Monday, December 21, 2009

Democrats: Lying Their Way to Reform

Here you have Rhode Island Jr. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse making some insane statements on the Senate floor.



Of course, as is standard practice for any Liberal attempting make a point, Whitehouse went on to compare the GOP to Jim Crow-era lynchers, and Nazis:

“History cautions us of the excesses to which these malignant, vindictive passions can ultimately lead. Tumbrils have rolled through taunting crowds, broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets. Strange fruit has hung from Southern trees. Even this great institution of government that we share has cowered before a tail-gunner waving secret lists."

Gross, but not at all surprising.

My question is, is this simply political rhetoric that the Senator knows to be an offensive exaggeration or is it really how the far-Left views the opposition to this Health Care bill?

Another piece of evidence that the Left may actually believe that our motives in opposing this health care monstrosity were something other than considered opposition to a bad piece of legislation, can be found in Clive Crook's pro-Obamacare piece in today's Financial Times, in which he opines:

"It does not matter that conservatives oppose this reform. Of course they do. Conservatives are unmoved by the plight of the uninsured, want to block this administration’s domestic initiatives regardless, and are incapable of uniting behind an alternative proposal. They have nothing to offer on the issue."

To Mr. Crook's credit, I don't think he actually believes what he wrote about conservatives. Any intellectually honest individual who has paid attention to this bloody, 8-month debate, knows full well that conservatives have proposed a number of ideas to make health care more affordable. His implication that conservatives are "..unmoved by the plight of the uninsured." Is tantamount to a conservative columnist writing that those who want premature withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq are unmoved by the plight of families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks.

The statement's silliness is clearly illustrated by the fact that the Democratic leadership had to bribe several senators of their own party in order to get the bill to the floor.

Crook knows better. What he's guilty of is laziness as it would require far more thought and time spent at the word processor to delve into the true reasons behind the unified conservative opposition to Obamacare than he is willing to give.

Senator Whitehouse's words are far more egregious. It's one thing when you find statements like these in a comment thread on Daily Kos or coming from the mouths of Bill Maher's guests or the wildly uninformed host himself. However when it comes from a member of the world's greatest deliberative body, it should give all of us pause.

Whitehouse's statement is just one more example of the tactics that the Democratic Party has used all along in its attempts to gain public support for it's health care legislation.

They lied.

Plain and simple. From the very beginning, when President Obama was telling American's that if they liked their current health care they could keep it, even with the existence of a Public Option. Or that that Public Option would "compete" with private insurers rather than put them completely out of business. Now we have the current Dem claim that this legislation will lower costs for the privately insured when almost every analysis shows that costs for the privately insured will rise substantially once this bill goes into effect. The Democratic Party has undeniably sold Obamacare almost exclusively by way of sophistry, half-truths and bald-faced lies.

Yet another stunning example of this was last week when President Obama himself claimed that passing his trillion dollar health care bill was the only way to save the country from bankruptcy. Not only does this statement defy common sense, but most American's (and the Chinese Government)understand that the exact opposite is true. If anything, the Democratic plan will put the United States closer to fiscal insolvency than ever before.

Obama says that care will improve across the board. Not true.

He says this bill is deficit neutral. It's not and incredibly dishonest budget gimmickry is the only way Dems could even achieve this result on paper.

One positive thing to come out of all this is that the majority of the American people are smart enough not to buy into the trickery of the lying Democrats. That's a good sign of things to come. The Democrat's failure to gain majority support for this bill and the anger that their actions have resulted in among independents, almost guarantees that they will be unable to achieve other damaging policy goals like Cap & Trade and amnesty for illegal immigrants. The failure of the Public Option is a huge victory for the conservative movement and leaves the current bill without a clear path to single-payer care, which was the Left's primary objective all along.

Most importantly however, we've seen first hand that the American Left must lie about the effects of its policy proposals, because if they are honest about the repercussions of their ideas, the American people will reject the progressive agenda outright. Fortunately, this time the American people saw through it and the Democrats will almost certainly pay a price for it come November.

So don't be too mad at Senator Whitehouse and Clive Crook. After all, hyperbole and misinformation is the only effective weapon they wield in the battle to implement the liberal agenda in center-right America.

-Dan Joseph

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Friday, December 18, 2009

This Is It!


The fate of American health care rests in the hands of one man. Call Sen. Ben Nelson. 202-224-6551 Tell him to kill the bill.

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Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

The Death of Climate Alarmism: Poor Leadership 101

Here's Al Gore's Huffington Post, profile picture:


Yeah. I know.

It's shocking that an individual so socially awkward and phony could be taken seriously by such a huge portion of the population. And yet, he's still around. The reason is obvious. On the Left, Bush derangement syndrome still lingers in the souls of many. It is still yet to be cured by the soothing yet thus far, completely ineffective, aroma of Campbell's "Hope, Change and Chicken Soup" which liberals have been feasting on since last November.

To the modern liberal, Gore represents an alternative universe, in which folks in Palm Beach County were actually able to figure out their simple ballots, designed by equally simple Democratic Party officials, on Election Day 2000. In the minds of these true believers, had Gore been elected, not only would 9/11 never had happened. Not only would the economic collapse had been avoided with risky mortgages being put into a "Lock-Box" instead of being sold in bundles to Fannie May and Freddie Mac. But the true challenge of our time, that of facing down the dangers of anthropogenic climate change or "global warming," would have been solved long ago. Because as a wise liberal professor once told me in college: "WAR BAD! ENVIRONMENT GOOD! ME LIKE NPR AND MOTHER JONES! LET'S GO PROTEST! BLAH-BLAH-BLAH! UHHHHHHHH..... Professor sleepy. Must....go home....read Chomsky...then...not...get...laid.

But here, in reality, Gore lost the 2000 election and I still thank God that the duty of waging a war against Islamic extremism and Saddam Hussein was not left in the hands of a Gore Administration. For those who think things would actually be better now had Gore had 8 years in the White House instead of Bush, one need only look at the recent climate change debacle to put any delusions regarding the superior competence or intellectual honesty of Mr. Gore's leadership to rest.

For a decade now, Al Gore has served as the voice of the Global Warming alarmists. That they chose him to represent their cause was their first big mistake.

If you want people to take your movement seriously and believe it when you claim that you are fighting for a cause backed up by a "scientific consensus," then the last thing you want is for your movement's leader to be the incredibly divisive, hyper partisan loser of the most controversial presidential election in American history. Of course it doesn't help that Gore is so uncharismatic that he makes Mitch McConnell look like a politically knowledgeable George Clooney.

But the movement had to be led by a liberal. Even with some believable evidence pointing to Global Warming being caused by man, the whole concept of the apocalyptic nature of climate change fits perfectly into the traditional dogma of the modern liberal.

It is based on the idea that human kind is so flawed that it is destroying the planet. As with most of the worlds problems, America is to blame for most of it. And of course, the solution is to punish corporations and others within the private sector. It's the perfect progressive blame trifecta. It fits in absolutely perfectly with the world view of the devout leftist. If the Left could have found some way to hold the military accountable for the rise in global temperatures over the last 50 years I'm positive that they would have not hesitated to do so.

Then Gore and his followers made another mistake typical of politicians. They took a limited amount of inconclusive data and used it to convince the public that the evidence was so strong that no debate was necessary on the subject. And it worked. For a while. Until that is, the situation changed and the warnings of continued warming that the alarmists had been giving us for twenty years failed to materialize.

Oops.

Plan B: Fudge the data. Hope the people don't find out.

Oops.

They found out.

Plan C: Repeat original claim. Hope no one notices.


Oops.

They noticed.

Ironically, it appears as though the debate on climate change actually is over. Gore and the alarmists have lost. There is no way that the American people are confident enough in the scientific community's theories, that they will sacrifice trillions in tax dollars and long-term economic growth for a cause whose leaders have engaged in trickery, irresponsible exaggerations and whose theories haven't panned out in the first place. Right now environmental and energy concerns rank dead last in terms of the issues that Americans view as important, tied with "something else" and "other" in almost every major poll. This weeks events in Copenhagen are a joke when viewed in light of climategate earthquake that occurred when those East Anglia e-mails popped up, forcing any common sense observer to reassess what they thought they knew about the end of the world.

It's difficult to feel very sorry for a character as unsympathetic as Al Gore and yet I do. Just when he thinks that his dreams of becoming a relevant figure in the annals of world history have been realized, those dreams are dashed by the reality of trying to lead a center-right and intellectually curious nation where non-partisan leadership and honesty are important qualities. The kind that is an unfortunate rarity in the rest of the world today.

But don't feel too bad for Mr. Gore. He may never be President. The prospects of the cause he has championed for decades may appear to have been devoured by the very polar bears that he sought to save and experiencing its last hurrah this week in Denmark. However, Gore has made a ton of money by spreading his climate change gospel to the true believers. So much money. Millions and millions of dollars. More money than you and I could possibly fathom. He did all of this without ever having to answer his critics or engage in a serious debate on the topic. That's talent.

-Dan Joseph


Here's a particularly disgusting piece of propaganda from the alarmists.

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Wednesday, December 02, 2009

The Feigned Indignation of Barbara Mikulski


Maryland's Senior Senator Barbara Mikulski got all upset the other day over the recent government panel recommendation that discouraged women under the age of 50 from getting annual mammograms. That's fine with me. But the reality is that Mikulski's objection was far from sincere. Had her outrage been based solely in a concern for women's lives her statements regarding the matter would have been far less politically charged and her support for the current Senate health care bill would not be as certain as it remains today.

Addressing the mammogram controversy, Mikulski said:

“....insurance companies may use this new recommendation as yet another reason to deny women coverage for mammograms.”

Sure. They may. But that's really a very backwards way of looking at the matter considering that if they did, it would be because a government panel told them that it was ok to do so.

The recommendations were not made by a group of independent doctors funded by the insurance industry. They came from doctors on a government panel, none of whom had expertise in the area of mammography. The same kind of government panel that will be making recommendations to the Department of Health and Human Services about what kind of care patients are eligible to receive under government run health care and what corners can be cut in order to save money. These types of recommendations are assured once the Health care bill making it's way through congress is hooked up with the mandates for comparative effectiveness research found in the stimulus package.

And Senator Mikulski is going to vote for all of it. Her cover? She turns the tables and attempts to make the insurance industry the bad guy. Sorry Barb. This is a preview of government oversight into women's health issues, not another instance of the dangers of the status quo. A status quo that is second to none in terms of breast cancer survival rates. But the fact that you're still going to vote for the monstrosity currently making its way through the Senate, proves that you really don't care.

I know that putting an end to breast cancer is an issue that many young people--especially young women who have family members or friends who have been afflicted with this terrible disease--care deeply about. But young people continue to be the demographic group supporting Obamacare with the most enthusiasm. You need to wake up. You're being duped into believing that poorly thought out recommendations made by the government can be remedied by giving more power to the people responsible for making those poorly thought out recommendations in the first place. It's ironic that Sen. Mikulski is about to vote to give additional power to the type of group who she sharply criticized just days earlier for putting women's lives at risk.

So come on people. It's time to start watching what the other hand is doing.

-Dan

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