Policia de Catalunya

Golly gee. Everyone seems to be going at it these days, from Thomas Blow-Hard Friedman and Bob Herbert to George Will and my favorite law-prof blogger Ann Althouse, and . . . well the list just keeps growing.
Here's a snippet from Friedman's most recent bloviatings (assuming you can bear to read them):
President Obama�s bad luck was that he showed up just as we moved from the fat years to the lean years. His calling is to lead The Regeneration. He clearly understands that in his head, but he has yet to give full voice to it. Actually, the thing that most baffles me about Mr. Obama is how a politician who speaks so well, and is trying to do so many worthy things, can�t come up with a clear, simple, repeatable narrative to explain his politics � when it is so obvious.
Mr. Obama won the election because he was able to "rent" a significant number of independent voters � including Republican business types who had never voted for a Democrat in their lives � because they knew in their guts that the country was on the wrong track and was desperately in need of nation-building at home and that John McCain was not the man to do it.
They thought that Mr. Obama, despite his liberal credentials, had the unique skills, temperament, voice and values to pull the country together for this new Apollo program � not to take us to the moon, but into the 21st century.(emph. added)
He says Obama "speaks so well" but says nothing. Et tu, Thomas?
But, ah, it feels good to be a rented voter, yes?
And never did I think I'd agree with Susan Estrich on anything, but check out this excerpt from her recent column:
Paying doctors and hospitals less to give us more? That's bound to work�
It's not a communications problem. What's gone wrong is that people see the country swimming in debt, see the jobs recovery lagging, see friends and neighbors who are not even hanging on, and they just don't know how this administration is planning to pay for a massive health care reform effort.
The appointment of a bipartisan commission on the deficit only underscores the problem and makes it seem that the administration has no answer for it except another new spending program. "Just say no" isn't the answer to the need for health care reform � but neither is another big spending program when we are being told our historic debt is a ticking time bomb for our children.She makes perfect sense. "Don't tell me I can eat an entire chocolate cake and not gain an ounce, Mr. President. I'm not stupid."
Fact is, folks, we're screwed. And these truths are self-evident, even through the obfuscating gauze of Obama's "empowering" oratory.
The problem is that no one in DC will say so. The biggest D.C. denial game being played is that we, the voters, don't already know how bad things are.
Unemployment will remain at crisis levels for years to come.
Social Security is running out of money at a rapid pace. And let's not even talk about Medicare or Medicaid. It's too damn depressing.
Fannie and Freddie are hemorrhaging losses (and some $3.9 TRILLION in liabilities are being carried off the balance sheet, don't forget -- so that the real losses -- borne by you and I -- are never reflected in the federal budget. You think an Obama 1.6T budget is unpalatable? Imagine the fireworks if the White House budget were truthfully stated.)
As we trudge to work everyday, facing unpaid bills and late-fees, the voters know the government is taking our hard-earned dollars to bail out people behind in their mortgage payments, including people who should have never been allowed to borrow in the first place.
It feels good, eh? Keep on truckin' trudging!
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for charity. But can it at least be voluntary rather than by default?
As for the housing market, well, unless the Fed changes its mind, losers Fannie and Freddie will be buying no more
mortgages from the private banks, come the end of March. Which is . . . okay.
But brace yourselves for the consequences. Can you say "no more loans" for home buyers? Higher interest rates on everything? More and more new treasury issues (i.e., government bonds we sell to investors overseas) that we will never be able to re-pay without massive tax increases or cuts in spending? And all of this assumes anyone will even buy our debt.
We can jump in bed and cover our heads, but Santa's not coming tonight. Or tomorrow.
Better that we face what's ahead of us now, I say -- and go on a rice-and-beans diet immediately -- rather than choke ourselves to death on a "reconciled" healthcare cram-down and a cap and tax bill.
Choke (def.): to check or block normal breathing of by compressing or obstructing the trachea or by poisoning or adulterating available air.
Make no mistake: health care and global warming deserve our attention. They are worthy causes, noble undertakings, and ultimately attainable -- in some future incantation. But not now.
Sorry, Washington, but we the people simply can't afford them.
Because closer to home, it's things like summer camp, dental bills, and a new pair of glasses for our kids that we're finding harder and harder to swing. Vacations we crossed off our wish-list months ago. It would be great if the funds were there, but they're not.
We get it.
But, inexplicably, Congress does not. Take a look at these 2010 omnibus budget-busters, which were A-Okay per the DC folk:

A 38 percent increase for International Food Aid;

A 20 percent increase for the Transportation Security Administration;

An 8.4 percent increase for Lawmakers' Office Allowances;

An 8.1 percent increase for the National Endowment for the Arts; and

A 67 percent increase for the Environmental Protection Agency's State and Tribal Assistance Grants;

An 8.1 percent increase for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

WTF? And they wonder why we're apoplectic?
A chicken in every pot . . . sounds mighty good.
So now then. Who's going to rustle up those chickens?

Labels: Bipartisan, Flogging, Health Care, Obama Agenda

Margaret Chan, Director-General for the World Health Organization, praised communist North Korea's national health care system, declaring it "the envy" of most developing nations.
But Amnesty International? Not so much. WHO claims Amnesty's scathing assessment of the country's health care system is, umm, "not up to the U.N. agency's scientific approach to evaluating health care."
I guess you have to be a scientist to observe:
* doctors "sometimes performing amputations without anesthesia and working by candlelight in hospitals lacking essential medicine, heat and power."
* patients who said, "they or a family member had given doctors cigarettes, alcohol or money to receive medical care" and that without bribes, they'd get no health care at all.
Photo Credit: Eric Lafforgue
And there's "no lack of doctors" over in North Korea, either, said Chan. True enough, I suppose, if you don't mind a two-hour walk to the hospital to get your surgery.
Meanwhile, in the highly developed U.K.,
Photo credit: Defence Images
"Women in labour have been forced to wait while epidural equipment was borrowed from other hospitals, while other patients have been denied chest drains and radiology supplies, according to doctors at South London Healthcare Trust.Minutes of a meeting between medical staff and the trust's chief executive say "cash flow" problems at the trust which has a �50 million deficit, mean vital equipment is regularly not ordered.
A separate letter sent to managers of the trust, one of the largest in the country, says consultants have been misled into carrying out operations when it was not safe to go ahead because of bed shortages."So reports the UK Daily Telegraph.
Ah. Socialized medicine.
Anything we can do, government does better.

Labels: Health Care, North Korea, Obamacare, Socialized Medicine, UK

While I've been whiling away the hours, conferring with the flowers (e.g., the February jobless numbers soon to be announced) I found a few interesting reads and a new and exciting game we can all play.
First, the reads:
* George Will wrote an excellent article on how parents vicariously derive self esteem from their children via fatuous praising; here's an excerpt:
Memo to that Massachusetts school where children in physical education classes jump rope without using ropes: Get some ropes. And you � you are about 85 percent of all parents � who are constantly telling your children how intelligent they are: Do your children a favor and pipe down.
These are nuggets from "NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. It is another book to torment modern parents who are determined to bring to bear on their offspring the accumulated science of child-rearing.
Those Massachusetts children are jumping rope without ropes because of a self-esteem obsession.
The assumption is that thinking highly of oneself is a prerequisite for high achievement. That is why some children's soccer teams stopped counting goals (think of the damaged psyches of children who rarely scored) and shower trophies on everyone. No child at that Massachusetts school suffers damaged self-esteem by tripping on the jump rope.
But the theory that praise, self-esteem and accomplishment increase in tandem is false. Children incessantly praised for their intelligence (often by parents who are really praising themselves) often underrate the importance of effort.
Children who open their lunchboxes and find mothers' handwritten notes telling them how amazingly bright they are tend to falter when they encounter academic difficulties.* Obama just nominated Senator Jim Matheson's brother Scott to a federal bench. A federal judge, as you probably know, gets lifetime tenure. It's one hell of a plum job. Scott Matheson, who has no judicial experience whatsoever but impressive credentials nonetheless, signaled President Obama in June of last year that he was interested in the bench which would be vacated in August of 2009.
But Obama kept a few arrows in his quiver it appears, and waited, oh, some six months or more before deciding, just this week, to nominate the undecided senator's brother to the federal bench. Could it be, could it be . . . because of health care and the senator's teetering vote?
Sorry, sports fans, I know nobody likes a cynic. But this Obamaneuver just doesn't pass the smell test.
Next up, a current events game suitable for the entire family. Let's call it "Name that Speaker." In this first iteration, I'll give you some quotes and a few hints, via my scrambled photo line-up (including some red herrings). Be the first one to pin the quote on the donkey and whammo! You'll be the mom, man.
Oh, right. What's the prize? Umm, well, a link to your blog, of course, so I can drive my five loyal readers (and once my mom's a fan, you'll never lose her) to your site. And, err, surely something else, something else "to be determined." I'm thinking a ten-day cruise on the ship that was just quarantined outside of Brazil -- I could book your tickets and charge no commission -- would be a mighty fine prize.
But before we set off for the races, and I know you're champing (chomping?) at the bit, let me gently remind my competitive readers that we're on the honor system here. No clicking on the links until you've made your guesses, Mom.
C, D & G are my favorite quotes, especially knowing who said them. And God bless our hearts, I know these are some pretty wonky snippets. But health care is an important topic about which all of us need to be educated; our children will be paying for it for years to come.
Alrighty then. Let's start with the first prevarication quote:
(A) "No one has talked about reconciliation!"
(B) "Barack Obama has been working hard to push his healthcare proposal. Obama still wants the bill to be bipartisan, but he's a realist, and given the near unanimous Republican opposition he's facing, now says he'd be satisfied if the bill was just bicurious."
(C) "Under the rules, the reconciliation process does not permit that debate. Reconciliation is therefore the wrong place for policy changes. In short, the reconciliation process appears to have lost its proper meaning: A vehicle designed for deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility has been hijacked."(D) "The Senate Budget Committee chairman [Kent Conrad] said that this is a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.
Now, when you take a look at the Medicare cuts, what this bill essentially does [is treat] Medicare like a piggy bank. It raids a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare, not to shore up Medicare solvency, but to spend on this new government program.
. . . [A]ccording to the chief actuary of Medicare . . . as much as 20 percent of Medicare's providers will either go out of business or will have to stop seeing Medicare beneficiaries. Millions of seniors . . . who have chosen Medicare Advantage will lose the coverage that they now enjoy.
You can't say that you're using this money to either extend Medicare solvency and also offset the cost of this new program. That's double counting."(E) "Republican Congressman Joe Wilson apologized for calling President Obama a liar during his speech on health care. Obama accepted Wilson's apology, and then invited him to appear before a death panel."
(F) "At best it was a waste of history's time, a struggle that will not in the end yield something big and helpful but will in fact make future progress more difficult. At worst it may prove to have fatally undermined a new presidency at a time when America desperately needs a successful one."
(G) "And the Postal Service announced last week the Post Office lost $3.8 billion last year. I've got a good idea. Let's put the government in charge of healthcare! Fantastic idea!"(H) "This has been a long and wrenching debate. It has stoked great passions among the American people and their representatives. And that's because health care is a difficult issue. It is a complicated issue. If it was easy, it would have been solved long ago. As all of you know from experience, health care can literally be an issue of life or death. And as a result, it easily lends itself to demagoguery and political gamesmanship, and misrepresentation and misunderstanding."
(I) "But that�s not an excuse for those of us who were sent here to lead. That's not an excuse for us to walk away. We can�t just give up because the politics are hard."
Onward health care soldiers . . . marching as to war. With the deaths of constituents, going on before . . . .
(J) "Everything there is to say about health care has been said--and just about everybody has said it."
Alrighty then. Enough said. We'll be quiet.
(K) "It looks like Democrats have their 60 votes for healthcare. Harry Reid said the bill will save us hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, it would have, except for the hundreds of millions of dollars we had to pay to buy the 60 votes."
(L) "In the space of 10 days, thanks in no small part to my own newspaper, the president of the United States has been portrayed as a weakling and a chronic screw-up who is wrecking his administration despite everything that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, can do to make things right."So now then. Who said what?
Go on. Give it a gander.

Labels: Deficit, Health Care, Obamaneuver, Paul Ryan

"Why Dems are Going Down in November," is far and away, the best explanation I've seen yet, for why so many people are red-hot mad. It's a must-read.
Here are a few snippets:
* The health care bill. The absolute epitome of ideological, public-be-damned arrogance. A horrendous compendium of bribes, exploding bureaucracy, runaway costs, written in secret and unread by those who passed it. It includes a mandate, likely un-Constitutional, forcing people to buy health insurance or pay a fine. The same administration which originally claimed the commerce clause of the Constitution made such a fine possible is now saying that the federal government's "power to tax" justifies it. Irrelevant. 60% of Americans want this monstrosity repealed, ASAP.
* A hopelessly compromised media. Air America tanked, CNN is tanking, and ABC, NBC and CBS news programs have been shedding viewers at historically unprecedented rates-even as Fox and the Wall Street Journal prosper. Americans don't mind people in the media expressing their opinions, as long as they're characterized as opinions, but they seethe when such opinions are portrayed as "hard news." They get even angrier when certain stories are "omitted" by those same organizations, especially when Americans recognize such omissions are calculated to protect the progressive agenda. I wonder if it occurs to either Democrats or their media water-carriers that a majority [of] Americans may savor whacking both groups in November. Depressed looks on the faces of Nancy Pelosi and Katie Couric? In theater circles, that's known as a "two-fer."
* The complete disconnect between the First Family and ordinary Americans. The golfing, the soirees, and the high-priced vacations have created the perception that we are living through another "let them eat cake" moment in history. On Tuesday, the president called the public schools in Washington, D.C. a "'struggling' system that doesn't measure up to the needs of first daughters, Sasha and Malia." Those would be the same public schools Congressional Democrats tossed 3,300 low-income kids back into when they killed funding for vouchers that had freed those kids from D.C.'s educational ghetto. The First Lady is hectoring Americans to eat healthier. Perhaps more Americans would if they could afford to: the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stated in their Producer Price Index that the price of food increased 2.4% for March 2010. That's the biggest increase in almost 30 years.
* "Unexceptional" America. Progressive contempt for the values and traditions which make this the greatest country on earth can no longer be disguised. An American president who "believe(s) in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism" has made it plain that this is not a great nation which needs tweaking, but a fundamentally flawed one needing a complete progressive make-over. Once one understands this basic premise, everything this administration and Democratically-controlled Congress does makes sense. All of it centers around the ridiculous premise that America owes the world an apology for any number of shortcomings, many of which can only be alleviated by government-mandated "social justice." That would be the same social justice which demanded-and still demands-that Americans manifestly unqualified to own homes be given mortgages, regardless. Unknown to the majority of Americans, this precise mindset was part of the financial "reform" bill which also requires banks to lend a certain percentage of capital to minority-owned businesses, even if it means lowering their lending standards. Apparently progressives won't be satisfied with their odious social-engineering schemes until every sector of the American economy bears a striking resemblance to the housing sector. So far, Americans support financial reform because it's been framed as "Main Street versus "Wall Street." It's not. Like every other initiative undertaken by this Congress and this administration, it's the elevation of irresponsible and dishonest Americans over those willing to accept the consequences of their own behavior.Read the entire article here.

Labels: Arnold Ahlert, Democrats, Disconnect, Health Care, Obama, Ruling Class, Why The Dems Are Going Down In November

Here's another smackdown for you -- except this one's a double smackeroo:

For shame, for shame.
Why must a bill with allegedly so much merit be passed under cover of darkness? Frankly, I'm starting to dread the weekends. Because when the country's away, our Congress will play.
The whole voting process has grown so clandestine, even Democrats are now grumbling about its cloak-and-daggerness. Could it be, dare I say it, because the health care bill has so much public opposition?
Is it any wonder the Republicans want a full reading of the bill from the floor? For God's sake. Harry Reid won't even let the other senators see it.
Consider this blurb, from the Washington Examiner:
"I am in the dark almost as much as he is, and I am in the leadership." Durbin explained that during a Democratic caucus, Reid and the small group of senators involved in crafting the bill turned to their fellow Democrats and "basically stood and said, 'We are sorry, we can't tell you in detail what was involved.'"
"Isn't that a very unusual process?" asked McCain, noting that "we are discussing one-sixth of the gross national product; the bill before us has been a product of almost a year of sausage-making. Yet here we are at a position on December 12, with a proposal that none of us, except, I understand, one person, the Majority Leader, knows what the final parameters are, much less informing the American people. I don't get it."
"I think the senator is correct," Durbin answered, "saying most of us know the fundamentals, but we do not know the important details behind this." (emph. added)
What the hell! If sunlight is the best disinfectant, why are most Dems sprinting for the caves?
Oh, and while I've got the Tide box out on this Friday night, how about the 2010 Omnivore Omnibus Spending Bill which the Senate approved last weekend?
You know, the one that has over five thousand earmarks, the bill that pushes our total earmark spending for 2009 to eleven billion? Obama signed it into law this past Wednesday with nary a whimper.
Oh, those evil earmarks. Do you remember, back in the day, what Obama used to say?

Yadayadayada.
P.S. In case you're planning on getting any dental crowns or botox, or gee, I don't know, a beer at the local pub, don't miss the Dental Maven's heads' up on all the new taxes this health "care" bill includes.

Labels: Botox, Dental Crowns, Earmarks, Franken, Health Care, Lieberman, Mccain