Saturday, September 26, 2009

I guess being green pays IF you're the ex-VPOTUS

Gore-Backed Car Firm Gets Large U.S. Loan
SEPTEMBER 25, 2009
By JOSH MITCHELL and STEPHEN POWER
WSJ Online

WASHINGTON -- A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000.

DOE officials spent months working with Fisker on its application, touring its Irvine, Calif., and Pontiac, Mich., facilities and test-driving prototypes.

I'll bet they did....

Matt Rogers, who oversees the department's loan programs as a senior adviser to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, said Fisker was awarded the loan after a "detailed technical review" that concluded the company could eventually deliver a highly fuel-efficient hybrid car to a mass audience. Fisker said most of its DOE loan will be used to finance U.S. production of a $40,000 family sedan that has yet to be designed.


Detailed... I'm sure....

Friday, September 18, 2009

I Promise I wrote the comments in my previous post BEFORE I read this amazing column by Charles Krauthammer. I Promise!

Does He Lie?
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 18, 2009
The Washington Post

I remember Rush Limbaugh once saying that if he had to trade his brain for any other brain, he would trade for Charles Krauthammer's. Having said that, I want you to note how the afore mentioned Mr. Krauthammer finishes his column:

Obama doesn't lie. He implies, he misdirects, he misleads -- so fluidly and incessantly that he risks transmuting eloquence into mere slickness.

Slickness wasn't fatal to "Slick Willie" Clinton because he possessed a winning, nearly irresistible charm. Obama's persona is more cool, distant, imperial. The charming scoundrel can get away with endless deception; the righteous redeemer cannot.

Isn't it funny that both Krauthammer & I default to eluding to Clinton. I guess it's true, great minds do think alike.

By commutative property of association I think Rush may be willing to trade for my brain as well…

"MY HEALTHCARE PLAN WILL NOT COVER ILLEGALS... (um) because we are going to give them all amensty."

Obama: Legalize illegals to get them health care
[Those mean nasty] Republicans see a backdoor move toward 'amnesty'
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Post

President Obama said this week that his health care plan won't cover illegal immigrants, but argued that's all the more reason to legalize them and ensure they eventually do get coverage.

He also staked out a position that anyone in the country legally should be covered - a major break with the 1996 welfare reform bill, which limited most federal public assistance programs only to citizens and longtime immigrants.

"Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don't simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken," Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. "That's why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else.

I like it. He's proving to be very Clintonesque, don't you think? "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky."

I suppose technically being the beneficiary of a 'Lewinsky' is not sexual relations, but telling the joint session of congress, "My bill will not cover illegal immigrants..." ("um, because we are going to legalize them"), is technically true, but...

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Oh... This is rich...!

Fox News: Welcome To The MSM, Guys
Posted by Charles Cooper
September 16, 2009 8:46 PM
cbsnews.com

Excerpts:

With Barack Obama's arrival at the White House, Fox has emerged as the voice of conservatism in exile. Fox touts itself as the one media outfit brave enough to hold the new administration accountable. Everybody else is "in the tank." That message finds an audience. During the second quarter of 2009, Fox's prime time ratings soared 34%, according to Nielsen Media Research. Compare Fox's average 1.2 million viewers with CNN's 598,000 and MSNBC's average audience of 392,000.

I strongly encourage you to go read the body of this article. It would be hilarious if it weren't so completely 180 degrees wrong.

So, in the interest of being fair and balanced, let's dispense with this dated fiction about a scrappy upstart and all, and acknowledge the reality: For better or for worse, Fox is undeniably a player in the world of big television media. Welcome to the MSM, guys.

BTW - My response to this article was as follows (not that any one on the left cares...):

by an80sreaganite September 17, 2009 11:11 AM EDT
Let's see:

A White House advisor (or "czar") resigns at 12:05 pm on a Sunday morning and yet the MSM fails to even mention it. I don't care who you are, the sheer timing of the resignation is enough to report, yet all I heard where crickets from the likes of CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WP, etc... (aka: the MSM)

The largest (leftist) community organizing group in the U.S. fires employees on 3 consecutive days, the census bureau cuts ties with them, the senate votes to suspend (housing only) funding from them and yet all we get from the left wing media (re: MSM) is crickets or at best maybe a story on a block. Charlie Gibson was too busy sailing off the coast of Maine to know anything about it. The only place this in mentioned on the ABC website is Jake Tappers BLOG! I wonder what would happen if the NRA were advising people on how to evade gun laws??

So, as per usual, the drive-by gets it wrong even in their opinion pages. Reading this blog only confirms what the rest of us in "fly-over-country" already know. The MSM (as defined above) are operating as media consultants for the liberal elite, the inside the beltway liberal democrat-socialist party and more importantly this administration.

If they (the MSM) can build a case to prove otherwise, I would think now would be the time to start, before they go broke. Maybe that is what Rupert Murdock is waiting for. As the players in the MSM go broke, he can just buy them one by one out of bankruptcy, dust them off, hire some actual journalists, and make real news organizations out of them once again.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Two more excellent articles...

The first is from Sarah Palin in the WSJ 9/8/09:

Obama and the Bureaucratization of Health Care
The president's proposals would give unelected officials life-and-death rationing powers.

Highlights:

How can we ensure that those who need medical care receive it while also reducing health-care costs? The answers offered by Democrats in Washington all rest on one principle: that increased government involvement can solve the problem. I fundamentally disagree.

Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats' proposals "will provide more stability and security to every American."

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He's asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of "normal political channels," should guide decisions regarding that "huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . ."

Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels?

The next article is from another favorite of mine, Karl Rove, also in the WSJ 10/10/09:

Obama's Big Political Gamble
Red-state Democrats are being asked to risk their seats.
Millions of Americans watched President Barack Obama's speech last night to a joint session of Congress. Much of it was familiar, having been delivered in at least 111 speeches, town halls, radio addresses and other appearances on health care. But his most revealing remarks on the topic came on Monday, at a Labor Day union picnic in Cincinnati.

There Mr. Obama accused critics of his health reforms of spreading "lies" and said opponents want "to do nothing." These false charges do not reveal a spirit of bipartisanship nor do they create a foundation for dialogue. It is more like what you'd say if you are planning to jam through a bill without compromise. Which is exactly what Mr. Obama is about to attempt.

Team Obama is essentially asking congressional Democrats to take a huge gamble. The White House is arguing that ramming through a controversial bill is safer for Democrats than not passing anything. This is based on the false premise that the death of HillaryCare is what doomed Democrats in 1994. Mr. Obama told a reporter in July that the defeat of HillaryCare "Helped [Republicans] regain the House." Former President Bill Clinton echoed that thought recently by saying "doing nothing" today is "the worst thing we can do for the Democrats."

Actually, attempting to pass HillaryCare is what brought down the party. Voters rejected a massively complicated, hugely expensive government takeover of health care and the Democrats who pushed it.

These are both great well thought out articles and it has got to unnerve the left when these two are able to have such an impact with us, the "little people" out here in "fly-over country".

Keep it up folks!

Is AP-Obama turning on their "chosen one"?

FACT CHECK: Obama uses iffy math on deficit pledge
By CALVIN WOODWARD and ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writers
Thu Sep 10, 3:15 am ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama used only-in-Washington accounting Wednesday when he promised to overhaul the nation's health care system without adding "one dime" to the deficit. By conventional arithmetic, Democratic plans would drive up the deficit by billions of dollars.

The president's speech to Congress contained a variety of oversimplifications and omissions in laying out what he wants to do about health insurance.

You know BHO is losing the Healthcare Crisis battle when the people who elected him begin to expose his lies. What are they thinking? The next thing you know, ABC News will start reporting the facts. I swear if I start seeing MSNBC doing stories critical to Obama, I may have to uncork a champagne bottle.

An excellent viewpoint...

An economist explains health spending
Charleston Daily Mail
Don Surber
Thursday September 10, 2009

Robert Fogel won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1993. He wrote a piece last week in which he explained the two reasons why Americans spend more money on health care than everyone else in the world.

First, Americans have had more money to spend.

"Between 1875 and 1995, the share of family income spent on food, clothing, and shelter declined from 87 percent to just 30 percent, despite the fact that we eat more food, own more clothes, and have better and larger homes today than we had in 1875," Fogel wrote.

If we limit the basics to these three items, that means spending on non-basic items rose from 13 percent of income in 1875 to 70 percent in 1995.

That is a fivefold increase.

Some of it went to entertainment, some of it went to government (taxes are much higher), and the rest went to other things, including health care.

So we have had more money to spend on health care.

The second reason we spend more is because spending more money on health care works.

"It is important to emphasize that medical interventions have not only contributed to the decline in prevalence rates of chronic conditions but also to the reduction in their severity," Fogel wrote.

"Advances in both surgical and drug therapies have significantly reduced the rate at which chronic conditions turn into disabilities that severely impair functioning.

"Such interventions have been especially effective in genitourinary, circulatory, digestive, and musculoskeletal conditions.

"However, many of the surgical procedures are quite expensive, and the cost of the new and more effective drugs is increasing sharply, mainly because of the large investments in developing these drugs."

The United States, overall, has both the most expensive and the best health care in the world.

The socialist argument that somehow spending more on health care makes our health system inferior is absurd.

This argument is based on life expectancy tables.

But life expectancy has many factors, including average weight, homicide rates, suicide rates, genetics and traffic fatalities.

The emphasis in America is on saving lives, not money.

In every socialist country, the opposite is true. The only way to save money on health care is to ration it.

When socialists toss around a number such as 18,000 people die because they lack health insurance, I remember that 14,802 people died in France in August 2003 because of the French health system.

There was a heat wave, and instead of calling doctors back from their month-long vacations to tend those people, the French government decided to save money.

Adjusted for population, that would be like 70,000 deaths in America, or roughly 35 Hurricane Katrinas.

In England, the Taxpayers Alliance estimated that an extra 17,000 people die each year because of the quality of the National Health Service.

That is no big deal to many British people.

"An extra 17,000 deaths might seem high, but that figure needed to be set against annual mortality, which was between 750,000 and one million deaths every year," the liberal London Guardian reported.

"The countries with which the UK was being compared spent more of their GDP on healthcare."

The extra deaths are OK to liberals because, hey, look at all the money the government is saving.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

A copy of a letter I sent to Olympia Snowe (RINO) ME

Ms. Snowe, I read that you are now working with the president on a "compromise" for healthcare. Should a bill, any bill supported by the majority of Democrats, manage to get out of committee with your assistance, I and thousands more will be contributing large sums of money to defeat you in your next election attempt. Sadly, however, once ousted from office, you will still not be required to be subjected to the same pitiful healthcare you will thrust upon the rest of us. Enjoy your power while you still have it, for it will likely be fleeting.... Sincerely, Xxxx Xxxxxx www.an80sreaganite.blogspot.com

Do you want a peek at Nationalized Healthcare?

Here is a sample of where we are headed:
Note: All bold, emphasis & [notes] added by me.

All from the UK Telegraph [not exactly a "right-wing" newspaper]

Sentenced to death on the NHS
Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors have warned.
By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent
Published: 10:00PM BST 02 Sep 2009

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

NHS 'tick box medicine' is no way to diagnose death, says doctor
NHS guidelines have led to a form of "tick-box medicine" that is harming patient care, a leading doctor has warned.
Published: 12:24PM BST 03 Sep 2009

Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, was among a group of medical experts who wrote to the Telegraph warning that patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives.

The new guidelines "are a guide to students about the art of medicine but not the application of medicine," he told the BBC today.

"I have concern about that sort of tick-box medicine. Medicine cannot be done by ticking boxes. You can't just follow guidelines blindly to get results," he said.

Under NHS guidance [re: death panels] introduced in a number of hospitals to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But wait there's more:

Number of NHS patients given wrong medicine doubles
The number of incidents in the NHS where patients have been given the wrong medicines has more than doubled in two years, official figures show.
Published: 10:37AM BST 03 Sep 2009

A report from the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) found a ''significant'' rise in the number of errors and near misses reported by NHS staff.

In 2005, 36,335 incidents were reported, rising to 64,678 in 2006 and 86,085 in 2007.


'Cruel and neglectful' care of one million NHS patients exposed
One million NHS patients have been the victims of appalling care in hospitals across Britain, according to a major report released today.
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
Published: 12:01AM BST 27 Aug 2009

In the last six years, the Patients Association claims hundreds of thousands have suffered from poor standards of nursing, often with 'neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel' treatment.

The charity has disclosed a horrifying catalogue of elderly people left in pain, in soiled bed clothes, denied adequate food and drink, and suffering from repeatedly cancelled operations, missed diagnoses and dismissive staff.

The Patients Association said the dossier proves that while the scale of the scandal at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust - where up to 1,200 people died through failings in urgent care - was a one off, there are repeated examples they have uncovered of the same appalling standards throughout the NHS.

But wait there's more!!!

Patients more likely to go hungry than prisoners
People are far more likely to go hungry in an NHS hospital than in a prison, researchers from Bournemouth University said.
Published: 8:00AM BST 31 Aug 2009

This is despite prisons spending less per person on meals than hospitals do.

Experts from Bournemouth University have been studying the food offered to inmates and across the NHS.

They believe hospital patients face barriers in getting good nutrition, including not receiving assistance with eating and nobody monitoring if they are well fed.

Professor John Edwards said around 40 per cent of patients going into hospital were already malnourished but this situation did not tend to improve while there.

A third of patients ‘being treated by nurses at GP surgeries’
More than a third of patients visiting GP surgeries are seen by a nurse rather than a doctor, latest figures show.
By Andrew Hough
Published: 6:30AM BST 03 Sep 2009

Patients are visiting their GPs on average almost six times a year – up from almost four times in 1995 – while 34 per cent of consultation were undertaken by a nurse, figures from the NHS Information Centre showed.

The percentage of telephone consultations trebled from three per cent to 12 per cent while the number of home visits fell from 9 per cent to 4 per cent.

Complaining patients could end up with worse treatment
Disgruntled patients who complain about their GPs could end up with worse treatment as a result, doctors have warned.
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
Published: 7:00AM BST 30 Jun 2009

Under new government rules, for the first time patients’ opinions of their family doctor will be used to cut their surgery’s funding.

If patients complain that GP services are failing, then the amount of money supplied by the Department of Health could be cut by tens of thousands of pounds.

GPs have launched appeals to try and avert the income reduction, warning they will have to reduce the number of appointments on offer, cut nurses’ hours or delay the expansion of services.

And of course, no story regarding government run healthcare would be complete without a story of the government run healthcare system will "save money" and "be cheaper" than the current system....

1 in 10 NHS jobs 'would have to be cut to meet efficiency targets'
A tenth of health service jobs need to be cut within five years to meet planned £20bn efficiency savings, ministers have been told.
By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent
Published: 6:00AM BST 03 Sep 2009

The Government should also reduce the number of places in medical schools, a newly released report advises, and consider dropping some operations, including to remove varicose veins.

In a report commissioned by the Department of Health, McKinsey and Company, the consultancy firm, recommends that 137,000 NHS posts should be shed.

Although ministers say that they have comprehensively rejected the ideas critics claimed that they revealed the scale of the financial problems facing the NHS.

The Government aims to make between £15billion and £20 billion in effeciency saving between 2011 and 2014.

Stll think your life, your parent's lives, your children's lives, your unborn grandchildren's lives won't become just a number, just another governmental budget line item?

Given the current state of our healthcare system, is this REALLY where you think we should go?

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Who is Van Jones & why should we care....?

According to Wiki:
Anthony "Van" Jones (born September 20, 1968) is the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Jones is an environmental advocate, civil rights activist, attorney, and author. He founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in 1996, a California NGO working for alternatives to violence and incarceration.] In 2005, Jones co-founded Color of Change, an advocacy group for African Americans. Formerly based in Oakland, California, Jones founded Green For All in 2007, a national NGO dedicated to "building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty." His first book, The Green Collar Economy, released on October 7, 2008, was a New York Times bestseller.

Again you ask, why should I care...?

Read this again: Anthony "Van" Jones (born September 20, 1968) is the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).
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And of course there is this (Beware of strong language.):