Love for Limbaugh

I'm not a big Rush Limbaugh fan. He's on the Right, which is nice, but he's a blowhard and a hack who carried W's water for way too long.

That said, the way he's been blackballed by the NFL and kept from being part of a group set to by the St. Louis Rams -- after he'd received assurances from the ownership group that his participation was kosher with the league -- has been disgraceful. Supposedly, it was for "racist" comments he's made.

Racist comments? Limbaugh made one pretty tame (and fairly accurate) comment on Monday Night Football about folks in the media liking black QBs under center and one comment about wanting Obama's agenda to fail. Um, that's it. Nothing compared to the racist comments that have made Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright icons on the Left.

Oh, but Limbaugh's a conservative. So ganging up on him's alright, I suppose.

Give me a freaking break. These people are either dupes (90%) or shameless liars (10%).

"Deficit-neutral" health care reform now **OFFICIALLY** a lie

Congressional Democrats are trying to buy off the physicians lobby by shelling out a quarter-trillion dollars to make up for scheduled cuts in Medicare. That $250 billion isn't in the health care reform budget, though. Hence, any bill that comes out adds $250 billion to the deficit before it does anything else. Excellent.

Bob Laszewski sums it up quite well:

How many times have you heard the President say that any health care bill must be "deficit neutral?" How many times have you heard conservative and moderate Democrats say they won't vote for a health bill that isn't paid for?

What are the Democrats about to try?

Peeling out one of the biggest components of health care and quickly spending $245 billion to bolster physician fees over the next ten years, doing it separate from the "deficit neutral" health bill, and just adding the $245 billion cost of this to the deficit!

We always knew that Obama's claims about any bill he signs being deficit-neutral -- that is, not adding a penny to the deficit -- were lies. Now it's pretty much official.

The Baucus bill, or "How government action makes bad things worse"

One of my favorite demotivator posters -- the cynical, pessimistic posters that mock motivational posters -- is the one for meetings. It's a picture of a bunch of hands put into a circle (sort of like what you'd do before a sports game), with a phrase below it that says, "None of us is as dumb as all of us."

I can't think of a more perfect description of most government planning: all of the bad ideas, few of the good ones.

That's the situation with Max Baucus's health care bill. He tries to split the difference between socialist-style bills like the ones in the House and bills put forth by the GOP. The result is a potential clusterf*ck of epic proportions. It would lead to the end of private insurance by 2025.

The House bill was terrible, but it was a bit more intellectually consistent. It required insurers to take everyone, regardless of health status, but it also required everyone to guy insurance or face stiff penalties of $1,500 per adult in the first year. With everyone in the system, the healthy would subsidize the unhealthy. Insurers weren't happy with having to take everyone, but they accepted the deal because everyone would have to buy their products.

Many people -- inside and outside Congress -- didn't like the idea of a hard mandate, though, so in his bill Senator Max Baucus, chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, ratcheted down the penalties for not buying insurance to $400 after 8 years. That's a huge difference. It also sets the stage for the kind of massive problems Massachusetts is having with their "leaky" mandate.

People over at Harvard Pilgrim Health Plan have said that people are gaming the system like crazy. They face a $900 fine for not buying insurance, but they can buy -- and cancel -- policies whenever they want. Usually, in the individual market, folks have to wait at least 6 months to get coverage for big-ticket items like pregnancy or cancer treatment to make sure that people can't just buy coverage when they need it and then drop it.

In Massachusetts, though, insurers have found that people buy coverage for less than 5 months on average, and cost the system 600% more than they would otherwise. That kind of situation is simply unsustainable. After too long, insurers will have to shut their doors; they simply won't be able to stay in business.

That's bad enough for one state. Senator Baucus wants to bring that scenario to the whole country, though. Besides driving insurers out of business, it would jack up the taxes that we pay to massive levels, and jack up the out-of-pocket expenses we'd pay on health care to 3 or 4 times what we currently pay in just 12 years.

The response from the Left has been pretty uninspiring (though quite revealing). They haven't denied that this would be the case. They've just claimed that it won't be such a big deal.

But it will be a big deal. A very big deal, indeed. God help us if this horrible bill becomes law.

A Conversation About Race

This hour-long film by Colorado filmmaker Craig Bodecker is must-see viewing material. In it, he interviews about a dozen people trying to get at the definition and nature of "racism".

The point that shines through more than anything is that almost everyone who uses the term "racism" has no clear understanding of what racism really is, except that it's something that white people do. Some hilarious, and hilariously sad, comments in that hour of footage.

Definitely check it out.

If you look up "ridiculous" in the dictionary ...

You'll find this front-and-center:

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize in Surprise Pick

President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, in a surprise pick from the Norwegian Nobel Committee that cited the president's creation of a "new climate in international politics" and his work on nuclear disarmament.

As if we needed more evidence that the Nobel Peace Prize was a meaningless piece of masturbatory Liberal self-congratulation, now we have the award given to a president who's done almost literally nothing to deserve it.

Obama hasn't done anything meaningful when it comes to nuclear disarmament. The only actions he's taken in his limited time in the White House have emboldened aspiring nuclear powers like Iran.

Even if he had taken decisive action that hadn't made the situation worse, he's been President less than a year. It would be hard for anything a US President does in his first year to be known to have had the lasting positive impact on world events that the Nobel Peace Prize used to be known for. Hence the Nobel Committee's vacuous statement that Obama's achievement has been the establishing of "a new climate in international politics", not anything concrete or empirically verifiable.

What a joke. Martin Luther King's Peace Prize just became less meaningful because of this nonsense.

Fair & Balanced

Because it's necessary to remain open to criticism, posts like this are quite helpful:

Follies and lies of the MCM (mainstream conservative media)

About ten days ago I saw an episode of Sean Hannity's television program that was entirely devoted to Hannity's and his guests' responses to the speech President Obama had delivered to the UN General Assembly earlier that day. Unfortunately, one could not call it a discussion. It was a nonstop, high-intensity attack on Obama for his supposed put-downs of America, culminating in Hannity's long colloquy with Michelle Malkin in which the two of them, with an effortlessness obviously borne of long practice, skillfully fed off each other's animus against the president, each statement topping the last. I was struck by the way these conservative stars had become like the liberal media they despise--experts at generating endless amounts of furious moral indignation against the object of their dislike. The show was also frustrating, because, notwithstanding Hannity's and Malkin's roundhouse condemnations of Obama for his anti-Americanism, they provided almost no quotations from his speech to back up the charge. The exchange consisted almost entirely of overheated adjectives, not facts. The fact that Obama, like all leftist Democrats, believes that America has too much power relative to other countries does not automatically mean that every time he opens his mouth he is tearing down America. It is necessary to show that he is tearing down America.

There was however one passage from the speech that Hannity did quote, consisting of Obama's remark that "on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others." Hannity, backed by Malkin, must have repeated this line three or four times. And I had to agree with them, that was certainly an egregious thing for the president of the U.S. to have said.

Except, as I found our later that evening when I looked up the speech on the Web, Obama hadn't said it.

Here is the entire passage:

I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. Part of this was due to misperceptions and misinformation about my country. Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. This has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for our collective inaction.

So, when Obama stated that "America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others," he was pointedly not expressing his own view, but describing the view of other people, a view that he associated with "an almost reflexive anti-Americanism" which he said has damaged international cooperation.

Either Hannity (with Malkin's energetic assistance) told a scurrilous lie about Obama, or he is so stupid that he can't tell the difference between Obama stating his own views and Obama discussing (and criticizing) other people's views.

While this episode of Hannity's program was especially bad, it was not unique. To a disturbing degree the mainstream conservative media have become a mirror image of the liberal media, a generator of vitriol without facts.

A legend in his own mind

Steve McCann over at American Thinker may have uncovered the explanation of much of Obama's naive and thoughtless behavior as President.

President Obama apparently wants to do only half of his job -- the part that is the most fun. ...

It appears that Barack Obama views himself as the head of state only. As such he cannot be bothered with the day to day responsibility of governance. He is, in his narcissistic world, above all that; thus he delegates the writing of the Stimulus, health care and other major bills to Nancy Pelosi, puts off any decisions on Iran and Afghanistan, appoints czars with power to spend and set policy and prefers to spend his time on television speaking to the huddled masses.

His responsibilities as the head of government have been assigned to others, who in many cases are not answerable to the American people. This has created untold chaos in Congress and apprehension among the citizenry. Yet the President appears not to care, as his interests lie elsewhere. ...

Notwithstanding the determination of the founding fathers to avoid having a monarch, we now have one, at least in his own mind.