Glenn Beck -- speaking truth to the leftist power grab!

I must admit that prior to Obama's election, I was not really a big follower of Glenn Beck. But of late I think Beck has been making a huge contribution in "outing" the leftist/Marxist appointments in the Obama Administration, and giving voice to the millions of frustrated conservatives who see the current version of the Republican Party as having sold out its Reagan roots. Beck is pissing off Obama, Pelosi and the leftist netroots -- and so he must be doing something right.

For the record, I support fully his message of fealty to the Constitution and in this time when we are fighting Alinsky-trained socialists, I am warming to his methods. He's a voice in the wilderness and I will be supporting him fully against the censorship program that the left is pursuing against him, Rush and others who dare to speak the truth to power.

In this vein I offer this important snippet of one of Beck's shows. Watch it. Remember it. Share it with your friends. Our revolution is being hijacked by a new kind of revolt -- this one of the Marxist variety. Obama and his Chavez/Mao loving revolutionaries are now in charge.

Beware -- our founding revolution is now imperiled!

Harry Reid: crafty like a thief

I have absolutely nothing positive to say about Harry Reid -- but I will give him this: he's one crafty pickpocket. In keeping the public option alive in the Senate version of health care reform, he's managed to take the public's focus off the devastating taxes and fees that are part of this bill -- costs that will cripple our economy for generations and will ultimately destroy our top-flight health care system.

In keeping the bugaboo of the government-run health care program in the Senate bill, he's put the focus on something that he knows is not only expendable, but that he will be willing ultimately to bargain away as a chip as he fights for the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster. For those so-called "conservative" Democrats who can't take a public option back to their constituents, Reid can buy their votes on the overall bill by throwing it out. In doing so he gets 90% of what the left wants in a bill that provides health coverage to millions of Americans (many of whom are reliable Democratic voters) who currently are without. Neat trick, indeed.

Just in case you missed the fine print, the Senate reform bill will lead to skyrocketing premiums for all Americans who currently have health insurance -- meaning we will all pay out of pocket to insure the 38 million who don't have health care coverage. According to Newsmax.com:

Skyrocketing insurance premiums will slam millions of consumers next year because of "indirect taxes" contained in both the House and Senate versions of healthcare reform, according to various medical and insurance industry experts.

Healthcare reforms that were supposed to contain costs actually will cause a sharp hike in premiums, they add. In fact, several studies indicate consumers' premiums could more than double next year if healthcare reform takes effect.

"So even though this bill tries to hide these costs as indirect taxes," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, recently told a business symposium, "average Americans who purchase health plans, take prescription drugs, or use medical devices will end up footing the bill."

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, appeared to concur with Gottlieb's assessment in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

"These costs will be passed on to consumers by either directly raising insurance premiums, or by fueling higher health-care costs that inevitably lead to higher premiums," he wrote.

The bottom line: Most voters will be paying higher premiums for years before they see any benefits. That could spell serious trouble for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

The Senate bill proposes $2.3 billion in fees on brand-name drugs, $4 billion on medical devices, and $6.7 billion levied on insurance companies, plus more than $100 billion in Medicare reimbursements to medical providers — all costs that would be shifted back onto consumers.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's House bill appears even more expensive. It would impose $150 billion in Medicare cuts on the pharmaceutical industry, and a 2.5 percent tax on companies that manufacture medical devices.

"Most of astounding of all," Holtz-Eakin wrote, "is what this Congress is willing to do to struggling middle-class families. The bill would impose nearly $400 billion in new taxes and fees. Nearly 90 percent of that burden will be shouldered by those making $200,000 or less."

And this says nothing about the impact that the dramatic increase in Medicaid will have on already cash-strapped states. The Congressional plans all plan on forcing states to increase their Medicaid programs -- and costs -- to match the money coming from the Feds. This is just what California and many other states need now -- at a time when they can't fund the liabilities they already have.

And, lest you think that Reid would be silly enough in an election year to do that to his own struggling state of Nevada -- the Senate Majority Leader made sure to exempt Nevada from having to fund its half of the Medicaid increases. For Harry, the Federal government (meaning you and me) will fund 100% of Nevada's liabilities.

Ahhh, just another example of power corrupting absolutely!

Will Obama blink on Iran?

This morning the New York Times reports that (surprise!) Iran has rejected the deal its negotiators agreed to last week that would have compelled Iran to ship its uranium to Russia for enrichment into fuel that could be used only in nuclear power plants. Leaving aside the (significant) question as to whether Russia could be trusted as a partner in this program, the agreement that was supposedly reached by the IAEA and Iran in Vienna promised to at the very least slow down Iran's bomb making program, "buying time" for Obama and the Europeans to figure out a way to resolve the nuclear "standoff" peaceably. Many news outlets had praised the apparent agreement in Vienna as a major step forward in the Obama Administration's diplomacy-centered foreign policy.

Oops. Not so fast. The Iranian theocracy has apparently nixed the agreement, putting yet another spin on the on-again, off-again diplomatic machinations of dealing with the Iranians. This cannot seriously be a surprise to Barack Obama, who though living largely in a fantasy world of his own making, has to be aware of the past decade of smoke and mirrors that has marked U.S. engagement with Iran. As I have written many times, Iran's nuclear program is really non-negotiable -- so any pretense to serious discussions on it are bound to be met with failure. This has not, of course, kept the great Obama from trying to bend metal with his brain, or to use his x-ray vision and leap tall buildings in a single bound. But it should be of no surprise that the results with Iran are the same as those that confronted George W. Bush -- even in the midst of Obama's fig leaf to the Mullahs that he's ready to listen to their myriad grievances, etc.

So now that the Iranian's have apparently given Obama the proverbial finger, what's next? If his grand plan for engagement fails (as it inevitably will), will Obama be able to play hardball? Robert Kagan at the Washington Post asks this very question, and comes to the conclusion that Iran is clearly testing Obama to see whether he will blink -- and whether Tehran's friends in Moscow will be persuaded to launch sanctions that truly have a bite:

Tehran is obviously probing to see whether President Obama can play hardball or whether he can be played. If Obama has any hope of getting anywhere with the mullahs, he needs to show them he means business, now, and immediately begin imposing new sanctions.

This is precisely correct -- and the key now will be Obama's response to the Iranian rejection. Will be move forward aggressively to put together a program of aggressive penalties for Iran's non-compliance? Will he move to put a credible military option back on the table to show Iran that he means business? Can he play hardball?

For Kagan, it is an open question:

Many of us worry that, for Obama, engagement is an end in itself, not a means to an end. We worry that every time Iran rejects one proposal, the president will simply resume negotiations on another proposal and that this will continue right up until the day Iran finally tests its first nuclear weapon, at which point the president will simply begin negotiations again to try to persuade Iran to put its nuclear genie back in the bottle.

This is exactly my fear: that our president is a talker, and lacks the steel in his spine to move forcefully against this real and present threat to security in the Middle East. And as for Russia -- it is equally clear that Putin is working Obama as effectively as the Mullah's are:

Russia, meanwhile, will continue to be accommodated as a partner in this effort, on the perpetually untested theory that if Obama ever did decide to get tough with Iran, Moscow would join in. Russia thus reaps all the rewards of engagement without ever having to make a difficult decision.

This is a bad spot to be in: Iran continues to buy time to further its enrichment program, and we continue to court an "ally" in Russia that has its own economic stake in maintaining productive relations with Iran. We are caught in the middle, being played by both sides.

The rubber on Iran has hit the road. Will we get run over?

Partisan-in-Chief

Remember all that hooey during the election about "changing the tone" in Washington? About moving past the politics of partisanship and bring America into a new era of "hope"? As a candidate he said this -- just one of many, many times he talked about the subject on the campaign trail:

"I think the American people are hungry for something different and can be mobilized around big changes, not incremental changes, not small changes. I think that there are a whole host of Republicans, and certainly independents, who have lost trust in their government, who don't believe anybody is listening to them, who are staggering under rising costs of health care, college education, don't believe what politicians say. And we can draw those independents and some Republicans into a working coalition, a working majority for change."

Sounds good, right? Only it was a lie -- just like most everything else Obama said while running to be the president of ALL Americans. Since becoming president, Obama has vilified anyone who has deigned to utter a word against him -- from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to private sector business executives to doctors who oppose Obamacare. And that's not to mention Republicans -- who he now routinely disparages in his campaign-style speeches around the country. If this is "post-partisanship" than I have a bridge I'd like to sell you...

Of course, we know now that Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff was the first real signal of the kind of president Obama was going to be. Emanuel is a bare-knuckle brawler of the Chicago school -- the kind who fights first and for whom a sucker punch is no dirty trick. And Rahm is just one of a slew of Chicago pols who populate the Obama administration at all levels. These are street fighters who studied the "Rules for Radicals" and memorized its core tenet of divide, vilify and conquer. While the president polished his effete, smooth image, his mechanics were busy building an engine of power politics beneath him. "Post-partisan" has given way to "Posting up" and "slamming down" anyone who gets in the way.

Kimberly Strauss has more of this today in an excellent piece at the WSJ entitled "The Chicago Way". It's worth a read -- if only to be disgusted.

The party of appeasement

Someone asked me recently whether I thought it would have been better in the end if Hillary had become president instead of the empty suit we've elected. My stock answer is that anyone would be better than Obama, whose Marxist inclinations and redistributionist goals run much deeper than do Hillary's. Hillary always struck me as a tough nut, who doesn't back down from a fight -- which would be a nice change from the apologist-in-chief now in the White House.



Alas, perhaps I was wrong -- or maybe Hillary is just doing a particularly fine job of carrying Obama's water as Secretary of State. As Dick Morris writes today at TheHill.com, it now appears that Hillary has been conned by the Iranians in the recent talks on their nuclear program.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has fallen for Iran’s line that it is not developing nuclear weapons, but only wants the ability to develop one to achieve its place in the sun among the great nations of the earth.

In an interview on a Sunday show and in a leak in The New York Times that seems to have come from her (since it uses the same language), she notes that “there’s a small space for doubt [about Iran’s intention to build a bomb] because there are some contrary indicators. There is no doubt in my mind that they want nuclear energy and nuclear power, which they are entitled to, to be able to use it for peaceful purposes. The real problem is once you do that and you get what’s called a breakout capacity, it’s not long before you could do the other [build a bomb]. So that’s why this is so important to address now.”

Pressed to comment on a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it was clear Iran was headed toward building a bomb, Hillary demurred. “Well, they — we — we are doing this [pushing for sanctions] because we think they’re heading there. But whether they want to get what’s called the breakout capacity and stop, knowing that they could then move forward, that’s where the question comes.”

So let me get this straight: Iran has been working on building centrifuges and enrichment facilities for the past two decades, has made clear their intention and "right" to build a nuclear bomb and it is still "unclear" as to whether they intend to use their nuclear program to build a nuclear weapon with which to menace Israel and the greater Middle East?

Helloooooooooooooooooooooooooo? Is anyone out there?

It is hard to imagine that Hillary Clinton really believes what she's saying -- but perhaps the Messiah has cast his appeasement spell on her as well. She's either being a good soldier or she's a fool -- and proves that the Democrat Party is fully in the grips of its pacifist wing. This would not be surprising, given the radical left in charge of Congress and the myriad interest groups, from Code Pink to MoveOn.org that has a heavy influence within the Obama administration. But it does make one wonder if Hillary has given up her credibility as a serious person, and whether she can possibly believe what is coming out of her mouth.

The truth is that the Democrats are still stuck in their post-Vietnam malaise -- one which prompts them to seek accommodation whenever possible, and which would rather kick the can down the road and live in a world where tough choices -- like Afghanistan or Iran -- won't derail their socialist goals to remake America into a kinder, gentler and more egalitarian place.

Be afraid: the "Public Option" is not dead

I must admit that I give thanks every day to the courageous Editorial Board at the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ is a rarity these days: a national news outlet that is printing the facts that are needed on health care "reform", which they have accurately positioned as the left's "trojan horse" to socialized medicine.

Today they print a table that is worth memorizing -- for those who are prone to believe the Congressional Budget Office's "predictions" on what health care reform will really cost the American people. Remember, the CBO has now said that the Baucus Bill recently approved by the Senate Finance Committee will actually reduce the deficit by $81 Billion in ten years (if does so by lots of accounting gimmicks and tricks -- but that's another story). The real issue is whether this estimate can possibly be accurate -- most specifically because it is based on the Congress cutting some $240 billion from Medicare to help pay for it -- cuts that everyone knows will never happen.

In any event, the CBO has never been very good with its prognostications:

Next let's examine the record of Congressional forecasters in predicting costs. Start with Medicaid, the joint state-federal program for the poor. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that its first-year costs would be $238 million. Instead it hit more than $1 billion, and costs have kept climbing.

Thanks in part to expansions promoted by California's Henry Waxman, a principal author of the current House bill, Medicaid now costs 37 times more than it did when it was launched—after adjusting for inflation. Its current cost is $251 billion, up 24.7% or $50 billion in fiscal 2009 alone, and that's before the health-care bill covers millions of new beneficiaries.

Medicare has a similar record. In 1965, Congressional budgeters said that it would cost $12 billion in 1990. Its actual cost that year was $90 billion. Whoops. The hospitalization program alone was supposed to cost $9 billion but wound up costing $67 billion. These aren't small forecasting errors. The rate of increase in Medicare spending has outpaced overall inflation in nearly every year (up 9.8% in 2009), so a program that began at $4 billion now costs $428 billion.

It should be little surprise that the government has gotten these numbers so wrong -- the government can't run anything efficiently, and has little or no understanding of how incentives in the market really work. To prove this, the Baucus bill actually penalizes you for getting promoted and making more money: if you get a raise, you actually pay more out of pocket as your "tax" on health care. This is classic "redistributionist" economics at work: "From each according to their means..."

It looks increasingly like the "Public Option" is still on the table, and you can bet that the left in Congress will do whatever it can to push it through. The tempest of the summer has subsided, and the Democrats think they have dodged the bullet. It is up to us to prove them wrong!

In fact, today is being called by Obamacare supporters "a National Day of Action on Health Care Reform."

Call 1-800-828-0498, Tuesday, October 20th, and tell Congress exactly what you think of government-run healthcare. The opposition is going to be burning up the phone lines, so it's important to make your voice heard.

Use the Families USA toll-free call-in number -- 1-800-828-0498 -- to make three calls: two to your Senators and one to your Representative.

Burn the phone lines up!

Code Pink flirts with Obama in San Francisco!

This is just priceless. Code Pink, the radical woman's anti-war group managed to meet with Obama at a Democratic fund raiser in San Francisco yesterday, presenting him with a supposed petition signed by Afghan women that urges the president not to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Check out the the story here.

Code Pink is a despicable organization that made a name for itself by picketing Walter Reed medical center where the most grievously wounded troups from Iraq go through rehabilitation. They are the the kind of San Francisco left-wing organization that makes Nancy Pelosi proud -- and they know no bounds of common decency in their efforts to weaken America.

Check out the video of the meeting below. Notice how Jodie Evans is wearing a suggestive tank top to meet with the president; I guess if you can't get his attention by virtue of your principles, you should try and get it with your other, ahem, virtues. She certainly is using her virtues to maximum effect. And she's just so articulate! Wow. Maybe she'll be the next Speaker of the House?



Boy, Obama sure does get very touchy-feely, doesn't he?

Come to think of it, maybe she's got the right approach after all. I know it would have worked with Bill Clinton!

The left's McCarthyites get their man

If you need further proof of the intolerance on the left look no further than the case of Rush Limbaugh and his bid to buy a part of the St. Louis Rams football team. McCarthyism is alive and well among the "progressives" in our midst -- even as they profess to be the party of "tolerance and diversity".

Yep, they are plenty tolerant alright -- as long as you think and act exactly as they do.

I would venture to guess that none of the "progressives" who spent the last 72 hours trashing Rush as a racist have ever listened to more than a few seconds of his show. Rush is sarcastic and often uses irony to make his points, and thus can (and is) frequently taken out of context. The left-wing media has often used snippets of his show without the background or while leaving out the preceding minutes that put his remarks into some greater perspective -- and most of his provocative quotes have actually been tongue-in-cheek remarks designed to show the duplicity and idiocy of those on the left. Rush is NOT a racist.

But no matter what the real intent or context of Rush's statements are -- the left doesn't care. In fact, in buttressing their case for "Limbaugh as racist" the mainstream media -- by that I mean CNN and MSNBC have used uncited, un-linked quotes to slime rush with the racist tag. In fact, Rick Sanchez of CNN who used the quote later admitted on Twitter that he had not verified the quote he used that Limbaugh said slavery was a "good thing":

i've know rush. in person,i like him. his rhetoric,however is inexcusably divisive. he's right tho. we didn't confirm quote. our bad.

Right. His bad. Ooops! I'll just malign someone on national television and not do the least bit of research to see if it is correct or not. And this is good journalism? What a farce -- but that's what we get now with the supposed "mainstream" media outlets.

And what about MSNBC? How is it that MSNBC commentator and hate-monger Keith Obermann co-hosts "Football Night in America" with Bob Costas during the halftime of NBC's Sunday night NFL broadcast and that's ok? Why is no one making noise about the presence of someone for whom hate speech is a regular component of his show?

Olbermann is a hate-filled guy who started out in sports and suddenly has the political chops to be MSNBC's answer to Bill O'Reilly (its a poor answer, I know). In any event, its just another example of the blurring of entertainment and "journalism" -- and I use that word very, very loosely.

In case you need proof, here's Olbermann trashing George W. Bush -- and it makes Rush's statement that he hopes "Obama fails" seem downright tame by comparison. And, of course, even that statement by Rush was taken out of context -- as he was hoping that Obama's move to "socialize" America fails -- NOT the president himself:



Can you imagine if Rush had said that kind of thing about Barack Obama? Ahhh, but of course you can't -- because Rush knows that it would never, ever be acceptable to say such a thing about a BLACK president.

Double standard, you know!

And what about Wanda Sykes "comedy" skit at the White House Correspondents dinner earlier this year -- when she trashed Rush as a drug user and said that Rush may have been the "20th Hijacker on 9/11. That's funny?



And there the President of the United States is guffing it up and laughing at these "jokes". But, of course, Sykes is black -- so its ok.

Again, a total double standard. Know this: McCarthyism is alive and well on the left -- and don't ever believe that all this "diversity and tolerance"applies to anything other than the skin color or gender. If you don't believe in the liberal orthodoxy and haven't drunk the punch, you are the enemy. Truth matters not.

The Obama "credibility gap" becomes a gulf

This is a great video courtesy of Liz Cheney's new PAC Keep America Safe, showing the chasm between Barack Obama's rhetoric and the reality of his "appeasement" policies as president.

We've elected a man who is willing to say the right thing to look good in the moment -- but is unwilling to do the right thing when push comes to shove.

He also denies that he wants a "public option" for health care (though he is actually in favor of a single payer system), says he doesn't know much "about ACORN" (though the former NYC political director for ACORN is on the White House staff)...and it goes on and on and on.




H/T: Donald Douglas

It's NOT "We the government". It's "We the PEOPLE"!!

Ronald Reagan eloquently puts into words the basic premise of the American founding: that government gets its consent to power FROM the people -- and not the other way around. The Declaration of Independence was made to ensure that the government would be of, by and for the people -- and that it is the people who should be in charge.



Today, our Federal government is out of control -- and has turned completely upside down this very central principle of our republic.

We the people have become servants to the colossus in Washington.

We must take back this country -- and restore the rightful place of we the PEOPLE to decide our own destiny.

Obama's Nobel Handcuffs

The Nobel Peace Prize has always been a reflection of the political inclinations of the Norwegian Nobel Committee – a group of five former lawmakers and politicians from one of Europe’s most liberal countries. The list of winners over the past two decades include Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Anan and Yasser Arafat, and reads more like a political commitment to left-wing causes than a sober award for promoting real peace in the world. This year’s award to Barack Obama is all that – and more. In fact, for the first time the Nobel Committee has managed a twofer: it has rewarded someone who shares its goal of diplomacy “first, last and always”, while at the same time placing a substantial set of symbolic handcuffs around the U.S. president’s ability to use force in the defense of American interests – including the war in Afghanistan.

In bestowing the Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said this about Barack Obama:

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.

For Europe, Obama thus represents a real breakthrough: an American president who fancies himself as a “citizen of the world”, who has spent his first nine months rejecting the notion of “American exceptionalism”, and who seems to truly believe in the transformative potential for talking through even the most intractable problems. After eight years of a Bush Administration that was committed body and soul to American interests and security, Barack Obama represents a leader more interested in compromise than conflict, and who believes that American national interests are largely indistinguishable from those of the international community.

It would be a mistake, however, to view the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama as simply a rejection of the Bush years – or as just a pat on the back to America for electing such a cosmopolitan “man of the world”. The decision of the Nobel Committee to make award Obama was influenced heavily by the President’s commitment to a core value of the European peacenik movement – nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. The elimination of all nuclear weapons is an idealism based on the utility of diplomacy – even with rogue states such as North Korea and Iran – and is the logical extension of Europe’s multilateral engagement strategy. As Agot Valle, a Norwegian politician and member of the Nobel Committee said in a phone interview with the Wall Street Journal after the announcement,"…this was primarily an award on his work on, and commitment to, nuclear disarmament -- and his dialogue.”

But it is really more than just about Obama’s willingness to talk. Rather, there is something more strategic involved: an attempt to restrict Obama’s range of decisions in the critical reassessment of the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. According to Valle, the Nobel Committee reached its decision on the Obama award at their final meeting on October 5. It was thus no secret that the Obama Administration was in the midst of a full scale review of General Stanley McChrystal’s request for 40,000 additional U.S. soldiers in an expansion of the U.S. mission. Nor was it a secret that Vice President Joe Biden and others in the Administration were openly lobbying for a change in U.S. strategy that would dramatically reduce the American footprint in Afghanistan in favor of a targeted “offshore” force that would be used for surgical strikes against terrorist targets. The Nobel Committee clearly also knows that in the wake of an all-out focus on health care reform, the Obama Administration has let public support for the Afghan war drift; the latest polling shows that less than half of America supports the war that Obama himself once called “necessary” for America’s long-term security. The Norwegians know that Obama is wavering on Afghanistan, and that the Peace Prize could be an effective leverage point in convincing him to radically reduce – or even end – the U.S. war there.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee understands that awarding Obama the Peace Prize will appeal to the President’s own image as a transformational figure, and will serve to heighten the already stratospheric confidence he has in his ability to alter the status quo ante. Obama’s own belief in the power of his words is well known. Now, with the Nobel Prize in hand, he has a validation that Europe also sees him as The One. The net effect of this will put Obama in a tough position as he addresses America’s security concerns in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and elsewhere. With little more than a press release, the Nobel Committee has achieved what Europe has been trying to do for a generation: it has handcuffed the American president with the imprimatur of “Peacemaker”, narrowing the options for unilateral action in the process. For the peaceniks of Europe, awarding Obama the Nobel was a true masterstroke of preventive medicine.

The Nobel Committee has thus given the world's most prestigious award for peace to the American commander-in-chief in a time of war. Can the Nobel Peace Prize winner really escalate the war in Afghanistan? Or, for that matter, order a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the event that the current round of diplomacy fails? Even before the Prize, there was obviously much doubt as to whether Obama would make such tough choices. Now, it seems even more unlikely.

Madness

In a final nail in the coffin of the Nobel prize comes the joke of the century:

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

I guess this proves once and for all that it is more important to sound good, look good than actually DO good. Obama's platitudes about nuclear disarmament, "peace in our time" and all that idealistic garbage is apparently perfect for the Swedes. The international community is so vested in the niceties of multilateralism and diplomacy that they finally have their man.

What a joke.

This will only embolden the Messiah forward, to do more damage in our midst.

This is completely nuts!

Socialism rather than security

Michael Yon, war correspondent currently in Afghanistan, writes the following from the front lines:

"This supposed "low intensity" war is high intensity for the handful on the burning end. While London and Washington waffle over troop levels, Afghanistan is on course to surpass anything we ever saw in Iraq. We can still turn this war around but at the current rate surely the war will be lost. Indecision on a troop increase is a decision to lose the war. The required information has been presented to leaders in Washington and London. They have all the information needed to make a decision on troop levels. Weak civilian leadership is sabotaging the war effort."

I couldn't say it better myself. Weak leadership is sabotaging the effort and the sacrifice of so many brave young men and women.


What a travesty. Whatever you believe about war itself, the effort in Afghanistan remains critical to the security of Pakistan and the United States. Our president once said that this was the "necessary war". What's changed? Or maybe the president lied about his intentions as a way of winning the votes of many independents and conservative Democrats who don't want to cut and run from this fight.

Many would have certainly voted for John McCain had they known the truth.

Will Barack Obama pay the price for picking socialism at home instead of security abroad?

The Dem's health care war of attrition. We must resist!

Well, the CBO released its analysis of the Baucus health bill and the numbers will breathe new life into the ObamaCare effort. They claim it will cost "only" $829 billion" over the next decade and -- importantly -- will actually shave $81 billion off the deficit. Of course, these are the same accountants who predicted that Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990 and the actual number was almost 10 times that -- $107 billion. For the Federal Government, that's a rounding error. For you and I, its disastrous.

The reason the Senate bill shaves $81 billion OFF the deficit is because it pushes most of the real costs out past year 10. It's another example of smoke and mirrors from Congress. As Karl Rove points out in today's WSJ,

Yesterday's Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report pegs its cost at $829 billion over the next 10 years. The CBO report claims the bill won't add to the budget deficit until 2015—but the bill only manages that feat by delaying benefits and imposing taxes and Medicare and Medicaid cuts up front.

So, this all just another calculated political effort to shift the reality from the voters. The real risk is that the voters won't know that you can't trust the government's analyis of ANYTHING (how they don't alreadly know that if beyond me, of course -- but then again, 54% of them voted for the current socialist in the White House.)

The risk here is that the momentum gained during the summer will be lost as House Democrats and liberal Senate Republicans (yes, that's you Olympia Snowe) will be emboldened to passing this disaster. Clearly, there are many conservatives in Congress who are worried as well.

Senator Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho, recently told The Hill newspaper that he
"credited the August recess protests with having created enough of an
impression among his colleagues for them to have voted down public option
amendments in the Senate Finance Committee, but he's worried the protests
haven't had enough of an impact as the debate moves forward. ‘I'm concerned that
that impact is not as deep as they thought it would be,’ Crapo said.  

This is a real danger. We must take back to the streets and burn up the Congressional phone lines and fax lines to ensure that they do not succeed. While the poll numbers continue to drop for the Obama-led effort, the battle is being fought in Congress -- and they are playing a war of attrition to buy time so that the protest will get tired and resigned to an inevitable spate of legislation. We can't let this work.

Call your local representative. Call your Senator. Call every Senator. We must not let complacency set in -- these power hungry zealots in Congress want to destroy this country -- one devastating law at a time!!

* * * * *

Also -- please check out the Journal's Op-Ed today entitled "Nancy Pelosi Proposes a VAT" -- which is a huge stealth consumption tax on every component of the economy. It is a staple in the UK and other socialist democracies that have a national health plan -- and Pelosi admits it is coming here as well. The VAT in the UK is 16% -- meaning that 16% is added to the cost of every item or service before they even hit the market. And because you don't pay it at the checkout stand, you aren't faced with it in every purchase. It is -- like income tax withholding -- designed to hide from you the amount you are paying to the government. It is the holy grail for liberals who want to pay for their out of control spending.

And unless the GOP can take back the House and get rid of the socialist queen from San Francisco -- a VAT is on its way!