A former wealthy Obama donor has gone tea party. It will be interesting to see how effective the ad is. And whether or not he becomes New Hampshire’s next Senator.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Credit Where It’s Due
If the Obama administration really is firing and picking generals based on performance, rather than a rotation schedule, that is an improvement over the previous administration.
Change!
Apparently the Obama administration is pro torture. All the complaints about torture aren’t now, and never were, about torture. It was pure Bush derangement. Now that The One has ascended, no problem.
Britain Turns Ever More Orwellian
A woman has been prohibited from, and arrested for, “noisy s3x.”
As I noted a few days ago, modern “liberals” are the ideological descendants of the Puritans. Except usually it isn’t about sex. In this case, it is.
“Limits To Growth”
A critique. With a lot of ignorant (and often ad hominem) comments in the comments section.
You’ll Be As Shocked As I Was
…to learn that the president has no class:
Wanda Sykes isn’t of any interest to me. The fact that the American president was five feet away from her and had to laugh about her joke was of interest. A comedian wishes a citizen dead and the president laughs?
I can’t imagine such a “joke” being told about (say) Michael Moore during a Bush WHCD. I thought that the idea of the WHCD was supposed to be a “roast,” with those being lampooned in attendance, not a vicious attack on the president’s absent political enemies. And had such a thing had occurred, I can’t imagine the former president laughing at it. But with this president, we don’t have to imagine it. In many ways, it’s a return to the juvenile antics of the White House during the Clinton years. But it apparently gave Chris Matthews an extended leg tingle (shameful that, too, because Rush used to let him guest host for him back in the nineties), so I guess that’s all right.
Obamacare
And your doctor:
Doctors will consolidate into larger practices to spread overhead costs, and they’ll cram more patients into tight schedules to make up in volume what’s lost in margin. Visits will be shortened and new appointments harder to secure. It already takes on average 18 days to get an initial appointment with an internist, according to the American Medical Association, and as many as 30 days for specialists like obstetricians and neurologists.
Right or wrong, more doctors will close their practices to new patients, especially patients carrying lower paying insurance such as Medicaid. Some doctors will opt out of the system entirely, going “cash only.” If too many doctors take this route the government could step in — as in Canada, for example — to effectively outlaw private-only medical practice.
These changes are superimposed on a payment system where compensation often bears no connection to clinical outcomes. Medicare provides all the wrong incentives. Its charge-based system pays doctors more for delivering more care, meaning incomes rise as medical problems persist and decline when illness resolves.
So let’s expand Medicare to everybody. Great.
Obviously, The Answer Is “No”
Madam Speaker, have you no decency?
It’s kind of hard to run a witch hunt when you’re the lead witch.
[Tuesday morning update]
Some questions for the Speaker:
You said that you concurred with the letter written by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) that raised concerns about waterboarding. Is there any documentation to back that up? Did you sign the Harman letter? Were you aware of it in real time, or only later, when it was declassified? Did you send your own letter? Did you ever express your concerns with President Bush during any of your meetings with him between 2002 and 2008?
As I say in comments, I’m all for a truth commission, as long as it’s a whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth commission. Bring it on.
[Bumped]
I Like The Rail Option, Myself
Thoughts on how to pay for Obamacare.
Also, Tigerhawk on taxes:
I’ve clipped some inflammatory excerpts for your morning indigestion, but it is worth scrolling through to get a sense for the breadth and nature of the proposal. The short version is that President Obama is pushing absolutely staggering increases through the corporate and business tax systems. Direct taxes on business are, in general, inefficient and economically disruptive, but they are also peerless in their complexity, which means that few voters and essentially no reporters will make the effort to understand what is being done to them.
Trust me on this: something awful is being done to you.
That rail option’s looking better and better. With tar and feathers, of course.
[Update a few minutes later]
Obama Trek: the search for more money.
Boldly going where no American fascist president has gone before.
[Update]
They just keep on spending:
If not treated promptly, FSD, like alcoholism, leads inevitably to complete physical breakdown, loss of homes, jobs, cars, respect, everything. The breakdown is not limited to the sufferer, however. Like the alcoholic who must drink hard liquor every waking moment, massive budget deficits are the key symptom of late-stage FSD. The alcoholic dies, but with FSD, the nation, not the spenders, goes bankrupt. Even today, with Obama just beginning to manage the government, Geithner’s Treasury department must offer higher interest rates on bonds it sells to finance planned deficits because bondholders worry about Washington’s future repayment ability if taxes are not soon hugely increased. But those increases would kill economic growth, sending government revenues spiraling downward and eventually leaving Washington only one choice – repudiation of debt or bankruptcy. Either way, American prosperity will be a distant memory for generations to come. Intervention cannot come too soon.
But at least we’ll all be equal in our poverty. And that’s what’s important, right?
Bad News About Augustine
Bob Park is a big fan.