Health Care Weekend
Bensblurb #505 11/07/09
On this fair football weekend, your U.S. representative is an arm twister or twistee inside the stuffy House chamber trying to pass a bill at coo-coo leader Pelosi’s command. Why? It’s democracy in action, I guess. So a Muslim kills soldiers in Texas and unemployment soars past 10 percent. Health insurance reform can’t wait.
Check these comments in Politico:
Lurita Doan, former GSA administrator :
With unemployment now at 10.2 percent, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama have decided that healthcare, not jobs, is their priority and have decided to sock it to the small businesses in order to pay for their dodgy, social experiment that still leaves 30 million Americans without healthcare insurance. Does this make any sense? Any congressperson who votes "yes" for Pelosi’s bill should be ousted from office.
Michael Cannon. Cato Director of Health Policy Studies : If House Democrats hold a vote on their health-care overhaul this weekend, they might as well vote to abolish the Congressional Budget Office too. It would be no more audacious (and much more honest) than the way they have gamed the CBO's rules to hide $1.5 trillion of the cost of their legislation -- which has to be the biggest fiscal obfuscation in the history of American politics.
Regardless, the Friday night TV pundit consensus was that the bill would pass but never become law. The Senate is all over the lot on health care, fortunately.
Meanwhile, how could any President have had a worse week? He campaigns hard for the wrong candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, who then get whipped. His stimulus package gets ripped by the rise in unemployment to over 10 percent Then, after a Muslim shoots up soldiers at Fort Hood, he goes on TV and first thanks an Indian group honoring its “medal of honor” (oops) medal of freedom winner before touching on the Texas tragedy.
Speaking of which, here‘s Ralph Peters in the NY Post:
“Hasan isn’t the sole guilty party. The US Army’s unforgivable political correctness is also to blame for the casualties at Ft. Hood.
Given the myriad warning signs, it’s appalling that no action was taken against a man apparently known to praise suicide bombers and openly damn US policy. But no officer in his chain of command, either at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or at Ft. Hood, had the guts to take meaningful action against a dysfunctional soldier and an incompetent doctor. . There’s another important issue, too. How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war? An Islamist whacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who’ve been assigned to his care? And he’s not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on?
And here’s John Hinderaker, in Power Line: President Obama took another pass at commenting on the Fort Hood massacre in the Rose Garden this morning:
This morning I met with FBI Director Mueller and the relevant agencies to discuss their ongoing investigation into what caused one individual to turn his gun on fellow servicemen and women. We don't know all of the answers yet, and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all of the facts.
"Don't jump to conclusions" is an all-purpose tautology, like "Don't panic."... One wonders, though, exactly what conclusions he has in mind. I think it's safe to predict that President Obama will never reach those conclusions, let alone jump to them.
The most informative and straightforward account of the massacre I've seen is in London's Sun newspaper. It pays tribute to policewoman Kimberly Munley, who was on a routine traffic patrol and became the first officer on the site. (There were lots of soldiers there, of course, but they were all unarmed because it was a "gun-free zone"--sort of a microcosm of the adage that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.)
The thought arose. Here was a building full of troops trained and ready to deploy and presumably versed in the combat arts, and nobody could have rushed and subdued the shooter?
Oh well. On to more serious matters, like global warming:
The Washington Examiner has this column (Plants need more CO2, not less,
by H. Leighton Steward):
Congress and federal regulators are poised to make a misguided and reckless decision that will stifle our economy recovery and spur long-term damage to plant and animal life on earth.
In the coming months, the Environmental Protection Agency will hold hearings to justify the movement to brand carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant. Congress will also consider cap-and-trade legislation that, if enacted, could also regulate CO2 as pollution.
Why is it such a catastrophic decision? Because there is not a single piece of evidence that CO2 is a pollutant. In fact, lower levels of carbon dioxide actually inhibit plant growth and food production. What we see happening in Washington right now is the replacement of politics for science in conversations about CO2.
For plants, CO2 is the greatest, naturally occurring air-borne fertilizer that exists. Even schoolchildren learn in elementary science class that plants need carbon dioxide to grow. During photosynthesis, plants use this CO2 fertilizer as their food and they “breathe out” oxygen into the air so humans can inhale it, and in turn exhale CO2. This mutually beneficial and reinforcing cycle is one of the most basic elements of life on earth.
And, from The American, a piece by Samuel Thernstrom...
Reading the climate-change news in recent weeks, one might wonder who won the last presidential election...When asked about whether the president has decided to skip the December climate summit in Copenhagen. United Nations climate negotiator Yvo de Boer has concluded that it is “unrealistic” to expect the conference to produce a new, comprehensive climate treaty—which also describes the once-fond hopes for passage of domestic climate legislation this year—or even in Obama’s first term.
This is not how it was supposed to be.
Among all the things that President Bush did to infuriate environmentalists, none was more inexcusable than his rejection of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, and it was assumed that Obama’s election meant a triumphant American return to the Kyoto fold—symbolically, at least, if not literally. Backed by large majorities in both houses of Congress, Obama was widely expected to quickly pass a Kyoto-style domestic cap-and-trade program....
-----But not to worry. It’s getting cooler as we speak. And footballs are flying.
On this fair football weekend, your U.S. representative is an arm twister or twistee inside the stuffy House chamber trying to pass a bill at coo-coo leader Pelosi’s command. Why? It’s democracy in action, I guess. So a Muslim kills soldiers in Texas and unemployment soars past 10 percent. Health insurance reform can’t wait.
Check these comments in Politico:
Lurita Doan, former GSA administrator :
With unemployment now at 10.2 percent, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama have decided that healthcare, not jobs, is their priority and have decided to sock it to the small businesses in order to pay for their dodgy, social experiment that still leaves 30 million Americans without healthcare insurance. Does this make any sense? Any congressperson who votes "yes" for Pelosi’s bill should be ousted from office.
Michael Cannon. Cato Director of Health Policy Studies : If House Democrats hold a vote on their health-care overhaul this weekend, they might as well vote to abolish the Congressional Budget Office too. It would be no more audacious (and much more honest) than the way they have gamed the CBO's rules to hide $1.5 trillion of the cost of their legislation -- which has to be the biggest fiscal obfuscation in the history of American politics.
Regardless, the Friday night TV pundit consensus was that the bill would pass but never become law. The Senate is all over the lot on health care, fortunately.
Meanwhile, how could any President have had a worse week? He campaigns hard for the wrong candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, who then get whipped. His stimulus package gets ripped by the rise in unemployment to over 10 percent Then, after a Muslim shoots up soldiers at Fort Hood, he goes on TV and first thanks an Indian group honoring its “medal of honor” (oops) medal of freedom winner before touching on the Texas tragedy.
Speaking of which, here‘s Ralph Peters in the NY Post:
“Hasan isn’t the sole guilty party. The US Army’s unforgivable political correctness is also to blame for the casualties at Ft. Hood.
Given the myriad warning signs, it’s appalling that no action was taken against a man apparently known to praise suicide bombers and openly damn US policy. But no officer in his chain of command, either at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or at Ft. Hood, had the guts to take meaningful action against a dysfunctional soldier and an incompetent doctor. . There’s another important issue, too. How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war? An Islamist whacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who’ve been assigned to his care? And he’s not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on?
And here’s John Hinderaker, in Power Line: President Obama took another pass at commenting on the Fort Hood massacre in the Rose Garden this morning:
This morning I met with FBI Director Mueller and the relevant agencies to discuss their ongoing investigation into what caused one individual to turn his gun on fellow servicemen and women. We don't know all of the answers yet, and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all of the facts.
"Don't jump to conclusions" is an all-purpose tautology, like "Don't panic."... One wonders, though, exactly what conclusions he has in mind. I think it's safe to predict that President Obama will never reach those conclusions, let alone jump to them.
The most informative and straightforward account of the massacre I've seen is in London's Sun newspaper. It pays tribute to policewoman Kimberly Munley, who was on a routine traffic patrol and became the first officer on the site. (There were lots of soldiers there, of course, but they were all unarmed because it was a "gun-free zone"--sort of a microcosm of the adage that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.)
The thought arose. Here was a building full of troops trained and ready to deploy and presumably versed in the combat arts, and nobody could have rushed and subdued the shooter?
Oh well. On to more serious matters, like global warming:
The Washington Examiner has this column (Plants need more CO2, not less,
by H. Leighton Steward):
Congress and federal regulators are poised to make a misguided and reckless decision that will stifle our economy recovery and spur long-term damage to plant and animal life on earth.
In the coming months, the Environmental Protection Agency will hold hearings to justify the movement to brand carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant. Congress will also consider cap-and-trade legislation that, if enacted, could also regulate CO2 as pollution.
Why is it such a catastrophic decision? Because there is not a single piece of evidence that CO2 is a pollutant. In fact, lower levels of carbon dioxide actually inhibit plant growth and food production. What we see happening in Washington right now is the replacement of politics for science in conversations about CO2.
For plants, CO2 is the greatest, naturally occurring air-borne fertilizer that exists. Even schoolchildren learn in elementary science class that plants need carbon dioxide to grow. During photosynthesis, plants use this CO2 fertilizer as their food and they “breathe out” oxygen into the air so humans can inhale it, and in turn exhale CO2. This mutually beneficial and reinforcing cycle is one of the most basic elements of life on earth.
And, from The American, a piece by Samuel Thernstrom...
Reading the climate-change news in recent weeks, one might wonder who won the last presidential election...When asked about whether the president has decided to skip the December climate summit in Copenhagen. United Nations climate negotiator Yvo de Boer has concluded that it is “unrealistic” to expect the conference to produce a new, comprehensive climate treaty—which also describes the once-fond hopes for passage of domestic climate legislation this year—or even in Obama’s first term.
This is not how it was supposed to be.
Among all the things that President Bush did to infuriate environmentalists, none was more inexcusable than his rejection of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, and it was assumed that Obama’s election meant a triumphant American return to the Kyoto fold—symbolically, at least, if not literally. Backed by large majorities in both houses of Congress, Obama was widely expected to quickly pass a Kyoto-style domestic cap-and-trade program....
-----But not to worry. It’s getting cooler as we speak. And footballs are flying.
posted by Ben Blankenship at
7:50 AM
