Against the ‘New Normal’ - Obama's Acceptance of Permanent Decline

How refreshing. I had wondered if ANYONE in America worried, or even noticed, our stunning and precipitous decline these last 5 years

Are you alarmed by the counterterrorism failures increasingly evident as we learn more about the Boston terror attack? Don’t be. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has helpfully explained, “This tragedy is the new normal.”


Are you surprised that a whole city was ordered to “shelter in place” as one “knockoff jihadi,” in Vice President Biden’s term, roamed the streets? Don’t be. It’s the new normal. Are you shocked by the Obama administration’s dissembling in response to terror attacks in Benghazi? Don’t be naïve. It’s the new normal. Are you worried that the president proclaims “red lines” to deter dictators from, e.g., using chemical weapons, then does nothing to enforce them? Don’t be unsophisticated. As Rep. Adam Smith, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, explained, “The president said it was a red line. What the president never said was what that meant exactly.” It’s the new normal. Are you startled that the commander in chief accepts defense cuts that the president’s own defense secretary said would be “devastating” and “a disaster” and “would inflict severe damage to our national defense”? Don’t be foolish. It’s the new normal.

And do you think, back home, that we might do better than slow economic growth, high long-term unemployment, mountains of debt, and a massive health care reform that’s a “train wreck,” in the felicitous term of the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who helped shepherd it through Congress? Didn’t you get the memo? It’s all the new normal.

By the way, the new normal is bipartisan. It’s of course true that the administration in power during this period of national decline has a particular interest in selling the concept of a new normal. It’s true that the idea fits uncommonly well with the fatalism that, beneath the airy talk of hope and change, lies at the heart of modern liberalism. But Republican elites aren’t immune to the charms of the new normal, which excuses subpar performance in so many areas.

So it’s apparently the new normal for GOP leaders in Congress to be more interested in exempting themselves from Obamacare than in laying the groundwork for repealing it, and thereby exempting all Americans. It’s apparently the new normal for GOP elites to spend all their time, money, and effort trying to quickly muscle through a poorly crafted immigration bill—which once passed will have irreversible effects—than trying to do anything significant for American workers or against crony capitalism. It’s apparently the new normal for GOP leaders, at once terrified and contemptuous of their own base, equally intimidated by donors and voters but uninterested in treating either group as grownups, to think they too can simply shelter in place, under the awning of the new normal. (One might add that, when it comes to the leaders of both parties colluding to preserve power and perquisites, the new normal bears a striking resemblance to the old normal.)

Normal Americans, we would wager, don’t accept the new normal. For one thing, they remember being told that all manner of problems, from the existence of the Soviet Union to economic stagflation to high crime rates to welfare dependency, had to be accepted as normal. Both party establishments were wrong in their earlier embrace of various pathologies deemed to be permanent. Why are they owed greater deference today?

There are times when the conservative party ought to be and has to be the party of normalcy, standing against utopian or destructive or foolish change. But there are times—and this is one of them—when a modern conservative party has to be the party that refuses to accept what is said to be normal. This is a time for a serious political party to point out that the new normal is merely a new excuse by the powers-that-be for their deficiencies and failures.

The historic task of American conservatism is not merely to defeat the liberal party in the next election, which, given the way things are going for this administration, shouldn’t be very difficult. It’s to refuse to accept, to boldly challenge, and to fundamentally reverse, an enervating “new normal” that would acquiesce in American decline and say farewell to American greatness.
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Why Barack Obama may be heading for electoral disaster in 2012

Image by London Summit via FlickrThis is what I have been predicting since his 101's day or so: A dangerous radical, a rank incompetent, or a fatal combination of both. Jimmy Carter finally gets a reprieve as the worst president in 100 years...T

On a recent visit to London I was struck by how much faith many British politicians, journalists and political advisers have in Barack Obama being re-elected in 2012. In the aftermath of the hugely successful Special Forces operation that took out Osama Bin Laden and a modest spike in the polls for the president, the conventional wisdom among political elites in Britain is overwhelmingly that Obama will win another four years in the Oval Office. Add to this a widespread perception of continuing disarray in the Republican race, as well as a State Visit to London that had the chattering classes worshipping at the feet of the US president, and you can easily see why Obama’s prospects look a lot rosier from across the Atlantic.

But back in the United States, the reality looks a lot different. Many political leaders in Britain fail to understand the degree to which the American people are deeply unhappy with their president’s poor handling of the economy. Nor have they grasped the epic scale of the defeat suffered by the president in the November mid-terms, and the emphatic rejection by a clear majority of Americans of the Big Government Obama agenda.

Just seven months ago, the United States was swept by a conservative revolution that fundamentally transformed the political landscape on Capitol Hill, and gravely weakened the ability of the president to pass legislation. This revolution is not in retreat but gaining ground, led by charismatic figures such as Paul Ryan, the Reaganite chairman of the House Budget Committee, entrusted with reining in out of control government spending. And as a Gallup poll showed, America is unquestionably a conservative country ideologically, but one that is ironically led by the most left-wing president in the nation’s history.

Ultimately, the 2012 presidential election will be decided by the state of the economy, and new data released this week makes grim reading for the White House. In fact you cannot watch a US financial news network at the moment, from Bloomberg to CNBC to Fox Business, without a great deal of pessimism about the dire condition of the world’s biggest economy. 66 percent of Americans now worry the federal government will run out of money in the face of towering public debts.

To say this has been an extremely bad week for the Obama administration on the economic front would be a serious understatement. As The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, home prices in the United States have sunk to their lowest levels since 2002, falling 4.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011. At the same time, employment growth is stalling, with only 38,000 Americans added to the workforce in May, the smallest increase since September. This compares with 179,000 jobs added in April. There has also been a steep slowdown in the manufacturing sector, and a downturn in the stock market on the back of weak economic news.

Bill Clinton’s labour secretary Robert Reich summed up the grim mood in a hard-hitting op-ed in The Financial Times, which took aim at both the administration and Congress:


The US economy was supposed to be in bloom by late spring, but it is hardly growing at all. Expectations for second-quarter growth are not much better than the measly 1.8 per cent annualised rate of the first quarter. That is not nearly fast enough to reduce America’s ferociously high level of unemployment… Meanwhile, housing prices continue to fall. They are now 33 per cent below their 2006 peak. That is a bigger drop than recorded in the Great Depression. Homes are the largest single asset of the American middle class, so as housing prices drop many Americans feel poorer. All of this is contributing to a general gloominess. Not surprisingly, consumer confidence is also down.

Unsurprisingly, the polls are again looking problematic for the president. The latest Rasmussen Presidential Tracking Poll shows just 25 percent of Americans strongly approving of Obama’s performance, with 36 percent strongly disapproving, for a Presidential Approval Index rating of minus 11 points. In a projected match up between Obama and a Republican opponent, the president now trails by two points according to Rasmussen – 43 to 45. The RealClear Politics poll of polls shows just over a third of Americans (34.5 percent) agreeing that the country is heading in the right direction, with nearly three fifths (56.8 percent) believing it is heading down the wrong track. That negative figure rises to a staggering 66 percent of likely voters in a new Rasmussen survey, including 41 percent of Democrats.

There is no feel good factor in America at the moment. But there is a great deal of uncertainty, nervousness, even fear over the future of the world’s only superpower. This is hardly a solid foundation for a presidential victory for the incumbent. Even though we don’t know yet who he will be up against, Barack Obama could well go into 2012 as the underdog rather than the favourite he is frequently portrayed as. On balance we’re likely to see a very close race 17 months from now. But there is also the distinct possibility of an electoral rout of the president if the economy goes further south. “Hope and change” might have played well in 2008, but it is a message that will likely ring hollow in November 2012, with an American public that is deeply disillusioned with the direction Obama is taking the country.
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The Truth About Obama Care

Thank God for John Roberts and his 4 colleagues on SCOTUS: the last standing firewall between constitutional republicanism and liberal fascism - socialism

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Obama's Flow Chart - Democracy Denied

And that's after one year! Wait until card-check, cap and trade, and obamacare get passed. Can you say, goodbye representative constitutional goevernment, and hello, fascism?!...T

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ObamaCare at Ramming Speed

Well this should put to bed the debate about whether or not Osama would moderate, ala-Clinton, in the wake of his stunning electoral defeats, stunning losses in congressional legislation, an stunning drop in his and congressional democrat's poll numbers, voter enthusiasm, and re -elect numbers!

No, Osama is a dedicated socialist bent on the destruction of the American way of life as we have known it. If this legislation can be defeated or delayed until November, we will see the end, finally, of the progressive movement in American politics that has tried, over the last 100 years, to remodel society in it's collectivist hive-mentality views. If we cannot, and this abomination passes, there will be no recovery and America will have changed forever.

Impeach, convict, and jail Barack Insane Osama...T

A mere three days before President Obama's supposedly bipartisan health-care summit, the White House yesterday released a new blueprint that Democrats say they will ram through Congress with or without Republican support. So after election defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and even Massachusetts, and amid overwhelming public opposition, Democrats have decided to give the voters what they don't want anyway.

Ah, the glory of "progressive" governance and democratic consent.

"The President's Proposal," as the 11-page White House document is headlined, is in one sense a notable achievement: It manages to take the worst of both the House and Senate bills and combine them into something more destructive. It includes more taxes, more subsidies and even less cost control than the Senate bill. And it purports to fix the special-interest favors in the Senate bill not by eliminating them—but by expanding them to everyone.

The bill's one new inspiration is a powerful federal board that would regulate premiums in the individual insurance market. In all 50 states, insurers are already required to justify premium increases to insurance commissioners, who generally have the power to give a regulatory go-ahead, or not. But their primary concern is actuarial soundness and capital standards, making sure that companies have enough cash to pay claims.

The White House wants to create another layer of review that will be able to reject any rate increase that is "unreasonable or unjustified." Any insurer deemed guilty of such an infraction by this new bureaucracy "must lower premiums, provide rebates, or take other actions to make premiums affordable." In other words, de facto price controls.

Insurance premiums are rising too fast; therefore, premium increases should be illegal. Q.E.D. The result of this rate-setting board will be less competition in the individual market, as insurers flee expensive states or regions, or even a cascade of bankruptcies if premiums are frozen and the cost of the care they are expected to cover continues to rise. For all the Dickensian outrage about profiteering by WellPoint and other companies, insurance is a low-margin business even for health care, and at least 85 cents of the average premium dollar, usually more, is devoted to actual health services.

Price controls are always the first resort of national health care—i.e., Medicare's administered prices for doctors and hospitals. This new White House gambit is merely a preview of ObamaCare's inevitable planned medical economy, which will reduce choice and quality.

The coercive flavor that animates this exercise is best captured in the section that purports to accept the Senate's "grandfather clause" allowing people who like their current health plan to keep it. Except that "The President's Proposal adds certain consumer protections to these 'grandfathered' plans. Within months of legislation being enacted, it requires plans . . . prohibits . . . mandates . . . requires . . . the President's Proposal adds new protections that prohibit . . . ban . . . and prohibit . . . The President's Proposal requires . . ." After all of these dictates, no "grandfathered" plan will exist.

Meanwhile, the new White House plan further vitiates the remnants of cost-control that remained in the House and Senate bills. Now the highly vaunted excise tax on high-cost insurance plans won't kick in until 2018, whereas it would have started in 2013 in the Senate bill, and this tax will only apply to coverage that costs more than $27,500.

Very few plans ever reach that threshold, and sure enough, this is the same $60 billion deal the White House cut in December with union leaders who have negotiated very costly benefits. Now it is extended to all to avoid the taint of political favoritism.

While the White House claims to eliminate the "Cornhusker Kickback," the Medicaid bribe that bought Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson's vote, political appearances are deceiving. As with the union payoff, what the White House really does is broaden the same to all states, with all new Medicaid spending through 2017 and 90% after 2020 transferred to the federal balance sheet. Governors will love this ruse, but national taxpayers will pay more.

And more again, because the White House has adopted the House's firehose insurance subsidies. People earning up to 400% of the poverty line—or about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016—will qualify for government help, and, naturally, this new entitlement is designed to expand over time.

The Administration also claims to have discarded the House's 5.4-percentage-point surtax on joint-filers earning more than $1 million a year, but it sneaks it back in by expanding the Senate's expansion of the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax to joint income above $250,000. The White House would now apply that tax for the first time to income from "interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents," details to come.

***
The larger political message of this new proposal is that Mr. Obama and Democrats have no intention of compromising on an incremental reform, or of listening to Republican, or any other, ideas on health care. They want what they want, and they're going to play by Chicago Rules and try to dragoon it into law on a narrow partisan vote via Congressional rules that have never been used for such a major change in national policy. If you want to know why Democratic Washington is "ungovernable," this is it.
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Obama has ruined his presidency and his party

The worst president in US history with the possible exception of Woodrow Wilson. Osama has made Jimmy Carter look moderate and competent by comparison, and Bill Clinton look ethical...T

One of my favorite quotes about politics comes from Henry Kissinger in his book Years of Upheaval, his memoir of the Ford presidency: “A statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his vision and his nation’s experience. If his vision gets too far out ahead of his nation’s experience, he will lose his mandate. But if he hews too close to the conventional, he will lose control over events.”

Now, at once, we see both happening to President Barack Obama.

His healthcare proposals obviously ran afoul of the first of Kissinger’s warnings. By pushing for changes that conflicted with America’s values, common sense and experience, he lost his mandate. In that disastrous push for an elusive goal, he ruined his own presidency and his party. It may take decades for the Democratic Party to recover from his folly. Indeed, his push for health legislation, in the face of rapidly eroding public support, ranks with the Vietnam War, Watergate and, of course, Bill Clinton’s healthcare initiatives as the most costly to their respective political parties.

But now, as he faces threats from Iran, domestic terrorism, continually high unemployment and the swollen deficit, he is also violating the second half of the Kissinger warning — his politics are too passive and too conventional and, as a result, he is losing control over events.

In the phase of presidential dithering in the aftermath of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, there is no clear presidential message, no coherent strategy — not even an identifiable program. His budget cuts are far too tepid. His tax program is nothing new. Obama’s Stimulus 2 package seems like the same-old, same-old.

His short-lived bounce from the State of the Union speech is indicative of how limited a vision he has these days. It lasted a week and was never more than three points at its apogee.

And, as Kissinger would have predicted, he is losing control over events. Sen. Evan Bayh’s (D-Ind.) retirement, with its implied blast at Obama’s policies; the increasing recklessness of Iran; and the seemingly intractable unemployment all provide evidence that President Obama is no longer dictating the national agenda.

As a result, the negatives he incurred by moving too far out ahead of the nation’s experience are combining with those he is getting for being too conventional. He is experiencing both ends of the Kissinger prediction. Republicans and independents are still in shock from his headlong rush into socialism, while Democrats are increasingly restive and disillusioned by his failure to lead. The entire country is worried at his passivity in the face of domestic terror threats and the rapidly growing Iranian momentum toward the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

While his job rating has remained relatively steady in recent months, hovering just below 50 percent of likely voters, his ratings in specific areas — like holding down spending, cutting the deficit, creating jobs and managing the economy — are all eroding, presaging further drops in his overall ratings.

Seemingly paralyzed by adversity, President Obama and his advisers are showing a lack of resilience in the face of reversals that is perhaps the inevitable outcome of his smooth rise to the top in 2008. Never tried by bad outcomes (as Hillary has doubtless been), he and they seem unable to regain momentum and appear to be flailing without strategic or even tactical direction.

All this might be what happens when you elect a state Senator whose U.S. Senate career was consumed with his presidential campaign as president.
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One year out: President Obama's fall

Finally the chatting classes are beginning to "get it" that president Osama is indeed a committed fanatic, a dangerous radical, and not just a liberal demagogue representing the leftist tendencies of the democratic party (most of them actually liked that Osama).

Indeed, the man behind the red curtain is not Oz: it is Trotsky, Stalin, Woodrow Wilson, an incarnation of every socialist progressive monstrosity which 20th century thought created, and most thought had been aborted.

He must be stopped, and if Scott Brown becomes a reaganesque conservative senator from the people's republic of Massachusetts next week, stopped he will be, just in the nick of time. Perhaps the deus ex machina will swoop in to carry Dorothy safely back to Kansas after all. Better there than Nebraska...T

What went wrong? A year ago, he was king of the world. Now President Obama's approval rating, according to CBS, has dropped to 46 percent -- and his disapproval rating is the highest ever recorded by Gallup at the beginning of an (elected) president's second year.

A year ago, he was leader of a liberal ascendancy that would last 40 years (James Carville). A year ago, conservatism was dead (Sam Tanenhaus). Now the race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in bluest of blue Massachusetts is surprisingly close, with a virtually unknown state senator bursting on the scene by turning the election into a mini-referendum on Obama and his agenda, most particularly health-care reform.

A year ago, Obama was the most charismatic politician on Earth. Today the thrill is gone, the doubts growing -- even among erstwhile believers.

Liberals try to attribute Obama's political decline to matters of style. He's too cool, detached, uninvolved. He's not tough, angry or aggressive enough with opponents. He's contracted out too much of his agenda to Congress.

These stylistic and tactical complaints may be true, but they miss the major point: The reason for today's vast discontent, presaged by spontaneous national Tea Party opposition, is not that Obama is too cool or compliant but that he's too left.

It's not about style; it's about substance. About which Obama has been admirably candid. This out-of-nowhere, least-known of presidents dropped the veil most dramatically in the single most important political event of 2009, his Feb. 24 first address to Congress. With remarkable political honesty and courage, Obama unveiled the most radical (in American terms) ideological agenda since the New Deal: the fundamental restructuring of three pillars of American society -- health care, education and energy

Then began the descent -- when, more amazingly still, Obama devoted himself to turning these statist visions into legislative reality. First energy, with cap-and-trade, an unprecedented federal intrusion into American industry and commerce. It got through the House, with its Democratic majority and Supreme Soviet-style rules. But it will never get out of the Senate.

Then, the keystone: a health-care revolution in which the federal government will regulate in crushing detail one-sixth of the U.S. economy. By essentially abolishing medical underwriting (actuarially based risk assessment) and replacing it with government fiat, Obamacare turns the health insurance companies into utilities, their every significant move dictated by government regulators. The public option was a sideshow. As many on the right have long been arguing, and as the more astute on the left (such as The New Yorker's James Surowiecki) understand, Obamacare is government health care by proxy, single-payer through a facade of nominally "private" insurers.

At first, health-care reform was sustained politically by Obama's own popularity. But then gravity took hold, and Obamacare's profound unpopularity dragged him down with it. After 29 speeches and a fortune in squandered political capital, it still will not sell.

The health-care drive is the most important reason Obama has sunk to 46 percent. But this reflects something larger. In the end, what matters is not the persona but the agenda. In a country where politics is fought between the 40-yard lines, Obama has insisted on pushing hard for the 30. And the American people -- disorganized and unled but nonetheless agitated and mobilized -- have put up a stout defense somewhere just left of midfield.

Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.

It's inherently risky for any charismatic politician to legislate. To act is to choose and to choose is to disappoint the expectations of many who had poured their hopes into the empty vessel -- of which candidate Obama was the greatest representative in recent American political history.

Obama did not just act, however. He acted ideologically. To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something -- to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.

Perhaps Obama thought he'd been sent to the White House to do just that. If so, he vastly over-read his mandate. His own electoral success -- twinned with handy victories and large majorities in both houses of Congress -- was a referendum on his predecessor's governance and the post-Lehman financial collapse. It was not an endorsement of European-style social democracy.

Hence the resistance. Hence the fall. The system may not always work, but it does take its revenge.
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FOX News Sunday - Limbaugh Assails Obama's 'Radical' Agenda, Predicts One-Term Presidency

Rush Limbaugh via last.fm

Rush Limbaugh assails the Obama administration for its economic "stimulus" (fascism funding bill) package, health care reform plan (fascist takeover of the US economy) and alleged uncertainty (unilateral, American hating, surrender to our enemies) over the way forward in Afghanistan - T


President Obama is pursuing a "radical" agenda that is putting the economy and national security in peril, talk show host Rush Limbaugh told "Fox News Sunday," giving the young president failing grades across the board and standing by his sustained criticism of the administration.

The conservative radio host assailed the administration for its economic stimulus package, health care reform plan and alleged uncertainty over the way forward in Afghanistan. In a wide-ranging interview, he called Obama a "child" driven by his "out-of-this-world ego."

And he predicted that Obama, who built a broad-based majority over Republican candidate John McCain a year ago, would not win a second term.

"I'm really, really worried. We've never seen this kind of radical leadership at such a high level of power in the country," Limbaugh said. "I don't think we're better off in any way it could be measured."

Limbaugh is one of the administration's fiercest critics and has often found himself in the White House crosshairs as a result. Top White House aides blasted Limbaugh earlier in the year for saying he wanted Obama to fail as president.

Months later, Limbaugh has only doubled down on his criticism.

"He's immature, he's inexperienced -- in over his head," Limbaugh said of the president. He repeated former Vice President Dick Cheney's charge that Obama is "dithering" on deciding a strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

And Limbaugh scoffed at the administration's claim that hundreds of thousands of jobs have been saved or created by February's economic stimulus package, saying the government has become the job engine -- not the private sector.

"I believe that the economy is under siege," he said.

White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod, reacting to the interview Sunday, downplayed Limbaugh's comments, saying: "We'll let Mr. Limbaugh foment."

"I think it's a surreal day when you're getting lectures on humility from Rush Limbaugh. ... The fact is that he is an entertainer," Axelrod told CBS' "Face the Nation." "But I think the American people are well-served and believe they're well-served."

Limbaugh also blasted the Democrats' health care bills as a front that would steal money from American businesses and effect the partial takeover of the private sector.

"This is not about insuring the uninsured -- this is not about health care," Limbaugh said. "This is about stealing one-sixth of the U.S. private sector and putting it under the control of the federal government."

Limbaugh warned that the legislation currently being worked out in Congress would amount to massive encroachments on personal and private behavior, much of which would fall under the purview of the legislation.

"And when they get this health care bill -- if they do -- that's the easiest, fastest way for them to be able to regulate every aspect of human behavior, because it will all have some related cost to health care -- what you drive, what you eat, where you live, what you do -- and there will be penalties for violating regulation."

Limbaugh said these changes would have a drastic effect on the U.S.: "It's going to be the biggest snatch of freedom and liberty that has yet occurred in this country."

Though he criticized the Republican Party for lacking a clear leader or message that can unify Americans, Limbaugh nevertheless predicted anti-Democratic Party sentiment will propel Republicans to victory in 2010.

"I know that there is an eruption waiting to happen at the ballot box," he said.

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The Great Regrouping: Why the Co-Op Fallback is a Trojan Horse for Government Control

It took only 24 hours for the sheepskin clothing to come off the thief, liar, and communist thug wolf. No surprise then, that "Co-Op" sounds so much like "Commune".

The plan here, is to get the protesters - "The Mob" - out of those townhall meetings, so that they can, in the dead of the night, in conference committee, install Osamacare against the wishes of the American people en mass. With Conservatives now outnumbering liberals in all 50 states according to yesterday's Gallup poll, this is the fascistic democrat left's last chance to sneak socialist medicine past us, and they know this all too well!

So that is why, if they can't sucker the public into swallowing the "Public Option", then they know that once Co-Op's are in place they will soon need bailing out (taking over!) by the government.

We must remain vigilant!...T

THE CO-OP FALLBACK

The White House on Sunday was pushing the notion that it was willing to abandon the tent pole policy in its health care reform proposal -- the so-called "public option," more commonly understood to be socialized medicine -- in favor of the national health insurance co-op proposal put forward by Sen. Kent Conrad. But some White House and Health and Human Services aides say supporters of the "public option" shouldn't abandon hope.

Because while some media presented this as a victory for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who protested Obamacare, and leftists and progressives were angered by the apparent waving of the white flag by the Obama Administration, some administration insiders privately believe they can achieve the goal of the "public option" through the co-op plan's implementation.

"The federal government would have to seed money into the co-op program," says a White House source. "Depending on who you talk to, it's between $6 billion and $10 billion in funding, along with a congressionally mandated and administration designated board to oversee the co-op at least initially."

According to some of the more progressive members of the administration, this board, which would set the policies for the co-op plan's implementation and operation, along with the strict requirements for financial stability, might be a back-door way to "eventually," as another administration put it, allow the federal government to take over the co-op and transition it to a plan more closely resembling the "public option."

"It might not happen as fast as we would want, but based on the challenges the astroturfers and insurance industry have put in front of us for the full plan as the President has laid out, the co-op plan probably isn't going to achieve what Conrad and its supporters want," says an aide to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "The minute this co-op runs into financial difficulty with low reserves" -- some estimates believe the co-op could become the third-largest health-care insurance provider in the country -- "it's the government that's going to have to bail it out, and then we're looking at the clear path to the public option."
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Socialized Health Care via Stealth Mode

Great article by Mr Michael Barone, that really summarizes the crass opportunism and fanatic leftist ideology of the Unholy trinity of Obama, Pelosi and Reid...T

(Obama and the democrats) believe, out of idealism but also perhaps for crass political reasons, that America would be better off with a single-payer system like Canada's or Britain's. But they realize that they're operating in a country where most voters don't agree. The video helps us understand how they're seeking to reach their single-payer goal through government-option stealth.

One video is worth a thousand words (or, as in this column, about 730). The video in question, put together by a group called Verum Serum, shows public statements by three advocates of single-payer (government monopoly) health insurance explaining that a health care bill with a "government option" would move America toward a single-payer government health care system. You may not have heard of the first two, Rep. Jan Schakowsky and professor Jacob Hacker. But you have heard of the third, President Barack Obama.

Schakowsky is a left-wing Democrat from the north side of Chicago and adjacent suburbs and, as chief deputy whip, part of the House Democratic leadership. The video shows her speaking to an enthusiastic group last April. She cites an insurance company spokesman as saying, "A public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer." The audience cheers. "My single-payer friends," she goes on, "he was right." Later she adds, "This is not a principled fight. This is a fight about strategy for getting there, and I believe we will."
Schakowsky sounds self-assured but angry, perhaps because her husband, Robert Creamer, served five months in prison a few years ago for bank fraud and failure to pay withholding taxes. Hacker, Yale's Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science, sounds friendly and cheerful in appearances recorded in January 2007 and July 2008. With a government option plan, he says in 2007, "You can at least make the claim that there's a competitive system between the public and the private sector," but he predicts that the government option "would eliminate the small group insurance."

Speaking of the government option in 2008, he says, "Someone told me this was a Trojan horse for single-payer. Well, it's not a Trojan horse, right? It's just right there. I'm telling you. We're going to get there, over time, slowly, but we'll move away from reliance on employer-based health insurance as we should, but we'll do it in a way that we're not going to frighten people into thinking they're going to lose their private insurance. We're going to give them a choice of public and private insurance when they're in the pool, and we're going to let them keep their private employer-based insurance if their employer continues to provide it."

Of course, there's no guarantee employers will. Many employers, single-payer advocates hope, will be happy to let their employees go onto the government plan. The Lewin Group, cited often by various analysts, estimates that a government-option plan, depending on how the law is written, could move as many as 100 million households off private insurance and onto the government plan in a few years.

Obama has never made his ultimate goal a secret; it's the same as Schakowsky's and Hacker's. The video shows him saying in October 2003, when he was running for the U.S. Senate, "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care program." He adds, "We may not get there immediately," noting the Democrats must "take back" the White House and both houses of Congress -- a condition fulfilled last Jan. 20.

Campaigning for president in May 2007, he says, "But I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately." That seems to imply that his goal remains the same as it was in 2003. "There's going to be potentially some transition process -- I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out, where we've got a much more portable system." Which of course government health insurance would be. You couldn't get away from it. The president's defenders depict this video and others like it as a patchwork of irrelevant and misleading statements. They also cite Obama's oft-repeated pledges that any health care bill he would sign would let you keep the insurance you have. They don't address the point, raised by Hacker, that you can't keep it if your employer stops offering it.

But, as Schakowsky says, "This is not a principled fight." Schakowsky, Hacker and Obama believe, out of idealism but also perhaps for crass political reasons, that America would be better off with a single-payer system like Canada's or Britain's. But they realize that they're operating in a country where most voters don't agree. The video helps us understand how they're seeking to reach their single-payer goal through government-option stealth.

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Read The Bill?

We've all heard by now of the outcry against congressional representatives that don't even take the time to "read the bill!" This argument has struck me, although a staunch opponent of this fascistic government, as a populist argument at best, until now.



This bill needs reading by every informed citizen, and rereading to those less informed, in the home, at the school, in the town square, or in any venue we can collectively access.



This bill is codified totalitarianism, nothing less, nothing more. On this sad, frightening moment in the history of this once proud Constitutional Republic, hyperbole and simple recitation of fact have become one in the same.



This research was done by a practicing physician who then wrote to his Senator with his concerns. He is a great American who has done us all an invaluable service.

Here's the full Health Care bill being considered in the House...T http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3200ih.pdf


Senator (name rescinded by author), As a practicing physician I have major concerns with the health care bill before Congress. I actually have read the bill and am shocked by the brazenness of the government's proposed involvement in the patient physician relationship. The very idea that the government will dictate and ration patient care is dangerous and certainly not helpful in designing a health care system that works for all. Every physician I work with agrees that we ! need to fix our health care system, but the proposed bills currently making their way through congress will be a disaster if passed.



I ask you respectfully and as a patriotic American to look at the following troubling lines that I have read in the bill. You cannot possibly believe that these proposals are in the best interests of the country and our fellow citizens.



- Page 22 of the HC Bill: Mandates that the Govt will audit books of all employers that self insure!!



- Page 30 Sec 123 of HC bill - THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get.



- Page 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill: YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!!



- Page 42 of HC Bill:The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC Benefits for you. You have no choice!



- Page 50 Section 152 in HC bill: HC will be provided to ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise



- Page 58 HC Bill: Govt will have real-time access to individuals finances & a National ID Healthcard will be issued!



- Page 59 HC Bill lines 21-24: Govt will have direct access to your banks accounts for elective funds transfer.



- Page 65 Sec 164: is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in Unions & community organizations: (ACORN).



- Page 84 Sec 203 HC bill: Govt mandates ALL benefit packages for private HC plans in the Exchange.



- Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications for of Benefit Levels for Plans = The Govt will ration your Healthcare!



- Page 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill: Govt mandates linguistic appropriate services. Example - Translation: illegal aliens.



- Page 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18: The Govt will use groups i.e., ACORN & Americorps to sign up individuals for Govt HC plan.



- Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications of Benefit Levels for Plans. AARP members - your Health care WILL be rationed.



- Page 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill: Medicaid Eligible Individuals will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid. No choice.



- Page 124 lines 24-25 HC: No company can sue GOVT on price fixing. No "judicial review" against Govt Monopoly.



- Page 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill: Doctors/ American Medical Association - The Govt will tell YOU what you can make! (salary)



- Page 145 Line 15-17: An Employer MUST auto enroll employees into public option plan. NO CHOICE!



- Page 126 Lines 22-25: Employers MUST pay for HC for part time employees AND their families.



- Page 149 Lines 16-24: ANY Employer with payroll 401k & above who does not provide public option pays 8% tax on all payroll.



- Page 150 Lines 9-13: Business's with payroll btw 251k & 401k who doesn't provide public option pays 2-6% tax on all payroll.



- Page 167 Lines 18-23: ANY individual who doesn't have acceptable HC according to Govt will be taxed 2.5% of income.



- Page 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill: Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay)



- Page 195 HC Bill: Officers & employees of HC Admin (GOVT) will have access to ALL Americans finances /personal records.



- Page 203 Line 14-15 HC: "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax" Yes, it says that!



- Page 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill: Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid Seniors, low income and poor are affected.



- Page 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill: Doctors, doesn't matter what specialty you have, you'll all be paid the same!



- Page 253 Line 10-18: Govt sets value of Doctor's time, profession, judgment etc. Literally value of humans.



- Page 265 Sec 1131: Govt mandates & controls productivity for private HC industries.



- Page 268 Sec 1141: Federal Govt regulates rental & purchase of power driven wheelchairs.



- Page 272 SEC. 1145: TREATMENT OF CERTAIN CANCER HOSPITALS - Cancer patients - welcome to rationing!



- Page 280 Sec 1151: The Govt will penalize hospitals for whatever Govt deems preventable re-admissions.



- Page 298 Lines 9-11: Doctors, treat a patient during initial admission that results in a re-admission -Govt will penalize you.



- Page 317 L 13-20: PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. Govt tells Doctors what/how much they can own!



- Page 317-318 lines 21-25, 1-3: PROHIBITION on expansion- Govt is mandating hospitals cannot expand.



- Page 321 2-13: Hospitals have opportunity to apply for exception BUT community input is required. Can u say ACORN?!!



- Page 335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339: Govt mandates establishment of outcome based measures. HC the way they want. Rationing.



- Page 341 Lines 3-9: Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Advance Plans, HMOs, etc. Forcing people into Govt plan.



- Page 354 Sec 1177: Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of Special needs people! Unbelievable!



- Page 379 Sec 1191: Govt creates more bureaucracy - Tele-health Advisory Comittee. Can you say HC by phone?



- Page 425 Lines 4-12: Govt mandates Advance Care Planning Consult. Think Senior Citizens end of life patients.



- Page 425 Lines 17-19: Govt will instruct & consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney. Mandatory!



- Page 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3: Govt provides approved list of end of life resources, guiding you in death. (assisted suicide)



- Page 427 Lines 15-24: Govt mandates program for orders for end of life. The Govt has a say in how your life ends.



- Page 429 Lines 1-9: An "advanced care planning consultant" will be used frequently as patients health deteriorates.



- Page 429 Lines 10-12: "advanced care consultation" may include an ORDER for end of life plans. AN ORDER from GOVT!



- Page 429 Lines 13-25: The govt will specify which Doctors can write an end of life order.



- Page 430 Lines 11-15: The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life!



- Page 469: Community Based Home Medical Services = Non profit organizations. Hello, ACORN Medical Services here!!?



- Page 472 Lines 14-17: PAYMENT TO COMMUNITY-BASED ORIGINATION. 1 monthly payment 2 a community-based organization. Like ACORN?



- Page 489 Sec 1308: The Govt will cover Marriage & Family therapy. Which means they will insert Govt into your marriage.



- Page 494-498: Govt will cover Mental Health Services including defining, creating, rationing those services.



Senator, I guarantee that I personally will do everything possible to inform patients and my fellow physicians about the dangers of the proposed bills you and your colleagues are debating.



Furthermore, If you vote for a bill that enforces socialized medicine on the country and destroys the doctor/patient relationship, I will do everything in my power to make sure you lose your job in the next election.



Respectfully, Stephen E Fraser MD

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