelis engaged in systematic destruction of Palestinian property, defacing of and damage to its territory and areas and other violations of the human rights of the people of Gaza.

Dude, where's my minutes?

The specific charges against Israel in the new section of the report include the following:

• Israeli homes, schools, synagogues and other structures interrupted the trajectory of some 12,000 Palestinian missiles over the last eight years.  The resulting impact caused damage to, and in most cases, the complete destruction of this property with no compensation to its Gaza-based owners.

• Read the rest of this entry »

Gregory D. Lee

Trillions of dollars have been spent on the “war on poverty,” and what do we have to show for it? Not much. The poverty rate is about the same as it was when President Lyndon Johnson proposed the program 40 years ago. The war on poverty has only produced generations of government-dependent people who have lost their inherent ability to fend for themselves.

Have fun on welfare, kid.

If you want to avoid poverty, this advice is worth at least as much as the TARP government bailout, but I’m sharing it with our poverty-stricken communities for free. That’s how nice a guy I am.

Stay in School

There is probably no better way to break the poverty cycle than by staying in school. High school graduates make hundreds of thousands of dollars more money during their lifetime than those who don’t graduate. They also are less likely to be arrested and go to prison. A high school diploma opens the door to higher education like community colleges or universities.

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Lawrence J. Haas

“Mr. Obama appears to have crossed a psychological threshold on Iran, and in recent days he appears to have made a leap toward viewing tough new sanctions against Iran as an inevitability, after months of talking about the need for engagement.” – New York Times , September 25, 2009

President Obama’s tough remarks about the discovery of another nuclear enrichment site in Iran, which were echoed by France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain’s Gordon Brown, show that Western policy is – thankfully – catching up with the reality of Iranian lawlessness.

Change they can believe in.

Western leaders are demanding a tangible commitment by Iranian leaders, when they meet on October 1 with officials from the “P5 plus 1” (the five U.N. Security Council members plus Germany), to cooperate fully with nuclear inspectors and prove that they seek only a peaceful nuclear program. Western leaders also promise tough new sanctions against Tehran if it does not change course by December.

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Bob Franken

For the moment, let’s step past the battle over a government option as competition for the private insurance companies. The real problem is that there would still be that private option.

Unless, we eliminate the revenue-obsessed insurance companies and adopt a single-payer system in this country, which most are loathe to do, it would be difficult for profit and non-profit to co-exist.

We're upset and we're not gonna take it anymore!

Under such an arrangement, insurance companies would find ways to offer their policies only to the most healthy, those least likely to need a payout from their medical coverage. Their lawyers would find ways to circumvent any restrictions on covering those with pre-existing conditions and canceling those customers once they get sick.

They would use the public plans as their dumping grounds, to put in bluntly, by tossing out anybody who would threaten the next quarterly report.

It’s fascinating how this might be the mirror image of what happens in countries that rely on government health insurance the reflection would be backwards.

While the people of Canada, for instance, like to laud it over the United States for its government-run systems, many citizens sometimes get frustrated with the delays in optional and semi-optional care. Read the rest of this entry »

Candace Talmadge

Let’s get one thing straight up front. So-called tort reform will not cut U.S. health care costs in any significant manner. It will, however, deprive Americans of their constitutional right of redress while boosting the health insurance industry’s already bulging bottom line. 

The Congressional Budget Office estimated, in a report published in December 2008, that federal caps on malpractice insurance lawsuits and awards would lower total health care spending by 0.5 percent. That is one-half of 1 percentage point. Wow! Alert the press! 

Just for grins, let’s look at some more numbers. Removing private health care insurance industry charges for overhead and profit from health care funding would reduce spending by at least 30 percent and, in the individual insurance market, by as much as 40 percent. 

If we are actually serious about cutting health care costs, do we focus on a 0.5 percent saving, or cost cuts of at least 30 percent?  Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Sherrier

I received a press release from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee the other day, and something leapt out at me. Here’s the first paragraph. Read closely:

“As President Obama today highlights the role that community colleges play in fostering innovation and preparing America’s workforce for good-paying jobs, it’s worth noting that late last week Representative Eric Cantor tried to slash funding for America’s community colleges. Bachmann’s action was an attempt to take this critical tool away from middle class students and workers hoping to train for a better paying job.”

Cantor make Dems angry! Dems SMASH!

So are we talking about Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) or Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)?

Or is the DCCC sending out the form-letter equivalent of political attacks? “…it’s worth noting that late last week Representative [fill in the blank with your very own Republican Congressman!] tried to slash funding…”

The matter referred to in the press release was the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009. (If you say it’s fiscally responsible, then it will be, if you wish hard enough upon a star…) Read the rest of this entry »