Americans prefer Hillary to Barack

You have to lean pretty far left in order to get this to happen. According to the LA Times , via CNN:

And a new CNN/Opinion Research Poll has just revealed that even today Americans like that other Democrat more and dislike that other Democrat less than they do the incumbent Democratic president.

Click here if you want to see the complete breakdown.

Florida doctor 'refuses' Obama patients

I'm writing this to make sure people get the story right.
On the door of his office, Jack Cassell, a urologist, put this sign:

If you voted for Obama, seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years.

The left has since gone nuts about this one doctor putting that sign on his door. So its important to note what the original article said about the doctor:

Cassell told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday he wasn't questioning patients or refusing care, because that would be unethical.

If you notice that a member of the left calls him names, and accuses him of violating his oath, please point that out to them.

A round up of polls on Health Care and the Tea Party

According to CBS news, most Americans are still against the health care bill:

More Americans now disapprove of the legislation, and many expect their costs to rise and the quality of their care to worsen; few expect the reforms to help them.

I guess when you shove a bill through, it makes people skeptical.

Fifty-three percent of Americans say they disapprove of the new reforms, including 39 percent who say they disapprove strongly. In the days before the bill passed the House, 37 percent said they approved and 48 percent disapproved.

I think this is great. It means that people are paying attention. Now we need to get more people to pay attention.
Most important to me about the poll:

Even though the president and Democratic leaders have repeatedly pointed out that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office called the reform package a deficit-reducer, six in 10 Americans still think the new health care reforms will increase the budget deficit. Just 13 percent think the reforms will decrease the deficit and another 15 percent expect no effect.

I believe that means that pretty much the only people who don't believe that the health care bill will add to the deficit are democrats.
Which would explain this poll by Rasmussen:

Following the passage of the health care bill, 53% now say they trust Republicans on the issue of health care. Thirty-seven percent (37%) place their trust in Democrats.

Again... that just might have something to do with the democrats pushing the bill through so hard. It might also explain why in a generic poll, Republicans have gained considerably:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 47% would vote for their district's Republican congressional candidate, up from 46% last week, while 38% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent, down a point from the previous survey.

The news gets even better.
Gallup recently did a profile to find out who Tea Party members were. They found out that they were more likely to be male, and slightly less likely to be lower income. But then the real news comes out:

In several other respects, however -- their age, educational background, employment status, and race -- Tea Partiers are quite representative of the public at large.

Please go to the Gallup site for their breakdown. Its worth reading if you want to see who Tea Party members are. The most interesting fact for me is that while 40% of the general population has an unfavorable view of Tea Party members, 63% of liberals have an unfavorable opinion.

Finally, the one poll that puts it all in perspective. The best poll, ever, from Rasmussen:

On major issues, 48% of voters say that the average Tea Party member is closer to their views than President Barack Obama. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 44% hold the opposite view and believe the president’s views are closer to their own.

Not surprisingly, Republicans overwhelmingly feel closer to the Tea Party and most Democrats say that their views are more like Obama’s. Among voters not affiliated with either major political party, 50% say they’re closer to the Tea Party while 38% side with the President.

This isn't the way that the president thought it would be, I'm certain.

Representative Cleaver refuses to discuss "spitting" incident

You may remember Emanuel Cleaver. He's the representative who claimed that someone spit on him the day that the Democrats shoved the Health Care takeover through the house.

Well, now it appears as though Cleaver doesn't want to talk about the incident.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that they can't find videos of anyone yelling racial epithets?

Howard Dean, on redistributing wealth with health care bill

I don't know what is more frightening. When they deny it, or when they admit it.
Howard Dean admits that the health care bill is about redistributing wealth.

He's a big fucking deal among Democrats

Whenever democrats tell me that we 'narrowly' averted VP Palin, I remind them that we currently have VP Biden.

However, Democrats seem to love having incompetent gaffe-laden people on their side. So much so, that they sell t-shirts with their gaffes on them as fund raising devices.

Health Insurance companies make bad victims

I can't take credit for that statement. Its the theme of an article by Rick Neuman, in a brilliantly written article:

Overall, the profit margin for health insurance companies was a modest 3.4 percent over the past year, according to data provided by Morningstar. That ranks 87th out of 215 industries and slightly above the median of 2.2 percent. By this measure, the most profitable industry over the past year has been beverages, with a 25.9 percent profit margin. Right behind that were healthcare real-estate trusts (firms that are basically the landlords for hospitals and healthcare facilities) and application-software (think Windows). The worst performer was copper, with a profit margin of minus 56.6 percent.

What I love about it is that Rick lets the air out of the whole idea that heatlh insurance companies are robbing us blind compared to other companies.
Unfortunately, this article (written in August of 2009) did not fall neatly into the narrative, so it was blithely ignored by the administration and the democrats following it.

Honest, I love D & D, which is why I posted this

I'm a huge fan of the game Dungeons and Dragons. I lived it from pretty much 15 years of my life.
I also like porn. Really, no kidding.

Anyway, despite that, I still think that this is a bad idea. Getting porn stars to play D&D.

Forget for a second that D&D is only entertaining for those who are playing it. Watching it, is like watching golf on television. Its dull and pointless.

What this idea is missing is the reason why we watch porn stars.
-And it isn't because we think that they are fascinating people.
Having said that, I'd still love to meet Sasha some day.

Paul Krugman makes fun of death panels, then explains why they are needed

I'm sure that if you hear the extended interview, this would make a lot more sense.
Right?

Obama extends Patriot Act/ wiretapping

Its almost comical. From the LA Times:

Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will:

* Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.

* Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.

* Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.

This is bipartisanship, right? When he accepts the things that Democrats hated... up until he got into office?

Wouldn't it be weird if Obama broke another promise?

Like if he decided to drill for oil?

No. That wouldn't happen. He wouldn't do something like that.

Oh brother:

On Wednesday morning at Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility in Washington, DC, President Obama will announce that his administration will allow the lease sale to go forward for oil and gas exploration 50 miles off of the Virginia coast -- the first new sales of offshore oil and gas in the Atlantic in more than two decades.

Scott Brown: "The Healthcare Fight Is Not Over"

Scott Brown tries to remind the Democrats, gently, how he got elected:

Everywhere I go, people ask me what can be done about this now — after the president has signed it into law, and Nancy Pelosi and others are taking their victory laps.

I don't think he's lying about that. I know that there are a bunch of Republicans in my life who are trying to figure out ways to dodge this craptastic bill. Its what happens when people who hate business try to take over businesses.

Heritage: 10 disasters of Obamacare

This is what the Heritage Foundation is great at... math.
One example:

2. Bending the Cost Curve in the Wrong Direction.
The provisions of the legislation aimed at reducing health care spending are reactionary, addressing the symptoms rather than the root causes of growth in spending.[3] Instead of reducing spending in health care, the bill will increase overall health spending in the U.S. by $222 billion between now and 2019.[4]

Read the full thing. Its full of some common sense.

2/3rd of the US thinks that the health care takeover is too costly

From USA Today:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the health care overhaul signed into law last week costs too much and expands the government's role in health care too far, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, underscoring an uphill selling job ahead for President Obama and congressional Democrats.

Apparently, math scores in the US are better then what I thought.

Obama decides to be more confrontational

Because, apparently, he thinks that he hasn't been confrontational enough.
According to the Wall Street Journal:

President Barack Obama, after a year of fitfully searching for compromise, is taking a more aggressive tack with his Republican adversaries, hoping to energize Democratic voters and possibly muscle in some Republican support in Congress.

He tried searching for compromise.
Does anyone remember any point where Obama suggested a middle point that he could meet the Republicans on? Just saying that you want to compromise isn't the same as compromising.

Will health care costs go up?

USA Today asks this question:

The White House has long argued that pilot projects and demonstration programs stuffed into the legislation will produce far more in long-term savings than anyone can promise today. The Congressional Budget Office can't prove much of those savings will materialize, so it doesn't count them in its balance sheets.

Talking Points Memo on Democratic Talking Points

TPM is one of those groups who thinks that the only reason why Obamacare has a bad rap is because they aren't pushing the message right.
They say:

Last summer, members were caught unprepared and were faced with angry voters, loud protests and televised meetings that portrayed them in many cases as fumbling and unsure of how to talk about a bill that didn't actually exist yet.

Its kind of a blunt assessment from a blog that before blamed the chaos on Tea Party members yelling. Now they admit that congress critters didn't know what they were saying.

The Democrats actually put out a whole set of Talking Points for their lemmings... er.. congresspeople, to mimic. If you want to ask them a question, be prepared to hear a pre-recorded message.

A sample of what is on the web page:

CBO Score:

• Four Key Points You Need To Know About the CBO Score
• Full CBO Score

Never let it be said that I won't publish the same crap the Democrats are pushing.
Let's take one talking point, from 'four key points':

Is fully paid for – costs $940 billion over a decade. (Americans spend nearly $2.5 trillion each year on health care now and nearly two-thirds of the bill is paid for by reducing health care costs).

It is not fully paid for. The only way it could possibly be paid for is if they reduce medicare by $500 billion over ten years. Who believes that they would do that? They also pay for it by taxing anyone who doesn't get health care insurance.

Frank Rich: World Class Asshat

There are a lot of clueless journalists out there. A lot of columnists who never get out of their home offices enough to talk to real people and find out what real people think.

But when those particular asshats work for the New York Times, they seem to take on a whole new dimension of asshattedness.

Frank Rich believes that the opposition that the president and congress has run into over the past week has nothing to do with health care. Frank wrote:

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

Let's put aside the fact that Tea Party members do not liken Obama to Hitler. As most of us know, there were LaRouche protesters who showed up at Tea Party rallies with [insert current president here] being compared to Hitler. They used to do it with Bush. Now they do it with Obama. Let's also forget for a moment that it was the left who came up with the term BushHitler.

The question is: how fucking offensive can you get in comparing 4 broken windows across a country of 300 million with the destruction of 7500 Jewish businesses, during a period where 200 synagogues were damaged or destroyed? The only thing missing from Frank Rich's comparison, outside of it being approximately 7496 windows short, is the fact that the Jewish people were being attacked for being Jewish. Whereas the democrats were apparently targeted for voting for a bill that was unpopular with the majority of the country.

Rich moves on:

No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause

This just shows how clueless Rich is, that we 'shouldn't' be angry that our health care is being taken over by the government which should result in higher premiums and health care of a lower quality. Not to mention the loss of liberty: for the first time in the history of the US, the US government is requiring us to buy a private product.
If losing my liberty isn't a good reason to be upset... what is?

Now let me make this clear, in case anyone is a little fuzzy on this. I believe in non-violent protest. There is no place for vandalism. But freaking out over the 4 broken windows in the entire US and making it sound like all hell is breaking loose is obscene.
Frank didn't stop there:

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play.

Frank is old. I'm not saying that to make light of his age. I'm saying that to point out that he's old enough to remember Bill Clinton pushing his health care bill. Back then, people like Frank Rich blamed opposition to the bill on Hillary Clinton's involvement. Not much has changed since then. They are still blaming opposition on everything except the bill itself.

Its like he literally can't figure out why anyone would be opposed to it. His brain can't handle the idea of people taking care of their own health insurance. He doesn't know why anyone would be opposed to more government intervention in our lives.
That's how much of a democrat he is. Its what makes him almost dangerously dumb.
And for the record, when I say that he's dangerously dumb, it doesn't mean that I want to shoot him or slash his tires.
I do, however, hope that the New York Times continues its slow and eventual decline into bankruptcy.

The Tea Party in Searchlight, Nevada

Eric Odom took some video going down the road that leads to the event.
Watch it and tell me that the Tea Party does not still have momentum.

Catching up with some links.

Investor's .com came up with a list of 20 ways that the health care bill will take away our freedom. My 'favorite';

6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.
You're a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You're a woman who can't have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You're a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former CBO director, explains the faulty math in the CBO's 'costs' of health care in the NY Times:

Gimmick No. 1 is the way the bill front-loads revenues and backloads spending. That is, the taxes and fees it calls for are set to begin immediately, but its new subsidies would be deferred so that the first 10 years of revenue would be used to pay for only 6 years of spending.

Even worse, some costs are left out entirely. To operate the new programs over the first 10 years, future Congresses would need to vote for $114 billion in additional annual spending. But this so-called discretionary spending is excluded from the Congressional Budget Office’s tabulation.

The worst part about it is that in Douglas' opinion, the CBO should have been more critical of the spending.

Speaking of spending, Social Security finally hit the point of no return... where outlays are more then revenue. We are now also running a Social Security deficit:

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

But we need to spend more on social programs. Right.

Did you know that as part of the health care bill takeover, from now on, the federal government will be in charge of student loans? That should bring down the cost of tuition...

Ending one of the fiercest lobbying fights in Washington, Congress voted Thursday to force commercial banks out of the federal student loan market, cutting off billions of dollars in profits in a sweeping restructuring of financial-aid programs and redirecting most of the money to new education initiatives.

This is like taking the car keys away from the guy who is stumbling drunk and giving them to the guy who is passed out, and telling him, "Here... you look responsible!"

A week after the health care takeover was passed, Rasmussen did a poll. They found out the following:

One week after the House of Representatives passed the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, 54% of the nation's likely voters still favor repealing the new law. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 42% oppose repeal.

The only people who didn't see that coming were hard core democrats.