Want to hear the truth about the health care reform effort from a liberal?
…this rigid, intrusive and grotesquely expensive bill is a nightmare. Holy Hygeia, why can’t my fellow Democrats see that the creation of another huge, inefficient federal bureaucracy would slow and disrupt the delivery of basic healthcare and subject us all to a labyrinthine mass of incompetent, unaccountable petty dictators? Massively expanding the number of healthcare consumers without making due provision for the production of more healthcare providers means that we’re hurtling toward a staggering logjam of de facto rationing.
That’s Camille Paglia, a feminist and leftist who also tells the truth – a very unusual combination.
Steel yourself for the deafening screams from the careerist professional class of limousine liberals when they get stranded for hours in the jammed, jostling anterooms of doctors’ offices. They’ll probably try to hire Caribbean nannies as ringers to do the waiting for them.
Yes!
A second issue souring me on this bill is its failure to include the most common-sense clause to increase competition and drive down prices: portability of health insurance across state lines. What covert business interests is the Democratic leadership protecting by stopping consumers from shopping for policies nationwide?
Why doesn’t she mention tort reform?
Finally, no healthcare bill is worth the paper it’s printed on when the authors ostentatiously exempt themselves from its rules. The solipsistic members of Congress want us peons to be ground up in the communal machine, while they themselves gambol on in the flowering meadow of their own lavish federal health plan. Hypocrites!
Need a reminder that government money is used by Dems to support radicalism on college campuses?
Governor Deval Patrick today assailed the speaking invitation that a group of UMass Amherst faculty extended to a convicted terrorist, even after criticism from state and university leaders scuttled earlier plans for a speech.
“I am more than a little disappointed about this invitation having been extended,” Patrick said at a State House news conference. “I fully get the point, and respect the idea of free speech. But I think it is a reflection of profound insensitivity to continue to try and have this former terrorist on the campus.”
If Deval really thought it was insensitive, he could call out the PC Police and have the thing shut down in a moment. Instead, he’s having it both ways – pretending to care so he doesn’t do more damage to his re-election chances next year, but refusing to start a war over the matter – which would make the people of Massachusetts happy, but would upset his leftist base. What’s a wind testing politician to do?
Ray Luc Levasseur, the founder and former leader of the radical revolutionary group United Freedom Front, is scheduled to speak Thursday night. An earlier invitation for him to speak at a library symposium was canceled last week amid pressure from Patrick’s office and from family members of victims of his group’s attacks, which included the April 1976 blast on the third floor of the Suffolk County Courthouse that injured two dozen people.
Will Democrats ever pay the political price for refusing to fight people who declare war on the United States of America?
But a group of faculty members independently decided to invite him, university officials said.
The radicals, their salaries paid by the people of Massachusetts, are given the freedom to offend – with full support from leftist officials.
In a statement today, UMass President Jack Wilson said he shares Patrick’s concerns and “strongly disapproves” of the planned visit by Levasseur on campus.
“The decision to invite him was made by a small number of faculty members,” he said. “With that decision having been made, we see no way of preventing a speaking appearance, based on the free speech and free assembly rights we enjoy in this country and based on well-established principles of academic freedom.”
Wilson stressed, however, that no state funds would be used to support the visit.
Very reassuring.
Robert Holub, the chancellor of the state’s flagship campus, echoed Wilson’s comments.
“While the university administration does not approve, endorse or support the decision to invite this individual to campus, academic freedom must be paramount for the university community,” Holub said in a statement.
Funny, academic freedom doesn’t seem so important when representatives of the mainstream America – ie, conservatives – are invited to speak.
It was not immediately clear which faculty members extended the latest invitation to Levasseur.
Levasseur was released from federal prison in Atlanta in 2004 after serving 18 years for his involvement in the radical group, which plotted a series of bombings and bank robberies along the East Coast between 1976 and 1984.
The group’s followers were also convicted in the murder of a New Jersey state trooper, Phil Lamonaco, and linked to a 1982 shootout with Massachusetts state troopers. Police groups and the trooper’s widow have pledged to protest Levasseur’s speech.
Poor Deval. He’d love to do more, if only he had a spine.
I’m back from a nice vacation to North Caroline. Sunny with temperatures getting upwards of as much as 77 the last few days, it was a nice break from the cool fall whether we’ve faced in Boston.
Visit Asheville – it’s a very fun town, a nice mix of upscale and 60’s retro.
We found a restaurant that we liked so much we had three meals there! It’s called Posana.
This wonderful cafe overcomes the burdens of offering gluten free beer, organic wine and fair trade coffee, and comes through with creative food at good prices! And the cappuccino is outstanding. Here’s a sample from the lunch menu:
Saffron Sea Scallops with sweet corn risotto, snow peas and roasted tomato compote – Featuring local sweet corn and Lake Lure tomatoes.
The day after our first visit to Posana, we were exploring the River Arts District and stumbled upon the Gerard gallery. The artist was doing performance painting at 2pm, so we decided to come back at 2pm to watch him paint.
Wife Rosalie and step-daughter Kathy get lessons from Gerard
We ended up hanging around for a couple of hours as Jonas riffed for the audience – slapping paint on canvas, playing bongos, and sharing life philosophy. The Gerard Gallery brings art to life. Big fun.
We also had a good time in Charlotte – the 18th largest city in the country according to Wikipedia – with some nice food experiences and a night in a cool bed and breakfast, the Duke Mansion.
The Duke Mansion has seen good times and bad times over the last 90+ years. Recognizing that right now times are tough, we are rolling back the price of spending the night with us to our 2006 rates – beginning at $179. Come stay with us, and we can ride out the tough times together.
The Duke Mansion, as you might expect, was one of the homes of the famous rich guy. Now, in the inn, you get to imagine what being there might have been like for a lot less than the old fellow spent to provide the room back in the day.
I was happy that it wasn’t a hundred years ago, me a guest at the mansion, having to pretend to be interested in what the stodgy old self-important bastard might have been talking about over cigars after dinner.
In order to introduce his beloved daughter, Doris, to life in the South, North Carolina entrepreneur James B. “Buck” Duke purchases the home and triples it in size. Renowned Charlotte residential architect C.C. Hook designs the Dukes’ renovation.
It must be a bummer to be in a line of work where your job is to be as deceptive as possible every day. The truth is also being discussed.
But moderate and conservative Democrats took a clear signal from Tuesday’s voting, warning that the results prove that independent voters are wary of Obama’s far-reaching proposals and mounting spending, as well as the growing federal debt. Liberal lawmakers, meanwhile, said the party’s shortcoming came in moving too slowly on health-care reform and other items that would satisfy a base becoming disenchanted with the failure to deliver rapid change in government.
For the sake of the country, let’s hope the liberals win this debate. The more America sees of them, the less it likes. The more liberalism they pursue, the weaker Obama, Pelosi and Reid become.
Are the American people clamoring for anything with regard to health care reform? I haven’t heard the ruckus, but at the same time I think we’re all agreed that some things need fixing.
In theory, Americans think the health care system needs to be fixed and they like many of the ideas Democrats are promoting. But they don’t like the specific proposals taking shape because they do not think they will benefit them personally.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone, though, with a full understanding of what’s going on, would want to turn the entire medical system in this country over to the federal government in order to get 8% of the population an insurance policy.
Am I getting ahead of myself? Oh, the joys of inexperience. The Obama presidency has been destroyed by naive overreach – pursuit of the Public Option, the Trojan Horse of the Single Payer crowd. By the Tea Party Movement. Indeed, by the American people, who simply don’t believe in the things that the radicals controlling Washington believe.
Senior Congressional Democrats told ABC News today it is highly unlikely that a health care reform bill will be completed this year, just a week after President Barack Obama declared he was “absolutely confident” he’ll be able to sign one by then.
They can spin however they want about this not being a referendum on the president and the leadership in congress – the truth is, the Messiah has landed, and he’s not walking on water. His power to pass Cap & Trade, Immigration Reform, and even Health Reform – anything on the radical agenda – are now severely diminished.
“Getting this done by the by the end of the year is a no-go,” a senior Democratic leadership aide told ABC News. Two other key Congressional Democrats also told ABC News the same thing.
If they’re working on health care next year, during a congressional election season, the crowd in the capital will be much less interested in slapping the American people in the face by ignoring our opinion.
There will long lines of Senators and Reps looking to talk to leadership today, and there will lots of hemming and hawing over prior commitments to vote socialist.
“I am absolutely confident that we are going to get health care done by the end of this year, and Nancy Pelosi is just as confident,” Obama said Oct. 27 at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi may still be confident — and her spokesman Brendan Daly said today, “We are going to get our part done” — but the reason for the delay can be found in the Senate.
In the Senate, Harry Reid started backing off yesterday, even before the returns were all in.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., spoke as Democratic officials said it could be December before Senate debate begins in earnest on the issue atop President Barack Obama’s domestic agenda, months after senior lawmakers and the White House had hoped. The drive to pass legislation has been plagued for months by divisions within the party’s rank and file.
The President and his party took it on the chin last night, losing the Governor’s seats in Virginia and New Jersey, and, to the will of the people on Gay Marriage in Maine. Democrats have never been much impressed with the will of the peeps – last night did little to alter their outlook.
Gay marriage has lost in every state in which it has been put to a popular vote – most recently in California last year.
The only bright spot for the Democrats came in New York’s 23rd, where the late resignation of the GOP nominee from the race proved too big a hurdle for the independent conservative, quirky unknown who didn’t live in the district that he was, to get over.
The struggle was viewed as a proxy for a national struggle between activists arguing the GOP slipped by betraying conservative values and officials warning a rightward move would further alienate an increasingly independent-minded electorate.
The split resulted in the election of Bill Owens — the first Democratic congressman from that region since the late 1800s.
As they do the honest analysis in the backrooms of power, they will chock this up to the GOP shooting itself in the foot as part of its growing pains over how to move forward ideologically. Consider it a win for Newt.
Results in the 23rd also represent a glitch in the skyrocketing influence of Sarah Palin, and a more important stumble for the Governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, who broke party protocol by supporting Doug Hoffman. Party protocol is important for someone who is running for president. He is, Sarah isn’t.
WASHINGTON – Republicans wrested political control of Virginia from the Democrats on Tuesday as independent voters swung behind the GOP, a troubling sign for President Barack Obama and his party heading into an important midterm election year. Exit polls showed unpopular Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine locked in a close race in New Jersey, where independents were heavily favoring his Republican challenger.
Republican Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell’s victory in Virginia over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds was a triumph for a GOP looking to rebuild after being booted from power in national elections in 2006 and 2008. It also was a setback for the White House in a swing state that was a crucial part of Obama’s electoral landslide just a year ago. The president had personally campaigned for Deeds.
The GOP also took the Lt. Governor and Attorney General positions by about 20 points. Some folks are asking what difference these races make.
In a blow to the White House, the Senate’s top Democrat signaled Tuesday that Congress may fail to meet a year-end deadline for passing health care legislation, leaving the measure’s fate to the uncertainties of the 2010 election season.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., spoke as Democratic officials said it could be December before Senate debate begins in earnest on the issue atop President Barack Obama’s domestic agenda, months after senior lawmakers and the White House had hoped. The drive to pass legislation has been plagued for months by divisions within the party’s rank and file.
That’s the difference. Fear of losing their personal political power replaces the fear of party failure.
In New York’s 23rd, a Conservative Party candidate is poised to win after the liberal Republican candidate was run out of the race.
According to a study conducted by Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y., Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman leads Democrat Bill Owens 41 percent to 36 percent — while 18 percent of likely voters said they were undecided.
Vice President Joe Biden is campaigning for the Democratic candidate in a special congressional election that has suddenly become a referendum on the Republican Party.
While the conservative candidate always gets elected in this district, it is unusual, and ominous for the Conservative Party candidate, to have such a large number of undecideds – 18% – following the departure of the Republican on Saturday.
Now that the NY-23 special congressional election has essentially turned into a two-person race, a new Siena Research poll has Conservative Doug Hoffman leading Democrat Bill Owens by five percentage points, 41%-36%, with Republican Dede Scozzafava (who withdrew from the race on Saturday) now getting just 6%.
In Virginia, the only conjecture in the Governor’s race is over how big the GOP victory will be in a state that voted for Obama last year.
My Democratic counterparts are already writing their eulogies for Deeds and exclusively blaming either 1) President Barack Obama’s unpopularity or 2) Creigh Deeds’s skills as a candidate, depending on the writer’s proximity to the Deeds campaign itself.
The toughest race to call is the gubernatorial election in New Jersey, where the intensely unpopular Jon Corzine is fighting hard to overcome an anti-incumbent, anti-Wall Street climate.
Gov. Corzine has spent about $23 million – most of it his own money – in his fight for reelection, more than the combined total of his two main competitors, according to campaign finance documents released yesterday.
This race is in a virtual dead heat, with a slight lead in the possession of Republican Chris Christie. But with a conservative independent showing about 12% in the polls, the GOP hope is that as votes peel away from him the majority of them will move over to Christie.
If Republicans sweep in Virginia, New Jersey and New York, look for GOP representatives to argue that the victories amount to a referendum against Obama. But Democrats have tried to play down the national significance of the races, pointing out that each contest raises unique issues.
If there is a GOP sweep, the media storyline will start to focus on the unraveling of Hope & Change after just 9 months. And there will be lines of Democrats in Congress waiting for their turn to tell Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi about why they can’t support the health care bill as presently written.
The fraud of Obama on Afganistan expands, as he deems a corrupt election as legitimate.
Karzai declared elected president
The first round of the vote in August was marred by mass fraud
Hamid Karzai has been declared the elected president of Afghanistan by poll officials, after they scrapped the planned second round of the vote.
The Independent Election Commission announcement comes a day after Mr Karzai’s sole challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, pulled out of the race.
Dr Abdullah, who had demanded key poll officials quit, said he did not think it would be a free and fair vote.
Of course it wouldn’t have been a fair vote. Abdullah was scammed by a corrupt Karzai government, and Obama used the disputed election as an excuse for delaying announcement of his decision on increasing troop levels in Afghanistan. Now, Adbullah says that none of thieves who stole the election have been removed, so the results of the runoff would be no better than those of the first election, and Obama celebrates the election results as Democracy in Action!
The first round of the vote, in August, was marred by mass electoral fraud.
“We declare Hamid Karzai, which [sic] got the majority of votes in the first round and [since] he is the only candidate for the second round… be declared as elected president of Afghanistan,” said a spokesman for the Independent Election Commission in Monday’s news conference.
But David Axelrod, the guy who runs the U.S. government, said on Face the Nation yesterday that we can breathe a sigh of relief and move forward with the Karzai government as legitimate.
“What the president said was he wanted there to be an election that proceeded in the constitutional way. It did. In fact, many ballots were thrown out, a run-off was called.
Now Mr. Abdullah has exercised his rights as a candidate to withdraw. He has made a political decision to withdraw from this contest. And that doesn’t markedly change the situation.”
Huh? He’s made a political decision? How about he’s bailed because the corruption is too thick to cut.
He said the second round on 7 November was being scrapped to save money, and to prevent further setbacks which could damage Afghanistan politically and economically… One of the reasons for holding a deciding vote had been to try to restore some legitimacy to the election after the discredited first round.
The right has been proven right in abandoning the Republican nominee in New York’s 23rd Congressional District race by, none other than, the Republican nominee.
Republican Dede Scozzafava endorsed her former Democratic opponent Sunday in the race for an upstate New York congressional seat, shaking up the contest for the second day in a row after exiting the race Saturday.
How funny… unless, or course, you’re Newt Gingrich.
Scozzafava dropped out after Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman experienced a late-in-the-game surge. The move was expected to consolidate GOP voters behind Hoffman on Tuesday.
But on Sunday, Scozzafava issued a written statement in which she backed Democrat Bill Owens.
The decision by Scozzy could be viewed as a plot to bolster Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty, two GOP presidential contenders who had thrown their support behind the Conservative Party candidate over their own party’s nominee.
Hoffman and Owens are competing for the 23rd Congressional District seat formerly held by Republican John McHugh, who was lured away by the Obama administration to be Army secretary.
One might ask, of course, who would care what Dede has to say about the race she was forced to abandon due to dropping poll numbers and an inability to raise money.
Scozzafava was criticized by members of her party for being too moderate on social issues. However, it’s unclear how much of an impact her endorsement will have since there were mixed messages coming out of the GOP — a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee said Saturday that Scozzafava was releasing her supporters to vote for Hoffman.
The race reflects a GOP ready to rebuild around its foundational conservative beliefs. A dangerous path, Newt argues, but a necessary one in order to regain long term dominance.
“It’s rather telling when the Republican Party forces out a moderate Republican and it says, I think, a great deal about where the Republican Party is right now,” she said.
The GOP can’t be a party people can believe in if it’s going to endorse candidates who believe in the most unAmerican of Democratic beliefs – such as Card Check.
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Todd is back on the air, and Tom & Todd are talking about the speech by a former bomber of America at UMASS Amherst tomorrow night. On WRKO 7 hours ago
Boston City Hall workers spending time at work posting to their Facebook and Twitter accounts are profiled in the Herald. U do this? On WRKO 2 weeks ago
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