Obama Sings Same Old Song On Health Care: This MUST Be Passed Immediately!

In his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, President Obama once again attempted to use fear and urgency as the principal reasons to pass his Health Care Reform. With support rapidly dwindling in the public sector for both the legislation and his style of delivery (It’s got to be passed immediately or the world will end as we know it!), he revisited all the talking points of the issue.

In fact, he did everything but parade Janeane Garafalo around to remind us that anyone who fails to support this legislation immediately is simply a tea-bagging rednecked racist who can’t stand having a black man in the White House.

Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona sets the record straight in his reply:

To that, I would add the following in response to Obama’s speech.

“This is an issue that affects the health and financial well-being of every single American and the stability of our entire economy.”

All the more reason not to rush this process. Remember how you rushed to get Crapulus One (the stimulus package you immediately shoved down our throats when you took office) passed? It had to be right away, you said. And it still hasn’t started to do its work, at least not down here at ground zero.  How about a unique approach, Mr. President? How about taking the time to get it right?

It’s about a woman in Colorado who told us that when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, her insurance company – the one she’d paid over $700 a month to – refused to pay for her treatment. She had to use up her retirement funds to save her own life.

Sad story, indeed, if it’s true. So she had a lousy insurance company and they ought to be targeted. Not the entire health care industry. But I can counter that with the story of a high school friend, who moved to England when she married. At the age of 55, four years ago, she discovered a lump on her breast. By the time the government run health care (i.e., socialized medicine similar to what you’re touting) got around to helping her, the lump had gone from pre-cancerous to inoperable, as it had spread to other areas of her body. She died as a result of not having timely access to quality medical care… something we already have in this country (which is one reason so many Europeans choose to come here and pay for it. They can get treatment before it’s too late).

Go, Granny Go!! Half A Million Miles And Still Layin’ Rubber!

90 Year-old Rachel Veitch

Sometimes, our motto (“Our World Discussed”) implores us to step outside the world of politics and, when we do so, it’s not long before we come upon something interesting. This is one of those times.  In 1964, California rockers Jan & Dean had a number one hit with “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena,” a song about about a little old granny who drove a “brand new, shiny Red Super Stock Dodge.”

About the time that song came out, a “45 year-old” Orlando Florida woman named Rachel Veitch decided to buy a “Brand new shiny white Mercury Caliente.”  She named it “Chariot” and decided she would keep this car for a long time.  Forty-five years later, the now 90 year-old still drives it daily.

In fact, in 2007, she drove it, by herself, from her home in Orlando all the way to Pennsylvania for her 70th High School Class Reunion.

Knowing she was going to keep the car “a long time,” she has always looked for (and bought) replacement parts that came with a “Lifetime Warranty.”  That’s included Midas Mufflers (she’s gone through seven mufflers),  Sears Shocks (3 sets) and J.C. Penny Battery (she’s on her 16th free battery replacement).

I’d like to say that this is how durable American cars can be when you pamper them. But that hasn’t been the case completely. While she changes the oil every 3,000 miles, and does all scheduled maintenance on time, she’s been known to “stick her foot in it” at times. She’s had the car up to 120 mph according to her, and she got a speeding ticket 12 years ago for doing 92 mph in a 55 mph zone.

Veitch jokes that the car has been more faithful to her than her ex-husbands and that’s why it’s around and they aren’t.

She’s got a permit to carry a concealed weapon, guys, so I’d think twice before plotting to steal Chariot.  And she’s  “packing” at all times.  No shrinking violet here…

She proudly points out that “Caliente” is Spanish for “Hot.”

When a local reporter asked if she considered trading in Chariot under President Obama’s “Cash for Clunkers” program (which would qualify her for $4,500 towards a new car because of the V-8′s paltry 15 mpg),  Veitch replied: “He ain’t gonna get mine… I’ll die fighting for her.”

Yeah, this is one Caliente Granny, that’s for sure… GO GRANNY GO!  

Note: You can watch an interview with Rachel here.

Gerry Ashley

Mass Health Care FAILING As US Healthcare Showdown Looms

As the President’s Healthcare Reform plan heads for a showdown in the United States Senate, key players line up in their respective corners of the ring. Each side is calling on its heavy hitters to determine which way the country will go. The outcome may well determine whether or not America can survive economically.

The Obama administration is crowing this morning because the House of Representatives plan just got the endorsement of the 800 pound gorilla known as the American Medical Association (AMA). The endorsement was announced yesterday.

But the Wall St. Journal is reporting a significant blow to the health plan was also delivered yesterday by director of the Congressional Budget Office Douglas Elmendorf, who  told the Senate Budget Committee that one of the main goals of the proposals currently under consideration, containing costs, would fail to contain costs. Elmendorf went so far as to say Obamacare could actually worsen the problem of rapidly escalating medical spending.

This report comes on the heels of yet another potentially lethal blow to the legislation:  a textbook example of how Healthcare Reform has been tried… and failed… here in America already. The state which has already implemented its own version of socialized health care (Massachusetts) is having to cut back on the number of people being covered… it’s just too expensive.  The New York Times is reporting:

The new state budget in Massachusetts eliminates health care coverage for some 30,000 legal immigrants to help close a growing deficit, reversing progress toward universal coverage just as Congress looks to the state as a model for overhauling the nation’s health care system.

Many small business owners have done the math and realize they will be caught in a double whammy, coupled with a Catch-22. From CBS News:

The White House says most Americans would be winners. But try telling that to Chris Warner who owns a small mountain climbing business

He’s climbed the two tallest mountains in the world, Everest and K2, but says surviving health reform could be his toughest challenge yet.

“We really could find ourselves in a position where a lot more small businesses are going to go bankrupt,” he said.

Warner worries about getting hit by a double whammy

First, under the House bill, businesses with payrolls of more than $400,000, like Warner’s, must either provide health insurance for their employees or pay a penalty of 8 percent of their payroll.

That could add over $100,000 to Warner’s tax bill.

“Do we do it by not giving our employees a raise, not reinvesting back in our company? It’s just that classic Catch-22 for small businesses,” Warner said.

The bottom line for many small- to medium-sized businesses, is that if the current National Health Care legislation becomes law, they will have no choice but to close down, or at the very least, cut back on the number of people they employ out of economic necessity just to survive. This is in stark contrast to the Obama administration claim of how many jobs will be “created or saved.”

Many constituents have been melting the phone lines of their legislators in Washington, threatening to vote them out of office if they vote in favor of this socialist boondoggle that would very likely cause the closing of many small businesses and further cripple our already over-taxed economy (pun intended). It seems to be having a positive effect. From the July 7th Washington Times:

“I think there is a genuine alarm,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican. “Americans see the government now running banks, insurance companies, automobile companies … and now they fear the government wants to take over health care as well.”

Politico.com brings a balanced perspective to this issue, pointing out, that while Obama is correct that health care reform is an essential part of a strong economy, the legislation currently pending moves in the wrong direction to accomplish this and, in fact, could damage  the remaining portion of our economy still intact after six months of Obama’s “smack-down” stimulus spending. In particular their concern is that we MUST avoid making the same mistakes with Healthcare Reform legislation (i.e., uncontrolled spending with not enough control built in) that were made with the stimulus package.

Please, folks, now is the time to stand up and do your part to protect what is left of our existing health care system as well as the free enterprise system before it is destroyed from within via  “Obamacare” costs.

KEEP CALLING your Senators’ offices and letting them know in no uncertain terms the cost of their vote if they should vote to pass this albatross. While health care reform is necessary, it doesn’t justify a poor plan rushed through that is poorly designed and will ultimately cause more damage to our economy.

Sigh… this is what you get when you elect a President who has never even run a lemonade stand and blindly hand him the keys to the economy. And Joe Biden is the only one of the two honest enough to admit they “miscalculated” the economy. Take a closer look, Joe, and I think you’ll find you miscalculated health care too.

Gerry Ashley

I Remember Apollo 11: 40 Years Ago

Forty years ago yesterday, three of the bravest men who ever lived started a journey no-one else had ever taken. Looking now at the craft in which they traveled, they were even braver than I remember thinking them back in July of 1969.

These were our heroes, and they were more than equal to the job at hand: going to the Moon!

Actually, it apparently got so mundane in the capsule, that 40 years ago today, July 17, 1969, the big news of the day was hearing and seeing Mike Collins discuss what the astronauts had to eat aboard Apollo 11.

What, no Tang?

Those truly were heady days.

Stoutcat

Losing REAL Heroes… And Our Perspective

Some of you may have received word recently about the  passing of a real American hero.  No,  I’m not referring to a certain Pop Singer with a troubled childhood manifested in odd and seriously questionable behavior as an adult.

And no, there was no 24/7 coverage on either the internet or the cable news channels.

There were no fans crying outside his home to mourn his passing.  No special editions of Night Line or 20/20.  In fact, he barely got any mention in the press at all. And, actually, that’s probably just fine with him.

Geraldo Rivera didn’t camp outside his house hoping for big ratings. After all, isn’t that all network news is all about these days?

Hell, even Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews couldn’t be bothered to take time out from their Obama Worship Group to provide coverage.  I’d bet the farm that neither one of these “journalists” (Bawhahahahahahaaa!) had even heard of him.

"Shifty" Powers

But on June 17th, (about a week before the passing of Michael Jackson), death claimed World War II hero Darrell “Shifty” Powers.

In somewhat of an irony, many of today’s  young men cheered on the exploits of Shifty and his fellow soldiers of the famed EZ Co  of the 101st Airborne Division. They came to be more widely known as the Band of Brothers. I’m sure Shifty and his comrades were an inspiration to many young men and women in the military today, based on the excellent HBO/Steven Spielberg mini-series of that name.

Well, here… let Shifty tell you a little bit about himself in his own words:

One of the reasons we find this country in the state it’s in today is because we’ve allowed “Pop Culture” (an oxymoron if there ever was one) to replace true culture.  (See Alan’s excellent post for more about this.) When it becomes more important for young people to know why Jessica Simpson and Tony Romo broke up than why our troops are still in Afghanistan, we’ve lost perspective.

When it’s more important to people who gets booted from American Idol than for them to take a moment to study the character of someone who is hoping to be confirmed to a life-time position on the United States Supreme Court, we’ve lost perspective.

And when we lose a true hero like Shifty Powers and the media virtually ignores it, but spends weeks mourning publicly over every aspect of the death of  a troubled pop star who, at the very least, acted horrendously inappropriately around young boys, we have lost all perspective of what is important.

We are truly becoming a nation of bread and circuses. And that goes a long, long way towards explaining how we have wound up with a President whose entire agenda seems to be based on that concept.

To Shifty: Thank you for your bravery, your decency, your dedication to your country and for “getting it.” I’m glad you got to live your life in the America that was free and got to enjoy the fruits of your toil, sacrifice, and labor.  And don’t take this the wrong way, sir, but I’m kind of glad you won’t be here to see the final squandering of the embarrassment of riches that you, your band of brothers, and all the WWII veterans placed upon our table.

When a soldier passes, it is often said by his/her comerades, “Thanks for your services… we’ll take it from here.”  And while I have no doubt today’s military is more than qualified to do just that, I have to question the public who mourns more the celebrity, and the government who panders to that public.

Welcome to the final days of the Roman Empire.

Gerry Ashley

Levi Johnston’s “McClellan Moment”

Levi Johnston and son.

Well, it had to happen. As painful as it is, it had to happen. Levi (MIA father of Sarah Palin’s grandchild) had to have his 15 minutes of fame… Ouch. And, now he’s talking about why Sarah Palin stepped down. (According to Levi, the soon-to-be ex-Governor of Alaska was looking for money, and her personality seemed to change.)

So where does it all end? There’s Kato Kaelin, Anna Nichole Smith, and Paris Hilton… People who never really brought anything to the table, and simply glommed on to someone famous or to the very glitz of fame itself. When do we as a society stop leering at news’ “Special Reports” of live high-speed car chases, fawning over whacko baby danglers, and cheating sports stars? In other words, when do we bottom out? Will it finally be when we have a TV show based on “Dirty Jobs” which feature such enlightening episodes as “Roadkill Cleaners & Chinatown Garbage Collector” on the Discovery Channel? Apparently not. Maybe it will be a “reality show” centered around a VD clinic?

This is just flat-out crazy, and Levi Johnston is simply one more example of the media’s willingness to pimp to our hedonistic society virtually any titillation that would stiffen their ratings and stroke our Id. Witness the picture above.

Back in 2008, Scott McClellan wrote the “tell all” book “What Happened“, a petty tome that bashed the Bush White House. In it and the resulting media storm he betrayed both trust and the truth for speculation and sales. In my opinion, he was and is a tawdry little man who was over his head. Levi Johnston should take note of McClellan’s solipsism before he too is thrown on the seamy scrap heap of cultural and political wannabees.

Alan Speakman

DemCare: Confusion, Mis-direction, and Red Tape

UPDATE: Hah! Irishspy calls it the health plan from Planet Ten. We’re laughing while we can, monkeyboys!

By now, you have probably seen this chart, produced by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), on the mish-mash of new bureaus, programs, agencies, and commissions that would be the necessary outcome of the passage of the health care plan presented by House Democrats.

Click to embiggen

As you can see, it starts at the top with the President and Congress. Consumers are on the left, and health care providers are on the right. Everything else is a huge jumble of all that new red tape that would be required if this bill passes. but if you look closely, you can see that there are some pretty questionable items that look to come between you and your health care provider:

• What have the Office of Civil Rights and the Office of Minority Rights to do with anything? Are minorities subject to different standards of care?
• Why is there an Inspector General and a Special HIE Inspector General (whatever that is), and if they are both really necessary, why are they not adjuncts to one another?
• If everybody gets health care, why do we need to continue to spend tens of billions of dollars on the recently-expanded S-CHIP program?
• Just what does the Health Benefits Advisory Committee do? Are they the ones who decide that my mother is too old, at age 77, for an operation? And who is on this committee? Who chooses them?

The questions just beg to be asked. Of course, not everyone will run into all the red tape outlined above every time they need care. But it sure looks like there’s plenty for everyone, just in case.

If Congress could be persuaded to write and pass a health care bill that they would submit their own families to, it might be a bill worthy of consideration. I don’t think this is it.

Stoutcat

More to Life than Politics

Amazing as it may seem, there is sometimes more to life than the circus we see every day from our elected officials, appointees, czars, lobbyists, and the like. Occasionally, life takes a swipe and forces one from behind the keyboard and out into the wilds. Especially if one is on vacation. Especially if it’s a cloudless 85 degrees. And of course especially if one is on Cape Cod.

On such a day as this, it was incumbent upon me to take my kayak out on local waters for a trek from pond to ocean and back, communing with nature, taking photos, and generally having a life.

Having fought the tide and the breeze all the way downstream from Swan Pond to Nantucket Sound, taking photos of the local wildlife (such as branta canadensis, below) as I went, I decided to beach my craft, stretch my legs, and perhaps take a quick swim before my return trip.

Canada goose (branta canadensis)

Nature may not actually be red in tooth and claw these days, but she sure has a quirky sense of humor. As I was about to beach the kayak, a sudden series of waves gave a not-so-gentle push, the kayak turned turtle, and into the water I went. Unfortunately, also into the water went a Palm Treo cell phone, a hand-held GPS, a very nice Canon DSLR camera, and a small video recorder. All of these were in plastic bags; however not one of the bags was actually sealed. After assessing the damage, trying to dry what I could (not much, as my towel of course was also soaked), I righted the boat, bailed out the small bit of water remaining in the cockpit with one of my Crocs, and headed back upstream, the journey back made easier by the push of the tide and the wind.

Having successfully retrieved from the flash disk the hundred or so photos I took on the trip out, I have some small (very small) hope that the Canon might not be beyond repair. Sadly, the video camera and the cell phone are toast. The GPS, being made for the outdoors, is likely fine.

Great egret (ardea alba)

Maybe I should stick to politics after all.

Stoutcat

Cross-posted at eBirdseed.com

Another One to Watch

Looks like politics runs in the Cheney family: Liz Cheney hasn’t ruled out a possible Congressional run. And she surely has the intelligence, the presence, and the grasp of situational politics to be successful:

Although, perhaps she’d be better behind the scenes, playing the Karl Rove role to Sarah Palin’s George W. Bush… Très formidable!

H/T: HotAir

Stoutcat

The American Revolution of 2010 and 2012

Take a look at the the diagram below…

No great surprise right? But here’s the hitch… Americans are sick and tired of these two parties. Consider that we’re roughly one third Democrat, one third Republican, and one third Independent, and that the current shift away from the two major parties and into sanity independence is trending strongly upward, according to Pew Research:

Quite simply, people are disgusted with the two-party, good-old-boy, nudge-nudge-wink-wink political machine. Our values are no longer reflected by our elected officials; and their greedy selfish hubris is killing us.

Mark these words… The elections of 2010 and 2012 will witness a sea change in this country. We’re sick and tired of czars and bills that no one reads. (Oh by the way, now there’s talk of a “Health Insurance Czar” that would mold our health care system just in case the ruminations rattling around DC don’t actualize.)

No… There is a storm brewing, and it’s reflected in those charts above.

Enough is enough.

Alan Speakman