More Basic Than BarryCare?

As the two political parties resolve their differences over Socialized Medicine, henceforth known here as "BarryCare", one notices two major questions left unaddressed by the Medi-Uhhh and the politicians.

While the D's seem hellbent on jamming a Canadian-style system down our throats, the R's are largely not opposing the general concept. The main part of the fight is over "how much" rather than "whether this is stupid or smart".

The insurance industry turncoats up on the stage with Obama are the same crowd as HillaryCare's "industry advisors" from years ago, perps like Kaiser Permanente. They are whistling in the graveyard, my friends. Because once there is coverage for everyone, who needs 15 or 20 different HMOs?

Inevitably, they will be consolidated into a single payer system, run by the federal borg. So the gambit for the insurers is simply to "get onboard" the inevitable change "train" and to ride it to the end of the line: their corporate armageddons. But meanwhile, they'll make money while they can. And sell us out.

Thus, Un-Answered Question #1: Is this a stupid idea?

Well, heck yes, it's stupid. The same dull people that run the Post Office, hand out Social Security, monitor Wall Street, modernize the FAA, keep the roads nicely paved, and oversee the banks are going to be in charge of your Health Care!!!! Are you insane?

We expect the D's to look at this as more AFSCME voting jobs, purely from their selfish Big Brother point of view. They can't grow government big enough. Now DC even has Federal Motors and sets executive pay for bankers! Neat!

But I cannot abide the deafening silence and acquiescence of the R's. Most of them drank the grape Koolaid during the Bush 2 years, and voted in that idiotically expensive, non-means-tested, and wasteful prescription drug plum for the senior citizens. And back further, Bob Dole's goofy ADA "civil rights" law. All of which stepped the R's closer and closer to socialized medicine.

Un-Answered Question #2: Why is Health Care a "right"?

Exactly where in the Constitution is the Congress empowered to "save" us from poor health, or to disgorge one person's money for the personal benefit of another person's bodily functions?

No where.

And exactly why are we starting with health care anyway? It's certainly not the most widely needed service to maintain life! What about Universal Food, Universal Water, Universal Shelter, Universal Clothing? Go without the first two for a week, and you're dead. Go without the last two for a day, and you get arrested.

Why don't we start with a baseline Universal Food Benefit? Everybody gets to go to the grocery store and hand over a non-means-tested plastic card to "purchase" all the basic food items needed to sustain us in the "manner to which we have become accustomed"?

Did you laugh?

Don't.

That will come as surely as the Founders would have laughed over Universal Health Care in Constitution Hall back in the late 18th Century.

Fiat, A Sad Joke

Fiat! Now there's a joke.

Fiat is to take over and run Chrysler?

The joke is that Fiat can't even run Fiat, much less anything else. Fiat's quality control and product choices were so atrocious it left the American market in disgrace. Every single Fiat 850 was eligible for a recall.

No, not a recall to fix anything on the Fiat 850. But a recall on the entire car!

Evidently, the 850 was half-rusted as it made its way across the Atlantic on containerships, its frame so weakened after a few US winters, that the company was forced to buy them back. All that could still be found, that is.

Then Fiat escaped America, away from U.S. DOT's safety rules and construction standards, for its native Mediterranean climes.

Fiat's other big division, Alfa Romeo, likewise couldn't cut the mustard in the American marketplace, and dejectedly wandered back to Europe. That leaves Fiat's only product currently for sale in America: Ferrari. Now there's a mass-market success story! (huge eyeroll, here)

This is the best Obama can offer the American taxpayer for our $Billions of bailout cash?

The Prez said Chrysler wouldn't go bankrupt if we floated Cerberus, the private equity firm that owns Chrysler, all that jack. Turns out the Three-Headed Hound of Cerberus: Robert Nardelli, Barack Obama, and the UAW's Ron Gettelfinger, have been whistling in the graveyard since February.

It was a foregone certainty that Chrysler would go into bankruptcy. And a certainty that we, the taxpayers, will ultimately be funding comparatively luxurious retirements for UAW pensioners, while the rest of us scrape by.

No. I say, if Fiat wants Chrysler, let them pay for ALL of it. The pensions, the healthcare, and the rest of the obligations Chrysler made to various creditors.

I sure damn well didn't make any of those promises, nor did 99.999999% of my fellow citizens. If the UAW wants to get the retirement money promised to its members, that is no concern of mine. The UAW isn't looking after my needs or those of my family. Why should we be expected to stand in the shoes of Chrysler and make good on promises we had nothing to do with?

A private contract negotiated between the UAW and an auto company has NOTHING to do with the taxpayers of this country.

We forked out bailout $Billions that we'll never see re-paid to the Treasury. That's enough blood money, for Chrysler, for Fiat, for the UAW, for Cerberus.

And for Barry.

Mr. Pot, Meet Mr. Kettle

You could almost hear the titters and snickers of the credit card company executives around the table.

Last week they were getting lectured by the Imperial POTUS hisownself, one Mr. Barack Obama, about honesty, transparency, straight talk, easy-to-read terms, and lots of advance notice of changes.

Ha, Ha, Ha.

Would that Barack lived up to his own sturm und drang!

Honesty? During the campaign he said no lobbyists (a stupid promise, but he made it, he should keep it). He said he would be a deficit hawk, "going line by line" to cut government spending. Yeah....

Transparency? Obama stuck in $634B in health care earmarks to begin "universal health care", aka, the end of quality health care in America. He did this with no debate, no explanation, and no details provided.

Straight talk? This from the Euphemism President? To whom terrorism is "man-caused disaster" and the war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban is "an overseas contigency operation".

Easy to read terms? You mean like during the passage of the $787B so-called Stimulus Package, where no one was allowed the time to read the ARRA Bill? And Obama's buddy Arlen Specter helped shut down Senate deliberations so The White House could ram the spending through without anyone knowing what was in the legislation.

Advance Notice of changes? Another broken Obama campaign promise, specifically that he would always allow a 5-day "cooling off" period before he would sign legislation, so that new spending and laws would be fully understood.

With all his bluster, Obama is shamelessly pushing for a Credit Card Bill of Rights, while ignoring the Bill of Rights we already have.

You know, the 1st through the 10th Amendments to the US Constitution.

Aw, it's just boilerplate language, that constitutional stuff, folks. Go ahead and sign the application.

Mr. Kettle will protect you.

O: What Flu? Border Open!

You want to know why BHO and Janet Napolitano are shouting down anybody who asks about shutting down the border to the Mexican N1H1 Swine Flu?

It's real simple: They can't shut it down.

Well, OK, they could, but not right now. The US Government simply doesn't have the means at hand to quickly and effectively shut down the border in an emergency. Almost 8 years after 9/11. Still can't do it.

Make that, still don't want to do it. Not for protection against terrorism. Not for protection against pathogens.

Obama and Napolitano use the following moronic quip to deflect such questions (this is a direct quote): "It's too late to close the border because the horses have already left the barn."

Can you believe that?

Why don't we game this one out a little? Let's change the deadly threat from a virus (which has tallied well over a hundred deaths at this early stage) to, oh I don't know.... something really scary..... um..... how about armed Al Qaeda bombers?

Now let's apply the Obama Template to this new threat. Both the virus and the bombers have a track record of KILLING PEOPLE. Both are coming in from Mexico. Some use official entry points. Some use illegal frontier crossings.

Now, let's hear the quote again: "It's too late to close the border because the horses have already left the barn."

So logically, what The White House is saying is, once a deadly threat has entered the country, then you might as well let more of that threat in, "because the horses have already left the barn."

Huh? So let more sick people in? Because just like armed bombers, once you have a few inside the country, you may as well let in as many as wish to come?

If that isn't the most pathetic and lametudinous excuse for "preserving, protecting, and defending" the United States, then the Oath Of Office now means nothing at all.

That Obama's first 100 days is capped off by this Brobdingnagian failure to grasp his Constitutional responsibilities portends a VERY rough 1360 additional days. Europe has shut down travel in and out of Mexico. They have even advised against travel to the USA, since we don't control our border and are basically "North Mexico". Mexico itself has cancelled school, closed malls, and called off public events.

But our border is open for bidness as usual.

Obama is literally risking our deaths in exchange for election succor with the illegal alien voting block. That's his value system on full display. It's all about Him.

He's willing to see people killed to stay in office. Plain and simple.

[Newsflash Update: This morning Joe Biden let his own horse out of the barn, when he advised staying off any enclosed public transportation, where coughing and sneezing could vector H1N1 into your lungs. He said he advised this to his own family - stay off planes, buses, and trains. Huh. Well, now he's backpedalling of course. Because this doesn't fit in with the OPEN MEXICAN BORDER policy during the now-Level 5 Pandemic, which allows as many coughers and sneezers as wish to come to the US. Because of the scientific "the horses have already left the barn" guidance we have from our CDC, White House, and Homeland Security.]

NYC: 9/11 Was About Me

Big deal, they flew a huge 747 with Presidential colors over New York City.

Where I was raised, emblems of American "exceptionalism" like Air Force One and fighter jet escorts are most definitely "cool"!! We'd go outside the house, stare up in the sky, and cheer.

In NYC and NJ, however, it's different. And don't give me the standard media "9/11 stigma" BS.

There's something culturally sick about the eastern metropolis. 9/11 merely brought it out into the open.

Following 9/11, where hijacked airliners were used as guided missiles to take down the two tallest buildings in New York, killing thousands, you'd think a lot of unity would ensue. Yeah, you'd think.

Because you're probably normal. But it's not normal in NYC.

Had an attack of such a scale been launched on a normal city, oh say, like Indianapolis, or Omaha, or San Diego, or Tampa, or Nashville, here's what would have happened:

1.) The city's residents would have blamed the attackers for the attack.
2.) The city's male population would have swarmed military recruiters.
3.) The city's victims would have been cared for by fellow residents.
4.) The families of the victims would have directed rage at the attackers.

But the sad tale of NYC was thus:

1.) Residents and media blamed America for causing the attack on America.
2.) Relatively few NYC men enlisted in the war against Al Qaeda.
3.) Victims expected immediate, fullsome federal care for all their needs.
4.) Victim families directed rage at Bush, queing up for $1M government checks.

I don't need to tell you how insulting and unappreciative the NYC attitude was to the rest of America.

The sassy "Jersey Girls", hands on hips, demanding bigger US Treasury money pay-outs and postulating insane rumors that "Bush knew ahead of time" and just wanted an excuse to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. Their ridiculous 9/11 Commission ended up producing nothing new, with mental giants like Jamie Gorelick and Richard Ben-Veniste onboard.

(Gorelick, along with Janet Reno and Eric Holder, largely CAUSED the Commission's major finding that the FBI and CIA didn't share terrorist intel. Because of Gorelick's own policies of separation! Talk about foxes investigating the henhouse.)

Then came the manpower for the Terror Wars. It didn't come from NYC. It largely came from the South, the Mid-West, and the West. I knew patriotic young men entering college that September as freshmen, who had never even been to NYC, that quit college and enlisted in the USMC. I went to the funeral of one who didn't come home.

There was no "Thank you" note from NYC at his funeral. There was no $1M check for his little sister or his parents. Yet he gave his last full measure of devotion for us, for NYC, and for his country in Al Anbar Province.

And he did it knowingly, in the prime of his youth, with a clear vision of his duty to defend his countrymen like his forebearers had done. His mother and father didn't "go Sheehan" and disparage his memory. They didn't "Michael Moore" his sacrifice. They honored him as comparatively few NYC denizens would know how to do.

So it's a laugh to me that NYC citizens scurry like rats beneath President Barack Hussein Obama's big blue and silver airplane.

They betray their real motives about 9/11. And it has nothing to do with saving their country or defending their fellow man (the major exception being the gallant firemen of the FDNY who ran "in" while the officeworkers ran "out").

No. The pictures sent around the world this week of scared NYC workers and homemakers calling 911 and screaming at the sky say one thing quite clearly: It's all about me.

Protect me. Pay me. Take care of me. Me. Me. Me.

They remember 9/11 because it was about "Me".

Whereas, to the young Marine and those who love him and honor him, 9/11 was about "Us".

The NYC Way = Me.

The American Way = Us.

Specter Of A Turncoat

WHAT A SHOCK!

Arlen Specter decided to out himself as the liberal Democratic Senutter he always was.

Arlen Specter decided to end 30 years of phoney duplicity as a "maverick Republican".

Arlen Specter decided to save his ass because he was a political dead man walking.

Why would the Republicans be nervously wringing their hands over the De-Spectering of the GOP? What calculus will it change on the floor?

The answer is NONE.

As White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said today, "He is a valuable ally who helped us pass" the Bailout Package (along with R's Snow and Collins). For more on the ASSCOS turncoats, see my column of February 6, 2009 "Remember The Maine".

Yeah, BHO's "valuable ally"..... indeed.

But my February 15, 2009 blog entry, "Nerves Of Steele Needed", is more appropos here and now. In that column, I called on Mike Steele, RNC Chairman, to kick the ASSCOS trio the hell out of the Republican Party.

You can absolutely count on Specter to paint his decision as a "forced" upon him by his towering intellect colliding with a "hard right" Republican Party. That will be funny to hear him say with a straight face.

Does Specter actually ask us to believe the Republican Party of 2009 is MORE CONSERVATIVE than the Republican Party of 1979? He is nuts. The party hasn't moved to the right. Is he trying to say Bush was to the RIGHT of Reagan? He IS nuts. And dishonest.

What Specter can't bring himself to say and can't admit is that the Republican Party has moved to the LEFT, albeit it slower in pace, than the Democratic Party has moved to the LEFT. In other words, the Republicans, in Specter Talk, haven't moved LEFT fast enough.

And he will say, therefore, that he didn't leave the GOP. The GOP left him. Which is dung.

What has happened is the large conservative base of central and western Pennsylvania has become overwhelmed by the east coast liberal part of the state. And Specter is deciding to save his ass and play it safe this coming election. He saw what happened to Rick Santorum, a true principled conservative Republican.

Oh, and the small matter of the primary challenge Specter was looking at losing. Yeah, that small matter. He was going to get his head handed to him by Pennsylvania Republicans he had abandoned, ignored, and betrayed.

And what will change in the Senate because of this?

Specter will continue to vote liberal. He will continue to vote for cloture, to prevent conservatives from slowing down Obama's radical socialism, and to take away more of our constitutional rights. He'll continue to block filibustering by Republicans who want to hold back the tidal wave of state-control of our economy and political processes.

Steele was wrong to merely clean out the RNC staff of dead wood. He should have listened to voices from the heartland, who know how to fight and how to rebuild a moribund party into an effective banner for winning back control of government for conservatism.

Steele ought to have kicked Specter out, rather than give him the luxury of skulking out the door and spinning it to his advantage. The GOP would have been better off, self-respect intact, to have defrocked Specter back in February.

Specter left the conservative movement a LONG time ago. If he ever was in it to begin with.

Good riddance. The jack ass.

Wither Robert Gates?

Why in the hell isn't Secretary of Defense Robert Gates walking out the door, while giving The White House the middle digit?

Gates was head of CIA. He worked under Bill Casey following the Church Hearings and Pike Commission. He knows what a demoralised and risk-averse CIA will inevitably lead to, namely low-grade intelligence.

He knows how hard it was for Casey to restore an activist CIA under Reagan. A CIA that put people back into the field, that engaged America's enemies and rivals.

The CIA was in tatters after it was emasculated under Stansfield Turner and Jimmy Carter. It took Reagan and GHW Bush twelve years to reverse course. And their work was still far from done. The damage from hamstringing our own spy service couldn't be reversed in a decade. The toll kept coming, including poor pre-9/11 estimates, and poor intel inside Iraq leading up to Desert Storm II.

Along the way, self-stuffed gasbags like Senutter Patrick Leahy sought to foil Casey and the resurrection of the CIA, even meeting with the likes of the Sandinistas. (You know, just like President Obama just did in Trinidad!)

It is inexecusable, unpardonable, and downright dangerous to this nation, for Barack Obama to have released "sources and methods" on enhanced interrogation techniques (what the NYT and the SF Chron and the rest of the insane wing of the press call "torture").

He just gave Al Qaeda our playbook for when the Army Field Manual fails to deliver urgent intel answers. (The Army manual, ha. Basically: "Hi, nice day, huh, Mr. Terrorist? Please tell me what that ticking sound is. Purty please!").

Now all of America's enemies have the specifics of waterboarding, walling, and the non-physically harmful scare-tactics which have been approved and vetted by Congressional oversight ALL ALONG (including by the conveniently forgetful Nancy Pelosi). With Obama's publication our enemies can train to resist these interrogation techniques, like our own pilots and spec ops personnel do while undergoing military survival classes.

What a flipping diasaster Obama is, at nearly every level and on nearly every issue.

But this is intolerable.

He ought to be impeached. He has given succor to our destroyers. He's betrayed us.

And that wuss Robert Gates ought to lead the charge, instead of hunkering down behind his desk like Kilroy.

When are people of integrity and patriotism going to start quitting this farce of an "Administration"?

And the worst thing is, the CIA is going to spiral downward once again, another 20 year cycle of poor intel and inadequate human assets in the field, strangled by fear of official reprisal for doing anything the least bit controversial (as viewed through the periwinkle lenses of the liberal utopians, who are going to get some of us killed).

Maybe get a LOT of us killed.