Tag: IBD

Amusing

Barack Obama Vs. Majority Public Opinion

Phyllis Schlafly wrote this piece that neatly packages an illustration of our rogue anti-American Marxist/Socialist president.

Americans are being treated to welcome entertainment during the dog days of summer as we watch the Democrats wring their hands over Barack Obama’s tone-deafness about political reality. Their despair about Obama is so painful that they are even calling on George W. Bush to come back and rescue Obama from his own mistakes.

The Democrats are reluctant to admit the truth that Obama is not a smart politician (like Bill Clinton, for example). Obama is a radical ideologue determined to “transform” America into the socialist mold, regardless of voter retaliation against Democratic candidates.

Let’s tick off the issues where Obama staked out his lonely position at the same time public opinion polls showed the majority of Americans lining up on the other side. Obama’s determination to achieve “change” doesn’t include obeying the wishes of We the People.

Take ObamaCare, for example. Ramming it through Congress, overriding regular legislative procedure and the opposition of the American public, he deluded himself into believing that once it became the law of the land, the people would dutifully support it.

But they didn’t. Even after passage, the Rasmussen survey reports this month that 66% favor repeal of the Health Control Law, and 50% say repeal will benefit the economy.

On Aug. 3, 71% of voters in Missouri, the bellwether state, approved a referendum to invalidate any ObamaCare mandate to force individuals to buy health insurance. The same week, a federal judge ruled that Virginia may proceed with its lawsuit to overturn ObamaCare’s mandate on individuals to buy insurance.

The Democrats had hoped they could postpone Obama’s commitment to Hispanic voters until after the 2010 elections by tucking the contentious immigration issue under the rug this year. But then Obama brought the immigration issue front and center by filing suit against the Arizona law.

A CBS poll shows that 57% of Americans think Arizona’s law is “about right,” and a Rasmussen poll found that 65% of Arizonans support the law. Zogby found that 58% of Americans nationwide want their own state to adopt a law similar to Arizona’s.

Then there’s the matter of building the mosque on the ground near the 9/11 attack on New York City. Obama supports it, even though 61% of Americans are against it.

The mosque raises another festering issue. The Pew Research Center reports that 18% (one in five Americans) think Obama is a Muslim, and Time magazine puts that figure at 24%. The number of people who think Obama is a Christian is in a free fall, and 43% don’t know his religion.

Obama’s Arabic Accent

Rush Limbaugh reminded us of Obama’s statement quoted in the New York Times that the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth” and that he recited it with a first-rate Arabic accent. The translation of the prayer call is “Allah is supreme. Allah is supreme. Allah is supreme. I witness that there is no god but Allah.”

Obama chose the most left-wing Supreme Court justice in history, Elena Kagan. He ignored the Gallup poll showing that 42% of Americans wanted a new Supreme Court justice who would move the court in the conservative direction, while only 27% wanted it to move more liberal.

Obama is even pressing for “card check,” one of his many payoffs to the unions, even though 61% of Americans oppose this, according to Voter Consumer Research. Card check would make it easier for unions to organize workplaces by getting rid of the secret ballot.

Obama is still pushing cap-and-trade, which the voters have dubbed “cap and tax” because it will make electricity and all kinds of energy cost every American thousands of dollars a year. CNN reports that 51% of Americans oppose it, and Democratic congressional incumbents who voted for it in the House last year are finding it a big negative in their 2010 campaigns.

Obama is still unwilling to face up to the American people’s opposition to his economic policies of big spending, higher deficits, staggering debt and redistribution of wealth. According to a Rasmussen survey, less than one in five voters are willing to pay more taxes to lower the federal deficit because they believe we are already overtaxed.

More than 8 in 10 Americans believe the deficit is the result of overspending, not a lack of tax revenue. And 58% believe that if Obama and Congress raise taxes to reduce the deficit, they will just spend the money on new government programs.

When Gallup asked Americans to name the greatest threat facing our country, the national debt tied with terrorism as the top choice. No wonder Zogby reports that 52% of Americans say Obama’s change has made the country worse.

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Amusing

The Saudi Arabia Of Shale


It is truly amazing the amount of oil and natural gas available to us in this country. Someday the corruption that exists in Washington will be gone and we will able to declare our energy independence!

Energy Policy: New York’s governor wants to tap into a shale formation that can supply the entire U.S. with natural gas for 65 years. Will NIMBY environmentalists let him stimulate New York’s and America’s energy economy?

Last week, David Patterson released a draft report of his Energy Planning Board that does something Democrats are loath to do: It proposes developing a domestic energy resource — the huge amounts of natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation. New York produces 5% of its natural gas in-state and imports more than 95% from the Gulf Coast and Canada.

The Marcellus Shale stretches from southwestern New York to Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. A nearby formation of Devonian shale is even more porous, with a superior amount of trapped gas per volume of rock.

Geologist Gary Lash of State University New York at Fredonia and colleague Terry Engelder of Penn State estimate that Marcellus holds 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. About 20 trillion cubic feet are produced in the U.S. annually.

Lash notes that successful wells have already been drilled in Pennsylvania — one near Pittsburgh and the other in Susquehanna County. A Penn State report that was requested by state legislators predicted that Marcellus could add $14 billion to the state’s economy in 2010, create more than 98,000 jobs and generate $800 million in state and local tax revenues. Now that’s what you call a stimulus package.

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Amusing

Politicians, Heal Thyselves!

The government should stay out of health care or they should be forced to swallow the same pill that they force down our throats. They ruin everything they touch! They have already wrecked the Post Office, the Railroads, the Steel Industry, the Tobacco Industry, the US borders, Social Security, Medicare, America’s Energy Independence….and on and on. Now they want to destroy the greatest medical system in the history of human existence.

Don’t let the gangsters in Washington make medical decisions for you and your children.

Health Reform: If Democrats in Washington think their health care reform with a public option is a good thing, why have they exempted themselves from it? Why isn’t what’s good for their constituents good for them?

During ABC’s June 24 infomercial for government-run health care broadcast from the White House, President Obama was asked if he and his family would abide by the restrictions and limitations that came with his proposed reforms.

In what Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com called “Obama’s Michael Dukakis moment,” President Obama refused to make such a pledge and confessed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.”

There was no commentary about evil insurance companies making excessive profits or greedy physicians and hospitals doing unnecessary tests and procedures to run up your bill.

There was only a dutiful husband and father wanting the best care for his wife and children, as do we all.

Yet here was the president arguing for the need for 50 million new patients officially in the system while adding no new doctors, a plan that inevitably leads to rationing.

Add to this situation doctors who will retire in droves and doctors who never will be, all to avoid a clone of Britain’s draconian National Health Service.

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center who asked Obama that question, says elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.

Congress is no exception.

As World Net Daily points out, on Page 114 of the Orwellian-titled Affordable Health Care Choices Act authored by Sen. Ted Kennedy’s staff and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), there is a provision that specifically exempts members of Congress from the public plan.

At a news conference June 23, President Obama said people would be able to choose their insurance “the same way that federal employees do, same way that members of Congress do.”

That statement was false.

Rep. John Fleming, R-La., a physician, told Fox News: “All these health care bills that are coming out on the Democrats’ side — the ‘reform’ bills — basically say that Congress is exempt for at least the first five years, and perhaps longer.

“I’ve issued H. Res. 615 that simply says, look, if you vote for this, then you should choose it.”

House Resolution 615, which is nonbinding, says “members who vote in favor of the establishment of a public, federal government run health insurance option are urged to forgo their right to participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and agree to enroll under that public option.”

On July 16, Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., went further and offered an amendment to the House version during the Ways and Means Committee markup that would require members of Congress to enroll in its own government-run health care program.

Democrats defeated the amendment, 23 to 18.

The irony here is that under the health reform he is sponsoring, it is unlikely that Sen. Ted Kennedy would have gotten the treatment he needed for his brain tumor if his case had to be reviewed by some cost-effectiveness board.

The likelihood is that if Ted Kennedy were British and subject to the tender mercies of that nation’s National Health System, he’d be dead by now.

As Fleming says, his resolution offers “members of Congress an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is.”

Congressmen, heal thyselves.

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Amusing

Putin’s Patsy?

It was obvious from the start that the Russians would pluck Obama like a dead chicken. Think about it… Putin is a former KGB agent and Obama is a former Chicago community organizer. You be the judge. You don’t even need those old Soviet Olympic judges to know the outcome.

Russia’s nondemocratic rulers over the years have shown an uncanny knack for detecting weakness in their foes. Russia’s Vladimir Putin is continuing the tradition.

President Obama no doubt believes he was dealing with honest brokers when he agreed with Russia’s leaders to cut U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads to about 1,600 each. For the U.S., that’s a cut of about a third.

But please read the fine print. This is a “preliminary” agreement. In order for it to go into effect, Russian leaders say they want the U.S. to give up its plans for a missile defense system.

To do so would, in effect, be a unilateral disarmament by the U.S. against the most feared weapons on earth — nuclear missiles. It’s an abandonment of our allies, including Poland and the Czech Republic. It’s not an acceptable bargaining chip.
It’s reminiscent of the time in 1961 when President Kennedy — like Obama, youthful, attractive, intelligent, well-spoken — met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. During that meeting, Khrushchev quickly sized up Kennedy as a foreign-policy lightweight.

Within months, he tested Kennedy’s mettle — erecting the Berlin Wall, and, the following year, sending missiles to Cuba to challenge the U.S. just 90 miles off its own coast.

In public, Kennedy stood up to Khrushchev; behind the scenes, he caved, trading our missiles in Turkey for the ones in Cuba. Kennedy, in interviews, later regretted his own callowness.

Compare that with President Reagan’s 1986 showdown with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. That came on the heels of a U.S. deployment of missiles in Europe, Reagan’s refusal to sign a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and his 1983 “Star Wars” speech. He was negotiating from strength — the only thing Russians get.

In 1985, Reagan had told Gorbachev bluntly during Geneva arms talks: “We won’t stand by and let you maintain weapon superiority over us. We can agree to reduce arms, or we can continue the arms race, which I think you know you can’t win.”

In Reykjavik, with the world’s media egging him on to make a deal, any deal, on nuclear arms with the USSR, Reagan said, “Nyet.” Why? He wouldn’t give up U.S. missile defense. With that stand, the Soviet Union’s demise was assured.
By contrast, Obama on Tuesday called Russia, a country that’s falling apart, a “great power” and reassured the nondemocratic Putin he’ll keep Russia’s interests in mind while crafting U.S. policy.

“As I said in Cairo,” the president said, “given our interdependence, any world order that tries to elevate one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. That is why I have called for a ‘reset’ in relations between the United States and Russia.”

This implies an equivalency between Russia and the U.S. that simply doesn’t exist. Russia comes up short on any measure of civilizational success you might want to use. Indeed, we have elevated a country that has invaded a neighbor, uses energy as a weapon against our democratic allies and refuses to help in our effort to halt Iran’s dangerous nuclear program.

Russia is not a “great” power. It’s a Third World nation with First World nuclear weapons. It’s in a downward spiral due to its collapsing population, shortening life-spans and shrinking economy. It might not even survive this century as a nation.
This has been the U.S.’ biggest mistake: to give Russia respect it hasn’t really earned. Maybe, as it turns out, Putin, a former top KGB operative, is more clever than Gorbachev. He knows our president needs a foreign affairs success.

Before President Obama signs off on anything, he’d do well to review the presidential history of dealings with the Soviets. He can learn from both Kennedy and Reagan.

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Amusing

Carbongate

We are in the middle of the Progressive Dark Ages where logic, truth and integrity have no value.

Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill?

This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters’ arguments.

On Friday, the day of the vote, the Competitive Enterprise Institute said it was releasing “an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency.”

In the release, the institute’s Richard Morrison said “internal EPA e-mail messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.”

Reading the report, available on the CEI Web site, we find this “endangerment analysis” contains such interesting items as: “Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until at least 2030), there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.”

What the report says is that the EPA, by adopting the United Nations’ 2007 “Fourth Assessment” report, is relying on outdated research by its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The research, it says, is “at best three years out of date in a rapidly changing field” and ignores the latest scientific findings.

Besides noting the decline in temperatures as CO2 levels have increased, the draft report says the “consensus” on storm frequency and intensity is now “much more neutral.”

Then there’s one of Al Gore’s grim fairy tales — the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and glaciers the size of Tennessee roaming the North Atlantic. “The idea that warming temperatures will cause Greenland to rapidly shed its ice has been greatly diminished by new results indicating little evidence for operations of such processes,” the report says.

Little evidence? Outdated U.N. research? No reason to rush? This is not what the Obama administration and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were telling us when they were rushing to force a Friday vote on Waxman-Markey. We were given the impression that unless we passed this cap-and-tax fiasco, polar bears would be extinct by the Fourth of July.

We have noted frequently the significance of solar activity on earth’s climate and history. This EPA draft report not only confirms our reporting but the brazen incompetence of those “experts” that have been prophesying planetary apocalypse.

“A new 2009 paper by Scafetta and West,” the report says, “suggests that the IPCC used faulty solar data in dismissing the direct effect of solar variability on global temperatures. Their report suggests that solar variability could account for up to 68% of the increase in Earth’s global temperatures.”

The report was the product of Alan Carlin, senior operations research analyst at the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE). He’s been with the EPA for 38 years but now has been taken off all climate-related work. He is convinced that actual climate observations do not match climate change theories and that only the politics, not the science, has been settled.

Thomas Fuller, environmental policy blogger with the San Francisco Examiner, wrote Thursday in a story developed in conjunction with Anthony Watts’ Web site wattsupwiththat.com: “A source inside the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed many of the claims made by analyst Alan Carlin, the economist/physicist who yesterday went public with accusations that science was being ignored in evaluating the danger of CO2.”

All this is particularly interesting because of the charges by Al Gore, NASA’s James Hansen and others that the Bush administration and energy companies actively suppressed the truth about climate change.

One of the e-mails unearthed by CEI was dated March 12, from Al McGartland, office director at NCEE, forbidding Carlin from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues such as those in his suppressed report.

Carlin replied on March 16, requesting that his study be forwarded to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, which directs EPA’s climate change program. Carlin points out the peer-reviewed references in his study and points out that the new studies “explain much of the observational data that have been collected which cannot be explained by the IPCC models.”

For saying the climate change emperors had no clothes, Carlin was told March 17: “The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”

In other words, the administration and Congress had their collective minds made up and didn’t want to be confused with the facts. They certainly didn’t want any inconvenient truths coming out of their own Environmental Protection Agency, the one that wants to regulate everything from your lawn mower to bovine emissions and which says the product of your respiration and ours, carbon dioxide, is a dangerous pollutant and not the basis for all life on earth.

The problem the warm-mongers have is they now are in a position of telling the American people, who are you going to believe — us or your own lying eyes? Forget the snow in Malibu, the record cold winters. Forget that temperatures have dropped for a decade.

In April, President Obama declared that “the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.” Apparently not, for as he spoke those very words his administration was suppressing science to advance a very pernicious ideology.

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