Time for Thorns

I’m never glad to disagree with Byron York,  who so often gets matters exactly right,  but  here I think I must.   Democrats are saying they must pass health care reform because it will be good for the American people.   I’m sure they really do believe that at some level,  because logic is not a progressive strong suit,  but that’s merely their stated excuse for having the government control all access to health care.

Even if they drop the public option and the Medicare buy-in,  their goal of single-payer health care has not changed.   With the feds determining what has to be in a health plan,   “private”  insurers will just be a feeble front.   And if they get this camel under the tent flap,  they can simply regulate the rest of it into being,  so now is no time to sit and rest.    Spare 5 minutes out of your busy schedules to call your Congress critters and impress upon them that you expect them to do what has proven to work instead of following the Massachusetts model.

Another reason for the sudden interest of His Oneness and Democrats in job creation is that the peculiarities and vagaries of the government means of estimating jobs requires that certain assumptions be made,  based on magical formulae developed in a windowless chamber of the Labor Department and applied to a certain amount of actual raw data after suitable incantations and specialized rituals are employed.

There is a re-set button on all these educated guesses,  and it is punched in January,  so that the numbers which emerge in early February are the only “real” numbers which appear annually,  being somewhat immune from the infection of previous additions and subtractions.

John Crudele  does an  excellent job of explaining the dilemma of His Oneness in having to subtract another 800,000 jobs from the economy without getting blamed for it.

If you’re still unconvinced that His Oneness has no deadly agenda,  perhaps  this will convince you,  courtesy of Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government site.

If you find yourself in need of some good news regarding Iran, read  this.   One should not be surprised that His Oneness doesn’t grasp that the more internal strife there is inside Iran,  the more the mullahs will try to project an image of strength abroad.

And give full credit to the Iranian people who are standing up to their theocracy despite Obama having consigned them to the undercarriage section of the bus.     There is  live-blogging,  some  video and more  here and some thoughts from Michael Ledeen  here.

We can thank Amb. Louis Susman for  confirming to us all that the Obama Administration neither knows nor cares about actual science, only about using it as a weapon with which to silence critics and acquire power.

What other excuse could  His Oneness have for ignoring the fact that the emails suggest that the  raw data was  error-filled and manipulated,  and therefor is unreliable for scientific purposes,  not to mention that the computer  source code used is third-rate.

And give a cheer for the two brave  Canadians who discovered faulty calculations in some of the key scientific studies underlying the UN’s Climate reports.

And this wouldn’t be the first time  scientists eager for grant money reached the conclusion wanted by the money bags instead of actually following the evidence.

Stay tuned,  folks — this is going to get a lot more interesting!

How can  this be?   Wasn’t global warming supposed to increase the frequency and severity of hurricanes?   Didn’t Al Gore warn us that Katrina was merely the tip of the iceberg?    That we would all drown and be burnt —–  Never mind…

Eric Cantor has a  straightforward plan for job creation,  while John Stossel looks at who creates jobs,   and Mitt Romney offers  some suggestions.

Check out Don Surber’s  blog for some additional observations,  and National Review Online’s  symposium.

The Wall Street Journal goes directly to  small business having been left out of the recovery,  and Andrea Tantaros memorably calls the summit a  great feast of folly,  while Byron York explains  the  sudden presidential interest in jobs.   Evan Newmark delivers the  harshest criticism.

I was surprised to hear His Oneness even mention private enterprise,  but he hates it  (it creates private wealth,  not government wealth),   so I don’t think he has the slightest intention of listening to any of the good ideas these people have.   And there were certainly no proponents of free markets at his dog and pony show.

And of course he won’t follow the  excellent example of Chile, which has used the free market and private enterprise to exit the Third World.

Just in case you haven’t figured out yet what the modern progressives are and what they want,  Howard Dean  spells it out for you.

Watch it and forward it to everyone you know.

The  next time some arrogant politician tries to make you think he’s smarter than you are,  throw this  nugget in his face.

Sen. Max Baucus,  author of a chunk of the Senate health bill,  claimed on the floor that the $118 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage don’t count because those aren’t Medicare plans.    I went to my computer and to Medicare.gov,  the official website,   which says specifically that such plans ARE part of Medicare.

Is Baucus uninformed or untruthful?   To me it doesn’t matter much,  and he has done other things which qualify him for  both.  The end result is that Democrats are so desperate to pass this that they are willing to lie,  bribe and cheat.

You know this,  so get on the phone to your critters.    If you’re stuck with Lindsey Graham-types who think the best that can be done is to make the bill “better”,  please disabuse them of that notion.   There is no change significant enough to keep this bill from being a total disaster for the citizens.   If you’re so lucky as to have representatives trying to drive a stake through the heart of the health bill,  call and thank and encourage them.

Any if any of their offices try to blow you off,  give the Baucus example above.

The CBO’s new report says  premiums will rise.    True to form, Paul Krugman has  accused Republicans of being stupid,  but as Joseph Lawlor  points out,  Krugman must be either stupid himself or deliberately deceptive.

If memory serves,  this has knocked off the third leg off the stool of Democratic promises.    Logic says this would be the death of this horrible legislation,  but we’re talking Democratic politicians here,   so what we will get is a whole bunch of spin explaining how it will all work in the end because it has been so carefully planned.

But this does give me hope that the Christmas deadline will quickly become part of Harry Reid’s unfulfilled wish list.  What a grand Christmas gift that would be to the American people!