Posts Tagged ‘News’

One Question Poll

August 13, 2009

From Doctor Dan:

This is NOT a joke

A one question poll.

DO NOT MISS YOUR CHANCE TO CAST YOUR VOTE:

This is your chance to vote on Obama’s performance on this Economy-AT&T/Yahoo Poll… NOTE: this is a totally unbiased poll.  The question is stated very simply… and, to the point.  No tricks.  No hidden messages. No nothing. JUST A SINGLE, SIMPLE QUESTION.  There is no way that anyone can say that it was not a fair poll… or, that it was “phrased” in a way that it can be interpreted later… to fit someone else’s desired answer.  In other words… it is a spin-doctor’s “nightmare.”

NOTE:   After you vote, you will see a second page that shows the running total and what the opinions are.

Then pass it on… so others can cast their vote.


Rosen: No “right” to health care

August 13, 2009

More discussion on the health care debate. Well reasoned, and logical. Unlike most of what I have read across wordpress, and other blog websites.

SOURCE

No, 47 million Americans are not permanently unable to obtain health insurance. This oft-cited, sensationalized statistic is a snapshot at any point in time, something akin to saying 50 million Americans may have a head cold at any point in time but soon get over it.

The Census Bureau reports that in 2007, more than 250 million Americans (85 percent of the population) had either private insurance or were enrolled in a government health program such as Medicare, Medicaid or SCHIP. The uninsured include those between jobs, students just out of school and millions of foreign-born, many of whom are here illegally. The average family that loses its health insurance is reinsured within six months; 75 percent are reinsured within a year. The largest group of longer-term uninsured is younger people who are healthy and can afford insurance but choose to gamble.

The serious problems are confined to about 15 million people, less than 5 percent of the population, who can’t afford insurance or are uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions. These problems are manageable within our existing health care system rather than spending trillions on Obamacare to create a bureaucratic nightmare.

Health care is not a fundamental “right” in our society. The unalienable rights cited in the Declaration of Independence are life, liberty and the “pursuit” (not the delivery) of happiness. The Preamble to the Constitution speaks of “promoting” the general welfare, not providing it. The Bill of Rights delineates a series of fundamental rights that individuals possess, by nature, and that government shall not infringe. Free health care is not one of them. If it were, it could only be delivered to one person by forcing another to provide it. And that would be a violation of the provider’s individual rights. When you exercise your right of free speech, religious worship or assembly, it imposes no obligation on anyone else.

If someone is indigent, we don’t let him die on the sidewalk outside a hospital. We treat that person, as we should. We’ll even send an ambulance to get him. But whether the money to pay for this comes from taxpayers, private benefactors or by shifting the cost to other patients, it’s still charity. Health care isn’t a right. Neither are food stamps, housing subsidies or welfare. They’re all charity. When the government refers to these benefits as “entitlements,” it’s because the recipients are granted them by statute, not as rights.

Food, clothing, shelter and health care are essential to maintain life, but individual Americans enjoy different levels in the quality of all those things in our market economy based on their ability to purchase them. This strikes some people as unfair, by the socialist definition of that term. Is it fair that people with more money can afford better homes, better cars, buy more expensive clothes and eat at more expensive restaurants? Is it fair that a rich man can afford the best lawyers in the country while an indigent defendant gets only a court-appointed public defender?

Of course it is, because individuals have earned those benefits, and because there’s no practical alternative. Distributing homes, cars, lawyers or health care via a random lottery isn’t practical; it’s socialism. And socialism is doomed to failure because it lacks incentives and rewards for individual productivity and excellence. In the absence of that, it ultimately collapses when it runs out of the means to spend other people’s money.

The same reasoning applies to health care. “Universal care,” as President Barack Obama envisions it, would throw everyone in the same pit. We’d all become charity cases. Demand for medical care would soar, and supply would unavoidably be rationed. We’d sacrifice the world’s highest quality health care system for the great majority of Americans to a socialist model that will improve the lot of a few at the expense of the many. Very bad idea.

Mike Rosen’s radio show airs week- days from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.

Militia Groups and others on the rise, oh my!

August 13, 2009

Supposedly various militia groups are on the rise according to the hate mongers at the Southern Poverty Law center. Be that as it may, why, I ask, would the American people feel the need to form such groups? Which, by the way, are allowed by the Constitution. Could it be a result of the oppression that many view as the de facto mission of the current administration? Or could there be more? This excerpt is from The Liberty Alerts Newsletter; H/T to Texas Fred

U.S. Preparing a Military Response
to Coming Social Chaos

As the shocking confidential information contained in this briefing shows, the threat of social meltdown and chaos is so large a domestic law-enforcement arm of the U.S. military (referred to by The Army Times as the “Consequence Management Response Force”) has been created to deal with what U.S. officials believe to be a coming, unprecedented wave of massive social chaos.

Later I’ll show you why many Washington insiders (including officials directly involved in homeland security) are personally making emergency preparations for social chaos. In addition, outgoing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson told Sen. James Inhofe and Rep. Brad Sherman that so much financial mayhem lies ahead U.S. troops may have to impose martial law to deal with social unrest.

Yes, U.S. Officials Are Quietly Preparing
for BIG Trouble Ahead

A new report by the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute states flatly the U.S. military must prepare for “a violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.”

Late last year, The Washington Post noted the incoming Obama Administration is going to “earmark” at least 20,000 troops returning from Iraq to deal with “domestic emergencies.” Since then, the Army Times has broken the story that the domestic emergency army unit has been increased to 80,000 troops, who are being trained right now in Georgia.

In short, U.S. officials expect big trouble ahead — but they are not warning the general public about the danger (much less urge the unsuspecting masses to make basic preparations).

A rare critic of the government’s keep-the-public-in-the-dark mentality is former head of the U.S. Commission on National Security, Stephen Flynn.  He noted in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial: “Too many officials believe telling the truth to Americans about the risk would set off a nationwide panic. Thus, they keep us sheep in the dark for our own good.”

New anti-gun strategy: Demonize CCW holders

August 12, 2009

The Examiners are turning out to be a very decent group. Even the ones that I don’t agree with. Now, if they would just let me have a general outdoors column… In any case, this reminds me a lot of a blogger that used to hang out at The Liberty News Forum. He is well stated, and backs up what he says.

SOURCE

Bigotry assumes many forms, hides behind many facades, but always it is the same; the social demonization of entire groups, classes or races of people in an effort to make them appear inferior and detrimental by their very existence.

In the wake of a nasty multiple shooting at a Pittsburgh, PA-area fitness club by a not-so-clearly psychotic man identified as George Sodini, America’s gun prohibitionists – led by the Violence Policy Center and Freedom States Alliance – are clamoring for restrictions or repeal of concealed carry statutes.
In the case against legally-armed citizens, the VPC has even manufactured an innuendo-riddled “study” to support their prejudices. My colleague, Cleveland Gun Rights Examiner Daniel White, writes about the shooting here.
Their hardly subliminal argument appears to be that citizens licensed to carry concealed handguns for personal protection are a threat to the community. This contention is based on six shooting incidents over the past couple of years in which the gunman had, or apparently had, a carry permit.

A 39-year-old Ypsilanti man used his concealed weapon and his experience in the Lebanese army to stop an alleged bank robber.

Meanwhile, proponents of public disarmament haven’t said a thing about the estimated five million other citizens who are licensed to carry, and haven’t harmed anybody. There hasn’t been a peep from the gun prohibition lobby about the armed citizen who shot a convenience store robber in Virginia recently, heading off a bloodbath.
Nor have the gun grabbers mentioned the incident a week ago in Topeka, KS in which a legally-armed store clerk fended off two robbers at closing time. Self-defense Examiner Eric Puryear wrote about that incident here.
And you never heard applause from the hoplophobes – about whom I wrote the other day – after an Ypsilanti, MI man named Nabil Fawzi last year intervened in a bank robbery, did you?
An employee with a concealed carry license used his handgun to defend himself and stop a pair of criminals who tried to rob his shop.
Instead, what we get from the gun prohibitionists is a steady diet of fear mongering with but one purpose: The stripping of a fundamental civil right to keep and bear arms so that we lose our ability to exercise that most basic of human rights, that of self-preservation.
Nowadays, about the only form of acceptable overt social bigotry is against gun owners. The gun bigots argue that when one person with a gun does something heinous, all gun owners are expected to bear responsibility, and surrender their rights as though it would undo the crime.
Before the armed citizen, it was the owners of .50-caliber rifles who were likened to terrorists and cop-killers. Next week or next month, who will the prohibitionists smear in their effort to promote public hatred of fellow citizens whose only “crime” is that they exercise a constitutionally-protected civil right?
The VPC and Freedom States crowd would have us all believe that every armed citizen is just like George Sodini, and that he is like all of us; a killer waiting to strike.
While they are loathe to admit it, there is really no difference between gun bigots and racial or religious bigots. One form of class hatred is no less divisive than another.
Visit with other Gun Rights Examiners:
David Codrea
Ed Stone
Paul Valone
Howard Nemerov
Dan Bidstrup
Daniel White
Don Gwinn
Kurt Hofmann
John Longenecker
Ron Bokleman
John Pierce
Candace Dainty
Gene German
Mike Stollenwerk
And don’t forget to visit these forums:
GunVoter.org
TheHighRoad.us
OpenCarry.org
More About: gunrights · Crime · Gun Control · Second Amendment · Self-Defense · Supreme Court · Personal Protection · D.C. · Constitution · Liberty · Gun safety · Open Carry · National concealed carry · Gun bans · Homicide data · Hoplophobia
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Guns in School? : Front Sight Newsletter

August 12, 2009

Front Sight was the very first thing that I put on my sidebar. Read this from the newsletter, and you will understand why.

Packing for school: Guns on campus one year later

Ann Work Times Record News
Thursday, August 6, 2009
David ThweattWICHITA FALLS — One year ago, David Thweatt made a decision so controversial and groundbreaking the story about it sped around the world.The superintendent of the isolated Harrold Independent School District, about 30 miles northwest of here, made history last August when he and his school board decided to allow select teachers and staff members at the 110-student school to carry guns on campus — a first for Texas and the nation.

For Thweatt and his board, the decision was pure mathematics.

The school, which sits in the middle of a prairie, was too far from law enforcement for police to come in time to fend off would-be attackers. The students and staff would be safer if on-site, trained staff members were equipped to handle a crisis at a moment’s notice, they decided.

Thweatt had already installed a $100,000 state-of-the-art security system in the school. Now, arming certain unnamed school staff members by allowing them to strap a firearm under their clothing was the final flourish.

In the year since that historic decision, a gun was never brandished or fired at the school. There were no problems, Thweatt said.

However, one week after school began, police busted a methamphetamine lab set up in an abandoned house that sat 50 feet from the school property.

A deputy had peered inside and “saw something in the walls and windows and called for backup,” Thweatt said. “They made it to the abandoned house in 15 minutes. We had figured it would take 18 to 20 minutes in a typical situation.”

Had that been an armed intruder at his school, response time would have been too slow.

“We’re the first responders. We have to be,” Thweatt said. “We don’t have 5 minutes. We don’t have 10 minutes. We would have had 20 minutes of hell” if attackers had targeted the school.

Harrold students, who grew up on ranches and in the middle of the North Texas gun culture, were unperturbed by the school district’s new gun policy.

“The kids just laughed about it,” Thweatt said.

Thweatt himself is the son of a retired minister/missionary/teacher in Abilene and a 1978 graduate of Abilene High School and Hardin-Simmons University.

Too small for athletics, Thweatt spent his time at Abilene High focused on his studies, particularly interested in journalism.

He wrote music and played guitar in a Christian band on weekends and was active in his father’s nondenominational Abilene Fellowship ministry.

Thweatt drove a school bus for the Abilene ISD and occasionally worked as a substitute teacher to help fund his education, graduating in 1983.

In Harrold, media attention was fierce all year. He talked to reporters from as far away as Ireland and New Zealand; he participated on more than a dozen talk shows. The story continues to spread; recently he saw a write-up in a Jerusalem newspaper. Only Finland and Switzerland reporters ignored the story; they already have high gun ownership rates, he said.

“I had a lot of interviews from kids and college kids,” he said. “They needed to learn. I’m an educator,” said Thweatt, who is opinionated but patient in interviews.

“Would you stick a sign at a school that says, ‘No guns on this property’? Why wouldn’t you? It invites nasty people to come,” he said. “That’s what you’ve done to every public school in the nation. That’s why there were no shootings until Columbine. It’s turned into a dad-gum shoot fest.”

Thweatt took calls from “just a handful” of Texas districts considering the same policy, but he wouldn’t say if any other districts had modeled Harrold’s M.O.

According to Barbara Williams with the Texas Association of School Boards, Harrold remains the only Texas school district with a guns-on-campus policy.

“We’re not aware of any others,” she said.

However, when Harrold made its groundbreaking decision one year ago, she watched the story go as far as Malaysia. She was even called by the Dr. Phil show, who asked her to help plan a show on the topic because they were so fascinated by it. She refused.

To her, it was so obvious as to be a non-issue. Dr. Phil, who claims to be a Texan, should know that, she said.

“This is Texas. I have a magnet on my refrigerator of the state with a plastic gun glued to it that says, ‘We don’t call 9-1-1.’ We find that funny in Texas,” she said.

When a London reporter asked Thweatt to explain why so many kooks go into schools looking for a body count, Thweatt said he couldn’t explain such a devolution of society, but he did know a simple way to stop it — the same solution he chose for Harrold ISD.

“Good guys with guns — good,” he said. “Bad guys with guns — bad.”

This is a story you won’t see in the main stream media so please forward this blog to everyone you know so it spreads across the Internet like wild fire as an example of the right solution for law abiding citizens who want to protect themselves, their communities, schools and families.

To show my personal thanks and respect for Superintendent David Thweatt’s outstanding actions, I have placed a Front Sight Legacy Lifetime Membership in his name and look forward to seeing him at Front Sight in the future.

I will be posting a different article on this blog each Monday so I look forward to your visit every week.

If you have an interesting photo, story or tip about a relevant topic of interest to gun ownership, firearms training or Second Amendment issues, please feel free to send it to me at:

info@frontsight.com or

Ignatius@frontsight.com

If you want to take advantage of the Greatest Course, Gun, and CCW Permit Offer in the firearms training industry see this link:

https://www.frontsight.com/free-gun.asp

See you next week.

Dr. Ignatius Piazza
Founder and Director
Front Sight Firearms Training Institute

//

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Entry Filed under: Front Sight, Handgun Training, Monday Blog Posts, Self Defense, second amendment

Insight from the ObamaCare bill

August 12, 2009

I’m flat out stealing this from my good friend and fellow blogger Texas Fred. It’s only a comment, but rates being a stand alone post!

  1. Insight from the ObamaCare bill.

    • Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!
    • Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!
    • Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)
    • Page 42: The “Health Choices Commissioner” will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.
    • Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.
    • Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.
    • Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.
    • Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (read: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)
    • Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.
    • Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)
    • Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens
    • Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.
    • Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.
    • Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No “judicial review” is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.
    • Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages thereby reducing competition and quality of providers.
    • Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.
    • Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.
    • Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll
    • Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll
    • Page 167: Any individual who doesnt’ have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.
    • Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).
    • Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.
    • Page 203: “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax.” Yes, it really says that.
    • Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected.”
    • Page 241: Doctors: no matter what speciality you have, you’ll all be paid the same.
    • Page 253: Government sets value of doctors’ time, their professional judgment, etc.
    • Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.
    • Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs. • Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!
    • Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.
    • Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.
    • Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in healthcare companies!
    • Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.
    • Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on “community” input.
    • Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.
    • Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.
    • Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.
    • Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone).
    • Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?
    • Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time.
    • Page 425: Goverment provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.
    • Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends.
    • Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patients health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.
    • Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.
    • Page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services: more payoffs for ACORN.
    • Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN.
    • Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage.
    • Page 494: Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services.

    And the bastards in the Senate can’t understand why Americans are pissed off?

HR 450: This is a MUST pass!

August 11, 2009

From Down size D.C.

Quote of the Day: “The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.” — Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Source: Slavery in Massachusetts (1854)

Subject: Good news on the Enumerated Powers Act

The Enumerated Powers Act (HR 450) would require Congress to identify the Constitutional authority for each law it passes. We think this requirement is an important step on the long road to restoring Constitutional limits and the Bill of Rights.

When we last reported to you the bill had 32 co-sponsors in the House. Now it has 48.

Better yet, there’s now a companion bill in the Senate (S. 1319), and it already has 21 co-sponsors!

We think DC Downsizers have played a big role in making this happen. You have constantly asked for new co-sponsors on this legislation, and the number of co-sponsors has constantly grown. Let’s keep pushing.

First, check the lists below to see if one or more members of your Congressional delegation is already co-sponsoring this legislation. Then, use our Educate the Powerful System (sm) to write a letter to your delegation, thanking or requesting participation, as the case may be.

Here’s the list of House co-sponsors of HR 450 . . .

Bachmann, Michele [MN-6] — Barrett, J. Gresham [SC-3] — Bilbray, Brian P. [CA-50] — Bilirakis, Gus M. [FL-9] — Bishop, Rob [UT-1] — Blackburn, Marsha [TN-7] — Rep Boozman, John [AR-3] — Broun, Paul C. [GA-10] — Conaway, K. Michael [TX-11] — Culberson, John Abney [TX-7] — Davis, Geoff [KY-4] — Deal, Nathan [GA-9] — Flake, Jeff [AZ-6] — Forbes, J. Randy [VA-4] — Foxx, Virginia [NC-5] — Franks, Trent [AZ-2] — Garrett, Scott [NJ-5] — Gohmert, Louie [TX-1] — Goodlatte, Bob [VA-6] — Heller, Dean [NV-2] — Herger, Wally [CA-2] — Hoekstra, Peter [MI-2] — Hunter, Duncan D. [CA-52] — Johnson, Sam [TX-3] — Kline, John [MN-2] — Lamborn, Doug [CO-5] — Mack, Connie [FL-14] — McCaul, Michael T. [TX-10] — McCotter, Thaddeus G. [MI-11] — McHenry, Patrick T. [NC-10] — Miller, Jeff [FL-1] — Moran, Jerry [KS-1] — Myrick, Sue Wilkins [NC-9] — Neugebauer, Randy [TX-19] — Olson, Pete [TX-22] — Paul, Ron [TX-14] — Poe, Ted [TX-2] — Posey, Bil l [FL-15] — Price, Tom [GA-6] — Roe, David P. [TN-1] — Ryan, Paul [WI-1] — Sessions, Pete [TX-32] — Smith, Lamar [TX-21] — Terry, Lee [NE-2] — Thompson, Glenn [PA-5] — Wamp, Zach [TN-3] — Westmoreland, Lynn A. [GA-3] — Wittman, Robert J. [VA-1]

Here’s the list of Senate co-sponsors for S. 1319 . . .

Barrasso, John — Brownback, Sam — Bunning, Jim — Burr, Richard — Chambliss, Saxby — Crapo, Mike 15976 — DeMint, Jim — Ensign, John — Enzi, Michael B. — Graham, Lindsey — Grassley, Chuck — Hutchison, Kay Bailey — Inhofe, James M. — Isakson, Johnny — Kyl, Jon — McCain, John — McConnell, Mitch — Risch, James E. 15976 — Thune, John — Vitter, David — Wicker, Roger F.

Use DownsizeDC.org’s campagin for the Enumerated Powers Act to send your letter to Congress.

My two Senators are already co-sponsors, but my House Representative is not, so here’s what I said in my personal comments:

“I applaud my Senators, McCain and Kyl, for co-sponsoring this bill, and urge my Representative, Ms. Giffords, to join them by co-sponsoring the House version, HR 450. I view support for this bill as evidence that you want to walk-the-talk of your oath to serve, protect, and defend the Constitution.”

You can send your letter to Congress here.

To stay on pace to exceed the 50,802 messages Downsizers sent to Congress last month we must send 2,620 messages today.

Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC Army. To see the latest members of the Read the Bills Act Coalition, and see exactly how fast your army is growing, please check out the Keeping Score report below my signature.

Perry Willis
Communications Director
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

KEEPING SCORE REPORT

New Read the Bills Act Coalition members: Resident Bush, Reality’s Bitch, Strike The Root!Craig W. Wright

If you’re a blog or talk show and want to join the coalition, visit DownsizeDC.org.

We grew by 17 net new members yesterday. This brings us to 3,440 net new members for the year. The Downsize DC Army now stands at 27,789 — nearly 79% of the way between 27,000 and 28,000!

YOU can make the army grow even faster by following our quick and easy instructions for personalized recruiting.

More on healthcare…

August 11, 2009

Jon Caldara (see sidebar) gets this healthcare debate going in the correct direction, as The Independence Institute always does. Enjoy!

The right-wing extremist Republican base is back!

August 11, 2009

“‘The right-wing extremist Republican base is back!’ warns the Democratic National Committee. These right-wing extremists have been given their marching orders by their masters: They’ve been directed to show up at ‘thousands of events,’ told to ‘organize,’ ‘knock on doors’ … No, wait. My mistake. That’s the e-mail I got from Mitch Stewart, Director of ‘Organizing for America’ at BarackObama.com. But that’s the good kind of ‘organizing.’ Obama’s a community organizer. We’re the community. He organizes us. What part of that don’t you get? When the community starts organizing against the organizer, the whole rigmarole goes to hell. … Decrying the snarling, angry protesters, liberal talk-show host Bill Press … says that ‘Americans want serious discussion’ on health care. If only we’d stuck to the President’s August timetable and passed a gazillion-page health care reform entirely unread by the House of Representatives or the Senate (the world’s greatest deliberative body) in nothing flat, we’d now have all the time in the world to sit around having a ‘serious discussion’ and ‘real debate’ on whatever it was we just did to one-sixth of the economy. But a sick, deranged, un-American mob has put an end to all that moderate and reasonable steamrollering by showing up and yelling insane, out-of-control questions like, ‘Awfully sorry to bother you, your Most Excellent Senatorial Eminence, but I was wondering if you could tell me why you don’t read any of the laws you make before you make them into law?’ The community is restless. The firm hand of greater organization is needed.” –columnist Mark Steyn

‘White House Affirms Deal on Drug Cost’

August 11, 2009

The more things change, the more they stay the same…

“The New York Times had an amazing front page story [Thursday] which I would have thought would have jumped to the top of every cable news cycle except for the Senate’s confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The headline of the story was: ‘White House Affirms Deal on Drug Cost’ by David Kirkpatrick. I want you to read the lead paragraph very slowly: ‘Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.’ Whoa! Check Please! How can the words ‘industry lobbyists’ and ‘White House’ be in the same sentence? We have been told — to the point of needing Compazine (an anti-nausea drug) — that this administration was, is, and will always be a lobbyist-free zone. Yet, here it is; in the newspaper of record. The White House had reached a secret deal with the pharmaceutical industry to put a ceiling on the amount of money the government could save by negotiating for lower drug prices. In the words of the NY Times, the White House ‘had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the [health care] overhaul’ but ‘had never spelled out the details of the agreement.’ Oh, here we are in graf seven: ‘The new attention to the agreement could prove embarrassing to the White House, which has sought to keep lobbyists at a distance, including by refusing to hire them to work in the administration.’ Embarrassing? Ya think…? It turns out that there is a quid pro quo for keeping the drug companies out of the rough and tumble world of free markets. Again, from Mr. Kirkpatrick’s piece: ‘Failing to publicly confirm [the drug lobby’s] descriptions of the deal risked alienating a powerful industry ally currently helping to bankroll millions in television commercials in favor of Mr. Obama’s reforms. [emphasis mine] So… let me walk through this. In strange world in which Obamaville is located, lobbyists are bad only if and until the White House needs them to do things like run ads in favor of nationalized health care and then lobbyists are good. So, what if the previously dreadful, greedy, self-serving oil companies sent their lobbyists in to cut a deal with Obama to support a cap-and-trade bill though heavy advertising? Might they trade for removing any caps on their profits? I think I’m beginning to get how this works. It works like … Chicago!” –political analyst Rich Galen