Paul Ryan (Obama Owned the transcript)

Stolen from here:

Many viewers were wowed by the president's performance at the health care summit, his command of facts and ability to rebut every point the Republicans made. We must have been watching another channel.

'Obama dominates the room at health care summit" was the headline on a Reuters dispatch that found the president "always in command not only of the room but also the most intricate policy details, as he personally rebutted every point he disagreed with."

In a Washington Post column titled "Professor Obama schools lawmakers on health care reform," Dana Milbank marveled at how the president "controlled the microphone and the clock, (using) both skillfully to limit the Republicans' time, to rebut their arguments and to always have the last word."

Milbank went on to tell how Sen. John McCain got his "knuckles rapped" by the learned professor, how Sen. Mitch McConnell was made to "look small in his chair" and how various other Republican low-achievers felt the sting of Obama's "big rhetorical paddle."

But neither Reuters nor Milbank — nor many others, it seems — noticed Obama's conspicuous non-rebuttal to Rep. Paul Ryan.

It was the Wisconsin congressman who made the most pointed remarks about Obama's reform proposal. For example:

• "This bill does not control costs (or) reduce deficits. Instead, (it) adds a new health care entitlement when we have no idea how to pay for the entitlements we already have."

• "The bill has 10 years of tax increases, about half a trillion dollars, with 10 years of Medicare cuts, about half a trillion dollars, to pay for six years of spending. The true 10-year cost (is) $2.3 trillion."

• "The bill takes $52 billion in higher Social Security tax revenues and counts them as offsets. But that's really reserved for Social Security. So either we're double-counting them or we don't intend on paying those Social Security benefits."

• "The bill takes $72 billion from the CLASS Act (long-term care insurance) benefit premiums and claims them as offsets."

• "The bill treats Medicare like a piggy bank, (raiding) half a trillion dollars not to shore up Medicare solvency, but to spend on this new government program."

• "The chief actuary of Medicare (says) as much as 20% of Medicare providers will either go out of business or have to stop seeing Medicare beneficiaries."

• "Millions of seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage (Medicare through a private insurer) will lose the coverage that they now enjoy."

• "When you strip out the double-counting and ... gimmicks, the full 10-year cost of the bill has a $460 billion deficit. The second 10-year cost of this bill has a $1.4 trillion deficit."

• "The 'doc fix' (restoring cuts in Medicare reimbursements) costs $371 billion ... a price tag (that) made the score look bad. (So) that provision was taken out, and (put) in stand-alone legislation. But ignoring these costs does not remove them from the backs of taxpayers. Hiding spending does not reduce spending."

• "Are we bending the cost curve down or are we bending the cost curve up? If you look at your own chief actuary at Medicare, we're bending it up. He's claiming that we're going up $222 billion, adding more to the unsustainable fiscal situation we have."

In response to all this, Obama basically talked up the benefits of Medicare Advantage. Call us sticklers, but we expected something a little more, uh, professorial.

Obama OWNED (the video link)

If you don't watch anything else this week, you absolutely have to watch this.

Health Care Anyone?

"We cannot have another yearlong debate about this," Obama declared. "I'm not sure we can bridge the gap."

1.  There is no "gap" - the GOP will not support a government takeover of this much of the economy.  You knew this a year ago when you completely shut them out.
2.  Reconciliation here we come
3.  Don't forget that it will take 10 years to pay for 6 years of this plan
4.  There is no need for a provision that takes away the ability of a future Congress to repeal this bill.  Entitlements never die.  Example:
1. Greece 
2. California 
3. Social Security 
4. Medicare

Biased Media

When did the NY Times become a reliable news source? I agree that Fox News leans to the right, just like CNBC and ALL of the networks lean left.  So tell me, when I want the news and JUST the news, where can I go? The papers are not unbiased, nor is TV.  Where can I go to find out the truth about what is contained in a 2000+ page bill?

Tha answer is simple. You go to the opposition. These will be the only ones that you can count on to discover key points in a bill and point out its fundamental flaws.

The Sacred Heart University Polling Institute released its 2009 survey on “Trust and Satisfaction with the National News Media.” The September 2009 poll of 800 Americans found large majorities believe the media are “very or somewhat biased,” played a “very or somewhat strong” role in electing Barack Obama in 2008, and were “promoting the Obama presidency” and the President’s health care effort “without objective criticism.”


KEY FINDINGS:

•“Poll results found 83.6% saw national news media organizations as very or somewhat biased while just 14.1% viewed them as somewhat unbiased or not at all biased.”

•“A large majority, 89.3%, suggested the national media played a very or somewhat strong role in helping to elect President Obama. Just 10.0% suggested the national media played little or no role.”

•“Further, 69.9% agreed the national news media are intent on promoting the Obama presidency while 26.5% disagreed.”

•“Over half of Americans surveyed, 56.4%, said they agreed that the news media are promoting President Obama’s health care reform without objective criticism.”

•Six out of seven Americans (86.6%) “strongly or somewhat agreed that the news media have their own political and public policy positions and attempt to influence public opinion.” Just over 70 percent felt that way in 2003.

•Americans prefer objective reporting to coverage that just reflects their own point of view. “In results that were nearly three-to-one, 59.0% suggested they made their selection based on objective reporting, while 19.0% chose their favorite because they share the same views on issues.”

•Less than one-fourth of Americans (24.3%) “indicated they believe all or most news media reporting.”

•Two-thirds (67.9%) “agreed with a statement that read: ‘Old-style, traditional objective and fair journalism is dead.’”

What is Insurance?

Lifted from Here:

Now let’s discuss risk assessment. Ignoring pre-existing conditions might sound compassionate, but it is equivalent to declaring that a fire-insurance company must charge the same amount for a modern house with smoke detectors and interior fireproofing as for a century-old, wooden-frame former stable, complete with some hay left over, and a basement full of painting supplies. Taking the analogy further, the same premium must be charged for a well-protected, unscathed house as for one that is already on fire.


The business of insurance is about determining risk and charging accordingly. It’s why insurance companies exist. If we eliminate that, medical insurers are just form-processing companies for the government. Worse, we lose a valuable economic input: that of accurate risk assessment and pricing, without which sensible management of medical expenses is impossible.

‘Don’t Ask’

The desire to help those with pre-existing conditions is laudable. The way to do this is to help. If someone needs more medical care than he or she can pay for, direct state subsidy is far more efficient than making insurance companies pretend that the patient isn’t ill or at high risk of becoming ill. We can separately debate the degree of generosity of this subsidy, but it is efficient and honest. Making insurance companies play “don’t ask, don’t tell” with health status is neither.

Though you wouldn’t know it from the headlines, our system today, and our discussion of reform, isn’t about insurance. It’s about the total provision of health care, largely by employers, with costs hidden from individuals. Furthermore, much of the proposed reform is about eliminating the main function of an insurance company: the assessment and pricing of risk.

Creating a system of real health insurance, along with honest subsidy where necessary, is the simple solution to many of our problems, and an honest first step toward tackling the rest.

Dennis Kucinich

This guy is a complete genius.  He had the audacity to go on TV today and state his plan for creating job growth.  Now get this, his plan is to lower the age for early Social Security retirement so that old people can leave their jobs earlier thereby creating openings that can be filled by younger people currently out of work.  

So, once again another career politician comes up with a solution to a problem that will both not solve the problem but have various other negative impacts.  Lets discuss:

First, and in my estimation most concerning, is the issue of adding more people to the rolls of Social Security that will be draining this insovent fund for an even longer period of time.  Just another example of short-sighted leadership from a career politician.  We should at least require an online MBA for these guys, but that would likely require that we review that standard as well.

Second, this plan does not help witht he creation of any new jobs.  It merely shuffles the deck, no net gains whatsoever.  This plan basically states that if your unemployment percentage starts to run high, jsut take workers out of the mix.  Perhaps if too few people vounteer for the program, he can suggest another method of culling the mass of working aged persons.  I hope the "permanent solution" does not occur to him. 

Third, what about the cost to companies?  I know that many of these faceless evil corporations have the temerity to turn a profit while so many "average" americans are suffering, but lets follow this to the logical conclusion.  How many of these aged retirees will actually be replaced?  Just as likely as replacing the departing personnel is the retirement of the position.  If they are replaced, how much will it cost these companies to train the incomming  personnel? (this is money that will be written-off at tax time)

Given more time I could likely come up with more.  But gee wiz, I only put an hour of thought into this so far.  I am not so smart a guy that I can outthink a congressman's entire staff, but I have done so yet again.  I expect that there will be a ton of bloggers and editorials on this.  However, I doubt a plan like this will ever see itself voted on by the general assembly.  I am just staggered by how obtuse our elected officials are.

I think it is time that we stop blaming the elected officials and just start back-handing each and every voter.

Obama continues to fight the housing bubble

In his town hall in NV today Obama unveiled plans today to "buy up vacant homes and turn them into affordable housing."  Great plan.  Kudos on both his generosity and foresight in taking the tough steps to make sure that the housing crisis does not go to waste, but can be used to further the socialist agenda. 

Am I the only one that sees the amazing flaw in this latest plan?  What happens when the home next to yours is taken over by the government and turned into "affordable" housing?  Lets assume that the people (for the most part) that live in your neighborhood worked hard to afford those homes right next door to yours.  They likely manicure their lawns, do regular maintenance on their homes, and do the various other things necessary to keep the entire neighborhood looking good.  These same folks also are more apt to instill in their children the values and work ethic that helped them achieve a similar level of success that you yourself have achieved.  What happens when the $300,000 dollar home similar to the one that you have sacrificed, saved, and worked hard for (which also happens to be right next door) is sold for $150,000 or even $200,000?  Does the school that still has the "best teachers" get to maintain its lofty standards even though the children now attending it are not pushed to study by their parents?  Administrators and teachers can only do so much with a student that will not study. 

This new program proposal from the administration can be defined in only two words.  SOCIAL ENGINEERING  I can assure you that the same family that bought the $300,000 home could have had the $200,000 neighbor if they had wanted to from day one. 

Guess what? 
They did not want it. 
Guess what? 
They're gonna get it anyway.

I have an alternative to the President's plan.  Stop spending money that you do not have.  Start reducing the deficits that you "inherited."  Trust me, I know it's not your fault.  However, feel free to start by reworking the budget YOU just submitted.  You know, the one with the largest deficit in history. 

I guess it really does all come back to education.  Obama admitted today that he did not always do his math homework.  Not a huge shocker given his track record for ignoring America's huge deficit.

Biden "Going Rogue"

In his latest "Going Rogue" event, Joe Biden stated "Washington right now is broken" and the country is in "deep trouble" unless it attacks ballooning federal deficits.


One year and a few days in and the VP is attacking the President. I guess the honeymoon is over.

However, in classic Progressive faux pas fashion he also argued that money invested in both private and public-sector initiatives has saved as many as 2 million jobs, "I don't think they realize it." He goes on to say the Stimulus program, now a year old, was designed to be implemented in two stages, saying "we've only been halfway through the act."

The facts are that we are just over a third of the way through the "act," a significant portion of the reported "saved/created" jobs are lies, and many of the "shovel ready" projects were delayed for political reasons. So lets see some math. (787B/3 = 262B/2M = 131,000) Awesome!! Each job created only cost us $131,000. Given that the average private sector employee makes roughly 40k/yr. We have created limited time jobs (these jobs will not last after the money stops coming in) for the low low cost of 3x the pay scale. I gotta give ol' Bidey the credit here, that is a great feat given that it is government. It would devastate his argument, but help his over-all credibility should they actually be able to post real numbers that do not crumble under the most mild of investigations.

Tea Party Agenda

You want a good chuckle today?  The Tea Partyists agenda almost exactly mirrors most of Obama's campaign promises.

There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs.

President Obama knew what the people wanted and promised it to them.  He openly stated his desire for universal health care, but with the caveat that it would not happen if it added "even one dime" to the budget.  What nobody realized was the Enron-esq accounting that he would allow to play into the plan. 

Given this, I am shocked that anyone has the ability to be blase about the Tea Party movement.  The inside joke on Capitol Hill has been, for quite some time, that lawmakers will tell you exactly what you want to hear to get elected and then forget their promises (many of which their position would never have let them accomplish). 

Can we please let some of the standards from the private sector filter into the public sector?  I am pretty sure that if I lie on my job application and my employer finds out, then I can be summarily fired.  Put this standard into place and let these guys fight for their jobs (which have about 4x the average pay for private sector and staggeringly better benefits).  What's the issue?  Other than the completely empty buildings we would have on Capitol Hill.

MARTA changes 'yellow' train line name

(AP) -- The "yellow" train line in Atlanta is now going to be called the "gold" line after members of the local Asian community complained that it was racially insensitive.

In related news, the Yellow River will now be called the golden stream and all rice will be white as eating yellow and brown rice is considered racist.

Seriously, I am too tired for this crap today.