Archive for March 28th, 2010
Putting Big Government First and Patients Last
Dear HillBuzz,
There’s been a lot of spin since ObamaCare passed. Below are some resources I have collected and created to help you counter the blarney. MOLE FOOD: Be the FIRST to claim the PRIZE Congressman Lewis has gotten a lot of sympathetic LameStreamMedia mileage out of his claim that anti-ObamaCare protesters in Washington last week-end yelled the N word and spit at him. When Andrew Breitbart challenged anyone to produce actual evidence, the Leftie media booed him for having not proved that it didn’t happen. Speaking of lame …. To date, the only “evidence” is a video showing someone yelling “Kill the bill!” at Lewis in a very “say it don’t spray it” way. So “spitty” but not “spitting” … if you get my meaning. But the Left isn’t interested in facts or reason, just agenda. Anyway, Andy has their number. He just upped his reward from ten grand to a hundred grand! LOL
MOLE FOOD: Final Votes on Major Social Legislation Nancy Pelosi has supposedly claimed that all important civil rights legislation has been highly partisan, which is just not true. I couldn’t find a source for the Nancy Pants quote, but I did find this very nifty graphic showing what a buncha hoo-ha the claim is.
ATTACHED: 2010_03 26 Seattle Times supports review of healthcare by courts One of the ways the majority who opposed ObamaCare is pushing back is by challenging the constitutionality of the requirement to purchase health insurance. Interestingly, the Seattle Times, which supported Obama and says, “We still like him,” published an editorial supporting the legal challenges.
MOLE FOOD: What could possibly go wrong – March 2010 Let me count the ways …
ATTACHED: 2010_03 21 Premiums likely to keep going up ObamaCare is going to INCREASE premiums for millions of families. This isn’t Republican propaganda. Associated Press, hardly a bastion of conservative thought, reported on March 17, “If cost controls work as advertised, annual increases would level off with time. But don’t look for a rollback.” This article includes a list of items Republicans proposed that actually would have worked to bring premiums down, but they also would have increased individual freedoms and decreased government control, so naturally the Democrats nixed them.
MOLE FOOD: ObamaCare is RAISING the cost of medical devices Obama promised no new taxes for ordinary Americans. ::snort:: ObamaCare is imposing an across-the-board tax on all medical devices that are not specifically exempted. So far, the only exemptions are for hearing aids, eyeglasses and contact lenses. Everything else that is legally classified as a “medical device” is going to cost everybody more. EVERYBODY. “Medical devices” covers the kind of specialty stuff that hospitals use, like heart monitors and catheter tubes, but it also refers to things like the test kits and syringes that diabetics use every day and even the absolutely ordinary, everyday stuff healthy folks use on a regular basis. Stuff like band-aids, tampons and condoms.
MOLE FOOD: It didn’t work in Massachusetts A national survey* of over 1,000 physicians suggests that as many as one-third of American physicians will quit as a direct result of the mandates in the ObamaCare bill. In one swell foop, the Leftists have increased the number of people who will expect free health care as a right, while decreasing the number of people qualified to provide that care. [That’s really gonna work. Not.]
Survey online: http://www.themedicusfirm.com/pages/medicus-media-survey-reveals-impact-health-reform
MOLE FOOD: Troop Buildup
ATTACHED: 2010_03 18 Dem health plan massive expansion to IRS power The good news is that there will be a whole lot of NEW JOBS created by ObamaCare. The bad news is that they’re all government jobs in the IRS. An important feature of ObamaCare is requiring every American* to purchase and maintain health insurance coverage that meets the federal minimum allowed and they’ve designated the IRS as the enforcer. *Illegal residents, the Amish, some Muslims and a variety of high ranking Democrat government officials are not included in this mandate, but so far as I can determine, these people are all still eligible for free health care. To cope with the new workload, the IRS may need to hire as many as 16,500 additional auditors, agents and other employees to investigate and collect fines of up to $2,250 or 2 percent of your income (whichever is greater) for failure to prove that you have purchased “acceptable” health care coverage. The IRS will have the authority to determine what “acceptable” means and confiscate your tax refund if they feel like it.
ATTACHED: 2010_03 19 159 new govt agencies won’t improve health care ObamaCare is also going to create a whole bunch of new bureaucratic boards to decide on what is considered “quality” health care. It’ll be a one-size-fits-some system where individuals and doctors will have no freedom to make choices about what is defined as “best” … and you know that with this level of centralization, the opportunities for corruption, bribery and graft will be nearly unlimited. Already, in exchange for support for ObamaCare, Big Pharma scored much greater government protection for their expensive name brand drugs from competition from generics and the health insurance industry scored a right to deny or refuse coverage to expensive sick people in exchange for paying a piddly fine to the government. Nancy Pelosi crowed that “no money changed hands” to get this bill passed. Maybe so … but only because Leftists never spend their own money on anything if they can get taxpayers to foot the bill. The most recent analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the version of ObamaCare that has been passed into law will cost $69 billion MORE than the previous version that, as I recall, President Obama said was too expensive … or something. Even worse, it’s going to siphon even more money out of Medicare, make even further cuts to Medicare Advantage, and levy even higher taxes and fines on the American people.
Report at: http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbo-obamacare-would-cost-over-2-trillion The CBO also says that health insurance premiums would rise by 10 to 13 percent in the individual market and the percent of GDP spent on health care will increase from the current 17 percent to 21 percent in 2019, at which time they expect there will still be 23 million people in America lacking health insurance. [Aren’t you just feeling the love?]
The GOP has compiled a list of what ObamaCare is expected to cost: http://www.gop.gov/policy-news/10/03/19/health-care-takeover-by-the E.g., “$52 billion: The amount of new taxes on employers who cannot afford to pay their employees health care, imposed at a time when unemployment is 9.7 percent.” [That’s really gonna help create more jobs. Not.] In the midst of the Obamacare nightmare comes the chilling story of a Minnesota nurse who was known to be abusive and incompetent. Now it’s come out that he has also been actively encouraging depressed people to commit suicide on camera for his amusement.
Report at: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/03/this_nurse_no_angel_of_mercy.html
How did he remain employed in the healthcare field? Simple. The increasing power of Obama’s BFFs in the SEIU* has made it difficult to remove unfit persons from positions in the field. *SEIU leadership has had more access to the White House and the president himself than any other special interest on the planet.
Hugs,
Chrissy
HillBuzz Coast to Coast: What are people talking about in your home towns?
We’d like this to be a daily thing around here — can you tell us what people are talking about in your part of the country?
Just as we share our little anecdotes from Boystown, we’d love to hear what people are saying down at the Piggly Wiggly or IHOP today, in Macon or Tallahassee.
What are the people at your church in Dallas talking about?
What do people think of Obamacare in Columbus?
What bits of news from the past week seemed most important to everyone in Des Moines?
Give us a little window into your worlds, and maybe we can build this up enough to hear from all 50 states every day in some capacity, and get a better feel for the mood of the country than our MSM ever gives us.
What’s the buzz as you see it, where you can see and hear it?
Did you watch Sarah Palin's speech for John McCain on Friday?
It’s been a very busy weekend here at Buzzquarters, with all sorts of adventures we need to catch up and tell you about. But, on Friday, we happened to be in the right place at the right time to catch a little of CNN covering Sarah Palin’s speech for John McCain in Arizona.
We just want to speak from the heart for a minute here, and say how much we truly love hearing Sarah Palin speak. Seeing Palin up there with McCain behind her made us remember one of our favorite days of all time: August 29th, 2008, when McCain introduced Palin in Dayton, Ohio as his running mate.
Great Merciful Zeus, that was a wonderful day.
As we’ve told you before, we watched the announcement live on Pioneer Square here in Chicago, seeing Palin speak on the big TVs the NBC affiliate has for the public. All around us a big crowd of Chicagoans gathered, and as Palin delivered a fantastic speech, we heard many of them grumble, “she’s too good…we’ll have to destroy her…she could win this for him”.
It has been the Left’s unrelenting, obsessive goal to do just that — to destroy Sarah Palin — ever since.
Considering that reality, we think back to that last Friday in August and are AWED by the courage Palin showed in getting up on that stage.
She had to know that day would change her life forever. She became target numero uno by giving that speech…and if not for the George Soros-engineered economic collapse in early fall 2008, we believe Palin would have won the presidency for McCain.
There’s no way in Hell people would have been excited to hear Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty speak last Friday in Arizona. People related to those two cucumbers-and-mayonnaise Vichyssoisse Republicans aren’t ever excited to hear them speak. The only people who ever want them to talk are insomniacs, as the two, especially when taken together, are better than a case full of Nyquil.
Seeing McCain behind Palin last night, and Cindy McCain up there on the dais too, reminds us we did everything humanly possible to stop what’s being done to our country by the Left today. We did something we never thought we’d do by becoming Democrats for McCain. And we are so proud of that.
But, we have to say now, and we hope this does not hurt any feelings of McCain supporters, that he was a bad candidate to run for Republicans. We like the man. We are awed by the strength he showed as a POW. We ADORE Cindy McCain and her unbelievable philanthropic works around the world. And Roberta McCain — HELLO — Roberta McCain rocks like nobody’s business. Love. That. Nanagenarian.
To be honest, Meghan McCain we can do without. The less time in front of the microphone for her, the better for everyone.
But, put the McCain sons in front of the camera any damn time you want. Preferably shirtless in boxer briefs at charity car washes, where water fights are most apt to break out.
The MSM pushed McCain’s candidacy, and while we think he would have been a good president, and Cindy would have been one of our best First Ladies ever — with the smarts and policy focus of Hillary Clinton, the kindness and grace of Laura Bush, and the passion to make life better for the struggling and hopeless of Eleanor Roosevelt — looking at McCain, so pale, with his shock white hair, and his timid nature on the national stage, we’re heartbroken the GOP couldn’t send a real fighter into battle in 2008. Ironic, we know, because McCain was a fighter pilot.
But, on the campaign trail, he always pulled his punches. He should have eviscerated Obama as the socialist he is, and exposed everything the American public STILL doesn’t know about this man and his agenda. McCain should have hammered home every day what America would be in for in the The Golden Age of Hope and Change, and he should have smacked Obama with a metaphoric two-by-four 25 hours a day.
Just like, we’re sure, Sarah Palin would have done had she been in the driver’s seat in 2008.
This nation is blessed McCain had the good sense to ignore the fools around him and elevate Palin to the national stage as his VP nominee, instead of giving Tim Pawlenty more time in front of the cameras to perfect his coma-inducing Droopy Dog impression.
If McCain had introduced anyone but Palin on that Friday in August, we’d feel very pessimistic about America’s chances for survival today. There would be no one on the field who we believe will defeat Dr. Utopia in 2012.
Soros’ “October Surprise” in tanking the economy just before the election guaranteed a win for Obama, no matter who McCain had as his VP. But, if McCain had picked Pawlenty or Romney in 2008, there’s be no hope for 2012 out there energizing people, hitting back, and gaining the experience she needs leading a national coalition to take America back.
Say what you will about John McCain, but he kicked off something momentous on August 29th, 2008. He set in motion a chain of events that will lead to our first female president, who will be elected in a landslide if she sets her mind to rallying Americans to take this country back from the collectivists.
When America needs it most, John McCain indeed had a hand in creating the hero whose time and place has come.
That’s what we kept thinking of over and over watching Palin campaign for her former running mate in Arizona. And then Todd would enter the frame, in all his awesome Todd-ness, and we’d be rightfully distracted for a moment.
We just love the Palins.
And no matter what he does, we’ll always like John McCain for putting them on the national stage.
We were never McCainiacs. We supported him because he was the better choice over Obama. But once he picked Palin as his running mate, we were all-in for that campaign, because of HER.
Just as we’ll be all-in whenever Palin needs it, in whatever she does. Today, tomorrow, and in 2012.
"I have diplomatic immunity!!!!"
Here’s a bit of Sunday morning Bizarreness here in Boystown.
After breakfast, we popped into one of the little shops here on Halsted and witnessed quite the scene. And, for once, it wasn’t our friend Panda causing it.
A foreign, Spanish-speaking man and a woman started yelling at the shopkeeper — screaming about diplomatic immunity from taxes. We don’t know if he was from Mexico or someplace else in Latin America, but he was not from Spain itself. The man was oafish and rude, and kept yelling at the clerk to exempt him from taxes because he was “a diplomat”.
It was disgusting.
He would not identify which country he supposedly represented, and he would not give his name, but just kept screaming and yelling about his “immunity”.
It reminded us of that villain in the second or third Lethal Weapon movies, who was from South Africa, and did all sorts of horrible things in America, citing “diplomatic immunity” as his get out of jail free card.
Disgusting.
Mercifully, Chicago is not New York, where friends of ours who live near the UN tell horror stories of the Star Wars cantina of oddballs who make life in the city Hell, with their “diplomatic immunity”.
In liberal arts colleges we were indoctrinated with the “globalization meme” and how wonderful all these third world countries supposedly were, and how we had to respect them, and do whatever they wanted mainly.
Why?
We’ll show these “diplomats” respect when they show respect to the country they are working in. They should be on their very best behavior when representing whatever hellhole they are from, when they are in the United States as “diplomats”.
Not all countries on this Earth are equal.
Americans should never take abuse from foreigners, especially not in our own country.
The Latin “diplomat” left the store ranting and raving in Spanish, with his equally abusive and loud lady friend on his arm, spreading their own particular brand of “diplomacy” here in Boystown.
We wonder what the Ambassador would think if he knew this guy was hanging out in Boystown, yelling at people in a little store selling rainbow flags and greeting cards, on a Sunday morning.
Have any of you out there ever had run-ins with “diplomats” like this?
Can you believe people representing their country would act like that?
Would YOU ever behave that way if you were overseas representing America?
Pamela Geller does it again: calls the collectivists out on their madness
We love Pamela Geller, and look forward to meeting her in person some day, because she is awesome.
She’s got a great article up over at BigGoverment where she points out the obvious: Obamcare is going to tank the American economy.
AT&T reports Obamacare is going to cost it ONE BILLION DOLLARS.
John Deere and Caterpillar combined are expecting a hit of half a billion.
Then taxes hit big companies, big companies pass those hits onto employees and consumers.
People will lose jobs, have to forgo raises, and take salary cuts to protect shareholders’ interests. Consumers will have to pay more for goods while making less under Obamacare, so they’ll really be hit by these taxes TWICE.
Three, four, five, eleventy times, really, as one industry after another raises prices, cuts staff, and struggles to survive under the yoke of oppressive taxation and Obamafication.
Geller is absolutely spot-on right, as usual.
When November rolls around, the difference between the two parties could not be more clear: the Socialist Democrats are for tanking the economy, taking away what you worked hard for and redistributing it to the lazy, and driving this country into the ground so it can be a third world nation like “190 other ones in the world”.
Republicans need to grow spines, armor up, and fight for America.
If they do that, it will be stunning how many Americans who’ve never voted Republican before will rise up and stand with them.
Count us in with that.
Big time.
Former First Lady Barbara Bush Hospitalized: Please Keep Her In Your Thoughts
h/t Chrissy the Hyphenated
Former First Lady Barbara Bush has been hospitalized again, and while doctors say it’s not serious, and that she just wasn’t feeling well, the woman is 84 and had heart surgery last year, so every trip to the hospital is a cause of concern.
Our current first lady makes us appreciate the women who preceded her in the White House more and more every day — they are national treasures, and were proud of their country every day of their lives, even before their husbands were picked to occupy the White House.
Barbara Bush would also never, EVER, berate anyone else for their weight without taking a jab at her own robust physique. We can’t imagine her ever calling anyone’s child “chubby”, let alone her own. She championed adult literacy and helped thousands of people learn to read, while Mrs. Utopia seems interested only in reading magazines that are about her and her “fashion sense”, and has yet to help anyone with anything substantive that we’re aware of.
Barbara Bush was a class act as First Lady.
Unlike the woman in that role today.
So, our thoughts and prayers are with Barbara Bush today for her speedy recovery. She’s a national treasure and our collective First Grandma Emeritus, and she’s loved very, very much by many of you out there we are sure.
Great Merciful Zeus. We agree with Maureen Dowd on something.
Great Merciful Zeus.
We agree with Maureen Dowd on something this morning.
Surprisingly, it’s not that she’s a terrible writer. She is — but she just doesn’t realize it.
It’s also not the fact we think she should stop hiding in people’s crawl spaces, eating their cereal at night, and making “laffy sounds” because she’s having so much fun “pretending to be a gremlin”.
Dowd is 100% pro-hiding in crawl spaces and creeping around at night.
So, on these two points we disagree.
But, today Dowd hit on an interesting point of agreement with us, after spending hours randomly hitting keys on her computer, producing that sole interesting nugget of revelation amidst so much trademarked nonsense.
Dowd thinks the Catholic Church needs to make a nun the next pope.
She also thins Pope Benedict should resign his office.
We agree. On both counts.
Let’s start with the latter.
We have never been a fan of Pope Benedict. While John Paul the Great was a tough act for anyone to follow, selecting a man who more closely resembles Emperor Palpatine than his kindly, sainted predecessor was a colossal mistake of the conclave of cardinals. Allowing little red birds to hire anyone is beyond lunacy, but they got it right with JP. Not so much with the man who used to be called “God’s rottweiler”. Rotten to the core is a more apt description.
We’ve always been uncomfortable with his history in Hitler’s Germany. While it’s true every German was forced to join the institutions of the Reich, we think it should also be true that those still alive with connections to that much evil should recuse themselves from positions such as Pope, just because it looks bad. Similarly, anyone who appeared in movies such as Battlefield Earth or Gigli should voluntarily never make another picture. For the good of everyone. There are other things to do with their lives. Spare all of us the awkwardness of being reminded of so much terrible condensed in one place.
More so than the Hitler Youth appearances, we find it beyond reprehensible that Benedict knew of sexual abuse going on in Wisconsin and in Germany for years and did nothing about it. He claims he never read any of the memos sent to him about pedophiles in his ranks, because he received “almost a thousand memos a year”. As Dowd notes in her piece, then-cardinal Ratzinger used to brag about reading immense volumes of medieval scribblings on theology. But, he couldn’t find the time to read three memos a day pertaining to priests destroying the lives of little boys?
We just don’t buy that.
Palpatine knew what was going on, and Palpatine chose to protect bad priests at the expense of innocents being abused.
He should announce he has serious health problems and retire to Bavaria, or maybe Argentina, where so many others from the old HY days retired.
Dowd has a good line in her article about nuns having a great deal of experience cleaning up the messes left by priests.
Just as we believe President Palin will restore this country after the disaster that is Dr. Utopia, “The One” termer, we believe a nun could indeed, as the second female Pope (after Pope Joan centuries ago), root the evil out of the church.
Men in dresses have fouled things up — as, frankly, men in dresses often do.
Let a woman lead them.
To salvation and a return to greatness.
Someone bold and feisty, who will protect children like a big momma grizzly, the way the nuns in our Catholic schools growing up always did. It’s too bad all those awesome nuns who taught us are all gone now, because Sister Francis Borgia, Sister Therese Marie, Sister Mary Howard, and Sister Michael Immaculata would have made great Popes.
We have a feeling the next Pope will be from Africa, as the cardinals almost picked an African the last go-round. We’ve known a lot of people from Africa over the years, and all of them have had really strong hearts and good souls. But the African priests we’ve known have been push-overs: very jovial, kindly, and a lot like John Paul the Great, actually.
That’s not what’s needed now.
What the Church needs is a ruler-wielding, task-mastering, skull-cracking, old school NUN to whip everyone into shape and terrorize every pederast from Vatican City to Boston and beyond, with all points in between.
Ain’t nobody who can put the holy terror in the hearts of evil doers than an experienced nun.
Or Batman.
But, since Batman isn’t real, but nuns are, the choice for the next Pope is clear.
But — you say — it’s against the Church’s rules to elevate a woman to priesthood, let alone Pope.
It’s against the Church’s rules to molest small boys, but that doesn’t seem to be a rule that’s taken very seriously by many in the Vatican.
So, why should the no women in the papacy be abided either?
