Obamacare Delay? What Delay?

Just a reminder of what the Obama Administration told us only recently...

As @JimGeraghty at NRO likes to say "All Obama statements come with an expiration date"...

The Mob Has Spoken?

So who really wants over-priced and under-performing "high-speed rail"? Apparently we all do, since the Federal Government is going to give it to us...

I can only imagine that this is the reaction that Democrats think that these boondoggle projects will create in the public...



Count me as on board! I am nearing my military retirement, and need one of those cushy jobs!

It's Bush's Fault - Part XXIV

Bryan Preston at Pajama's Media highlights the outrageous and inaccurate statements of an assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs concerning the treatment of injured Vets...

“This unfortunately is the result of dollars. It’s money,” Duckworth said. “I think that we as a nation would want to take care of all of our veterans. But it means that we’re going to have be willing to get the folks in Washington to spend the dollars on all of our veterans. And as long as there aren’t enough dollars, then they are force to prioritize veterans.

“And combat-connected, disabled veterans are the highest priority. That is why when you and I go to the VA they will take care of me first because I am combat-connected,” noted Duckworth, who lost both of her legs when the helicopter she was co-piloting in Iraq in 2004 was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

“The difference is how did you get hurt. Unfortunately that’s just the way that … it’s a bureaucracy that was put into place in previous administrations in order to prioritize veterans because they didn’t spend enough to take care of everyone,” Duckworth told Wheeler.

As Preston goes on to explain, this is "Grade-A Bravo Sierra".

But the question I have is...if it was all "Bush's Fault", then why hadn't the new Obama leadership at the VA (Duckworth included) done anything about it??

Now you could reasonably expect to have some leeway when you place blame for something complex and intangible like "the economy", but when you are a bureaucratic administrator you cannot blame "a bureaucracy that was put into place in previous administrations" without also offering an explanation for why you haven't changed it after being in office for 18 months....

Of course the easy answer is that they haven't changed it because her statement wasn't true in the first place....

Foundation Repair

According to Peggy Noonan, the Obama Administration has a new program for us, called "The New Foundation".

Given the success of the so-called stimulus, I am sure that we will soon see these signs popping up in the DC area....

Of course, the Congress will then nationalize the foundation repair industry and we will start to see these signs popping up instead....

It is the circle of life....

Google v. Intelligence

The London Telegraph asks the question "So Google is better than US intelligence?"...

So this means that the US government’s computers apparently don’t have an equivalent of Google’s “Did You Mean?” tool that picks up misspellings and finds results for similar words.

If it had been realised immediately that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has a valid US visa then presumably the alarm bells would have begun to ring weeks before he actually flew – but they believed he had no visa because the State Department database or whatever database it was could only recognise a particular version of an Arabic name.

Of course, had the Telegraph used Google they could have discovered the following:

1) The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't: $170 Million Bought an Unusable Computer System

"The nation's premier law enforcement and counterterrorism agency, burdened with one of the government's most archaic computer systems, would have to start from scratch."

2) Lawmaker: Terrorism info database troubled

"Severe technical troubles, poor management of contractors and weak government oversight have put the federal government’s efforts to enhance and upgrade its primary terrorist identity database at risk..."

3) Pink Slips, Spyblogs, and More New Year’s Resolutions for the Intelligence Community

"There is no practical reason why the IC could not immediately adopt a “living intelligence” model that gets vetted and valid intelligence into the hands of consumers in near-real-time — not weeks or months after-the-fact. Such a model would actually allow analysts more time to think about the problems at hand, rather than following dated, time-wasting protocols. What hinders progress in this area is Intelligence Community management that is more concerned with getting credit than serving the intelligence needs of consumers."

4) Credit Where It's Due

2010: The United States Government revokes Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's visa a mere 12 days after he tries to kill 300 people.

2002: The United States Government approves Mohammed Atta's visa six months after he's actually killed 3,000 people - and is, in fact, himself deceased.

So, is Google better than US Intelligence? I think a quick search of Google would point to the fact that has been public for a long time. Many of the agencies in question have had major problems using and improving new technologies to make their jobs easier. Free market internet companies will always have greater ability to out-perform government bureaucracies when it comes to these technologies.

So the answer to the semi-rhetorical quesiton is....YES!

Sand in The Gears

Instapundit offered commentary on people's opinion of the big government bailout for GM (or just bailouts in general):

"Lots of people have decided to be sand in the gears."

But I would remind everyone, there is no need to be the sands in gears that won't even mesh with each other.....

New TSA Rules for Public Travelers not Releasable to the Public

A new TSA terror crackdown has swung into immediate action....against some travel bloggers:

The Transportation Security Administration is going after bloggers who wrote
about a directive to increase security after the incident.

TSA special agents served subpoenas to travel bloggers Steve Frischling and
Chris Elliott, demanding that they reveal who leaked the security directive to
them. The government says the directive was not supposed to be disclosed to the public.

OK, perhaps I am just a simple knuckle-dragging idiot, but I need someone to explain this to me...

The government says that rules specifically targeted at the traveling public, and rules that must be publicly announced to the traveling public while in transit....are not supposed to be disclosed to the traveling public????

Huh?!?

Vital classified national security secrets to the NYT is no big whup, but unclassified rules for public citizens in the hands of those citizens is worthy of prosecution...This is not the transparency I was hoping for....

[Hat Tip: Confederate Yankee]

"Janet, You're Doin' A Heck of A Job"

In the finest tradition of using Presidential words to attempt to reassure the American public about the competence of an arguably less-than-competent administration flunky, I would recommend that President Obama should curtail his vacation to make the following statement....

"Janet, You're Doin' A Heck of A Job"

I think it would go over like gangbusters....it did wonders for Bush.

UPDATE: BTW, if that isn't a perfect stunned mullet look on Napolitano's face, I am not sure what is... I know I feel safe....

UPDATE II: Of course looking like a stunned mullet doesn't look as bad as this:

That look seems to be all the rage with the kids on Pennsylvania Ave....

UPDATE III: Let the furious Napolitano spin and backtracking begin!

TSA Ups Screening for Domestic Grandmother Threat

Instapundit points out the TSA's new 'HORSE, BARN DOOR' security program. "Air security has always been a joke. It’s just an increasingly inconvenient one."

New Restrictions Quickly Added for Air Passengers

In the wake of the terrorism attempt Friday on a Northwest Airlines flight, federal officials on Saturday imposed new restrictions on travelers that could lengthen lines at airports...

As I said on Friday, if what is reported above by the NYT is true, then the TSA is focusing on the wrong threat:

If this jihadi was able to get as far as he did because he boarded a flight in relatively security-free Nigeria (hint: outside the USA), and then didn't get another security screening in Amsterdam (again outside the USA), then why do American holiday travelers now have to get the third-degree from TSA (hint: inside the USA) on their way home from Grandma's??

A commenter to that post reminded me that even Grandma's are not exempt from this misapplication of security (all in the name of the appearance of non-profiling).

But the ultimate point in is that TSA and HLS should spend more time working to get other countries to improve their security procedures (like re-screening passengers from unsecure airports), than further inconveniencing American air travelers.

Security, and unpredictable security at that, *IS* needed. But it should common sense in the way that is more concerned with terrorists, than the agendas of the zealots in the ACLU and CAIR.

Pelosi-Care Holiday Anthem

Pelosi-Care
(to the tune of "Tannenbaum")

Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
It makes our health plans equal.
Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
I see a Commie sequel.

The current plan is just a start:
She'll take our freedoms all apart.
Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
Her chutzpah knows no equal.

Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
With Harry Reid's assistance,
Pelosi-care, Pelosi-care,
Will overcome resistance:

Oh, single payer's on its way!
The ghost of Marx will shout hurray!
Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
You'll buy at her insistence.

Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
The public is affrighted.
Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
Obama grins, delighted:

His leftist envy's proven pure;
His legacy is now secure!
Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
Some wrongs cannot be righted.

--Tom Riley

Global Warming Keystone Cops

If I happened to be a believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming, and a proponent of what is being bandied about in Copenhagen, right now I would be screaming, "For the love of Pete you idiots! Why don't you plan these conferences for the summer?!?!?"

I mean, what could be worse when you are trying to convince a non-plussed American public that Global Warming is a problem that requires immediate action and immediate infusions of American tax dollars, and then to battle the following headlines:

GLOBAL WARMING 'AGREEMENT' OBAMA RACES HOME FOR BLIZZARD

DC snowstorm forces Pelosi to cut short her global warming trip

NYC Expecting Up to 10 Inches of Snow

Up to 20-inches in DC

Alaska sees record snow: Five feet, 8 inches deep!

What with all the self-appointed smartest people in the world meeting in Denmark, you would think at least some of them could have figured out that it might make better propaganda if they could show their delegates sweating in un-air conditioned meeting rooms while working out an agreement.

Instead heretics like me get to cackle when Global Warming protests get snowed out, winters get worse, or they are forced to break out the shovels in Copenhagen....

I mean, how hard could it be for someone to think "We should do this in Vegas in July!"

Debauchery AND triple-digit temperatures. What could be better for the UN technocrat trying to make a point to us knuckle dragging layabouts without the threat of snow drifts distracting from the message.

Too hard apparently....but it doesn't bother me....

The Sticky Mess That is Obamacare

Instapundit quotes Ann Althouse:

“People just don’t want this bill. I think the big mistake was skipping the step of winning public support for a particular plan. It wasn’t enough that people believed there was a problem. People needed to believe the solution wasn’t worse than the problem. We were supposed to look away and trust them. The trust was never won, never earned. It’s been a horrific mess, and it just looks messier and messier as time wears on. Obama kept his distance, which looks pretty smart now.”

Two thoughts on this....

1) The main problem that has doomed Obamacare is that the American people have a general historic distrust of what comes out of Congress. If the people had a positive, or even neutral, opinion of our Congresscritters, then Obama may well have been able to sign a healthcare reform bill by now. But the fact that the effort was so closely associated with Congress and not the highly popular new president probably spelled its doom. Since 'Obama kept his distance', and every pronouncement came out of preening camera-hogs in the Capital rotunda, its was obvious who was making the sausage. The One should have expended his own newly bestowed political capital to push the bill over the goal line, but he left it to those people that all polls show that America distrusts.

2) At the same time, keeping his distance did not work for Obama. The simple fact that the term 'Obamacare' is synonymous with the effort to cede the government control of everyone's healthcare, shows that his attempts to remain above the fray failed. While he did avoid being seen as working the details in the trenches, it was clear from the White House that healthcare reform was considered one of Obama's 'legacy issues'. Thus it is clear to most American's that while Congress is making the sausage, it was the White House that is running the Red Hot cart on the corner, selling the product to the public at large....

I think Ann is wrong. Obama does not escape the mess, and he does not look very smart...

Consequences of Delaying the Afghan Decision

Over at Bouhammer's Afghan Blog, an Afghan vet lays out why President Obama's delay in making a decision on an Afghan surge will make things a lot more complicated.

Dear Mr. President:
Posted By The Dude on December 6, 2009

Now that I’ve had a few days to ingest, digest, and perform my own mission analysis on your new plan for Afghanistan, I’m a bit concerned. My concerns are based from my experiences of being on one end of the spectrum at the tip of of the spear defending freedom in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions, to the opposite end of that spectrum in Kuwait serving in the logistical nerve center for both Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

Some points to consider....

- Winter is coming has already arrived in Afghanistan. Had this decision been made during the summer, any surge of forces to the north and the east of the country could have beaten the winter conditions. Now it will be more difficult.

- With the upcoming drawdown in Iraq, logistics hubs and transport will be very busy in 2010. Add ina surge to Afghanistan, and you get a logistics nightmare. Had this decision been made during the summer, then some of the surge movement could have preceded the Iraq drawdown, and thus avoided future scheduling conflicts. I feel for my Army logistician and Air Force airlift brethren over the coming year...

Perhaps this should not come as any surprise, especially concerning the office of the President of the United States, but decisions (or lack thereof) have consequences. And even seemingly trivial decisions can have cascading effects. However when it comes to military matters in times of war, there are no trivial decisions, and the cascading effects can have serious consequences.

It can only be in Washington where 'a decision delayed is a decision made'. I don't think they teach that up at West Point, Mr. President.

Stimulus Subterfuge

Its all a Stimulus Subterfuge, a Recovery Ruse, a GDP Gimmick.

In other words, the 'Great Obama Recovery'® that was announced earlier in October by the White House is all hogwash, a hoax, a fraud...a lie.

Sure, the economy was announced to have grown by 3.5%. However, that has now been revised down (GDP numbers are often adjusted) to 2.8%. 'What's so bad about that?' you might ask. 'Isn't any positive growth a good thing?' Normally, but as the blogprof points out, the only thing making this a positive number, is Stimulus cash....

That "robust" 3.5% GDP growth rate in Q3 that the AP heralded as the end of the recession sans actual jobs? That just got reduced. A lot. As in down to 2.8% now. Even that is deceiving as consumer spending, which comprises 70% of the economy, declined 0.5% during the same period (Positive GDP Fraud! Consumer Spending DOWN 0.5%. GDP Up Because Of MASSIVE DEBT!). So how is it that the GDP increased in the 3rd quarter after consumer spending decreased? Well, that's got everything to do with the 'G' in the GDP - gross. That includes consumer spending, government spending, in fact all spending. So if the consumer spending is down, one way to artificially inflate the GDP number is to increase government spending with money that the government doesn't, by the way, have. In essence, the GDP number is positive due to increased debt! It's purchased on a government card that has no credit limit.

So Stimulus cash, which is created out of thin air and injected into the economy to unknown effect, makes up 118% of the GDP growth....

So what this really means is that we will be seeing increasing GDP growth for many quarters to come, and thus a White House trumpeting a full-throated recovery, just in time for the 2010 elections.

Since only 22% of the Stimulus had been spent by the end of October, that means we have over $600 Billion left to be entered into that 'Government Spending' column that blogprof tells us about. Thus, unless consumer spending craters, this glut of Govt Spending spread over many quarters will prop up the GDP numbers for those quarters. And as it will most surely do, the White House will point to the string of positive quarters, and how their actions have saved the economy, despite the fact that it is really a Potemkin Village of economic figures...

The only problem will be the ever expanding unemployment roles....and the largest spike in employment will be found in GOP political campaigns.

[Hat Tip: Instapundit]

2009: The First Year of Global Governance

Mark Steyn distills our future succinctly:

"'Climate change' and 'health care' are different ends of the same stick: They're both all-purpose pretexts for regulating every aspect of your life..."

But to protest this is somehow dangerous....

"We have been flim-flammed"

#tcot #hhrs #rs
Nothing like a Foghorn Leghorn quote to be apropos to government policy....

Unless of course Foghorn Leghorn is part of the federal government...

SEN. LEGHORN ANNOUNCES $14.7 MILLION FOR TEXAS; ‘YEE, HAW!’ HE ADDS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Foghorn J. Leghorn, D-State, announced Tuesday that he had won an extra $14.7 million in stimulating funds from the solicitous Obama Administration for the people of seven congressional districts in Texas.

“This funding will go for good,” the Senator said. “Why, son, 98 hardworking, taxpaying, aging, poor, honest, hungry, working-class, middle-class, undereducated, disadvantaged, undercounted, overlooked, underprivileged, overtaxed and uninsured constituents of my good friends and esteemed colleagues in the 52nd, 58th, 86th, 00th, 68th, 91st, and 85th Congressional Districts of Texas deserve every penny,” he added. “Yep, they can shore count on me. Vote Leghorn! Yee, haw!”

Go to Moe Lane and read the whole thing. The best satire is always rooted in the truth...

Now lets get back to Senator Leghorn...

"I'm just a loud-mouthed schnook."

Put Away Your Pink Ribbons

#tcot #hhrs #rs #sgp
The United States vastly outpaces the rest of the world in Breast Cancer survival for one simple reason....screening.

Researchers discovered that it was because of breast cancer screenings that women with breast cancer have a 14 percent higher survival rate in the United States than in Europe. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Breast cancer mortality is also 9 percent higher in Canada than in the US. Less than 25 percent of U.S. women die from breast cancer. In Britain, it’s 46 percent; France, 35 percent; Germany, 31 percent; Canada, 28 percent; Australia, 28 percent, and New Zealand, 46 percent.

However now a Health & Human Services panel recommends that women should reduce the number of mammograms that they get. What is the reasoning behind this recommendation? They cite "evidence that the potential harm to women having annual exams beginning at age 40 outweighs the benefit..."

One might argue that the numbers listed above would counter that line of reasoning.

And the intelligentsia cackled when some warned that socialized medicine Obamacare would lead to rationing with faceless bureaucrats deciding levels of treatment. Like, say, a cancer related recommendation from a panel that doesn't have one oncologist.

Of course the left will argue back that this is simply a recommendation, not law. But do we really think that when Obamacare is the law of the land that these bureaucratic pronouncements won't become policy for those who are stuck with government-run health care?

Not the Hope and Change I was expecting....

Tyranny of the Minority Majority

#hhrs #tcot #rs
Some prescient thoughts on the results of last night...

Jennifer Rubin:

If Pelosi gets her 218 votes, it will be unprecedented. It is fair to say that never will a piece of legislation this sweeping (and damaging) have been passed over the opposition of so much of the electorate and on the votes of such a narrow ideological slice of the governing class.

'A Senate Friend':

If the only thing bipartisan is the opposition, and a party with an overwhelming majority is scrambling to get it over the first hurdle, it sure says something about the bill.

I believe that this is what might be called the 'Tyranny of the Minority Majority'...

Why Are Voters Angry?

#tcot #hhrs

"Bait-and-Switch - There is a growing sense of a “we’ve been had”, bait-and-switch....the Obama swing voter thought he was getting a 21st-century version of pragmatic, triangulating Bill Clinton—and instead got something to the left of 1970s Jimmy Carter."

In his latest effort, Prairie Fire Anger, Victor Davis Hansen does a fantastic job outlining the "cascading anger at a new sort of left-wing elitism and hypocrisy"

Another example:

"A well educated technocracy—we see such figures in the emblematic Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder, or Barack Obama himself —have most of their lives served in government, largely regulating, overseeing, organizing, auditing, and sermonizing far more productive and capable others. One of the worst flaws of this species of utopian technocrat is the notion that he wishes to curtail in others the very things he wishes to enjoy without constraint himself.

Thus we sense that a Geithner does not wish to pay the taxes he hikes on others. A Holder wants to destroy through subpoena and litigation the Bush lawyers, but pleaded once for mercy for his own shenanigans involving the crooked Clinton pardons. And Obama lectures about the inequality of wealth and the burdens of racism while his wife’s salary climbed as his political influence grew."

How much longer do they think they can hide behind the failings of President Bush?

The Cost of Growing Old

#tcot #hhrs
Where would you cut health care costs?

Lets play a hypothetical game....after an extended period without a job, and enjoying the new magically unending unemployment benefits (also known as Pelosi bucks!), you manage to land a mid-level position at the new National Health Administration, headquartered at the new Robert C. Byrd Federal Building in Charleston, West Virginia.

You are quickly assigned to the "Efficiencies" division, where you are given the task of helping reduce the operating costs of the new National Health Program. You are told that reducing costs due to waste and fraud will be handled by another division, located at the other Robert C. Byrd Federal Building located on the other side of Charleston.

In order to get your project kick-started, you are told to use the following graph, representing per-capita health care costs across a number of categories, to help decide where to cut costs.



Looking at this graph, there are obviously a few categories that contain significantly higher costs than the others. It is obvious to you and all the other newly hired bureaucrats around the Robert C. Byrd Conference Table that these categories are ripe for cost savings. Problem solved! By reducing those categories down to the levels of the other categories, not only can you hit your cost-savings targets, but you can instantly make health care spending 'fair', as all the categories would be relatively equal.

Who knew being a federal employee could be this easy??

Now lets come back to reality.... Sure that example is fairly simplistic, but he point is when you hear Democrats talk about achieving cost-savings with their nationalized health care proposals, those savings they talk about will come from the operational areas that contain the highest costs. If we know anything about government bureaucracy, it will tend to solve its problems not through tough choices, but through the "easy" choices. For bureaucrats, the easy choice is to reduce your highest cost.

Now lets take another look a at that graph, but this time using its proper sorting and labels.


(Numbers are from Canadian data, but is similar to US and other country's data as seen here and here)

This look makes it plain where those highest health care costs lie....with those Americans who are 65 and older. This makes perfect sense, as some of the most expensive medical procedures are those that have allowed us to extend our life expectancy over the last few decades.

So, if the goal of your plan is to provide the highest quality health care for everyone, you won't care if the costs spike at the end. But if the goal of your plan is to provide adequate health care to everyone at the least possible cost, then you will quickly begin to eye those outliers at the right end of the graph as the road to your budgetary salvation.

For those who protest that the suggestion that Obamacare would shortchange seniors is just scaremongering by an unruly mob, lets take a look at those countries that the Democrats want us to emulate (Sorry Mr Moore, Cuba is not on this chart...)


A quick look shows that overall costs for the younger portion of populations is not all that different, regardless of the country. However, in every other country, money spent on those over the age of 65 is significantly lower than in the US. Is there some magical European secret to providing the same health care to seniors that we do and a greatly reduced cost? No...they simply don't provide their seniors the quantity nd quality of care that we do. But hey. it saves them loads on money. The Democrats always trot out the stat that the US has the highest health care costs of any developed nation. Of course we do, because we spend 50-100% more than any other developed country on the medical quality of life for our seniors. It is good to grow old in the US, but it sucks to grow old in Europe.

To me it is quite obvious, that if Obamacare becomes the diktat of the land, there is one place where penny pinching bureaucrats will go to find their easiest possible savings. And if that is the future it will soon suck to grow old in the United States as well.