Don't Do What I Say, Just Pass the Bill

Within hours of C-SPAN's Brian Lamb offering to televise the proceedings of the healthcare bill conference committee to assist the President in living up to his campaign promise of transparency, Mr. Obama responded by "prodding House and Senate Democrats to get him a final health care bill as soon as possible, encouraging them to bypass the usual negotiations between the two chambers in the interest of speed," according to a story in The Washington Times. In the final analysis it doesn't matter what gets passed as long as something does. The list of what is wrong with this bill is long and tedious. It is sufficient to say that it both Democrats and Republicans are not pleased but, as I have said in the past, it leads to the public option by way of raising prices, rationing care and overwhelming the system with red tape. After several years of this pre-planned debacle the Federal government will step in with the public option as a way to finally take it over completely and give us the third world health care they feel we deserve. As Michael Moore is wont to say healthcare is great and free in Cuba, failing to point out that its hospitals are filled with old and broken equipment, there is no medicine and good healthcare is reserved for members of Castro's party. The rest of the people get their medicine from their relatives who live in America. The trouble is that if we go the public route there is no one to get medicine and treatment from. Currently those who cannot get treated in their own country come here. Once America has the public option there will be no place to go. As if this is not bad enough the current bill is a sellout to insurance companies, pharmaceuticals firms, medical device manufacturers and hospitals, all of whom will profit handsomely from the bill because they will see the benefits immediately in the form of tax breaks and cost controls. On the other hand, taxpayers and the uninsured, which will begin paying immediately, will not see benefits for years and even then most of the uninsured that need care will not be covered and most of those who do not need care will have to pay anyway. Is this anyway to run an industry? If you are a bureaucrat the answer is YES.

Is Global Warming Finally Dead?

The Copenhagen Climate turned out to be just the wasteful jaunt it was widely predicted to be. It was just another attempt to establish a world-wide carbon market and loot the treasuries of industrialized countries of the world in an attempt to blackmail them into paying reparations to developing nations, third world dictators and potentates of poorer countries. The truth is that it was known in September there would be no climate agreement and that was solidified when the emails from England's CRU (Climate Research Unit) were exposed. The global-warmists are now in a desperate race to hold on to whatever veracity remains in the climate change charade. Very little was accomplished before President Obama got there and even less was accomplished after his arrival. Despite all the efforts by Obama's staff, a compliant mainstream media for whom Obama's success is vital, and the conference attendees themselves to convince us that Obama made a difference, his presence did not change anything of substance that had been decided on before he arrived. The claim that his mere attendance moved the conference forward is pure fiction and self-aggrandizing claptrap. The organizers of the Global Warming movement may have changed the name to Climate Change, but changing the name does change the character of the argument. We now know that Global Warming is a farce. The statistics were based on faulty models, tampered evidence and twisted logic all designed to develop a rational for marketing carbon dioxide, which is simply taxing the air. (Just follow the money) We know that the Earth’s weather patterns are always in a state of flux and despite their short term unpredictability the long term trends tend to remain the same and are based on the a wide variety of activities, the burning of fossil fuel being only one. No one is against cleaner fuels, cleaner water or cleaner air, but to try and make carbon dioxide, which is required for life to exist, the boogey man would be like trying to grow crops without water.

Climate Change = $126 Billion

If you want to know why investors and their media lackeys are hopeful about the upcoming Climate Conference in Copenhagen just think $126 billion in emission permits to be sold to firms that use energy. For this money they will lie, cheat, steal and exaggerate to get you to believe something will happen even though it's been known for some time there will be no binding agreement. They will be able to take this money from companies and the companies will pass this cost on to you. There you have it. Do you wonder why they are trying so hard to defend the recently uncovered emails, which The New York Times wouldn't publish because they may have been illegally obtained? Isn't that special? Legality did not bother the Times when it came to revealing intelligence concerning government wiretaps on America's enemies or the publishing of the now infamous Pentagon Papers. But it shirks at presenting data that disputes its long-held position on global warming despite the fact that there has not been any for more than a decade. Wake up New York Times. Wake up America.

Another Phony Deadline

If you listen to the media and the Democrats in Congress this is again the last chance for health care. If it doesn't pass this time it's done. The Democrats and their willing media lackeys want to create a sense of inevitability so that when the final vote does come it will go unnoticed. Well the truth is this is not the last vote. It's not even close. If this vote passes today it does not constitute anything but an interim victory. If it passes today, or should I say Saturday night, since Senate Leader Reid didn't have the courage to bring it to the floor during the week for fear the phone lines would melt, it still has many hurdles including a House/Senate conference and matching versions of the bill passing in both Houses. The media and Democrats have tried to put the obstruction of health care at the feet of Republicans, but really the debate is within the Democratic Party and the people of the country. If the Democrats were united and the people wanted the reform as proposed the Republicans are powerless to prevent it. The problem for Democrats is that the more people know about the bill the less they want it to pass. The bill is about putting health care in the hands of government. A government that has proven time and time again it cannot be competitive, efficient or innovative. Some examples include Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, Indian Reservation Healthcare, Amtrak, The FAA and many others. Some readers may be confused when they see Medicare in this list, but the fact is that Medicare has $46 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities so while it seems free to seniors, not counting the supplemental plans they must buy, it's not free and never has been. More and more doctors are refusing the take on new Medicare patients and if health care reform is passed this alone will be worse and not better. Despite all these obvious points the main reason for rejecting this reform package in its entirety is because it contains clauses that permit the Congress to opt out of the program, while requiring that everyone else takes part. That alone is reason enough for me. Melt those telephone and fax lines to your Representatives and Senators.

The Exoneration of Terror

In your heart you would like to believe that Attorney General Eric Holder would want the best for our country even if you disagree with the way he is doing it. But if you look at his decision to try five Gitmo prisoners in New York it is pretty difficult not to think he is aiming for the exoneration of the terrorists and the indictment of the FBI, CIA and the Bush Administration. On Friday night, while the President was in Japan, he announced a plan to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others detained at Guantanamo Bay, in New York, just about a mile from Ground Zero. Is he kidding? I won’t argue the mitigating or aggravating aspects of his action (plenty of others are doing that) only that it will result in the exoneration of most of those defendants and could take 5 to 10 years to complete. Any good defense lawyer could get two years out of just seeking a change of venue and demanding sensitive material that could jeopardize national security, not to mention Miranda, torture, a previous lack rights, etc. You could spend the first five years on the preliminaries and never hear of single piece of evidence. And all this is not to mention “time served.” One of the defendants has been in military and federal custody for over a decade already. It is safe to say that most of these defendants will get minimal time and in some cases no jail due to time already served. And of course this will put them in a position to sue the United States on a variety of grievances. Holder is just giving happy talk when he says they will be convicted, and his confidence in the New York Federal Court is way overrated. A terrorist or spy has not been executed in New York since the Rosenberg’s. You also have to remember that Holder has been a friend of America’s enemies in the past. He fought hard for the freedom of the FALN terrorists and Mark Rich, a fugitive wanted by the U.S., all of whom were pardoned by Clinton. It should be noted that the law firm he worked for prior to becoming Attorney General was active in the defense of terrorists. From the moment he was sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States he has tried to turn the Guantanamo Bay issue into an indictment of the Bush Administration and the CIA and has worked hard to poison the atmosphere by providing institutional support a for all lawyers making arguments against government conduct in the treatment of terrorists. His weak presentations against opponents of the U.S. and his failure to provide a strong defense on behalf of the government are a strong indicator of exactly where his sympathies are. There are those, like Holder himself, who says he believes that the courts can get convictions against these defendants, but the legal issues are myriad and surmountable for good defense attorneys. A good prosecutor, one that wants a conviction, would opt for a Military Tribunal.

Climate Conference Over Before it Begins

The upcoming Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, has been proclaimed a failure before the gates have even been opened. We are fortunate that most of the world, including our own government, is sensible enough to not destroy the goose that lays the golden egg for the benefit of a few. In this case the goose is industrial society and the golden egg is fossil fuel. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just daydreaming and the failure of climate change activists to handcuff the world's strongest economies is a stunning example of the world coming to its senses. A close look at the organizers of the conference demonstrates that they have financial interests in alternative energy and stand to make a fortune if some world-wide carbon trading scheme can ever be established. You can visit the site at http://en.cop15.dk/. See for yourself. As you read through their laughable efforts at reducing pollution you can see it is nothing but window dressing and wishful thinking. For example, the preposterous idea that by providing a million dollars to rebuild 20 old, inefficient concrete factories in Bangladesh makes up for the carbon footprint created by 20,000 people traveling to Copenhagen from all over the world. A million dollars would not cover the costs of demolishing the old factories even in a nation like Bangladesh; much less build 20 new ones. And this is only one of the many ideas offered to fool the participants and a media, whose understanding of basic biological processes is so scant they are incapable of intelligent analysis on the subject of climate change. For the time being we have been saved, but there is always next year.

I Stand Corrected.

In a previous post I noted that I thought that Hasan a traitor and that to me it didn’t matter that he may have been a terrorist. He could have been any sleeper agent or converted lunatic. The fact that he committed treason overrides any other considerations. Now it seems that is not quite right. There is now certainty that he as a terrorist, but he is still a traitor.