Nightly Ramble Friday (The Socialist Healthcare Edition)

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere… The Bitsblog Nightly Ramble

• DANGEROUS EXPANSION : The WSJ says the House Healthcare bill dangerously expands IRS power. Well, yes. Of course it does.  When we talk about expanding powers for the Federal government, how can we help but talk about expanding powers for the IRS ?  The IRS, after all, is the means by which they maintain power.
• NO GOVERNMENT PROGRAM IS A SOLUTION TO ANYTHING: That”s a comment from Doctor Zero that in my view is a keeper.  But the good Doctor really gets into it here.  As he explains,  one of the tricks involved with getting unpopular bills through Congress and getting popular support behind said bills is front loading the benefits while back loading the consequences … for example raised taxes.  The house bill on healthcare for example.
  

  This weekend may see the fateful vote on ObamaCare, or it may be passed with twilight’s last deeming. There is not much time left for Americans to consider what is about to be done to them, and raise their voices in a protest loud enough to frighten nervous Democrats out of their parliamentary maneuvers. The ruling class wants this bill badly enough to interpret anything less than fierce protest as implied consent.

  Even discounting the sewer system of underhanded deals and bribes needed to push ObamaCare through Congress, distorting it beyond any semblance of a carefully-designed plan, it’s foolish to accept it as a “solution” to health care “problems.” No government program is a solution to anything. I’m not referring to their inefficiency or cost. I’m talking about their very nature.

  He goes on to point out that the promises of how this bill will work in the future are empty ones.

  Government social programs don’t work that way. They can’t. Today’s Congress cannot bind future sessions with discipline. They can only saddle their successors with obligations. The national debt has grown to staggering proportions because debt is the only thing each new Administration and Congress inherit from those who went before.

  When Barack Obama tries to convince you to accept a government takeover of the health-care industry, he is making a promise he won’t be around to keep. ObamaCare’s job-killing taxes are front-loaded, but in order to fool the Congressional Budget Office into giving it a respectable deficit score, its benefits are delayed for years. Even if Obama wins re-election, he would complete his second term long before the program was completely phased in… and no external authority exists to compel either Obama, or his successors, to honor the promises he’s been making.

  Consider the question of public funding for abortion, which has led Democrat representative Bart Stupak and his little bloc of pro-life colleagues to withhold their support. They are ostensibly holding out for guarantees against government-funded abortions, but the odds that ObamaCare will never cover abortions are exactly zero. It’s simply a question of when, not if.

  Now, as important as those points are individually, they also expose a principle which we should be paying very close attention to as we consider this monstrosity.  The promises about how this bill are is going to affect us in the future are in fact empty.  There is no way on God’s green earth that what we’re being promised now about this bill is going to come true. Keith Hennessey points up today, even outside the healthcare debate, yesterday:

  America is on an unsustainable fiscal path.  If we do nothing to address this, within 25 years the U.S. government will default on its debt, with devastating consequences for the U.S. economy and society.

  We are on this path because past elected officials made unsustainable benefit promises and enshrined them in law.  In some cases they paid for those promises in the short run.  In all cases they created programs that would grow more generous over time.

  Those past elected officials enjoyed the political benefits of creating a new promise, and they shifted the burden of paying for these promises onto their successors and onto future generations of citizens.

  With that in mind, let’s reconsiderthe CBO scores on this healthcare monster. Why?

  Well, look, we’ve already discussed the idea that the CBO is overloaded and their numbers are questionable thereby. But consider also the points Hennessey and Doc Zero make. Government programs always grow well beyond their original promises in terms of liability, but never in terms of benefits. So when the Democrats who are so desperate to get socialist healthcare into law start passing numbers around, the numbers are not with the paper they’re written on.

  Moreover, consider the words of Obama himself, when he told us that this healthcare bill is just the first step.  The numbers and promises of lower liability being passed out today don’t mean a damn thing to the reality of what this thing is going to become.

Sometimes haplessness can provoke sympathy. But [Eric] Holder mixes ineptness with self-righteousness. Critics of his questionable choices, he says, “cower.” They lack “confidence in the American system of justice.”

But there is another possibility. Perhaps Holder’s critics — in Congress, in the country and even within the White House — just lack confidence in his judgment

Michael Gerson, Washington Post.

Fess Parker has died.

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett

He was more than a bit of an American Icon, who started a whole wave of coonskin caps and buckskin outfits with his mid-50’s TV portrayal of Davy Crockett, and later, Daniel Boone.

Parker’s been living in Santa Barbara where he was apparently a decent winemaker and real-estate developer.

No cause of death was reported.

Fess Parker was 85.

Addendum; (Davidl)

Certainly an icon, but not just an American icon.  I had the experience of a co-working singing the Ballad of Davy Crockett in Macedonian.

Was I Won ever a constitutional law professor? Barack Obama has made the claim and soem the media have accepted it.  However a real law professor, Ann Althouse seem to have her doubts:

Yeah. Et cetera, indeed. As if procedure is a frivolous sidetrack that only trivial or devious people care about. Barack Obama was a constitutional law professor. Much of constitutional law is about procedural rights and structural safeguards that check power. Justice Felix Frankfurter famously wrote: “The history of American freedom is, in no small measure, the history of procedure.” Law professors are seriously engaging with the constitutionality of the “deem and pass,” and our erstwhile law professor Barack Obama would imperiously wave procedure aside as a distraction not worthy of his time. Let’s concentrate on the end and pay no attention to the means. When the most powerful man in the world says that, we should feel revulsion and alarm

Sure Obama claims to have been constitutional law professor.  Yet Obama displays little knowledge of  our Constitution, and even less concern about it.

While Professor Althoues has her doubts,  Clarice Feldman has none.

Clarice Feldman asks, Thoughts Of A Conservative Christian:

For all those who have a fit whenever Jews buy land in ‘the Hood” or try to build housing for their people, where are you, now?The Jerusalem Post contains the language of a report detailing Hamas’ inhuman behavior – behavior the rest of the world ignores

Obamafasda,   Yossi Klein Halevi, New Republic

Why, then, the outbreak of violence now? Why Hamas’s “day of rage” over Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority’s call to gather on the Temple Mount to “save” the Dome of the Rock from non-existent plans to build the Third Temple? Why the sudden outrage over rebuilding a synagogue, destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948, in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, when dozens of synagogues and yeshivas have been built in the quarter without incident?

The answer lies not in Jerusalem but in Washington. By placing the issue of building in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem at the center of the peace process, President Obama has inadvertently challenged the Palestinians to do no less

Obama embargoes Israel, World Tribune:

In 2008, the United States approved an Israeli request for bunker-busters capable of destroying underground facilities, including Iranian nuclear weapons sites. Officials said delivery of the weapons was held up by the administration of President Barack Obama.

Since taking office, Obama has refused to approve any major Israeli requests for U.S. weapons platforms or advanced systems. Officials said this included proposed Israeli procurement of AH-64D Apache attack helicopters, refueling systems, advanced munitions and data on a stealth variant of the F-15E

No announcement, no debate, no hearing. just an embargo of a former ally imposed by a petty tyrant.

Insight Communications unfortunately has decided to end all local programming in the Northern Kentucky market, and with that bad decision, ends a nearly 20 year run of the popular show “Northern Kentucky Magazine”, a local talk show that has served as an excellent venue for community news and entertainment.

I have been a “regular” guest on the show, on a roughly monthly basis, since 1995 serving as the resident technology expert. It’s been a great run,  and I very much appreciated the casual atmosphere and laid-back, friendly hosts. I have very fond memories of working with the legendary Dick Von Hoene, aka “The Cool Ghoul” as well as hosts Tawana Thomas, Nancy James and Pat Crowley, and I like to think that we provided lots of helpful demonstrations and information that helped folks out, even when we lost our dialup connection to the Internet on the air back in the day…

I’ll be making one last appearance today, March 20, 2010, and find myself somewhat sad at the prospect of never setting foot on the Magazine set again, and at the passing of an era of local news and entertainment.

I wish only the best for all the great staffers I’ve worked with who’ll now be looking for new jobs, and hope that Insight might reconsider this decision.

Goodbye, Northern Kentucky Magazine, I and thousands of viewers will miss you!

I’ll post the interview to YouTube in the near future and in the interim, here some great video of Dick VonHoene

Remembering Dick Von Hoene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA8A3SeR09g

The Cool Ghoul and Hattie the Witch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIXv-XtGy7U&feature=related

http://www.cio.com/article/164300/How_to_Network_12_Tips_for_Shy_People

Good advice!

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble.

• NO MODERATION HERE: Jennifer Rubin of Commentary opines:
  

  David Brooks says he’s out on the ledge, morose, and about to have a “Howard Beale” moment. Just last week he was telling us that Obama was a misunderstood moderate. Now he confesses that Obama is aiding and abetting unlawfulness of the worst kind. He explains:

  Barack Obama campaigned offering a new era of sane government. And I believe he would do it if he had the chance. But he has been so sucked into the system that now he stands by while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks about passing health care via “deem and pass” — a tricky legislative device in which things get passed without members having the honor or the guts to stand up and vote for it.
  Deem and pass? Are you kidding me? Is this what the Revolutionary War was fought for? Is this what the boys on Normandy beach were trying to defend? Is this where we thought we would end up when Obama was speaking so beautifully in Iowa or promising to put away childish things?

  Not very moderate. Not even defensible. Brooks is left, as many of us are, blinking in disbelief:

  It’s unbelievable that people even talk about this with a straight face. Do they really think the American people are going to stand for this? Do they think it will really fool anybody if a Democratic House member goes back to his district and says, “I didn’t vote for the bill. I just voted for the amendments.” Do they think all of America is insane? … It’s just Democrats wanting to pass a bill, any bill, and shredding anything they have to in order to get it done.

  

  Jenifer Rubin

  So I think we can agree that this is not moderate, not thoughtful, and not Burkean. (And it turns out that a perfectly creased pants leg was not a sign that “he’ll be a very good president.”) What we have learned is that Obama is willing to use radical means to defy the popular will and enact a massive expansion of government.

  As Jennifer points out, most people figured out a long time ago that the mantra of change hope, and God help us, post -partisanship, was all so much bilge.  That understanding is probably the best explanation for the approval ratings for both Congress and for the White House. Obama is exposed as a radical leftist by his aims and his means.  Interestingly, in the doing he’s been successful in revealing the remainder of this party to be radical left as well.  Most Americans now see the moral bankruptcy that drives these people.   And here’s the thing; It’s gotten to the point where even a numb-nutted hack like David Brooks has to admit it.

• SMELL THE DESPERATION: It’s also to the point where even Obama himself recognizes that things have gotten desperate.  Desperate enough, in fact for him to show up on Fox.  Over at Pajamas Media, Roger Simon points out :
  

  

  Pajamas Media's Roger Simon

  There’s no way Barack Obama would have appeared on Fox Wednesday night in a sit-down interview with Bret Baer had not the President’s health care bill been in serious trouble. Things must be really bad, even with all the legislative legerdemain being cooked up by Pelosi and company. The interview itself was testy with Baer doing relatively well, I thought. Nevertheless, the President was able to filibuster away from answering most of the questions. But whoever “won,” I doubt it changed many minds at this point; everybody’s already so disgusted with the process. (I was amused by the competition between Baer and Obama over the number of emails they received. When Baer claimed 18000 for Fox, Obama felt he had to best him with 40000 a day to the White House.) When you think over the last year, it’s clear Obama has some of the most inept advisers in recent presidential history. Allowing him to risk his entire presidency on a global overhaul of health care – when an incremental overhaul could have been had simply for the asking – seems absurd politics, win or lose.

  Frankly, Roger, I’m not convinced that what we’re dealing with here is ineptitude.  I think what we’re dealing with here is a dedication to radically leftist ideas.  Socialism, in short.  A dedication that prompts one to fall on one’s sword, politically speaking, for the greater political and of enacting socialism here in these United States.  Roger, you ask the question if these people live in the real world.  I think they do, but they live under a different value structure than you and I, and certainly a different value structure than most politicians.  Their central objective is to enact socialism, thus killing America.  Frankly, there’s no other reasonable explanation for that pattern of behavior that you rather eloquently describe.

• The CBO: The word on the street just now is that the final CBO numbers for the Healthcare bill probably won’t be out ’till Saturday, or possibly Sunday.  It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to see those numbers show up after the vote is taken.   As we indicated here yesterday, even then the numbers presented will be at least questionable.  The fact of the matter is that the bill is still written in invisible ink.
• STRAW MAN? I DON’T THINK SO: Joyner, over at OTB writes:
  

  Dan Riehl is in the cross-fire between Alan Colmes and MEDIAite over a rather bizarre argument:

  

  Dan Riehl

  I’m not sure I quite understand this, given that cost is so important as a burden to taxpayers when it comes to health care. If Democrats want so badly to abort babies because of it, why are we bothering with someone who has a broken neck and back at 69? It sounds to me like she’s pretty well used up and has probably been living off the taxpayers for plenty of years to begin with. Aren’t we at least going to get a vote on it?

  He’s talking about Harry Reid’s wife, who was injured, along with their daughter, in a car accident last week.  He continues:

  Come on, Harry – do your civic duty. The nation’s broke and counting on you guy. Pull the plug and get back to work. And don’t bill us for a full day today, either. This is no time to be sloughing off. Air freight her home, you can bury her during recess on your own time and dime. Or are you going to bill us for that, too?

  Now, aside from it being poor form to try to score cheap political points off the suffering of politicians’ families — Lara Reid isn’t the Senate Majority leader — the argument doesn’t even make sense on its face.  While I oppose the current health care reform plan, Reid and company are trying to extend care, not limit it.   For that matter, while I’m passionately against abortion in all but the most extreme cases, who’s arguing that it should be performed more often so that we can save money?  Certainly, not any Democrats I know.

  The thing is, James,  that’s what all those arguments are going to come down to in the future.  Remember, my friend,  this is not about Health care, this is about power.   Governmental power. If you think not, let’s try a little thought experiment.  Let’s replace senator Harry Reid’s wife, with Mrs. Jane Average. I suspect there are very few who don’t intuitively understand that given the same conditions the government health care cost miners would find that it’s just far too expensive to keep Jane alive.  And frankly, that’s a question that slime balls like Alan Colmes will never dare consider.
  And let’s consider something else, here. Dan says today:

  Rahm Emanuel insulted Nutroots types by calling them “retards,” also claiming they could be taken for granted on Obama Care and mostly ignored. Of course, the Netroot bloggers were furious.

  So, what did they do about it? Precisely what he said they would, nothing. It also points out how out of step the Netroots is with the country. They believe Obama went too far to the Right with Obama Care. But the country disapproves of it because it’s still too far Left.

  Well, I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody that the Nutroots really haven’t done anything other than help to empower the current Congress and the current White House occupants.  You see, they actually believed the “everything for everybody” ploy.  That’s another reason why Obama is so desperate.  Not only has he lost the center because they’ve identified he is a pathological liar, he’s lost his Nutroots core, as well.  Politics, you see, it is mostly about perception.  Try as the Democrats might, (Obama, particularly, of late) …they have never been able to successfully remove themselves from the influence of the leftist nutballs, such as the Nutroots.   leftist politics, let’s face it, is loaded with logical inconsistencies that any get ignored by its adherents.   It’s those  logical inconsistencies embedded in leftist politics that do the most damage to leftist politics.  And, as Obama shows is clearly, leftist politicians as well. Those logical inconsistencies  are the most pronounced among their most vocal supporters.   Rahm Emanuel recognized that when he said what he did; He was trying to separate the Democrats from that core group..  But the fact of the matter is, the Democrats are unable to separate themselves from the leftist nutballs. Either in reality, or in perception.  It doesn’t help the case when it is so bleeding apparent, by way of his policies and the means he uses to get them in play,  that Mr. Obama doesn’t appear to want separation from the ideals espoused by the nutroots…  merely the consequences of being associated with them.

Some women mellow out, others like Mrs. Clinton and ex-bunny, Gloria Steinem just get even nastier.  from Mary Milliken, Reuters:

At 76, Steinem laments elusive equality for women

As she turns 76 next week, the woman who walked the front lines of American feminism in the 1960s and 1970s — often in a miniskirt, big glasses and buttons with colorful expletives — celebrates her good health and “huge, huge leaps forward.”

But Steinem has plenty of bones to pick with government and society when it comes to women’s rights.

American women workers still earn only 70 cents to men’s $1, women are barred from combat, women’s health care premiums are higher and raising children is not counted as productive work, she says.

As to the seventy cents on the dollar myth, women’s is different than men’s, because women make different choices.    When the last time you called a plumber in the middle of the night and a woman responded?    Men and women make different choices.  Difference choices leads to different outcomes.   Example the Bureau of Labor Statistics listing of job related fatalities for the year 2008:

Men……………………………………………………………… 4,703
Women…………………………………………………………… 368

That is over twelve men killed on the job for every women.  Put those statistics in your tail and chew on it honey.

Women pay more in health care premium than men, because they use more.   Also young male drivers payer higher auto insurance premiums, because they tend to drive worse than the women.    Come back when you can find a real beef.

White House flood of misinformation, Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review:

Talking Points Memo, living up to its name, is providing the White House’s talking points on health care. Obamacare is to be voted on amid a final orgy of misinformation.

Are the Obami sane? Israel announces plans to build new housing in her capital.  The Obama administration response was just short of  a preemptive missile attack.     Whereas the Chicom, declare a trade war and call the president a moron, the Obami response, from Charles Lane, Washington Post:

The Obama administration’s response? Officials look forward to “an open channel of communication…and fostering a good bilateral relationship,” a State Department spokesman told the Wall Street Journal.

Turning the lights off in the Paterson Administration, WHEC-TV:

Gov. David Paterson’s press secretary is resigning, making her the fourth top staffer to resign amid scandals that threaten the administration.

Press Secretary Marissa Shorenstein says she is resigning because her reported role in a recent scandal makes her unable to do her job effectively.

Will the last person to leave the Paterson Administration please turn off the lights.

Jack Cafferty calls Mrs Pelosi sleazy, video:

Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds, Instrapundit.

Chrissy Matthews condemns Slaughter Rule, video:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Mark it down. I will not agree with Chrissy very often.

Obama’s Gettysburg Address, Paul Bedard, US News:

One town is already banking on President Obama’s re-election: Gettysburg, Pa. Looking ahead to July 2013, organizers of the 150th anniversary of the decisive three-day clash between Union and Confederate forces have extended an invitation for Obama to deliver his own Gettysburg address, we hear. “That would be really cool,” says Gettysburg Convention and Visitors Bureau President Norris Flowers. “I expect that.”

Somehow I doubt that all the teleprompters in the world could get the vain one to celebrate a new birth of freedom.

Eve Ensler loser, Laura Rozen, Politico:

Netanyahu, meanwhile, is due to speak at the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington on Monday. He’s then due to meet with Jewish Congress members, including Berman, on Tuesday, when he’s likely to get an earful of tough talk behind closed doors from members who share Berman’s sympathy with the Obama administration that months of American diplomatic heavy-lifting to try to get peace talks relaunched were knocked down so casually by the Israeli government’s East Jerusalem housing announcement. And he’s likely to find little patience from many of them for his excuses, and more stern urging that he does what he has to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again

Get real.  If the Obami’s so-called “peace process” is so fragile it can be knocked down by a mere housing project?  There was no heavy-lifting and there was no peace project   You can not have two states living side by side in peace when one of the states does not recognize the other state’s right to exist.

After being gone for a month, from around here, I find that I am terribly behind in my reading, and even further behind in my commentary on that reading.

Almost instantaneously on dropping the clutch on this backlog comes Ithaca NY native,  and friendly voice, Billy Beck:

“If people in Ithaca seem inured to suicide, that’s because they are. For as long as anyone can remember, Cornell’s gorges have furnished a wide open casket for those so inclined, and Ithaca, in turn, earned the unwanted distinction of ‘suicide capital of the combined Ivy League, Big Ten, Little Three, and Seven Sisters,’ as one local writer put it. Although commensurate with national averages, suicide at Cornell — or to borrow the local vernacular, ‘gorging out’ — has become the stuff of myth. And sometimes reality, as this month, when the university lost three students — in February, Bradley Ginsburg, 18; three weeks later, William Sinclair, 19; and the very next day, Matthew Zika, 21 — in as many weeks to its precipitous gorges.”

Rob Fishman (Huffington Post) moans about sail-kids flying off the edges of Cascadilla and Fall Creek — but they don’t fly for long.

I’ve spoken previously in these spaces about suicides. usually, the point involves some star or another. This case is a little different, and frankly a little closer to reality.  Not just because of its physical proximity to me here at Casa de Bit,  but because we’re dealing with real people, now.

The   Billy speaks of his wildly misspent youth, (chuckle) traverse sing some of the waterfalls and Gorges in the Ithaca area, and then says:

Since, however, everyone must now be responsible for everything and nobody can mind their own business anymore, I think it won’t be too long before both Cascadilla and Fall Creek will be completely swaddled in bubble-wrap, replete with sirens and rotating beacons in International School-Bus Chrome. And another piece of grown-up life will have gone to hell here in America.

I just wish I had one of the “Lemmings Society” t-shirts that were going around back in the 70’s.

I would wear that thing all the way out, now.

I, too, have walked some of the paths of which Billy speaks.  I know the Thurston Avenue bridge rather well, having taken my wife walking around the place a few years ago on a fairly warm November day when we celebrated our anniversary.  I know several places in and around my native Rochester that are similar and have caused shall we say, extraordinary, yet futile efforts to prevent such happenings .

I understand well Billy’s point, at least the stated central one, and sympathize.

Frankly, though, I have to wonder however briefly what it is in the culture of upper level academia to cause so much self destruction. Certainly, pressure to make grades is one plausible answer.  But I doubt it’s the whole deal.

In any event, it seems to me that as Billy puts it swaddling the place with bubble wrap is only a band aid on the original problem.  It certainly isn’t going to stop people taking their own lives ,it’ll just make it harder to recover the bodies.  But of course if they do that, if they put up the fences and whatnot, government now has something they can point to to say “See?  We did something about the problem.” In reality of course, they have done nothing at all. They’ve managed to do something without ever addressing the central cause.  “doing something” without ever addressing the central problem seems to be a specialty of government.

The central problem is that people want to kill themselves.  Billy can perhaps argue that that’s none of our business. I’m not so sure, because I wonder if our government hasn’t been the proximate cause of the problem in a lot of these cases.  Or, our society.  If we are the proximate cause, it’s very much our concern.

Who is it that commits suicide?  For the most part, at least in my experience, it is people who feel that their life is of no worth to anyone, or they feel that they are being pushed down a road to an unacceptable conclusion. Perhaps, we’re dealing with some combination of the two.  But you know, it seems to me that the former issue is the more foundational.  The idea that your life isn’t worth very much, your individualism isn’t worth very much, is a relatively new idea.  The political philosophy of Marxism, would seem to fit very well,here.  The state, after all, in that philosophy is by far more important than the individual.  Ponder the prevalence of socialist thought in today’s academia.  I wonder how many of the suicides are in direct or indirect response to the amount of control that government at all levels has over our daily lives?  Certainly, despondency is an understandable response to that control.  When feels they are being controlled, with no escape…(sigh)… the results are fairly predictable.

That’s something I don’t see government being able to do anything about, including it’s law enforcement representatives.  I don’t see fences solving the issue either.  As Oliver Renick, on staff at the school paper, The Cornell Review says:

Cornell students have begun to pick up on this.  Up until 12 AM this morning, at least three students were camping out on the Thurston Avenue bridge above the Fall Creek gorge.  ‘Thurston Ave Love’ is their message, and have inscribed it in chalk along the bridge’s walkway.  Beside the messages are white roses that were laid down earlier, apparently by a sorority.  Security guards and fences won’t keep people above water.  People like these will.

Frankly, this is a little too immersed in “feel good ism ” for my taste. but at least, it identifies the government isn’t the solution to the problem.  Given the state of academia today, that such a statement would come out of such a place strikes me as moderately encouraging. It’s not the whole enchilada, but maybe, just maybe, it’s a start.

Live and on tape, in Full Stereophonic Buzzing, it’s the…. long heralded ummmm. much anticipated (OK, never mind… actually nobody knew about it at all…) …return of the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere….
The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

OK, yes, I’m back for I’m not sure how long this time. The job I was chasing didn’t work out, and I’m looking at other options at the moment, which could start this process all over again. We’ll see, and I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile,  let’s have a look around us, shall we?

• THE HEALTHCARE SHAM: Nothing about the Democrats and their actions surrounding their attempts to get Obama-care into law can be considered surprising.  That includes the hypocrisy involved.  I’ve been watching this business from afar, and frankly have been going through withdrawal symptoms because of my lack of ability to respond in any amount of detail from the road.If you will recall, one of the major reasons we were told that this whole thing was going to go into law, one of the reasons that we were told the democrats wanted this in place was to lower premiums.  The problem, we were told, was that the premiums were far too high.  Now it seems that the press has finally caught on to the fact that premiums under this Obama pushed plan would rise, and not just by a little. So, once again, the Obama administration is revealed as lying. Like I said, none of this should be a surprise.And are the reports from the CBO Accurate? The democrats have been spending so much time touting the one Congressional Budget Office report or another, as a sales tool for Obamacare, that the strain is starting to show at the CBO. Does anybody questioned the possibility , nay, the probability that errors are in the reports the Democrats are using as a sales gimmick?  Further, who is it that is providing assurance , and accountability, with regards to those reports.  Does anybody really consider that the CBO is immune to the intense political pressures that we see mounting in Washington these days?

• St. Pat: I could hardly ignore the day. So here’s a pic from the Balloon Festival at Dansville NY a few years ago, that jumped to mind when I saw the Calendar.

• THE ISRAEL SNUB: I’ve gotten to the point where I am firmly convinced that this recent back and forth with Israel was premeditated on the part of the Obama administration.  We have been partners and friends with Israel for so long that one simply cannot come to this level of screw up without it being by intent .  I see The New Republic agrees… saying in part:
  

  The return of menace to Jerusalem is not because a mid-level bureaucrat announced stage four of a seven-stage process in the eventual construction of 1,600 apartments in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighborhood in northeast Jerusalem. Such announcements and building projects have become so routine over the years that Palestinians have scarcely responded, let alone violently…..

  …. Why, then, the outbreak of violence now? Why Hamas’s “day of rage” over Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority’s call to gather on the Temple Mount to “save” the Dome of the Rock from non-existent plans to build the Third Temple? Why the sudden outrage over rebuilding a synagogue, destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948, in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, when dozens of synagogues and yeshivas have been built in the quarter without incident?

  The answer lies not in Jerusalem but in Washington. By placing the issue of building in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem at the center of the peace process, President Obama has inadvertently challenged the Palestinians to do no less.

  So, then why the change in Washington on Israel?  First of all, I think Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother in law, Dr. Hagai Ben-Artzi has it right: Obama is at least an anti-semite. Given recent events I am once again astonished that so many Jews can perform the self destructive act of voting Democrat.

• THE SWITCH IS ON: Scott Rasmussen says the GOP has opened up a 10 point lead on the generic congressional ballot. At the same time, Gallup is reporting in their tracking polls that more people are disapproving of all Bama and his job performance than are approving.  The implications here are astonishing.  Thing is, they’re being ignored by the Democrats and the mainstream press.  But, I repeat myself.
• BOILING THE FROGS AS A SALVATION: In a contest for the single most dishonest blogger on the planet, Ezra Klein is near the top of the list.  So it doesn’t surprise me at all to see him trying to draw parallels between the current Healthcare debacle, and Medicare.  The implication being that people will eventually like Obama care.  Megan McArdle doesn’t think so.  Neither do I.  Says Megan;
  

  “Now, Medicare popularity did improve after it passed. On the other hand, it wasn’t passed despite terrible polling, with a controversial process, by a political party that was tanking in popularity thanks to a grinding recession.”

  The theory of the boiled frog comes to mind on this one, as well. Steve Yates describes it this way:

  In other words, if people become acclimated to some policy or state of affairs over a sufficient period of time, they come to accept the policy or state of affairs as normal.

  It seems apparent that this is the phenom that Klein is counting on. Sorta like what the Soviets experienced in Beria’s time.

Forcing 31 million people to buy a product they don’t want and can’t afford to use does not constitute health care reform. Once again, the poor get used as human shields so corporations can be the beneficiaries of massive government bailout

Jane Hamsher, via William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection.

Professor Althouse wraps her hand around the problem with Attorney General Eric Holder:

Holder, with 9 years to meditate on the right way to deal with the situation, assures us that bin Laden will not be taken alive. What has brought Holder to this heated state of mind? Not the death of thousands of Americans. The threat to his political prestige. It gets his “blood boiling” that he is attacked. The fact that we were attacked did not loom large when he decided to try KSM in federal court New York City.

George W.Bush was called a cowboy for wanting Usama bin Laden “dead or alive.”   Holder wants bin Laden dead or dead.    Holder can’t bring himself to put the nation’s security ahead of his vanity.

Hat tip:   Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.

The dim one made a mistake when he delegated the war on terror, or whatever the Obami call it, out to his attorney general.

Jim Inhofe calls out Algore, Meredith Shiner, Politico:

“After weeks of the global warming scandal, the world’s first climate billionaire is running for cover. Yes, I’m talking about Al Gore,” Inhofe charged. “He’s under siege these days. The credibility of the IPCC is eroding. The EPA’s endangerment finding is collapsing. And belief that global warming is leading to catastrophe is evaporating. Gore seems to be drowning in a sea of his own global warming illusions nevertheless. He’s desperately trying to keep global warming alarmism alive today.”

Slaughtering the Constitution, Clarice Feldman, American Thinker:

Stanford Professor Michael McConnell, writing in the Wall Street Journal, argues that the Slaughter Rule end run is unconstitutional:

[…]

Unlike the President with his grossly inflated campaign time resume, Professor McConnell really is a constitutional law professor.

Fat tax? Jersey chic wants to weigh half a ton, Colleen Cappon. Fox News:

Meet Donna Simpson. She’s going to cost you. A lot.

Simpson, of Old Bridge, N.J., is 42 years old, has two kids and a boyfriend, and she weighs 602 pounds. That’s right … 602 pounds.

She’s on a diet, of course, because she has a goal in mind:

It still remains a free country.   I don’t begrudge Homer Donna Simpson her goal.   However I do draw the line at voluntarily paying for her health care costs.    Further, I content that no ambulance crew has any obligation to transport a half of ton of lard to the hospital.   Why say you?

Flat Tax? WHEC-TV

A proposed new tax on sugary drinks appears unlikely to pass the state Senate, despite passionate campaigning by New York Gov. David Paterson and his health commissioner

Obamafada? William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection:

Obama’s desire to bring Israel down may spark another intifada, as Palestinians (both Hamas and the PA) are emboldened to consummate their plans to spark a crisis over false allegations that Israel plans to destoy the Al-Aqsa mosque

Eric Cartman is the new Archie Bunker, Fox:

NEW YORK – Golf clubs in hands or not, the kids of “South Park” are ready to take on Tiger Woods.

Creators of the Comedy Central cartoon have long since proven that no subject is sacred to them. So for the opening of its 14th season on Wednesday, the troubled golfer encounters Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman in their animated Colorado town.

More to the point, South Park is the new All in the Family, where no ox is too sacred to gore.

He’s the Great Reneger, video:

Hat tip:  Rick, Wizbang.

Will the Platters ever sound the same again?

How that health care prop working for ya, Barack?,  Jim Hoft,  Gateway Pundit:

President Barack Obama is introduced by Connie Anderson, sister of cancer patient Natoma Canfield, who wrote the president saying she gave up her health insurance after it rose, prior to speaking about health care reform, Monday, March 15, 2010, at the Walter F. Ehrnfelt Recreation and Senior Center in Strongsville, Ohio. (AP/Charles Dharapak)

Barack Obama came to Ohio today to prop Natoma up on stage with him. But, Natoma Canfield couldn’t make it. She is back in the hospital. (Our prayers for a quick recovery) She is getting cared for despite the fact that she has no insurance. She’s not out on the street. She’s not a statistic like Rep Alan Grayson would have you believe. Natoma is getting the care she needs. Her sister met with Barack Obama instead

Note, Natoma Canfield is being treated by a system which Obama wants to scrap.   His proposed would have Canfield dead.  She got diagnosed with breast cancer at thirty-four.  The Obami don’t want to screen for breast cancer till age fifty.

Change Jew can believe in? From Roger L. Simon, Pajamas Media:

Is the Jewish love affair with the Democratic Party about to end?

For all of my looooong life, the Jews have been so deep in the pocket of the Democratic Party it would make Chris Matthews blush. Maybe… just maybe… (I know old habits die hard)…. thanks to Barack Obama, that is about to end. The well-put lede from this morning’s WSJ opinion piece details the situation:

Hat tip:  Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.