Voters Schedule Town Hall in Colorado Representative’s Absence

You really don't need the member of congress there to get your point across. And as an extra bonus, you'll hear fewer lies.

After a series of unsuccessful requests to arrange a town hall over the August recess with Democratic Congresswoman Betsy Markey (CO-4), grassroots organizers opted instead to host their own health care town hall in the congresswoman’s absence – complete with an empty chair and placard for the reticent Markey.

Job Description for Virginian Pilot Editor: Must be stupid.

The incandescent stupidity of Virginian Pilot editor Donny Luzzatto has to be seen to be believed. In today’s paper, complaining about the fact that the US has not built any grand monuments, highway systems or gone back to the moon, he attributes this lack to …. (wait for it) money!

Having spent the public’s money like drunken editors (sailors spend their own money) during the Bush years and quintupling down during the Obama years, I am persuaded that this pile of towering ignorance is willful. It can’t be an accident; otherwise Donny would be right – like a stopped clock – at least some time.

He refers back to the grand public projects of the FDR administration and to the interstate highway system initiated by Eisenhower. Quick, boys and girls, what was different about those administrations and those of today? Did they throw money around? Well, FDR did by Ike certainly didn’t.

I’ll give you a hint: what does it take to build a dam, an interstate highway, a bridge, virtually anything except that temporary lemonade stand on the corner? Money, certainly … but money burns a virtual hole in the pockets of the criminal class in Washington who view billions as a rounding error.

What’s that, you say? Permits from the EPA, the Corps of Engineers, the approval of the courts? You say that takes years if not decades to get something built? You say that people who are young when they propose a project can die of old age before all the permits are in place? You say that “shovel ready” is a stupid slogan only believed in by the invincibly ignorant dolts who earn their daily bread writing for the Virginian Pilot?

Go to the head of the class, you smarty, you. Invincible ignorance; it’s right there in the job description.

UPDATE: Comments from FreeRepublic

What can one say?

Those that can not handle the punishing rigors of a English degree.....go for a Journalism degree. It is basically the Parks and Recreation degree for those that don’t like shovels.

The Etiquette Czar's Rules for Patriotic Protest

The Left's rules for how the rest of America is allowed to protest.

The White House press office is now Miss Manners' office. President Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, took to the television airwaves this week to criticize congressional town hall protesters for "yelling." Gibbs' underling, Bill Burton, chastised voters not to "disrupt" and "scream." Instead, he advised America to engage in a "spirited debate about health care, a real vigorous conversation about it."

What constitutes "spirited"? How do they define "vigorous"? When does forceful dissent become intolerable disruption? Herewith, the Obama Etiquette Czar's Official Rules for Patriotic Protest. Keep this guide with you at all times to avoid being flagged by the Democratic politeness monitors.
...
Limit your objections to a library whisper and only challenge your lawmakers with hushed, dulcet tones....

If, on the other hand, you are attending a presidential town hall to show your affection and approbation, "spirited" chanting is acceptable.
...
"I LOVE YOU, BARACK!" "AMEN!" and "YES, WE CAN!"

Shuttle and Meteor

Earth & Sky

Reid: Protesters are 'evil-mongers'

I'll be practicing my Dr. Evil laugh.

Roxana Mayer: I’m Not a Doctor But I Play One at Town Hall Meetings

Why did Roxana Mayer identify herself as a doctor at a town hall meeting when she spoke in support of national health care?

Our own David Jennings secured a phone interview, in which Mayer admitted to impersonating a physician, saying — get this — she thought it would help her credibility. (It didn’t.)

Weird; her hero Barack Obama also thinks that lying enhances his credibility . .

Here's the new title for the photo in the Houston Chronicle. Note the change in the label:

Megan McArdle addresses the comment that "no one's talking about national health care."

When I wrote the other week about why I am opposed to national health care, a number of people angrily demanded to know why I was writing about something that "no one is proposing". Now, this is clearly a lunatic statement. I was writing about something that many people were proposing. I just wasn't writing about the nebulous bills currently wending their way through various committees.

I hadn't intended to. I was writing about my deeper opposition to the entire project of providing, paying for, or otherwise guaranteeing health care. ...

Now, I felt this was relevant, because in fact, no one I know who is interested in national health care views these bills as the final iteration of American Healthcare 3.0.

The goal of everyone, to a first approximation, on the "pro" side of these health care reforms is a European-style system where the government basically runs the whole show. Maybe they contract out the billing services to insurance companies, which you may choose between (though you can't choose covered services, etc). Maybe there's a safety valve in the form of a private system that the very affluent can buy into. But for 95% of the population, the government dictates what treatments are covered, and usually, how much should be paid for them.

Read the whole thing.

Obama ought to read section 1233 of HR 3200

The fact that Obama does not actually have a Health Care Plan in writing is both an advantage and a problem ... because the Democrats in congress do.

You can only go so far with glittering generalities ... all the way to the White House.

Does anyone imagine that Barack Obama has sat down with HR 3200 and studied Section 1233 which concerns advanced care planning consultations? Has he seriously considered the implications of the language? Has he, or any supporters of his reforms, even attempted to refute these concerns by referring to the text of the provisions in question? He's a brilliant Harvard lawyer and U of C law professor. Why doesn't he go through the troubling language and show us why we shouldn't be concerned? This is right up his alley. Instead we get this:

The rumor that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for "death panels" that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we've decided that we don't -- it's too expensive to let her live anymore. (Laughter.) And there are various -- there are some variations on this theme.

He goes on to speculate about the intentions of the writers of the provisions and the sources of the "rumors." None of this addresses the language of the bill.

We disagree about is brilliance. We have him pegged as a good looking Marxist BS artist.

Sex lags behind bathroom visits in popularity: Dutch survey

You have to understand the Dutch.

Goldman In Talks To Acquire US Treasury

The spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: 'We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things'.

The only challenge facing Goldman in completing the merger 'is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept. we don't already own'.

Goldman recently celebrated record earnings by roasting a suckling pig over a bonfire of hundred-dollar bills'.

HEH.

Calling for Pizza in 2012

Only a few months ago the Liberals were complaing about George Bush's invasion of privacy.

E-Mail on Health Care

I can vouch for this to a degree. Wednesday, I was at the doctor whom I have been going to since we moved down here (he is the one who discovered my cancer). I have to get a very expensive shot every 3 months ($3000) that is designed to keep the PSI down and help to prevent a recurrence of the cancer. Has some uncomfortable side effects, and I was questioning the need to continue with it, which he assured me was necessary. He then asked how old I was, and when I replied 70, he said that if this legislation goes thro ugh as intended by the powers that be, that I probably would not be able to get it next year, as that would be money better spent on someone else with greater longevity. I would be referred to someone to "counsel" me.

I asked him why the AMA had recently endorsed the plan. He replied that only about 15% of the nation's doctors were members of AMA, and most of them were not really on the front lines of doctorhood but in some other areas of medicine. He said he was a member, but would not be after this membership year.



This man got part of his training in London, and practiced in Canada for 16 years before coming to the US, and he has no use for socialized medicine, regardless of how you wrap it, or what kind of bow to put on it. He said that we have a shortfall of around 400,000 doctors at the present time, and many of today's doctors are of the baby boomer generation who are nearing retirement and/or will decide to hang it up rather than deal with the results this is sure to bring.

Scary, my friends. The picture for our age group is not pretty.




ALL THE MORE REASON TO PUT YOUR FAITH IN GOD, NOT GOVERNMENT.

SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS:

In England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed.

Obama wants to have a healthcare system just like Canada's and England 's. I got this today and am sending it on.
If Obama's plans in other areas don't scare you, this should.
Please do not let Obama sign senior death warrants.

Everybody that is on this mailing list is either a senior citizen, is getting close or knows somebody that is.

Most of you know by now that the Senate version (at least) of the "stimulus" bill includes provisions for extensive rationing of health care for senior citizens. The author of this part of the bill, former senator and tax evader, Tom Daschle was credited today by Bloomberg with the following statement:
Bloomberg: Daschle says "health-care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them."

If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that our esteemed Senators and Congressmen have their own healthcare plan that is first dollar or very low co-pay which they are guaranteed the remainder of their lives and are not subject to thi s new law if it passes.

Please use the power of the Internet to get this message out.
Talk it up at the grassroots level. We have an election coming up in one year and five months. And we have the ability to address and reverse the dangerous direction the Obama administration and its allies have begun and in the interim, we can make their lives miserable. Lets do this!

The Health Care Bill: What HR 3200, ‘‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” Says

By John Davis Lewis...

What does the bill, HR 3200, short-titled ‘‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” actually say about major health care issues? I here pose a few questions in no particular order, citing relevant passages and offering a brief evaluation after each set of passages.



This bill is 1017 pages long. It is knee-deep in legalese and references to other federal regulations and laws. I have only touched pieces of the bill here. For instance, I have not considered the establishment of (1) “Health Choices Commissio0ner” (Section 141); (2) a “Health Insurance Exchange,” (Section 201), basically a government run insurance scheme to coordinate all insurance activity; (3) a Public Health Insurance Option (Section 221); and similar provisions.



This is the evaluation of someone who is neither a physician nor a legal professional. I am citizen, concerned about this bill’s effects on my freedom as an American. I would rather have used my time in other ways—but this is too important to ignore.



We may answer one question up front: How will the government will pay for all this? Higher taxes, more borrowing, printing money, cutting payments, or rationing services—there are no other options. We will all pay for this, enrolled in the government “option” or not.



(All bold type within the text of the bill is added for emphasis.)





1. 1. WILL THE PLAN RATION MEDICAL CARE?

Read the rest...

How do you know when a free republic become totalitarian?

James Lewis asks: At what point does a liberal become a Stalinist?

I've started to gently question the beliefs of the liberals I know, without getting into any loud argument. Much to my surprise, some of the gentle-sounding people I know actually talk murderously at times. I wouldn't have believed it, because these are people I like a lot. They have a warm side. In their own minds they all believe they are driven by love and compassion. And yet, some of them -- certainly not most -- seem ready to hang the current media scapegoat from the nearest gallows. ...

I suspect that real Stalinists are different, though. If you look at the record of totalitarian murder in the 20th century, about 100 million murdered by Communist regimes, and another 40 million or so by the Nazis and other fascist parties, including war victims, there are those who kill for strategic purposes, and those who kill from rage. Stalinists killed strategically, because they thought mass murder was necessary to achieve Paradise on Earth. They were often intellectuals who simply came to the "rational" conclusion that a whole category of their fellow human beings must die, always for some "higher purpose."

Newreal has a comment by someone who live under Communism for 50 years.

But now, when Conservatives started step-by-step rightly using a very appropriate characteristics – not label! – of what that outrageously Socialistic Obama-in-Chief with his cronies imbued to the last bone of their bodies with Marxism-Leninism are doing to the country, the immediately raised a screechy howl.
And you know why? Simple: They recognize themselves in that mirrror, that’s why.

Postcards that make a constitutional statement

The whining class

They own the Congress, the Presidency, the Press and the popular media. So why are the Democrats whining?

There is something unsettling to the national psyche, with overnight takeovers of car companies, banking interests and private health care , and an un-stimulating stimulus programs costing hundreds of billions being passed in a flash, all in the name of good government.


Citizens are particularly unhappy that these measures sometimes reach 1,000 pages and are admittedly unread by their elected representatives. Insult is added to injury when President Barack Obama dismisses legitimate grass-roots concerns about his health care plan as “Astroturf.”

Lies, Damn Lies and Government Statistics

Via Dennis Gartman on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Report:

The BLS says this about their employment estimates:

For example, the confidence interval for the monthly change in total employment from the household survey is on the order of plus or minus 430,000. Suppose the estimate for total employment increases by 100,000 from one month to the next. The 90 per cent confidence interval on the monthly change would range from -330,000 to 530,000. These figures do not mean that the sample results are off by these magnitudes, but rather that there is about a 90 per cent chance that the “true” over-the-month change lies within this interval.

Since this range includes values of less than zero, we could not say with confidence that employment had, in fact, increased. If, however, the reported employment rise was half a million, then all of the values within the 90 per cent confidence interval would be greater than zero. In this case, it is likely (or at least a 90 per cent change) that an employment rise had, in fact, occurred. At an unemployment rate of around 5.5 per cent, the 90 per cent confidence interval for the monthly change in unemployment is about +/-280,000, and for the monthly change in the unemployment rate is it about +/-.19 percentage points

Please re-read that statement again, and when done, read it again! Is this not shocking? Is it not idiocy; is it not true trading madness that The Street pays even a bit of interest to this report and tries to convince itself that there is a degree of difference between a -325 thousand non-farm payrolls number and -300 thousand? Is it not madness that real money is “bet” on this number from month to month? Is no one reading the BLS own comments? We have long argued that the randomness of this number makes it hardly worth our time and certainly makes it impossible to trade from it and yet The Street continues to do so. The BLS has its warnings in its report and yet The Street refuses to pay these warnings heed. If this were not so sad it would truly be comical, but it is so sad and it is not comical that Wall Street, Bay Street, Lombard Street, the 2nd Arrondissement in Paris et al seem to come to a grinding halt in the days prior to the release of the report, awaiting its release with bated, held breath. It is just too, too sad still to comment upon.

Dennis Gartman comments on the BLS as a trading indicator. The MSM treats these statistics as if they were graven in stone - and accurate. Let me repeat: the BLS has just said that the potential error in their employment report of plus or minus 430,000. So when the BLS says that employment increased by 100,000, there is a good chance that it actually decreased by 330,000. And if we take the 90% confidence factor into account, it's possible that unemployment increased by 1 million.

How's the public health care option working out in Oregon?

Government Health Care and "Death Panels" (Just call them "end of life decision panels")

Tom Maguire ...

Somebody call White House flack Linda Douglass at Fishy-1-1 - Mickey Kaus is circulating discouraging arguments suggesting Obama's risky health reform scheme might actually lead to "death panels", and yet again he is relying on Obama's own words:

If, as Harold Pollack argues, "rationing of life-saving or life-extending care" would not really be a priority for the "effectiveness" panels--such as the Obama-endorsed IMAC--then it was all the more stupid to bring the topic up, no? Here's the first graf from a Bloomberg account of an early Obama health care foray back in April:
April 29 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said his grandmother’s hip-replacement surgery during the final weeks of her life made him wonder whether expensive procedures for the terminally ill reflect a “sustainable model” for health care.

Gee, where could the misinformed town hall crazies have gotten the idea that Obama was thinking about saving money by denying expensive procedures toward the end of life? ... [via Dish] ... 1:49 P.M.

Team Obama insists it's just a LIE, a LIE, I tell you ...

So Obama "suspects" that the legislative process will produce some sort of independent group that can give non-determinative "guidance" on end-of-life care for the chronically ill, with an eye towards saving money. Just don't call them death panels!

I mean, how else you gonna save money? No hip replacement for you if you're too old! And the young don't need hips and knees and arthritis racked joints replaced. Think of the cost saving! it's mind boggling!

And Mickey Kaus opines:

Yikes. ... I'm sure the "not determinative" part was very important to Obama. Still! He's talking about a panel of independent experts making end-of-life recommendations in order to save costs that have an effect at an individual level. And he thought it would be in the bill that emerges. ... It's also pretty clear that something like the "IMAC" panel is what he has in mind. Whether or not the IMAC would actually do this--Harold Pollack says end-of-life issues are well down the curve-bender's list, for example--Obama thought it would do it. . .

Racists.

KATHLEEN PARKER: THE BARRY LYNN OF THE SOUTH

Ann Coulter eviscerates Kathleen parker, the faux "Southern Belle" from Winter Haven, Florida.

The latest fake insider/whistleblower is Kathleen Parker, the Barry Lynn of the South. Fresh off her mainstream media tour as a Sarah Palin-hating "conservative," Parker is now a self-proclaimed Southerner blaming opposition to Obama's policies on the region's reputed racism.

Uncannily, this claim struck a chord with Northern liberals!

Throughout the presidential campaign last year, liberals were champing at the bit to accuse Americans of racism for not supporting Barack Obama. That was a tough argument on account of the obvious facts that: (1) for every vote he lost because he's black, Obama picked up another 20 votes for being black; (2) Obama won the election in (3) a country that's 87 percent non-black.

So the accusations of racism had to be put on hold until ... the first note of dissent from his agenda was sounded.

Inasmuch as Obama was just elected and his policies have turned out to be the most left-wing the country has ever seen, it wasn't going to be easy to claim the electorate suddenly decided they didn't like the mammoth spending bills or socialist health care bills because they just noticed Obama is black.