You have to wonder what the Founders, who shed blood to create a new country, would think about this
Handing President Obama a hard-fought victory, the House narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Saturday night, advancing legislation that Democrats said could stand as their defining social policy achievement.
I’m not quite sure how this is a victory for Obama, considering he had little to no hand in creating this monstrosity, other than some pep talks and spam emails. The victory belongs to Nancy Pelosi. Sort of.
After a daylong clash with Republicans over what has been a Democratic goal for decades, lawmakers voted 220 to 215 to approve a plan that would cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years. Democrats said the legislation would provide overdue relief to Americans struggling to buy or hold on to health insurance.
Just Republicans? By everyone’s reckoning, 39 Democrats voted “no.” And one massively squishy Republican. And the plan, like every government plan, will cost well more than $1.1 trillion, a number the Fish Wrap of Record throws around like it is no big deal.
“This is our moment to revolutionize health care in this country,†said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and one of the chief architects of the bill.
Hey, a Dem spoke truth! Would sound a whole lot better if you could hear it in a 1930’s Russian or German accent.
Democrats were forced to make major concessions on insurance coverage for abortions to attract the final votes to secure passage, a wrenching compromise for the numerous abortion-rights advocates in their ranks.
In other words, massive bribes, adding billions of pork that will not be part of the CBO scoring of $1.1 trillion.
Many of them hope to make changes to the amendment during negotiations with the Senate, which will now become the main battleground in the health care fight as Democrats there ready their own bill for what is likely to be extensive floor debate.
In other words, you can expect the abortion ban to be stripped out in one manner or another.
But, this all comes down to a simple fact: the entire American health system will be changed on a bare majority vote. Five votes. If this legislation is so super duper fantastic, why were Republicans completely shut out? Why did 39 Democrats say no? You would think that a piece of legislation of this stature would get, nay, would require, more that 215 votes to pass.
Around the blogosphere, most are expecting this to fail in the Senate. But now is the time for the GOP to get its act together and get folks who will run against Democrats across the country in 2010. Now is the time for the GOP to work its tail off to expose this legislation for what it is: an extremely costly push for single payer and control over individual lives, private companies, and Central government.
On the good side, we have time to get Republicans elected who can immediately, their first day in office, to void this horrendous craptacular legislation before this horrendous craptacular legislation takes effect.
Crossed at Right Wing News
well Teach we do know that the founders were considered by their peers to be radical liberals, progressives moving forward away from the past
Nice try, John.
Actually, no; it’s not a nice try. It’s a completely lame try.
The definition of “radical liberal” and “progressive” has changed a great deal since the 1700s. Your attempt to equate our Founders with the Socialist scum of today is like comparing apples and motorcycles.
If the Founders were of the same stripe as the Pelosi/Obama/Reid crowd, then why are today’s Liberals so determined to rewrite (or completely destroy) the Constitution? There would be no 2nd amendment. Government-sponsored health care would be demanded on no uncertain terms, wouldn’t it? There would be no mention of a Creator. Instead of “all men are Created equal” it would be “all men ARE equal and must be given anything they need to achieve parity with every other man, even if it means taking from those who Have and giving it to those who Have Not.”
The past our Founders were “progressing” from was one of tyranny. They were “progressing” from the oppression of the King and the idea that Man has only the rights granted to him by the government. Fast forward to today, where our inalienable rights are being devoured by an ever-expanding government run by people who fully believe that THEY can make YOUR decisions better than you.
Whether they were referred to as liberal or progressive at that time has no bearing on the definition of today; our Founders were, by today’s standards, Conservative.
What TFMo said.
You really do not know a damned thing about the history of our great country, do you, John. No question mark necessary.
Teach,
Why do you continually trot out the total cost of the bill, but conveniently neglect to mention the fact that the CBO estimates that this bill will actually LOWER the federal deficit over those same ten years?
Reasic, maybe you should ponder why we should believe the gubmint when they tell us how much this is going to cost, when EVERY other Dem welfare program has wound up costing many, many, many times more than promised?
How much was Medicare supposed to cost, and how much did we wind up paying for it? How about Medicaid? How about Social Security? How about all the food stamp and housing programs?
That’s funny, TFMo, considering you conservatives were more than happy to throw around the total estimated cost from the preliminary report, put out by the very same Congressional Budget Office. I guess it’s kind of like how you like polls that show results you agree with, but all of the others are fixed by evil liberals in the mainstream media. You can’t have it both ways. Either you agree with the CBO analysis, or you don’t. If not, then you don’t have a total cost, either.
The other thing I find interesting about your response is how you are willing to rely solely on a generalization about how the government is never right, when you disagree with them. Generally, if a thinking person wanted to refute a detailed analysis, they would do so armed with facts and figures of their own. Not you, though. You can just dismiss it with sweeping generalizations.
Dodge, dodge, duck, weave, obfuscate, ignore…
The total estimated cost does not include that pork that will be attached. And please, do name a government welfare program that wound up costing LESS than advertised.
“You Conservatives.” Gee, that almost sounds like a “sweeping generalization”!
When the government actually manages to do something right, I’m more than willing to give them full credit. Tax cuts are a good thing, Bush managed to get that part right. Where it failed was when they didn’t cut back on their spending to match it, and allowed the Fed to screw with the interest rates.
Letting women and minorities vote, I certainly agree with that. Freeing the slaves was also a good idea.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights was an EXCELLENT idea. Big fan of that.
Unfortunately, the government hasn’t managed to get much else right. Or perhaps you hadn’t noticed that our unemployment has surpassed 10%, even though Obama’s Stimulus package was supposed to be the only way to keep unemployment for going above 8 or 9? Or did is slip by you that a country that is led by people who have sworn Holy War against us is mere days away from having a fully capable nuclear weapon? Or maybe you missed that little Cap and Trade thingy that promises to send the cost of EVERYTHING through the roof, all on a premise that does not stand up to serious scientific scrutiny? Or were you too busy considering the ramifications of giving unions the power to intimidate and force people to vote as the unions demand, via the removal of the private ballot? No, wait…I bet you were too engrossed in anticipation of your taxes being used to fund abortions, pay for illegals to have better health care than you, and potential jail time if you don’t get the insurance Nancy Pelosi thinks you should have!
Take yourself and your big floppy clown shoes and go read a book. Come back when you have enough knowledge to know what the hell you’re talking about.
Are you joking? What is dodging and weaving about calling you out for your hypocrisy on trusting government numbers? You like the CBO’s total cost estimate, but not their net estimate (minus revenue-generating and cost-cutting measures). Talk about dodging… You never addressed that one. Instead you bloviated with a bunch of misinformation.
Stimulus:
People like you forget that this mess we’re in occurred under Bush’s watch. I’m not saying it’s his fault. I’m just saying that Obama’s the one left to clean it up, and all you can do is blame him, as if he’s the culprit. The stimulus money hasn’t even fully been spent. Projects still have to be designed and constructed before all of the money can make its way into the economy. Did anyone tell you we’d be back on the ridiculous track we were on in the bubble in only a few months? I don’t remember hearing that promise.
Iran:
Bush’s policy of isolationism and unilateralism did nothing to help this situation. It only escalated during his Presidency. Now, we finally have a Commander in Chief who knows how foreign policy is supposed to work, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Cap and Trade/Global Warming:
“Scientific scrutiny”? Are you kidding?! Nearly all scientific research that’s been done on the subject of climate change has pointed to a warming climate due primarily to industrial activity.
That’s all I’m going to address. You assume way too much, TFMo, and you’re sorely misinformed on most of these topics. Please stop embarrassing yourself. If you try to denigrate me and make me look stupid, without knowing ANYHTING about me, you might just end up looking like an ass yourself. Be careful…
Horse puckey. I’m not overly thrilled with any information coming out of the CBO. What is particularly troubling is the massive disconnect between the numbers Obama’s citing and the numbers the CBO is citing. The CBO is low-balling, as usual. It’s what they do. As I said, show me ONE government welfare program that came in for LESS than was advertised.
Stimulus. More horse puckey. It hasn’t “saved or created” much more than a handful of jobs, and most of that are government jobs, which do NOT grow the economy; they wind up costing the tax payers more because THAT’S WHERE THEIR PAYCHECKS COME FROM. Even if we take Obama’s word for the thousands of jobs created or saved, it pales in comparison to the MILLION PLUS jobs that have died since the Stimulus was passed. And don’t give me that crap about this being all Bush’s fault (and yes, you ARE saying it’s his fault. Try reading what you write next time). When Bush left office, he did so with a deficit in the billions. Obama has grown the deficit to a number higher than ALL PREVIOUS PRESIDENTS COMBINED IN LESS THAN A YEAR. And one of the biggest budgetary blunders was TARP. Bush signed it, OBAMA PUSHED FOR IT AND VOTED FOR IT.
Obama’s policy on Iran has been “Time for another speech.” He has done NOTHING substantive…oh wait, I take that back. He wrote a nice little letter to Putin, begging him to intercede in exchange for the US abandoning Poland and the Czech Republic and dumping our missile defense system. Putin cheerfully REFUSED and made sure our allies knew that Obama had sold them down the river. Yeah, GREAT frickin’ foreign policy there.
Cap and Trade. All the global warming/cooling/partly cloudy with intermittent drizzle is caused by Nasty Ol’ Humans? Pull your head out of Al Gore’s butt and READ something. The inconvenient truth about “The Inconvenient Truth” is that it’s a pack of lies. Even in Britain, where they are all agog for this claptrap, found in a court of law that Gore’s book and movie were bullshit. There isn’t a SHRED of evidence that hasn’t been debunked. NASA’s famous hockey stick graph, for example, used as one of the main sources for the UN and for Gore, doesn’t even account for cloud formation or solar activity!
And let’s not forget, this is the same crowd that swore up and down that were were just a few short decades away from an ICE AGE. Maybe that was a bit before your time. One of these brain-trusts is currently in Obama’s shadow cabinet. He also predicted that we would be so over-populated that the world would not be able to sustain us and we’d all be cannibals by now. I don’t know about you, but I have neither seen a penguin outside the zoo, nor have I been forced to nosh on the neighbors.
Thank your lucky stars for Hollywood and the media. If it weren’t for them manufacturing credibility for the left, you guys would be in strait-jackets, barking at the walls.
If you don’t like ANY CBO numbers, then where are you getting that it will cost over a trillion dollars? And again, you’re simply dismissing their detailed analysis with your, uh… nothing. Do you at least have an alternate analysis to compare and contrast, or are you just distrustful of scary evil liberal government people?
Stimulus:
Again, you’re arguing that it didn’t save or create many jobs, all the while ignoring the fact that it hasn’t been fully spent yet.
Iran:
“Nothing substantive”? I guess you missed the news about how Iran agreed to ship its uranium abroad for processing under strict supervision. The administration is waiting for a coherent response or action from that country’s leadership, and the lack of such in the past month is actually showing a rift within Iran’s own governing body. This agreement alone is more than Bush ever got, and it’s because he would never meet with them.
GW:
Pull my head out of Gore’s butt. Right. I see you’re ASSuming that I have based my position on global warming on Gore’s movie or statements. The reality is that I’ve never seen his movie, and neither have I seen him speak on the subject. Instead, I’ve based my understanding on climate change on the work of the world’s top climate researchers, which is incorporated in the latest IPCC report.
You might also find it interesting that the “hockey stick graph” has not been debunked. You’re really showing your ignorance on the subject here, by the way. The graph is not NASA’s. It was developed through the work of Dr. Michael Mann. Also, this graph has nothing to do with the source of warming (sun, clouds, man, etc.). It is a paleoclimate study, which uses various proxies to determine the temperature of the earth in the past. The main argument against it is that it doesn’t account for the supposed “Medeival Warm Period”.
The theory of Cosmic flux/cloud formation is in its infancy, and hasn’t been thoroughly proven in scientific literature. I don’t think anyone has counted it out as of yet, but there are serious holes yet to be filled. It has been proven, however, that solar activity has a very small effect on climate change. Where many skeptics get confused is on the difference between total solar output and the variability in the same. Yes, the Sun puts out a lot of energy, but it varies by only 1 watt per meter squared, and that variation is regular. The only change in that variation is in the length of the cycles, and this change, at a maximum, could only account for 1/11th of the 1 W/m^2. This number is virtually insignificant compared to the combined positive radiative forcing due to human activity (over 3 W/m^2).
No, actually, this is NOT the “same crowd” that thought we were going into an ice age. This theory was largely the result of the unsupported assumptions of a couple of renegade scientists, who are now climate skeptics (they agree with you, not me). It was then picked up in sensational stories in newspaper and magazine articles, and a couple of books. The vast majority of the actual scientific research completed at the time pointed to a warming planet, as is the case now. This is just yet another tired old canard that keeps getting trotted out by misinformed people with a “do nothing” agenda.
So, how about you detach your lips from the conservative kool-aid pitcher, and try to objectively learn about something for a change?
Kid, you’re either taking too many drugs or not enough.
It’s not just the CBO saying this thing is going to cost us more than our country can afford. Anyone with three functioning braincells and a calculator can tell you this. And AGAIN, why would you believe that THIS time they’re going to get it right when they have FAILED MISERABLY to keep the cost anywhere near where they advertised?
Stimulus hasn’t been fully spent yet. And they’ve done WONDERS with what they’ve spent so far, haven’t they? Couple of million for bike paths, couple of million for turtle tunnels (funny thing, all the other turtle tunnels? Turtles don’t like them so much. Glad to see the money I was saving for my son’s college tuition went to a good cause.) Ohh, here’s another good one: a study to measure and reduce pig stench! Thank heaven SOMEONE is finally doing something about that huge blight on society! WAY more important than, say, cancer research.
Perhaps you don’t recall that it was V-I-T-A-L that Stimulus be passed. No, no, no time to read the bill! Gotta pass the bill! Or our economy will completely tank and unemployment will rise above EIGHT PERCENT!! It was so important, that as soon as it passed through House and Senate, Obama took a three-day weekend BEFORE signing it. Face it, dude. Stimulus, TARP, all that gotta-gotta crap, it was a boondoggle. Eight percent unemployment seems like a fond dream from a Countrytime commercial.
And who is going to be doing this “strict supervision”, if Iran actually bothers following this resolution? That would be the UN, who has been every bit as ineffectual in keeping the Ultimate Weapon out of these lunatic’s hands as Obama, only for a much longer time. Yeah, I feel TOTALLY safe now, thanks a bunch.
Let me explain to you how the whole IPCC thing works, brightness. A bunch of scientists made a report, in which they stated, that they had no reason to believe that man was any significant contributor to the changes in our climate, as per ice-core studies and other studies. Big long study, big long report, and most of it far beyond the comprehension of anyone in the UN. So this team of scientists sent copies to the various bureaucrats, who handed it over to lesser bureaucrats to “dumb it down” enough that their bosses wouldn’t feel like idiots. Following their lovely green agenda, these minions managed to make the report sound like man was almost solely responsible for the climate changes. They hand this off to their bosses and thus starts the whole three-ring circus. This is why several scientists resigned from the IPCC.
How about you read over those lovely Kyoto protocols sometime. Even people who have drunk deeply of the AGW kool-aid have come out saying that this plan would cost hundreds of billions PER YEAR, with a net result of doing diddly-squat, other than making it next to impossible for ANY country to be able to afford realistic preparation in case something DOES happen.
And yes, the hockey stick HAS been debunked. All attempts to duplicate it by anyone other than the jackass who came up with it have failed. He has refused to release the means by which he came to his assertion; what little data he DID provide did absolutely NOTHING to prove his theory.
And that’s all this AGW crap is. THEORY, based on half-science and half-agenda. There are ony two kinds of people supporting this nonsense; kool-aid drinkers like you who are all-too willing swallow whatever load the liberal talking heads dump on you, and the people who stand to make a huge profit of this scare, like Gore.
Having a “peer” reviewed article on this subject is a joke. The peers are caving to the people who are paying for the grants, by which scientists receive the funds needed to do their research. Since the AGW crybabies aren’t looking for real scientific information, they just want someone with a title to agree with them so they can bilk more money from the taxpayers. When a scientist can not be objective about the subject he is researching, it ceases to be research, and becomes PR. Most of the scientist willing to come out against this practice and against the green Nazis are retired; they don’t have to worry about losing a grant or being blacklisted. Scientists who are still working have learned that they are NOT allowed to voice any dissent, lest their tenure, grants, and careers vanish in a puff of whatever you hippies are stuffing in your bongs.
Again, try READING for a change, preferably something from someone who ISN’T standing to make billions off this crap.
TFMo,
You’re not making sense. The CBO hasn’t said that his bill will cost “more than the country can afford”. It estimated that the bill will actually LOWER THE DEFICIT. Either provide an alternative analysis or shut up about it. I’ll take the CBO’s detailed analysis over your three functioning brain cells and a calculator any day of the week.
Yeah, ignore the fact that you said he’s accomplished nothing on Iran, when he has, and just belittle what has been done. Whether they follow through or not, he has an agreement, and that’s much more than Bush ever got. Yes, he’s following a different path, and it’s because the previous path didn’t produce results.
You “debate” just like almost every other “skeptic” I’ve encountered in the past. You advance nonsensical claims. Then, I provide a detailed rebuttal to those claims, in this case, in regards to solar activity and climate scientists warning of an impending ice age. And rather than providing a counter argument to my rebuttal, you come back with different arguments.
You have absolutely NO IDEA how the IPCC works. Your oversimplification is absurd. This didn’t start with a study on ice cores, which stated that man isn’t responsible, and then morphed into the opposite. That’s ridiculous. The IPCC report is the culmination of hundreds and hundreds of research projects and papers over many years on this subject. The ice core study you referenced doesn’t even conclude what you claim. You’ve got your facts so royally screwed up, I don’t even know where to begin to try to untangle this mess of incoherent drivel that you’ve spewed at me.
You’re also wrong about how many scientists have resigned from the IPCC and why they did. I am aware of two who have resigned in recent years, and they did so for specific reasons. Dr. Landsea didn’t resign over anything that was in the report. The report actually reflected his concerns. He quit over public comments made by another scientist at a conference. Dr. Reiter was unhappy, specifically, about a statement in the report about mosquitos and malaria. He actually never “resigned”, as he wasn’t an author in the first place.
You also couldn’t be more wrong about the “hockey stick” graph. It is true that there was a small statistical error found by McIntyre and McKitrick, but the overall effect on the paper was negligible. And in fact, numerous similar studies have been done, nearly all of which validate Mann’s graph. Check out Figure 1 and 2 in this post:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/temperaturevariations-in-past-centuries-and-the-so-called-hockey-stick/
It is also interesting to note that even if the graph were bunk, it wouldn’t disprove global warming. There are still Detection and Attribution studies, which draw the same conclusion. You should look that up sometime.
Oh, and Mann did release ALL of his data. What he didn’t release was his code for the program used to analyze the data, but this is not typically given out. Any real scientist can replicate the results with only the data, and that’s part of the problem. His most ardent critics are not climate scientists. They are an economist and a former oil executive.
The funniest part of your comment was how you warn me not to listen to those who stand to make a huge profit. Climate scientists might make thousands on a particular study — nothing extravagant. The oil and coal lobbies, though, who support much of the misinformation that you have soaked in, stand to save billions by fighting taking any action on climate change. You blindly question motives, while completely missing the fact that the most gain to be had is on your side. So, please don’t talk to me about profit motives.
You know, the more you talk, the more you reveal that you know nothing about climate change. You really should stop. It’s making you look very bad. You can’t even get the usual skeptical talking points right. You’ve got them all jumbled up and confused.