Michael Moore's Letter To Obama

The Khaki Elephant has not exactly been a defender of Barack Obama. In fact, the posts on this blog tend to revolve around the revelation that President Obama may well be the worst president in U. S. history, from his juvenile economic policies to his love affair with government control. His leadership has been so amateur and damaging that is seemed nothing could prompt support from these pages . . . enter Michael Moore.

Today Michael Moore released an open letter to Barack Obama criticizing any strategy that would increase troop size in Afghanistan. In Moore's words,

"If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do . . ."

This is a far cry from Moore's initial take on the Afghanistan War depicted in his the epic work of misinformation, Fahrenheit 9/11, where he used a clip of Richard Clarke claiming that Bush's response to 9/11 in Afghanistan was "slow and small," a claim that had Moore's implied agreement in the film since he did not contradict it. Of course, that was back in the day when Moore criticized the Iran war by claiming it wasn't justified because Bin Laden was in Afghanistan. Wait a minute, didn't Obama promise to track down Bin Laden by now? Anyway, back to Michael Moore . . .

I have two problems with virtually everything Michael Moore does. First, his work is always based an overt manipulations of the truth that only his supporters and the functioning brain dead fail to see through. Second, well, if you try to follow his logic for more than a few minutes you need only be mildly observant to determine that Moore simply isn't very bright.

His manipulation of the truth is ever present. If you found Fahrenheit 9/11 then check out Fahrenhype 9/11 which exposes the misleading edits and outright lies of his post-terrorist attack treatise . . . though, come to think of it, in Dude, Where's My Country Moore claims there is no Terrorist threat. His tactics shouldn't surprise us since he launched his career with the film Roger and Me, an alleged documentary containing the primary premise that he could not get an interview with then GM Chair Roger Smith, and the film never mentioned the fact that Smith actually granted an interview.

The letter to Obama contains Moore's trademark manipulations (my gentle-mood way of saying "lies"). In the letter he claims to know that there are "LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan," though how he counted them we may never know. He implies that Obama's actions are prompted by "corporate backers" who could only be the dreaded "big oil" that Moore claimed were behind the initial push into Afghanistan (though Moore has never explained why America has failed to get all that blessed oil Bush was after). Moore asks "what would Martin Luther King, Jr. do?" apparently forgetting the Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican with little tolerance for the laundry list of lies that are Michael Moore's make up. He asks Obama "What would your grandmother do?" apparently forgetting that she was a "typical white woman."

But what bothers me the most about Moore is that he's just not very bright, yet some people fail to see it. His logic is virtually non-existent. For example, here is his choice for shining example of a President doing what's right when it comes to avoiding war:

We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't Truman the only world leader to drop atomic bombs on populated cities? Nice choice of an "anti-military" president, genius. Of course, in the mind of Moore the intellect is hardly important when one can be blinded by hatred of the U.S. military. As his letter explains,

Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD.

Forget his ignorance that the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Great Britain, Israel, France and Germany all believed in the existence of WMDs in Iran, Moore's insincere "love" for our kids in the military is undercut but his obvious failure to acknowledge that our military leaders are those same "kids in the armed services" with added experience. They are not the rabid torturers Moore pretends them to be. Nor are they hell bent on sending "more poor people to kill other poor people" just for a few kicks (Note: I suppose Moore is referring to our soldiers as the first "poor" in that equation, once again ignoring Pentagon statistics that American soldiers come from families with a higher average income than non-military Americans . . . but let's not let facts get in the way).

The bottom line is that we cannot fail in Afghanistan. Barack Obama may have considered withdrawal while he was campaigning, but it appears as though reality has set in and he knows the price of failure. We paid it on 9/11/01. Michael Moore would have us pay it again.

Climate Change Data Trashed

Climate Gate Continues . . .

The University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit has admitted that they threw away the data on which their global warming theories were based. That's right, the data that allegedly supported Al Gore's apocalyptic environmentalism was tossed in the trash along side last year's Marks & Spencer ad. And here I'll drop the rather important side note that the UEA's Climate Research Unit is the primary source of data for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their attempt to levy climate taxes on countries like America (taxes that Bush was wise enough to condemn while Obama, well, Obama is Obama). You may have heard of the Kyoto Protocol which bases its existence on this data.

Why, it's almost as if the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit had something to hide.

On the heels of last week's hacked e-mails exposing what appears to be a planned manipulation of data coupled with strategic attempts to discredit skeptics . . . oh, and let's not forget that New Zealand's climate change proponents were caught doctoring statistics . . . the doomsayers of the global warming crowd have been dealt another blow.

According to reports, the University of East Anglia could not comply with requests for their documents and data that were sought under Freedom of Information legislation because, well, they . . . um . . . they . . . threw it away, undoubtedly just before their dog was about to eat it. Of course, in their minds this should pose no concern as they "do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.” In other words, nobody should worry about reviewing our data, just trust us. So much for peer review.

Now I'm no scientist, but isn't science supposed to be based on analyzing data? And isn't that data generally maintained (i.e., not "thrown away") in case your hypothesis shifts during evaluation? And doesn't peer review require access to the raw, undoctored data? I guess I need to google the University of East Anglia since I don't know much about the school. Maybe I'm too harsh on them since the steps of scientific method generally aren't covered until the 3rd grade or so.

Party Crashing The State Dinner Prompts Obama To Action

The military has been asking for decisive direction from Barack Obama concerning a certain deadly war in Afghanistan for months, but it took a pair of tax-dodging party crashers to swing the Commander in Chief into immediate action. And this despite his obvious affinity for tax cheats, having carried a number of them into the White House along with the new drapes.

According to NBC:

A Secret Service officer stationed at the first checkpoint at the White House state dinner last Tuesday did not verify the names of a couple allowed in even though they were not on the guest list, a senior law enforcement official told NBC News on Friday.

The officer saw that Tareq and Michaele Salahi were not on the list and, rather than verifying if they were legitimate guests, assumed they would be vetted at the next checkpoint and allowed them to pass, NBC learned.

The source also confirmed what two White House staff sources earlier told NBC News, that the Salahis were not “waved in” or had their names manually entered into the White House computer to gain entry.

The couple were vetted at the next checkpoint, but when their car was turned away they simply got out of the vehicle and walked to the pedestrian entrance. No need to call in Jason Bourne for this security breach.

Obama has called for an immediate investigation. No doubt there where soon be a panel, complete with a new "State Dinner Czar," to provide some expert advice on security . . . perhaps they could use automotive industry representatives for the task since they didn't use them for the "expert" panel on the automotive industry.

Meanwhile, what is Obama's plan for Afghanistan?

H/T: Hot Air

And here is some video of the grand entrance:

When An Apology Isn't An Apology

I saw this over at Holycoast.com, describing yet another "meaning less apology where people who didn't commit the offense apologize to people who weren't harmed":

Members of one of America's oldest Protestant churches officially apologized Friday — for the first time — for massacring and displacing Native Americans 400 years ago."We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes and great love for this land," the Rev. Robert Chase told descendants from both sides. "With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events."

Apology? This is nothing more than a typically liberal self-indulgence. Try as he might, the Rev. Robert Chase cannot give an apology for the acts of others to people who were not among the offended. And the good Reverend (and people like him) knows it. The Reverend knows that when he says "we" he is really saying "they." It's easy to apologize for the actions of others, especially when you can do so with a nod and wink that you would never have done something like that yourself.

Let's face it, this is not an apology but an attempt to elevate oneself with an air of innocence and superiority. It's a tactic Barack Obama uses virtually every time he steps on foreign soil.

New Zealand's Role In The Global Warming Hoax

Watts Up With That? just dropped a report on the latest scandal cooling the jets of the global warming crowd. According the the award winning science blog:

The figures published on NIWA’s [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century
The caption to the photo on the NiWA site reads:
From NIWA’s web site — Figure 7: Mean annual temperature over New Zealand, from 1853 to 2008 inclusive, based on between 2 (from 1853) and 7 (from 1908) long-term station records. The blue and red bars show annual differences from the 1971 – 2000 average, the solid black line is a smoothed time series, and the dotted [straight] line is the linear trend over 1909 to 2008 (0.92°C/100 years).

But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result:

In other words,

What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.

About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming . . . There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.

Ah, but perhaps we could venture a guess as to why the NIWA falsified statistics to "demonstrate" a global warming trend? Could it be, oh, I don't know . . . money? Al Gore is not the only one bent on getting fat from the foment of the global warming hoax.

Minnesota Still Sucks

While driving through the rain today, maneuvering around construction pylons, I was struck by a random thought, "Minnesota still sucks."

It dawned on me that it is Minnesota's fault that we are on the verge of a Senatorial debate that could forever alter our country's leadership in health care/pharmaceutical innovation and economic stability. With their idiot election of failed talk show host and least amusing SNL alum, Al Franken, they gave the Senate the magical 60 left-leaning loons who are driving this country down it's current legislative path concerning health care. I know what you're thinking: Minnesotans didn't actually elect Franken, he stole the vote through judicial manipulation. True, but the fact that the vote was close enough to allow for that to happen should tell you all that you need to know about the state's voting population. Some suggest drug testing for Minnesota voters, I'd prefer IQ tests.

(Before some of you once again bring up the 2000 Presidential election with claims the Bush stole that election via the Supreme Court, I suggest that you review what the Supreme Court actually ruled on [hint, it was not the vote tally] and, more importantly, the fact that every subsequent recount of Florida not only proved Bush the winner, but demonstrated that he won the state by a greater margin that was officially recorded.)

Back to Minnesota sucking. First they introduce Gov. Jesse "the body" Ventura into mainstream political dialogue where he can continue to baffle the country with claims that 9/11 was an inside job, then they give us a babbling baboon like Franken who's presence allows for a Senatorial 60 leftest, giving the Dems absolute power in a critical time.

Not even the acquisition of Bret Farve can change the cold, cruel fact: Minnesota still sucks.

Debt Shock

Even the laughably liberal New York Times is starting to experience Obamanomic sticker shock. According to the Times headline, the “Federal Government Faces Balloon in Debt Payments: At $700 Billion a Year, Cost Will Top Budgets for 2 Wars, Education, Energy.” The page one article explains that the debt is rising so quickly that "payment shock" is knocking on the door of the American economy so "there is little doubt that the United States' long-term budget crisis is becoming too big to postpone."

Little wonder. With his "brilliant" plans of bailout bucks to GM before bankrupcy and a stimulus package that has produced fewer jobs of late than the buggy whip industry, Obama has displayed the economic accumen of a '70s child star before their '90s rehab. And now he wants to add a trillion dollar government managed health care system to the mix. A system directed by the same people who have destroyed the fiscal condition of medicare, social security and the post office. Looks like we could be in store for generations of debt shock.

ObamaCare And The Louisiana Purchase

When Thomas Jefferson dropped some coin for the Louisiana Purchase back in 1803, most folk considered it a pretty good deal. America had to borrow $15 millions from Britain (at 6% interest) to make the purchase from France but in the end gained 800,000 square miles of land and dialed down the growing threat of war with the French (and this in the days before their idea of conflict was arguing over the proper decorum for surrender).

Now that deal seems better than ever.

Obama and his cronies just made another Louisiana Purchase, this one borrowing over $100 million from our children's financial future, to pay for a single vote: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) "YEA" vote to move forward with the Senatorial debate on their version of the ObamaCare bill. Well, it's been reported as a $100 million provision specifically for the state of Louisiana but Landrieu added a little clarification to the agreement, "I am not going to be defensive," she declared. "And it's not a $100 million fix. It's a $300 million fix." And you thought Napoleon had a complex about power.

Not only are we now talking $300 million in tax payers dollars that the Democrats have so easily given away, but they did so without even securing Landrieu's vote on the final bill as she explained that her vote to proceed with the debate did not ensure that she would ultimately vote for the bill.

So I wonder . . . when it comes time for the actual vote, how much will the Dems give to other fence-riders in order to buy their love and seize control of another private sector institution? With Harry Reid pimping Obama's agenda we're about to literally witness a parliament of whores.

Reid Secures 60 Votes For ObamaCare

The will of the people be damned! The future of our children can go to blazes! The world's most powerful economy can collapse to Euro-standards! It appears as though the obtuse Senate leader Harry Reid has the 60 votes needed to move forward with the worst bill in America's long history.

After Sen. Mary Mary Landrieu of Louisiana sold her vote to Reid for a $100 million provision, Sens Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas became the 60th senator to agree to cast her vote in favor of this debacle. It's still unclear how much it will cost the American tax payers for Blanche's vote.

Let this be a lesson to the American people -- when you are voting for a Democrat you are not voting for a person, you are voting for a liberal agenda.

We just learned that the government run postal service lost $3.8 billion last year, and the left now wants to provide that same level of competence to the direction of America's health care system.

The Orwellian Obama administration has sealed government records, seized private corporations and now have their sites firmly set to subdue the populace through government controlled health care, despite the voice of the majority who believe the private sector is best equipped to provide medical care and advances.

Make your voice known. Contact every politician with a "D" affixed to their name and let them know that this will not stand. They have revealed their agenda of mass control and America will not stand for it!

The Global Warming Hoax Cont.

Computer hacking is bad. Awful. Real, real naughty. That said, the hacking of e-mail exchanges from a British University has revealed that the hackers are not the only real, real naughty on the internet. And I'm not even talking about The Huffington Post.

Over 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents were lifted from the electronic banks at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain, many of which contain discussions on how to manipulate climate change data and derisive attacks on skeptics of anthropogenic global warming. Oh, how I hate to use the word "conspiracy" but what do you do when it fits? Is this further evidence that the global warming movement is a hoax aimed at gaining funding for certain university departments and pocket-loads of spending cash for Al Gore?

The e-mail exchanges are between some of the most prominent proponents of the global warming hysteria including James Hansen (Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies), Michael Mann (of Mann's "Hockey Stick" fame), Stephen Schneider (Al Gore's buddy), and Gavin Schmidt (NASA climate modeler). Are the e-mails legit? Well, it has been verified by the BBC and the university itself that these self-serving servers have been hacked.

Since I doubt you'll see any of these damaging emails surface in the mainstram media, here are some examples of the exchanges for your edification:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: //';l[1]='a';l[2]='/';l[3]='<';l[4]=' 110';l[5]=' 114';l[6]=' 111';l[7]=' 98';l[8]=' 115';[9]=' 111';l[10]=' 46';l[11]=' 88';l[12]=' 88';l[13]=' 88';l[14]=' 64';l[15]=' 97';l[16]= 102';l[17]=' 102';l[18]=' 105';l[19]=' 114';l[20]=' 98';l[21]=' 46';l[22]=' 107';l[23]='>';l[24]='\"';l[25]=' 110';l[26]=' 114';l[27]=' 111';l[28]=' 98';l[29]=' 115';l[30]=' 111';l[31]=' 46';l[32]=' 88';l[33]=' 88';l[34]=' 88';l[35]=' 64';l[36]=' 97';l[37]=' 102';l[38]=' 102';l[39]=' 105';l[40]=' 114';l[41]=' 98';l[42]=' 46';l[43]=' 107';l[44]=':';l[45]='o';l[46]='t';l[47]='l';l[48]='i';l[49]='a';l[50]='m';l[51]='\"';l[52]='=';l[53]='f';l[54]='e';l[55]='r';l[56]='h';l[57]='a ';l[58]='<'; for (var i = l.length-1; i >= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') document.write("&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"); else document.write(unescape(l[i])); } //]]> k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit
Telephone XXXX School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX
University of East Anglia Norwich

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael MannSubject:
Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.

This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)***

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.***

From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith
will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit

From: “Michael E. Mann”
To: Tim Osborn, Keith Briffa
Subject: update Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 16:51:53 -0500
Cc: Gavin Schmidt

Guys,

I see that Science has already gone online w/ the new issue, so we put up the RC post. By now, you’ve probably read that nasty McIntyre thing. Apparently, he violated the embargo on his website (I don’t go there personally, but so I’m informed).

Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include.

You’re also welcome to do a followup guest post, etc. think of RC as a resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put forward by the McIntyres of the world. Just let us know. We’ll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics dont’get to use the RC comments as a megaphone…

This one is unattributed

Options appear to be:

Send them the data

Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.

Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

The House Passes Obamacare (H.R. 3200)

Last night the House of Reps passed the healthcare bill that The Wall Street Journal labeled "The Worst Bill Ever" by a vote of 220-215. And while 219 Democrats supported this national disaster, there was a truly bipartisan effort to stop it as 39 Democrats crossed the aisle to vote against it. One Republican voted in favor of the bill, Joseph Cao of Louisiana, a vote purchased by Barack Obama with a "commitment from President Obama that he would work together to address the health care issues of Louisiana, including the FMAP crisis and community disaster loan forgiveness, as well as issues related to Charity and Methodist Hospitals." Nice. Real nice. And given Obama's previous "commitments" to only raise taxes on the wealthy, provide a 72-hour review of legislation and support the 2nd amendment . . . let's just say I hope 'ol Joe has a back up plan (and hopefully another profession, come next election).



So, where do we go from here?



The fight is far from over. In fact, this is how we knew it would play out. The focus now turns to the Senate, where Harry Reid will need to score a super majority twice to proceed (a difficult task at this point) and the Republicans have vowed to read the bill in its entirety on the senate floor, which should take more time than an emergency room wait in Canada . . . though just barely. With that delay, the Senate debate will continue into next year -- an election year -- a year in which Americans can make the Democrats pay for their assault on freedom, just taxation, and the American health care machine that has produced more cures and innovation than any other in the world.

Sgt. Kimberly Denise Munley: American Hero

There simply can't be enough press about Sgt. Kimberly Denise Munley, the police officer who took down Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood killer who decided to shoot the infidels who defiled his take on Islam.

Civilian police Sgt. Munley, a former soldier who spent a good deal of time at Fort Hood in her own right, was called into action after a 911 call at 1:23. Within 5 minutes she had shot the gunmen.

As reported in the NY Daily News:

Just three minutes after Hasan shot up his fellow soldiers, Munley tracked him down outside a pre-deployment facility and unloaded on him at close range.

"She fired on him twice and drew the attention toward her. He immediately spun around and charged her," said Chuck Medley, director of emergency services at Fort Hood. "She fired a couple more rounds and fell back, continuing to fire."

Munley was hit in both legs and her wrist during the gun battle but stayed on her feet and kept firing at the charging gunman.

"She struck him a couple times in the upper torso and he went down," Medley said. "When she rounded that corner, she made a split-second decision to put her life at risk. If she had not responded the way she had, we would have had an extremely high number of dead and injured."

Thank you, Sgt Munley, for your act of courage in defending those who defend America.

What's In That Health Care Reform Bill?

Not sure what's in the House Health Care Reform Bill? Well, you're in pretty good company: namely the majority of house members who are actually going to vote on the thing. It's a little like watching my kitchen-challenged brother compete on the Iron Chef.

But if want to treat this bill like you did Tristram Shandy in your college days (which is to say, reading a Cliffs Notes version while you drink cheap beer that you bought at the party store by writing a check for $1.27) then you should check out the summary Ric put together over at Freadom Nation. You can find the whole post here: The final healthcare bill looks SCAAARY

WSJ: ObamaCare Is The Worst Bill Ever

Washington has produced its share of terrible bills (and I will pass on the easy Bill Clinton shot . . wait, did I just do that?) but according to the Wall Street Journal's Op-Ed pages, the current Health Care bill is the "The Worst Bill Ever!" According to the article:

In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.

Um . . .

The Journal lists four primary reasons as to why this bill is a disaster waiting to happen.

1. The spending surge: while Pelosi and company continue to contend that the bill will only cost the country a paltry $829 billion, the CBO is figuring the cost to top a cool trillion, or roughly equivalent to the gallons of botox that Nancy Pelosi has poured into her jowls to keep that sneer in place.
2. Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare: In this case the democrats are looking to take money from a Medicare program that already has "unfunded liabilities" of some $37 trillion over 75 years and drop it into an even larger government behemoth. Debt to pay debt? Only possible with Obamath.
3. European levels of taxation: Were talking $572 billion dollars in new taxes that is sure to pound American businesses. There is a simple truth about taxation: if you want to stop an activity, tax it. In this case we're talking about jobs. Rest assured that European levels of taxation are always followed by European levels of unemployment (though I still believe European techno club music will remain optional).
4. The insurance takeover: "The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and reduce cost-sharing" which means: defined coverage levels and medical rationing will be determine by Washingon D.C. And you thought Doctor visits were a pain in the past.

Nancy Pelosi has "reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare." I'm sure that passing this "worst of" bill will spell tremendous congressional gains for the GOP, but that would be small consolation after giving our children and their children trillions in national debt, government controlled insurance and rising unemployment.

The Obama Fix Fails

As reported by the Heritage Foundation:

The White House and Democratic leaders are offering doctors a deal: They’ll freeze cuts in Medicare payments to doctors in exchange for doctors’ support of health care reform . . . [during the the secret Obamacare negotiations] the White House and Senate leaders have ordered Congress to pass a $247 billion dollar payoff to doctors groups for their support of comprehensive health care reform.

Well, in case you were out of the loop (or busy with hunting and fishing this time of year), the bribe failed on a 47-43 vote. And Dirty Harry wasn't happy:

Reid brought the $247 billion bill to the Senate floor this week as part of a deal to secure the support of doctors groups such as the AMA for passage of a separate, broader healthcare reform bill later this year. But the strategy has backfired.

…Reid told reporters on Wednesday that he was led to believe that more than two dozen Republicans would vote for the bill, though he did not mention the AMA by name.

“I was told by various people that we would have 27 Republican votes, which was pretty reasonable to assume since one of the co-sponsors of this legislation was [Sen.] Jon Kyl [Ariz.], the assistant Republican leader.

“I was stunned when I was told by his cosponsor Sen. Stabenow after we introduced this legislation that [Kyl] couldn’t support it. Even though he is a cosponsor he couldn’t support the legislation,” Reid said, making reference to Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), the lead sponsor of the 10-year doctor payment fix.

And while I'm ecstatic that this bill (S. 1776) failed, I still feel the need to give a shout out to fellow Michigander Debbie Stabenow who stood by her convictions and voted to bribe doctors despite its obvious ethical depravity and absolute failure. Vito Corleone is petting his kitty with pride.

Fire Rich Rod . . . Please?

In a break from politics I have to take a moment to make an appeal to my Alma Mater:

Fire Rich Rod . . . please?

There were excuses last year, but all the crying in the world about installing a new system could never justify a 3 - 9 record while losing to Toledo at home (and do I need to remind anybody of the 42 - 7 beat down the Buckeyes delivered?)

Now the 2009 season has turned into another disaster. The Wolverines have dropped to 5-4 with a Big Ten record of 1-4. Are you kidding me? And Saturday provided a sleep depriving route at the hands of Illinois, giving the Illini their first win in weeks.

Enough is enough! This guy has turned the winningest program in the history of college football into a conference cellar dweller. RICH ROD MUST GO!!!