Rationing Healthcare? They already do! It's called Health Insurance.

I saw this today on the Meme tracker and I wanted to really avoid it. Because I just do not feel that I cannot speak on Healthcare in a objective form, because it is quite the personal issue with me.

I have no healthcare insurance at all. :-((

Anyone this is in the New York Times Magazine:

You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?
If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone else like him — with Sutent, your premiums will increase. Do you still think the drug is a good value? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.
In the current U.S. debate over health care reform, “rationing” has become a dirty word. Meeting last month with five governors, President Obama urged them to avoid using the term, apparently for fear of evoking the hostile response that sank the Clintons’ attempt to achieve reform. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published at the end of last year with the headline “Obama Will Ration Your Health Care,” Sally Pipes, C.E.O. of the conservative Pacific Research Institute, described how in Britain the national health service does not pay for drugs that are regarded as not offering good value for money, and added, “Americans will not put up with such limits, nor will our elected representatives.” And the Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus, told CNSNews in April, “There is no rationing of health care at all” in the proposed reform.
Remember the joke about the man who asks a woman if she would have sex with him for a million dollars? She reflects for a few moments and then answers that she would. “So,” he says, “would you have sex with me for $50?” Indignantly, she exclaims, “What kind of a woman do you think I am?” He replies: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price.” The man’s response implies that if a woman will sell herself at any price, she is a prostitute. The way we regard rationing in health care seems to rest on a similar assumption, that it’s immoral to apply monetary considerations to saving lives — but is that stance tenable?
Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another. In the United States, most health care is privately financed, and so most rationing is by price: you get what you, or your employer, can afford to insure you for. But our current system of employer-financed health insurance exists only because the federal government encouraged it by making the premiums tax deductible. That is, in effect, a more than $200 billion government subsidy for health care. In the public sector, primarily Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits, high patient copayment requirements, low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients and limits on payments to hospitals.
The case for explicit health care rationing in the United States starts with the difficulty of thinking of any other way in which we can continue to provide adequate health care to people on Medicaid and Medicare, let alone extend coverage to those who do not now have it. Health-insurance premiums have more than doubled in a decade, rising four times faster than wages. In May, Medicare’s trustees warned that the program’s biggest fund is heading for insolvency in just eight years. Health care now absorbs about one dollar in every six the nation spends, a figure that far exceeds the share spent by any other nation. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it is on track to double by 2035.

Now the Right Wing Blogs are doing some seriously loud howling about this right here. I guess that I break away from that pack. I tend to be a bit more clearer thinking about it. Hence my Moderate label. For some better perspective, Riverdaughter over at The Confluence, who is a Moderate Democrat; puts some of this in perspective:

Peter Singer is an ethicist who espouses a utilitarian view of ethics, meaning that his interpretation of general welfare extends to an economic calculation of costs versus benefits. For example, he proposes that it is acceptable to identify specific measures of when a treatment is effective enough to warrant the cost of providing such treatment.
[….]
First, it is critical to note that healthcare is already “rationed” in our country. It is “rationed” each and every day when the uninsured or under-insured are denied the same high quality treatments afforded to those without financial constraints. Anyone who has seen Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko” saw through this film the soulless rationing of treatment in our country such as how the poor and indigent were treated by a for-profit hospital that dumped them on a street corner after providing only minimal care. I will never forget the morning I broke down in tears after reading about a man in our community who had cancer, lost his job and with it his health insurance. His statement “I’m just waiting to die because I cannot afford the chemotherapy drugs” exposed the unimaginable truth that our society is willing to allow people to die with little protest from its citizens. If this is already unacceptable, why would we want to factor such a strategy into any plan we devise?
Now, I have a great deal of respect for Peter Singer and his general view of the world, but his utilitarian ethical approach to healthcare reform in our country is one I cannot embrace; and the reason I cannot embrace it is because our political leaders do not use a utilitarian view when dealing with banks, Wall Street barons, and corporations. How does a society continue to exist when those who have little are turned away from life saving treatments while the wealthy live in a world where money is no object? There is something inherently wrong with standing before a nation and acting as though there is no limit to the funds our country should expend so that banks and Wall Street traders are allowed to continue to feed at the trough of excess, yet a discussion over saving the lives of our fellow citizens erodes into debate over cutting costs. Yet this is exactly what our legislators and president are doing to us on a daily basis — on both sides of the political aisle.

I agree with on all point, except when it comes to Michael Moore. Michael Moore, In my humble opinion; is a socialist Propaganda maker. Who yowls about the evils of a capitalistic society —- All the whole driving around in a limousine himself. Moore is the perfect example of a Limousine Liberal; kind of like John Kerry. However, she is correct about the whole Health-care issue. If you have good insurance, you get good care, if you have none. You get treated and released most usually.

Like I said; I do not have any sort of health insurance at all. But I just cannot get up and cheer madly about something ran by our Federal Government. I just cannot. Because this is same Government that allowed the Siege at the Waco Compound to happen; of which I have never forgiven Bill Clinton for, nor will I ever. Also Ruby Ridge and the list goes on and on. Not to mention the Medicare and Medicaid systems, how screwed up they are.

However, the Compassionate side of me, that sees the suffering and poor getting stiffed; wants to see a better system. So far, from what I have read. Obama’s plan is STILL going to leave many people uninsured. So, what is the big change? There is not really going to be any change, of great importance anyhow. The far left and special interest people are figuring this out.

So, anyhow, hopefully I did not lose any Conservative credo in this posting. 😀 :-/

Others: Don Surber, Tammy Bruce, Say Anything, The Strata-Sphere, Winds of Change.NET, PoliGazette, Sweetness & Light and The Rhetorican

The President talks Baseball

Here’s the President talking baseball. A few observations:

The President has a horrible memory; of which I can relate. As I have the same problem. Uh, What was I saying? 😉 :laugh: 😀
He makes a cringe inducing crack about the CIA tapping into a sport network. 😯 It was a joke, but I bet his staff went “Ugh!” when he made it. :hypnotized:

Congress Delivers a Healthcare Bill

You can read about it here.

You can read the details here. (Adobe Reader Required)

Commentary up the wazoo here.

A couple of rubs:

The proposal would also impose a “play-or-pay” requirement on employers, who would either have to offer qualifying insurance to their employees and contribute a substantial share toward the premiums, or pay a fee to the federal government that would generally equal 8 percent of their payroll. Small employers (those with an annual payroll of less than $250,000) would be exempt from those requirements. As a rule, full-time employees with a qualifying offer of coverage from their employer would not be eligible to obtain subsidies via the exchanges, but an exception to that “firewall” would be allowed for workers who had to pay more than 11 percent of their income for their employer’s insurance. In that case, the employers would have to pay an amount equal to the per-worker fee due for firms subject to the “play-or-pay” penalty. Firms with relatively few employees and relatively low average wages would also be eligible for tax credits to cover up to half of their contributions toward health insurance premiums.

Comment on the underlined part: Which would of course, run some Businesses out of business. Either you play along or pay taxes out the nose. The small Employers part is nice. But this would put the squeeze on the Medium to large businesses.

Of course, you’ve got your “Let’s Cover our backsides” Caveats:

Important Caveats Regarding This Preliminary Analysis
There are several reasons why the preliminary analysis that is provided in this
letter and its attachments does not constitute a comprehensive cost estimate for
the coverage provisions of America’s Affordable Health Choices Act:
• First, our analysis was based on specifications regarding insurance coverage that were provided by the tri-committee group and that differ in important ways from the “discussion draft” version of legislative language that was
released on June 19, 2009. The specifications that we analyzed are supposed to be reflected in the draft language released by the three committees today, but we have not yet been able to analyze that language to determine whether it conforms to those specifications. Our review of that language could have a significant effect on our analysis. More generally, as our understanding of the specifications improves, that also could affect our future estimates.

• Second, some effects of the proposal have not yet been fully captured in our analysis. In particular, we have not yet estimated the administrative costs to the federal government of implementing the specified policies, nor have we
accounted for all of the proposal’s likely effects on spending for other federal programs. We expect to include those effects in the near future, but we also expect that they will not have a sizable impact on our analysis.

• Third, the budgetary information shown in the attached table reflects many of the major cash flows that would affect the federal budget as a result of implementing the specified policies, and it provides our preliminary assessment of the proposal’s net effects on the federal budget deficit (subject to the caveats listed above). Some additional cash flows would appear in the budget—either as outlays and offsetting receipts or outlays and revenues—but would net to zero and thus would not affect the deficit. CBO and the JCT staff have not yet estimated all of those cash flows but expect to do so in the near future.2 Those additional cash flows would include the premiums collected by the public plan and its outlays as well as risk-adjustment transfers from plans with relatively healthy enrollees to plans with relatively unhealthy enrollees.

The Requirements:

The proposal’s major provisions—including the establishment of an individual mandate to obtain insurance, an expansion of eligibility for the Medicaid program, and the creation of new insurance exchanges through which certain people could purchase subsidized coverage—would be implemented beginning in 2013.
All legal residents would be required to enroll in a health insurance plan meeting certain minimum standards or face a tax penalty (described below). Individuals not required to file a tax return would be exempt from the penalty; exemptions for hardship and other reasons would be determined by a new and independent federal agency overseeing the health insurance exchanges (also described below).

The penalty assessed on people who would be subject to the mandate but did not obtain insurance would equal 2.5 percent of the difference between their adjusted gross income (modified to include tax-exempt interest and certain other sources of income) and the tax filing threshold. The amount of the penalty could not exceed the national average
premium for plans offered in the exchanges.

New health insurance policies sold in the individual and group insurance markets would be subject to several requirements regarding their availability and benefits. Insurers would be required to issue policies to all applicants and could not limit coverage for people with preexisting medical conditions. In addition, premiums for a given plan could not vary because of enrollees’ health but could vary because of their age by a factor of two (under a system known as adjusted community rating). Individual policies that were purchased before 2013 and maintained continuously thereafter would be “grandfathered,” meaning that they would not have to conform to the new rules but would still fulfill the individual mandate. Existing group policies would have to conform to the new rules by
2017.

In order to fulfill the individual mandate, policies that were not grandfathered would have to cover a broadly specified minimum benefit package (which was assumed to have the same scope of benefits as seen in a typical employer-sponsored plan) and would have to have a minimum actuarial value of 70 percent and a limit on out-of-pocket costs no
greater than $5,000 for individual coverage and $10,000 for family coverage. (A health insurance plan’s actuarial value reflects the share of costs for covered services paid by the plan.) After 2013, the maximum levels of those out-of-pocket caps would be indexed to general inflation.

The proposal would establish a national exchange through which certain individuals and employers could purchase health insurance; states could also opt to operate their own exchanges (either one per state or one covering several states). All insurance plans sold through an exchange would be required to cover the “basic” benefit package described above. “Enhanced” plans would have an actuarial value of 85 percent, and “premium” plans would have an actuarial value of 95 percent.

Except as specified below, individuals and families who enroll in exchange plans and have income between 133 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) would be eligible for premium subsidies and cost-sharing subsidies (see table below).
Federal premium subsidies in a given area would be tied to the average premium of the three lowest-cost plans providing basic coverage in the exchange in that area. The subsidies would limit an enrollee’s contribution to a percentage of income ranging from 1.5 percent to 11.0 percent (see table); those caps would not be indexed over time. The federal government would fully fund cost-sharing subsidies, which would increase the actuarial value of enrollees’ coverage to specified tiers based on income.

Say goodbye to your freedoms folks. Because in a socialist society. You have none, at all.

Besides all that, how the hell are we going to pay for all this? Seeing our Economy is in the toilet and all. Stupid is, stupid does, I guess. :struggle: :silly:

Update: Ed Morrissey, As always, does a bang up job analyzing this new Bill and as I suspected; There’s some crap in it. :pissedoff:

Oh Wonderful….: The Economy is screwed to hell, worse than originally thought!

Hope and Change……and Unemployed:

The recent unemployment numbers have undermined confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession. What we can see on the surface is disconcerting enough, but the inside numbers are just as bad.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000, which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.
Here are 10 reasons we are in even more trouble than the 9.5% unemployment rate indicates:
– June’s total assumed 185,000 people at work who probably were not. The government could not identify them; it made an assumption about trends. But many of the mythical jobs are in industries that have absolutely no job creation, e.g., finance. When the official numbers are adjusted over the next several months, June will look worse.
– More companies are asking employees to take unpaid leave. These people don’t count on the unemployment roll.
– No fewer than 1.4 million people wanted or were available for work in the last 12 months but were not counted. Why? Because they hadn’t searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.
– The number of workers taking part-time jobs due to the slack economy, a kind of stealth underemployment, has doubled in this recession to about nine million, or 5.8% of the work force. Add those whose hours have been cut to those who cannot find a full-time job and the total unemployed rises to 16.5%, putting the number of involuntarily idle in the range of 25 million.
– The average work week for rank-and-file employees in the private sector, roughly 80% of the work force, slipped to 33 hours. That’s 48 minutes a week less than before the recession began, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data 45 years ago. Full-time workers are being downgraded to part time as businesses slash labor costs to remain above water, and factories are operating at only 65% of capacity. If Americans were still clocking those extra 48 minutes a week now, the same aggregate amount of work would get done with 3.3 million fewer employees, which means that if it were not for the shorter work week the jobless rate would be 11.7%, not 9.5% (which far exceeds the 8% rate projected by the Obama administration).
– The average length of official unemployment increased to 24.5 weeks, the longest since government began tracking this data in 1948. The number of long-term unemployed (i.e., for 27 weeks or more) has now jumped to 4.4 million, an all-time high.
– The average worker saw no wage gains in June, with average compensation running flat at $18.53 an hour.
– The goods producing sector is losing the most jobs — 223,000 in the last report alone.
– The prospects for job creation are equally distressing. The likelihood is that when economic activity picks up, employers will first choose to increase hours for existing workers and bring part-time workers back to full time. Many unemployed workers looking for jobs once the recovery begins will discover that jobs as good as the ones they lost are almost impossible to find because many layoffs have been permanent. Instead of shrinking operations, companies have shut down whole business units or made sweeping structural changes in the way they conduct business. General Motors and Chrysler, closed hundreds of dealerships and reduced brands. Citigroup and Bank of America cut tens of thousands of positions and exited many parts of the world of finance.
Job losses may last well into 2010 to hit an unemployment peak close to 11%. That unemployment rate may be sustained for an extended period.
via Average length of unemployment highest since 1948. – WSJ.com.

So much for “The One” fixing the economy. Oh, right; he misread it. Looks like this Blogging gig get might be my only job for a long time to come. The Left is now spinning saying it will never recover.

Here’s ol’ Floppy ears talking about it:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Others: Hot Air, Pajamas Media, QandO, The Strata-Sphere, Stop The ACLU and Balloon Juice

An Aunt's Grief

(H/T MRC)

Watch CBS Videos Online

I wonder, what would Lew Rockwell say now?

Pssst! Hey Liberals! Sarah Palin knows what she's talking about!

As I am sure you all know Sarah Palin wrote in the Washington Post, an Op-Ed about the purposed Cap and Trade legislation.

Government Palin Writes:

There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America’s unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won’t bring jobs. Our nation’s debt is unsustainable, and the federal government’s reach into the private sector is unprecedented.
Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:
I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.
American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.
There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America’s economy.
Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.
In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.

Of course, as if right on cue, every liberal in America is laughing at her and is saying that she is an idiot; and that she is trying to stay in the spotlight and so forth. Well, guess what? Not too long ago; on March 5, 2009. My own home paper, The Detroit News, wrote a similarly written editorial, basically saying the SAME THING. The Article itself is now offline, and you have to pay to get it. But luckily for me; I blogged about it. The Article says and I quote:

President Barack Obama’s proposed cap-and-trade system on greenhouse gas emissions is a giant economic dagger aimed at the nation’s heartland — particularly Michigan. It is a multibillion-dollar tax hike on everything that Michigan does, including making things, driving cars and burning coal.
The president is asking for a system of government limits on carbon emissions. The right to emit carbon would be auctioned off to generate revenue for more government spending programs.
The president’s budget projects receipts totaling $646 billion through 2019 from the sale of these greenhouse gas permits.
The goal, according to the president’s budget outline, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide to 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
Doing so will drive up the cost of nearly everything and will amount to a major tax increase for American consumers.
Such a tax will hit the Midwest particularly hard, which is why House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, told the New York Times, “let’s just be honest and call it a carbon tax that will increase taxes on all Americans who drive a car, who have a job, who turn on a light switch, pure and simple.”
The carbon tax will be paid by energy companies, manufacturers and public utilities, who will pass the cost on to their consumers. Michigan will be especially targeted. It gets 60 percent of its electric power from coal plants, and the state’s economy is still reliant on heavy manufacturing such as car and truck assembly and auto parts production.
Michigan will lose as carbon tax money is shifted to states with a greater presence of high-tech and service businesses.
The proposed tax would take effect in 2012 and has the very real potential to throw the nation back into recession, if indeed the expected recovery has arrived by then. It’s impossible to raise costs for such basics as manufacturing and energy production by more than half a trillion dollars over a decade and not have the effects felt across the economy.
The nation’s gross domestic product contracted at an annualized rate of 3.8 percent in last year’s fourth quarter — the worst economic record in nearly three decades. Is this really a good time to be talking about a carbon tax? How will such talk impact investment decisions?
Obama promises to use some of the revenues for tax relief for certain workers and some of the rest for subsidies for alternative energy. But that won’t make up for the damage this huge new tax will do to the economy, especially in Michigan.

So, maybe, perhaps maybe, Sarah Palin is not as stupid as these liberals want to make her out to be. At least, she right on point about this Cap and Trade Legislation. It would raise taxes and be a job killer for Michigan and yes, for the rest of the Country.

Others, Yes, Including idiot liberals who are mocking her: The Fix, The Atlantic Business Channel, The New Republic, The Huffington Post, Washington Wire, The Daily Dish, The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room, Ezra Klein, Boston Globe, Hot Air, Right Wing News, PERRspectives, PoliGazette, The Strata-Sphere, Wake up America, Moe Lane, The Note, The Daley Gator, Democratic Strategist, Zandar Versus The Stupid, NY Daily News, The Politico, The Swamp, NewsBusters.org, No More Mister Nice Blog, Gawker, Gathering of Eagles: NY, Sister Toldjah, YID With LID, Macsmind, Classical Values, GOP 12, Stop The ACLU, TBogg, American Power, Real Clear Politics, Green Inc., Gateway Pundit, Cold Fury, PoliBlog, Balloon Juice, Latest Open Salon Blog and Left in the West

TOTUS goes to pieces………Literally

Ya know; I’ve heard of going to pieces on the job. But, this is a little ridiculous.

Jack Tapper reports:

ABC News’ Sunlen Miller and Jake Tapper report: If a teleprompter falls in the White House, does it make a sound?
Yes, especially when it’s the President’s teleprompter – or TOTUS as it is often referred to.
Midway through his speech on urban and metropolitan policy in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building this afternoon, one of his two small glass prompters came crashing down, hitting the wood floor and crashing in many pieces. It made quite a ruckus.
“Oh, goodness,” a startled President Obama said. “Sorry about that, guys.”
He then proceeded on with his remarks, “To pull our economy back from the brink, including the largest and most sweeping economic recovery plan in our nation’s history…”
For the rest of the speech the president relied on the one remaining teleprompter, to his right, and notes on his podium to finish his speech.
Shards of glass remained near the president’s feet for the duration of his speech.

Video:

Alternative View Here

Poor thing; must have gotten tired, with all the hard work in the White House. Either that or all of the Socialism had him depressed, and he just could not take it any longer.

Other Blogs covering this horrible tragedy:

(H/T and Thanks to AllahPundit)

No Matter what your Politics is… Hate Speech is STILL WRONG

There is a big story burning up the Blogsophere right at the moment. I guess some liberal happened to go over to Free Republic and spotted some nasty remarks about Obama’s daughter.

Gawker has the story:

We should’ve seen this coming: conservative blog Free Republic fired hate speech off at Malia Obama after this photo of her appeared, letting their commenters go to town. But the journalist who reported this as news isn’t innocent, either. Chris Parry of The Vancouver Sun highlighted some of the comments on the mainstream, hard right-wing blog/news aggregator Free Republic. Among them, a picture of Michelle talking to Malia Obama with the caption: “To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds.” Classy.
[….]
FreeRepublic claims to be a site that “does not advocate or condone racism, violence, rebellion, secession, or an overthrow of the government.” Yet, the thread went down, and back up with the original comments in tact, and then some, notes Chris Parry, the story’s writer. Parry was careful and kind enough to – maybe unnecessarily – note the few reasonable voices in the crowd who were conservative, on Free Republic, and not racist. But there’re always going to be a few exceptions to the rule, which, as far as you should be concerned, are absolute swamp creatures. Pardon any political incorrectness, but I think you’ll agree if you happen to go over and dip your toe in what’s mostly a bog of contagiously slimy invective and general retardation.
It gets worse, though. Chris Parry, it appears, has advocated on his Daily Kos blog any number of egregious offenses, among them: posting hate speech on sites like Free Republic and blaming it on conservatives. Parry posted under the name “hollywoodoz” on Daily Kos, where his signature was “Fool me once, I’ll punch you in the fucking head.” Parry outed himself as hollywoodoz here, where he discloses the company he helped start. In essence: Parry, the journalist, found his story right where he’d been circling it for a very long time, and reported it as news. Sigh.
Bottom line: Parry’s noble intentions are paving him a road to hell, by taking the same one the slimeball majority at Free Republic employs. They’re probably going to cheer a “mainstream,” centrist blog pointing out the offenses of a liberal reporter trying to expose hate speech, but they shouldn’t get it mixed up. A quick glance at Free Republic and you’ll probably see the same thing I did: some of the most egregious examples that lend credence to the idea that some people just shouldn’t be allowed near a keyboard, or to open their mouths, no matter what their political affiliation. Or, as some would have it: STFU.

There you have it; What happened, basically in four paragraphs.

Here is my take on all this mess. As someone who has went over the line once myself. Hate Speech is wrong. I do not give two flips who is doing it. I do not care, if you are a Right Winger, or a Liberal. This sort of nonsense is wrong. You say, “But they do it!”, So what? Do two wrongs make a right? Hell No! It just makes two wrong people! This Chris Parry nut-job ought to be fired for trying to smear Conservatives, and ought to be SUED for a libel by the owner of the Free Republic. Not to mention the Vancouver Sun for allowing this idiot to write this report.

Just as well; The owner of the Free Republic ought to take some responsibility for the actions of his users. Whomever made the racist comments ought to be banned for life from that site. I know that I have had to snip some comments here from this Blog myself, when a couple people went overboard. It is simply called responsibility.

My feelings on this subject are not limited my partisan or Political Ideology. What is wrong; is wrong. No matter who is doing it. Period.

Others: Politics Daily, Say Anything, Lean Left, JammieWearingFool, Scared Monkeys, Gateway Pundit, The Progressive Republican, freerepublic.com, The Moderate Voice, The Huffington Post, Wake up America, Mediaite, Moonbattery, The Reaction and Latest Open Salon Blog

Update: Title changed after someone politely informed me, that I was using an improper word.

John Stossel takes on Liberal Propagandist Michael Moore

I happen to like John Stossel; because he dares to take on the Liberals. Not in a mean or nasty way. But by simply stating the truth.

He writes about Michael Moore’s latest Movie:

Michael Moore has been working on another documentary. This time, he’s taking on capitalism:
“The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth. They wanted more — a lot more. So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money.”
How ridiculous is that? The wealthy, and everyone else, almost always decide that they don’t have enough wealth. People ask their bosses for raises. We invest in stocks hoping for bigger returns than Treasury Bonds bring. “Greed” is a constant. The beauty of free markets, when government doesn’t meddle in them, is that they turn this greed into a phenomenal force for good. The way to win big money is to serve your customers well. Profit-seeking entrepreneurs have given us better products, shorter work days, extended lives, and more opportunities to write the script of our own life.

He goes on…:

Moore also fails to understand is that it was not “capitalism” run amok that caused today’s financial problems. In reality, it was a combination of ill-conceived government policies and an overzealous Federal Reserve artificially lowering interest rates to fuel a bubble in the housing market. Then it was government that took money from taxpayers and forced banks to accept it.
Moore ought to understand that, because he makes a good point when he says his movie will be about “the biggest robbery in the history of this country – the massive transfer of U.S. taxpayer money to private financial institutions.”
That is indeed robbery. It sure doesn’t sound like capitalism.

Nope, sounds more like socialized Healthcare or simply Socialism in general; to me.

Mike Tennant writing over at Lew Rockwell’s Blog chimes in:

According to the press release you linked, Chris, “Moore has made three of the top six highest-grossing documentaries of all time,” which presumably means he has accumulated a great deal of wealth. Apparently, since he continues to foist his so-called documentaries on an unsuspecting public, Moore has decided that he doesn’t have enough wealth. He wants more–a lot more.
Like most anti-capitalists, Moore has no problem personally profiting from his own endeavors while demonizing other successful persons and attempting to have them dispossessed of their wealth. The good news is that Moore ultimately has to answer to the marketplace and thus may find himself begging for work from the very people he now condemns if enough of his audience members wake up to the fact that he’s a charlatan and stop shelling out their increasingly scarce cash for his celluloid propaganda.

Mike is right on point; that is exactly how the socialists in America are. The Socialist left wants to preach to America, how evil, rotten, nasty and no good the evil capitalist system is; all the whole pocketing a profit from their lectures, Movies and the books that they just happen to make a profit at. It is more of that “Yea for me, but Nay for thee”, type of mentality and outright hypocritical nonsense that the Far Socialist left is known for.

The troubling thing about it, is this; these knuckle-headed socialists basically control the Democratic Party and it’s message. Hence my reasoning for not wanting anything to do with them or their Party any longer.

Give me Capitalism, Freedom and Liberty or Give Me Death!

Others: Wake up America

Unbelievable: Eric Holder Considering Prosecuting Bush Administration officials; for keeping America safe

This piece of sorry news comes from NewsWeek:

It’s the morning after Independence Day, and Eric Holder Jr. is feeling the weight of history. The night before, he’d stood on the roof of the White House alongside the president of the United States, leaning over a railing to watch fireworks burst over the Mall, the monuments to Lincoln and Washington aglow at either end. “I was so struck by the fact that for the first time in history an African-American was presiding over this celebration of what our nation is all about,” he says. Now, sitting at his kitchen table in jeans and a gray polo shirt, as his 11-year-old son, Buddy, dashes in and out of the room, Holder is reflecting on his own role. He doesn’t dwell on the fact that he’s the country’s first black attorney general. He is focused instead on the tension that the best of his predecessors have confronted: how does one faithfully serve both the law and the president?
Alone among cabinet officers, attorneys general are partisan appointees expected to rise above partisanship. All struggle to find a happy medium between loyalty and independence. Few succeed. At one extreme looms Alberto Gonzales, who allowed the Justice Department to be run like Tammany Hall. At the other is Janet Reno, whose righteousness and folksy eccentricities marginalized her within the Clinton administration. Lean too far one way and you corrupt the office, too far the other way and you render yourself impotent. Mindful of history, Holder is trying to get the balance right. “You have the responsibility of enforcing the nation’s laws, and you have to be seen as neutral, detached, and nonpartisan in that effort,” Holder says. “But the reality of being A.G. is that I’m also part of the president’s team. I want the president to succeed; I campaigned for him. I share his world view and values.”
These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama’s domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. “I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president’s agenda,” he says. “But that can’t be a part of my decision.”

[….]

Holder began to review those policies in April. As he pored over reports and listened to briefings, he became increasingly troubled. There were startling indications that some interrogators had gone far beyond what had been authorized in the legal opinions issued by the Justice Department, which were themselves controversial. He told one intimate that what he saw “turned my stomach.”
It was soon clear to Holder that he might have to launch an investigation to determine whether crimes were committed under the Bush administration and prosecutions warranted. The obstacles were obvious. For a new administration to reach back and investigate its predecessor is rare, if not unprecedented. After having been deeply involved in the decision to authorize Ken Starr to investigate Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, Holder well knew how politicized things could get. He worried about the impact on the CIA, whose operatives would be at the center of any probe. And he could clearly read the signals coming out of the White House. President Obama had already deflected the left wing of his party and human-rights organizations by saying, “We should be looking forward and not backwards” when it came to Bush-era abuses.
Still, Holder couldn’t shake what he had learned in reports about the treatment of prisoners at the CIA’s “black sites.” If the public knew the details, he and his aides figured, there would be a groundswell of support for an independent probe. He raised with his staff the possibility of appointing a prosecutor. According to three sources familiar with the process, they discussed several potential choices and the criteria for such a sensitive investigation. Holder was looking for someone with “gravitas and grit,” according to one of these sources, all of whom declined to be named. At one point, an aide joked that Holder might need to clone Patrick Fitzgerald, the hard-charging, independent-minded U.S. attorney who had prosecuted Scooter Libby in the Plamegate affair. In the end, Holder asked for a list of 10 candidates, five from within the Justice Department and five from outside.

[…]

The next few weeks, though, could test Holder’s confidence. After the prospect of torture investigations seemed to lose momentum in April, the attorney general and his aides turned to other pressing issues. They were preoccupied with Gitmo, developing a hugely complex new set of detention and prosecution policies, and putting out the daily fires that go along with running a 110,000-person department. The regular meetings Holder’s team had been having on the torture question died down. Some aides began to wonder whether the idea of appointing a prosecutor was off the table.
But in late June Holder asked an aide for a copy of the CIA inspector general’s thick classified report on interrogation abuses. He cleared his schedule and, over two days, holed up alone in his Justice Depart ment office, immersed himself in what Dick Cheney once referred to as “the dark side.” He read the report twice, the first time as a lawyer, looking for evidence and instances of transgressions that might call for prosecution. The second time, he started to absorb what he was reading at a more emotional level. He was “shocked and saddened,” he told a friend, by what government servants were alleged to have done in America’s name. When he was done he stood at his window for a long time, staring at Constitution Avenue.

I hope that if and when Mr. Holder decides to appoint this special prosecutor; that he keeps the follow items in mind: (H/T to The Corner)

* Alberto Gonzales did not attempt to mislead Congress in 2007 when he testified that the controversy that erupted at the Justice Department in 2004 was not over what was popularly known as the “terrorist surveillance program” (i.e., the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program to intercept suspected terrorist communications that crossed U.S. borders — the effort the Left smeared as “domestic spying”). In fact, as Gonzales told the Senate judiciary Committee, the controversy was about other intelligence activities.
* When congressional Democrats rolled their eyes, suggested that Gonzales was lying, and groused that a special prosecutor should be appointed, they well knew he wasn’t lying — but they also knew he couldn’t discuss the intellligence activities at the center of the controversy because those activities were (and remain) highly classified. That is, they knowingly badgered the Attorney General of the United States at a hearing in a calculated effort to make him look dishonest and to intimate something they knew to be untrue: namely, that the dispute at DOJ arose because senior officials believed warrantless surveillance was illegal.
* Before Gonzales and President Bush’s then chief-of-staff, Andy Card, went to see Attorney General Ashcroft in the hospital (where he was being treated for pancreatitis), President Bush directed his administration to meet with top congressional Democrats and Republicans (Senate leaders Frist and Daschle, Speaker Hastert and House minority leader Pelosi, Roberts and Rockefeller from Senate Intel, and Goss and Harman from House Intel) to alert them that Ashcroft’s deputy, Jim Comey, had refused to sign off on intelligence activities that Ashcroft had previously approved. Advised of the problem, the Gang of Eight did not agree to a quick legislative fix but, according to Gonzales’s contemporaneous notes, agreed that the intelligence activities should continue. (Three years later, after Gonzales’s testimony, Pelosi, Rockefeller and Daschle claimed that they hadn’t agreed.)
* Only after this meeting with the bipartisan congressional leaders, and with the prior 45-day authorization for all the program’s activities about to expire, did Gonzales and Card go to the hospital to visit the ailing Ashcroft — at the direction of President Bush.
* Between the time the time the collection intelligence activities that came to be known as the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” was first authorized after the 9/11 attacks until the warrantless surveillance aspect of the program was exposed by the New York Times in December 2005, the Bush administration briefed the bipartisan leadership of the congressional intelligence committees 17 times about the activities involved in the program.

In sum, congressional Democrats knew about the program and knew that the dissent of the Justice Department’s senior leadership in 2004 was not about warrantless surveillance. They knew that if they postured that the dissent was about warrantless surveillance, Gonzales — not an adept communicator — would not be able to rebut them in a public hearing because the details of the dispute were classified. Congressional Democrats also knew that President Bush agreed to make changes in the program in March 2004 to assuage DOJ’s concerns, and they knew that the program activities continued thereafter for a year-and-a-half (i.e., until the Times blew part of the program) without incident and with bipartisan congressional leadership continuing to be briefed.

The point I am trying to make is this, that the so-called “torture”; which was approved by Congress, prevented attacks on Los Angeles and various cities around the country. It also saves lives and gets people to talk. It is also used to train our Military as well.

My advice to Holder is this; if you want to tear this Country apart, again, after a long eight years of it being sharply divided; go right ahead. If you want to tear down the Democratic Party; you know; the one of your own boss? The go right ahead and do this. If you want ruin the chances of America ever defending itself from another terrorist attack, then go right ahead and do this. If you want to make a mockery of yourself and the entire polical system in America, go right Mr. Holder and do what you must do. It will be on your hands, what becomes of this Country.

I dread the next coming months.

Others: Gateway Pundit, Atlas Shrugs,