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Barack’s Schooltime Address — Meh.

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

There was a lot of hullaballoo over President Barack Obama’s webcast address to schoolkids that was scheduled for today. Lots of people on the right decided to keep their kids home from school to keep them from being made to hear what he had to say — one talk show host made mention that today was “Take Your Kid To The Doctor” day — and still others of the opposite political persuasion (no trackbacks or links from me) chose to blast the Right for voicing concerns about it.

I just listened to Obama’s speech, read through the text of what was on his teleprompter as he went, and all I can say is, ‘meh’. He followed the script pretty well, but I still don’t see why all the fuss over his oratory style. Double-meh. It was filled with good advice, and was the kind of rah-rah speech that kids in school get all the time (or they should); stay in school, respect your teachers, pay attention, etc… The same sort of things I tell my boys when they start slacking & letting their grades slide. This one stands apart in that it’s coming from the President of the United States and was intended to be piped in everywhere via webcast; can’t recall any previous president doing anything other than visiting a handful of schools & delivering the same type of speech in person.

This one also stands out in that it showcases our Glorious President’s narcissism; he uses the personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘me’ no less than 60 times in the speech. He seemed to set himself up as the example of how far someone can get in life through hard work, discipline and a dedicated family. And don’t forget that in spite of the knowledge that kids get the same type of pep talk from their parents and teachers, he somehow thinks that telling kids,

… I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

… will make them do better? As if his golden voice and rapturous tones will make the difference, and get the kids to perform. If it works to inspire some kids to do better, great. But it’s just a little too creepy for me, and I’d say the same if it was George W. Bush that was doing the talking (Reagan? I would be ok with that though!) I have to admit that when I tell my own kids those same things they often don’t listen; hearing it come from a respected teacher or family member usually has more traction. But since when did this become the purview of the POTUS? There seems to be someone who thinks the President can pull off what so many others can’t; it’s either a bit of narcissism on Obama’s part, or his staff and the adoring crowds that fill the bureaucratic positions in school systems across the country thinking a little too highly of him.

I just hope this doesn’t become a regular thing; Obama’s image being beamed into every US classroom on a regular basis is just a little too reminiscent of the portrait of Saddam Hussein or Fidel Castro being displayed in classrooms and homes. Add to that the thought of something like the ridiculous I Pledge video being shown along with it an address from Obama… (shivvvverrrrr) Too creepy for me, thanks.

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Call Me Un-American Then

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Congress’ August Recess is turning out to be quite interesting. Many Representatives and Senators supporting the Obamacare legislation that’s being ramrodded through Washington have gone home to their constituents & have held “Town Hall Meetings” to help sell the plan to all of us… But it looks like the less-than-cordial reception they’re getting is taking them a bit by surprise. Here’s a video clip of Senator “Agile” Arlen Specter, the Senate’s newest Democrat, & Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius at one such meeting in Philadelphia:

This is fantastic… At least I think it is. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) the President and the leadership of the Democrat majority in both houses of Congress don’t seem to share my excitement. Nancy Pelosi & Steny Hoyer co-authored a post on USA Today criticizing those who would dare to oppose Obama’s health care plan, labeling them as ‘Un-American’. Well, if that’s how the word is defined, call me un-American as well. The funny (sad) thing is that the Democrats were complaining about being labeled un-American & unpatriotic back during the Iraq war; they said then that it was their duty as American citizens to stand up against an administration that was going against the will of the people. Isn’t that exactly what’s going on now, or am I missing something? The big difference between then and now is that their grandstanding actually put the country and our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan at risk. Now it’s their proposed health care reform that’s putting us at risk.

The problem of course, is that Obama and his sycophants in Congress & elsewhere see this as an either/or issue; they offer their version of health care reform, and act as though we either choose between that or the dreaded status quo. Their plan is the best plan — Period. End of discussion. — and no other plan should even be considered. They seem to be holding these Town Hall Meetings more to ‘educate’ the masses and explain to us that they have only our best interests at heart rather than how you’d expect such a meeting to operate, where they’re open to hearing people’s concerns about the health care reform plan and answer questions. We just need to trust them! The problem is that many of us have seen the contents of the bill that “three House committees have passed” already, and we have found much of it to be unacceptable. I’m afraid the level of trust they think they should have just isn’t there.

And all the while Obama is also out there trying his darnedest to sell this package, and his credibility problem is growing even faster than Pelosi’s. He’s out there naming the things in the bill that people are having trouble with, like Federal Health Boards, and end of life counsellors, and the lie about being able to keep our current insurance, and much more, trying to convince people it’s all not true. That it’s not in his plan, when it actually is in the House plan. I can’t figure out if he’s talking about the House version of the plan or some other plan. If he’s got another plan, the rest of the country would sure like to see it; it must be pretty special for him to keep it so secret. So as far as this un-American is concerned, President Obama is lying through his teeth every time he tells us that something isn’t in the plan when we can recite to him chapter and verse to show him where it is in the plan.

Adding to his credibility problem is his attempts to distance himself from what he’s said in the past about his strong support of a single-payer health system; he said it numerous times during the Presidential election campaign and earlier. Yet at every opportunity he says this health plan is not about a single-payer health system and he’s not a proponent of such a system. All you’ve got to do is go to YouTube and type in Obama single payer health care to hear his own words on the subject. Did he change his mind? I don’t know, but I really doubt it. Even his cronies, like Barney Frank, are on record saying that the House plan, with it’s Public Option and provisions to eliminate private options, is a prelude to a single-payer health system. And every time Obama denies it his credibility drops even further.

The Democrat leadership — which is of course being echoed by the mainstream media — is saying that these meetings are being overrun by “angry mobs” that are not only encouraged by the RNC and talk radio to show up and cause trouble, but bussed in and paid for their troubles. Right. (Isn’t it funny how the Democrats accuse the Right of doing the exact things that they are known to do?) Nothing could be further from the truth; these people are hearing what Congress is up to and are truly concerned, and are voicing their frustration about Congress plowing ahead with this plan in spite of the strong opposition they hear from their constituents. I’d be right in there making noise if Tim Johnson or Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin were to hold such a meeting here. These ‘disruptions’ at the Democrats’ Town Hall Meetings are only a taste of what members of Congress can expect to hear from people across the country on this subject if Congress presses ahead and passes this legislation in spite of what they hear from us. I believe our form of government is still known as a Representative Republic, where Representatives are elected to go to Washington to Represent the will of the people; not to go there and decide what’s best for us, based on what the President tells them, what to do.

I’ll admit that the health care system in the US needs some help, but it’s not so far gone that it needs the complete overhaul that Obama and Co. are prescribing. There are other options, and they are acting as if there are only two; go with their nebulous plan or do nothing. If we go with their nebulous plan, with the government in charge, the cure will surely be worse than the disease. In my opinion doing nothing would be by far the more preferable choice, and I’m not alone in that assessment; far from alone.

Maybe this hullaballoo is a good thing overall; we get to see their true colors. Too bad they can’t be at least a little truthful about it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to send an email to flag@whitehouse.gov and turn myself in.

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Obama’s Health Care Snow Job

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Our not-so-esteemed President gave a press conference last night about his aspirations for reforming the health care system. He’s apparently encountering more opposition than he expected — well deserved opposition I might add — and felt the need to address all us little people in middle America to tell us why it’s such a high priority. He’s getting some push-back — well deserved push-back I might add — on his insistence that it needs to be passed through both houses of Congress before the August recess.

Well hold on there, bucko.

The case he laid out, very unconvincingly, is that the root cause of the economic crisis is the umpteeen million people who are without health insurance:

… even before this crisis hit, we had an economy that was creating a good deal of wealth for those folks at the very top, but not a lot of good-paying jobs for the rest of America. It’s an economy that simply wasn’t ready to compete in the 21st century, one where we’ve been slow to invest in clean-energy technologies that have created new jobs and industries in other countries; where we’ve watched our graduation rates lag behind too much of the world; and where we spend much more on health care than any other nation but aren’t any healthier for it. And that’s why I’ve said that even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, we must rebuild it stronger than before.

And health-insurance reform is central to that effort.

Oh, please. The same old leftist rhetoric about the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor, who get poorer every day. “It’s just not fair!” And what a pack of lies; we spend more on health care than any other nation but we aren’t any healthier for it? Baloney. Americans live longer and have more access to better health care than any other society on the face of the planet, but for him and the Democrats in the House and Senate, the whole nation is going to hell in a handbasket without the federal government jumping in and taking control of the entire health care system in America.

What drives me crazy is that he lied through his teeth last night, and nobody in the mainstream press is calling him on it. In the past he’s said on a number of occasions that if you have health insurance and you like your current coverage, you can keep it. Then last week the content of the bill that’s in the House got out, showing that if you change jobs or your employer decides to stop providing group health insurance, or even if the coverage changes, you’ll be mandated by law to buy into the single-payer system he’s trying to ramrod through. But then in last night’s opening comments, he phrased things a little differently, trying to make it sound like what he said before, but not so far from the truth;

If you have health insurance, the reform we’re proposing will provide you with more security and more stability.

It will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you’re happy with it. It’ll prevent insurance companies from dropping your coverage if you get too sick. It will give you the security of knowing that if you lose your job, if you move, or if you change your job, you’ll still be able to have coverage.

So now it sounds the same as what he’s said before, using similar terms, but adding others to change the meaning completely. How’s that for ‘honesty’ and ‘transparency’.

Then later, when answering a question from a reporter, he said the following, which totally contradicts what he said earlier about keeping insurance that you’ve already got;

I want to cover everybody. Now, the truth is that unless you have a — what’s called a single-payer system, in which everybody’s automatically covered, then you’re probably not going to reach every single individual, because there’s always going to be somebody out there who thinks they’re indestructible and doesn’t want to get health care, doesn’t bother getting health care, and then, unfortunately, when they get hit by a bus, end up in the emergency room and the rest of us have to pay for it…
… So the plan that has been — that I’ve put forward and that — what we’re seeing in Congress would cover, the estimates are, at least 97 to 98 percent of Americans. There might still be people left out there who, even though there’s an individual mandate, even though they are required to purchase health insurance, might still not get it, or despite a lot of subsidies, are still in such dire straits that it’s still hard for them to afford it…

So the plan is to get everybody on the single-payer system. And not just get them on it, mandate it. Oh and of course, you’d charge them for it.

But the biggest deception in the whole thing is how the thing is going to be funded. He talked about how costs are going up and coverage is going down and thousands of people are losing their health coverage every day and 47 million people have no coverage at all… But a recurring theme was that he’ll be able to pay for it through creating and enforcing new efficiencies in the system and using technology in new ways to eliminate duplicated services… I call BS on that. Since when has anything overseen by the federal government been described (accurately) as efficient? There is just no way that you’re going to keep providing the same level of care to more people and have it cost the same or less than it does now. But that’s what he’s saying he can do. And I say he’s full of it.

The only way he’s going to be able to pull that off is if the ‘efficiencies’ he’s talking about involve rationing care and allowing his proposed “Health Advisory Boards” to dole out treatment only to those the board deems worthy. Let’s say you’re in your late 60’s and you’re diagnosed with cancer. Your doctor runs your paperwork through the Health Advisory Board and they look at your life history and your family history, taking note that you’ve lived a full life, and that people in your family don’t typically live beyond their 70’s. Is it really a wise expenditure of precious health care resources to attack your cancer aggressively if it’s only going to extend your life a few more years, when you’re sure to die from something else? Think of all the children that could be helped with that money!

And what of people like Sarah Palin who find out early in a pregnancy that their child has Down’s Syndrome or a heart condition or some other malady that will likely require extended medical care throughout life. “Wouldn’t it just be easier to abort now? What kind of quality of life would you be giving your child?” Of course, that abortion would only be a proposed option at first, but how long until that Health Advisory Board is granted the power to mandate that abortion? It’d only be a matter of time.

The thing is, I don’t believe most people see the need for the wholesale overhaul of the health care system as it’s being proposed by Obama and the Democrat leadership in the House & Senate. Sure, there are shortfalls in the system, but it’s nowhere near as bad as they say it is. And the cure they propose would surely be worse than the disease; that has been shown to be fact, and not just partisan propaganda. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says that the proposed health care reform will raise costs and increase the deficit by $240 billion in the first ten years.

As I see it, there are two primary problems with the health care system in this country and its rising costs; that people who are insured are insulated from the actual cost of their care, and doctors spend too much time in CYA mode, making sure they don’t get sued. People pay $x for their health insurance plus their deductible and co-payment for office visits, so it matters little to them if they visit the doctor once a year or 30 times a year. If their kid has the sniffles, off they go to the doctor where the doctor runs several tests to rule out one dread disease or another, and before you know it, diagnosing Junior’s sniffles just cost $500 or more. But mom’s insurance covers it, and she’s out her $15 office visit co-payment plus maybe a percentage of the total for her deductible, but it’s far less than the $500. But if mom had to pay for all that herself, she might think twice about going to the office, and see if Junior gets over it on his own. And if there were some meaningful tort reform, the doctors could spend a little more time using the common sense that God gave them instead of ordering superfluous tests and expensive drugs to treat common maladies that the human body is perfectly capable of surviving with no medical intervention.

No, I don’t think that President Obama can pull this off. I don’t think he garners enough of the respect of the House & Senate Democrats and their leadership to get everything he wants in this bill, nor to even get it passed. And the push to get it passed by August is just ridiculous. He hasn’t even read or apparently been briefed on the current bill — he’s admitted as much himself — nor have many of those who are voting on it. Our senior Senator from South Dakota has already said he plans to vote for it; has he read it? I would bet a pile of money he has not, and he really doesn’t care what kind of fallout he gets from signing it either, because he’s got five years left of his term, and chances are he’ll retire after that.

If I’m wrong and this travesty of a bill does pass and become our new way of doing health care in the US, we will have change a-plenty, but not the kind of change any of us want.

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It Pays To Read The Fine Print

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

President Obama is on record saying that with his proposed “public option” healthcare that was just discussed (or passed?) in the House of Representatives, if we the people were happy with our current health insurance, we would be able keep it. He must’ve had his fingers crossed behind his back when he said that, because the legislation would outlaw individual private coverage.

The folks at Investor’s Business Daily went through the arduous task of actually reading the monstrous 1,018-page document — something most of our illustrious elected Representatives apparently didn’t have time for — and shared their findings:

… we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

If you like your current coverage, you’re fine. But if you change jobs, if you lose your job, if your employer decides to discontinue coverage… You’re out of luck.

Can I be the first to say, “Shame on you, Mr. President”? I won’t hold my breath waiting to hear news of this from ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, et al.

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After The Tea Party, What’s Next?

Monday, April 20th, 2009

What’s next indeed… The media and the Obama Administration seem to be busy trying to dismiss the Tax Day Tea Parties as underwhelming flashes in the pan that didn’t amount to anything and won’t be remembered in a week (plans are already in play for a second round of Tea Parties on July 4. (link) More on that later…)

But I will remember. I will remember what was said about how our President and Congress are running roughshod over the will of the people, passing legislation that will encumber us all with debt for generations. I will remember the reason we ended up with a President who was eminently unqualified for the job and a Congressional majority that does not represent the will of the American people… We ended up with them because of media embellishment, obfuscation, and outright lies. I get so angry about media bias, but there is so little I can do about it other than point out that bias and do what I can to amplify the messages of others doing the same. So, to that end I’ve added a new category on Media Bias, and will use my tiny little soapbox here to point out examples of it when I can.

To get things started, here’s a PajamasTV video that does a good job of exposing the cost of that bias.

It’s a rather long video, so I’ll highlight what I thought was the best part. After pointing out the egregious violation of journalistic ethics displayed by CNN ‘reporter’ wench Susan Roesgen at a Chicago Tax Day Tea Party, PGTV’s Bill Whittle has this to share:

Ok look, where is the harm in all this media bias, why does it really matter? Well, during the 2004 election between George Bush & John Kerry, Newsweek Magazine’s Evan Thomas had this to say; quote: “Let’s talk a little media bias here… They’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there’s going to be this glow about them, collective glow, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.” And that was in 2004.

Now even though Evan Thomas talked about Kerry and Edwards being portrayed as having a ‘glow’ about them, the media never really fell in love with John Kerry, they just gave him 15 points at the polls because they were the media. It’s what good liberals do. It’s the right thing to do, you know, it’s kind of a sense of duty on their part.

But, but, but… Four years later, the real deal would emerge. Now you wanna talk about a candidate with a glow they could really get behind… Well now! 2004 was nothing, NOTHING compared to the water the media carried lovingly and with wide-eyed admiration for the true messiah, to which candidate Kerry was in retrospect was merely a long-faced John the Baptist. I mean if this guy was worth an additional 15 percentage points at the polls, then who could put a price on this?

But let’s just say that even with the messiah the media bias alone, forgetting the constant throbbing drumbeat from Hollywood, late-night talk shows, the music industry, academia, all the rest… Let’s just say that Obama has the same benefit of liberal bias that Evan Thomas in an unguarded moment was ready to credit to John Kerry. Well if you look at the 2008 Electoral Map, and if you remove 15 points of media bias from Barack Obama, you will get this result… Obama carries Vermont with three electoral votes and DC with three electoral votes and, well that’s all he gets. Because in no other state was Obama’s margin of victory greater than the 15 points of media bias that the press themselves admit that they were willing to give him. And if you take that press bias away, John McCain wins by a score of 532 to 6.

Ladies and gentlemen, we not only have an aristocratic imperial Congress-for-life that no longer represents the will of the American people, we also have in place of the unbiased dispassionate watchdogs that they claim to be, a wildly partisan and utterly unethical press corps who decides over cocktails who should win elections and who should lose them, and then prepares the appropriate narrative, which they sell to you as the unbiased news. But the current products of CNN, Newsweek, and all the rest are as far from actual news reporting as our current congress and federal government are from the ideals our founding fathers had in mind at the very birth of this great nation.

Granted, Mr. Whittle takes some liberties with his source for the numbers he uses for the effect of media, but his point is valid; that the media’s fawning over Barack Obama during the election and their handling of anything that would’ve reflected badly on him gave him a huge boost in the election. I have to add that John McCain didn’t do himself many favors in the election, and the GOP should’ve been able to present a candidate in the first place. A candidate that better represented what most Republican voters wanted in a President. But the fact remains that had the media not been water carriers for candidate Obama, Barack Obama would not be in the White House now, and would instead be at home in Chicago, nursing his wounds.

Media bias matters.

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