Archive for August, 2009

31
Aug
09

Daily Presidential & Congressional Tracking Poll – Rasmussen

Monday, August 31, 2009

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 30% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11.

Twenty-nine percent (29%) are confident that Congress knows what it’s doing when it comes to the economy. If Americans could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, 57% would throw out all the legislators and start over again. Just 25% would vote to keep the Congress.

21
Aug
09

Charlie Cook: Dem situation has ‘slipped completely out of control’

August 20, 2009 in Politico.com – The Scorecard

Charlie Cook, one of the best political handicappers in the business, sent out a special update to Cook Political Report subscribers Thursday that should send shivers down Democratic spines.

Reviewing recent polling and the 2010 election landscape, Cook can envision a scenario in which Democratic House losses could exceed 20 seats.

“These data confirm anecdotal evidence, and our own view, that the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Today, The Cook Political Report’s Congressional election model, based on individual races, is pointing toward a net Democratic loss of between six and 12 seats, but our sense, factoring in macro-political dynamics is that this is far too low,” he wrote.

“Many veteran Congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats.”

Cook scrupulously avoided any mention that Democratic control of the House is in jeopardy but, noting a new Gallup poll showing Congress’ job disapproval at 70 percent among independents, concluded that the post-recess environment could feel considerably different than when Congress left in August.

“We believe it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact that this mood will have on Members of Congress of both parties when they return to Washington in September, if it persists through the end of the Congressional recess.”

20
Aug
09

Our father, who art in the white house…

Ben Smith, Politico.com – 8/20/09

‘We are God’s partners in matters of life and death’

A reader points out that President Obama’s call with the rabbis today — as recorded in Rabbi Jack Moline’s and other clerics’ Twitter feeds — freights health care reform with a great deal of religious meaning, and veers into the blend of policy and faith that outraged liberals in the last administration.

“We are God’s partners in matters of life and death,” Obama said, according to Moline (paging Sarah Palin…), quoting from the Rosh Hashanah prayer that says that in the holiday period, it is decided “who shall live and who shall die.”

The president ended the call by wishing the rabbis “shanah tovah,” or happy new year — in reference to the High Holidays a month from now.

Some thoughts that came from some of Ben’s readers:

So he has the chutzpah to claim that right? We elected a president not a God. Take a step down, Mr. President. Posted By: Paul in NH | August 19, 2009 at 04:30 PM

The devil now claims to be God’s partner in matters of life and death? I guess this started with Obama’s promotion of partial birth abortion. Posted By: | August 19, 2009 at 06:02 PM

18
Aug
09

“political wisdom”… the purest example of an oxymoron

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
–George Bernard Shaw

18
Aug
09

It’s the economy, stupid!

Economy has frequently nothing whatever to do with the amount of money being spent, but with the wisdom used in spending it.
–Henry Ford

14
Aug
09

Wow… they’re taking something out of the bill that they denied was in it? Congress can’t even lie well… want them running your healthcare? NOT ME!

Senators Exclude End-Of-Life Provision From Bill

Thursday, August 13, 2009 2:10 PM

WASHINGTON — Key senators are excluding a provision on end-of-life care from health overhaul legislation after language in a House bill caused a furor.

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Thursday that the provision had been dropped from consideration because it could be misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly.

A health care bill passed by three House committees allows Medicare to reimburse doctors for voluntary counseling sessions about end-of-life decisions. But critics have claimed the provision could lead to death panels and euthanasia for seniors.

The Senate Finance Committee is still working to complete a bill.

12
Aug
09

Sometimes, there are no words to describe the irony…

August 12, 2009
Rick Moran

Rep. Eugene Green (D-TX) is serious about informing his constituents about the health care reform proposals working their way through Congress.

In fact, he’s so serious that he will brook no “outsiders” to show up at his town hall meetings and disrupt them. Green wants only his supporters to attend and those from another district just aren’t welcome.

According to Tom Blumer, writing at Newsbusters , he went so far as to put this notice up on his website:

Town hall meetings are one of my favorite ways to communicate with constituents. I have held hundreds during my years of service in Congress and always welcomed everyone to attend. Unfortunately, due to a coordinated effort to disrupt our town hall meetings, we will be restricting further attendance to residents of the 29th Congressional District and verifying residency by requiring photo identification.
Whether individuals agree or disagree, we must maintain order to have a civil discussion of the issues. While I regret this restriction, it is necessary for the safety and consideration of our constituents. Those who do not reside in the 29th Congressional should contact their Member of Congress to voice any concerns that they may have on issues before Congress.

Well…you can hardly blame him, eh?

Except – Except…

Green voted “no” on laws to require voters to present a photo ID in order to cast their ballot.

Follow the liberal logic here, if you can: Show ID to vote? No.

Show ID to get into Congressman’s town hall on health care reform? You betchya – and don’t forget to vote for me in 2010.

Incredible.

12
Aug
09

Obama’s choice for a freedom medal is another Obomination!

Mary Robinson gave hate a megaphone BY RABBI ABRAHAM COOPER
The Daily News Op Ed Section
Wednesday, August 12th 2009, 4:00 AM

Today, as President Obama bestows the Medal of Freedom on Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, I will be thinking of my father, the late Isaac Cooper. He, unlike his son, was a saintly man who always strove to find the good in each person. As a youngster, I came to understand, however, that when my father couldn’t find something good to say, he would murmur: “He means well.”

Well, Mary Robinson is no anti-Semite. And as president of Ireland she achieved many important things. But her signature moment in history came when, as chairwoman of the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, she allowed the conference to be hijacked by extremist groups. The meeting devolved into an ugly anti-American and anti-Semitic debacle and gravely wounded the cause of human rights.

Durban was no big tent of tolerance. Rather, it was a launching pad for demonizing the United States, Israel and any Jews with the audacity to openly identify themselves as Zionists.
A few ugly incidents still cling to my psyche:

* Each nongovernmental organization, or NGO, was invited to set up a booth. In a presentation that would have brought tears of joy to the eyes of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, a Cairo-based lawyers group proudly displayed scores of political cartoons depicting Israelis as Nazis or subhumans.
* As a CNN reporter posed a question at our caucus’ news conference, 40 Muslim women from Iran burst in and physically tried to stop our event.
* On Friday, Durban’s chief of police gently but firmly urged us not to attempt to walk the 21/2 blocks from the conference to the Jewish Community Center. “I cannot guarantee your safety,” he told me. Outside, there were 17,000 anti-Zionist protesters, some of whom held up the banner: “Hitler Was Right!”
* The ill-fated “final NGO document” that Robinson was supposed to hand to then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, replete with anti-Israel invective, did have one reference condemning firebombing attacks against synagogues in France. But the reference was deleted when a delegate from the World Council of Churches rose at the closing plenary to ask, “What does an attack on a synagogue have to do with racism?”

We Jews left the big tent that night to the whistles and catcalls of some and the utter silence of too many of the human rights elites. Hate, not hope, had carried the day.

Sadly, the seeds of this debacle were planted by Robinson herself, when she approved a key conference preparatory meeting for Tehran. She assured the Jewish leaders and others attending the conference that we would be welcomed to participate. But visas for the Baha’i or members of the Wiesenthal Center did not arrive in time. While she protested the regime’s double cross, she welcomed the “consensus” of a productive meeting between civilizations at the Tehran meeting. She urged delegates to continue their fight against racism. As for the abuse against Israel, all Robinson would say was that “the situation in the Palestinian-occupied territories was brought up at the meeting and it is reflected in the final declaration.”
The internationally sanctioned Israel/apartheid ambush was ready to roll.

Robinson just doesn’t get it. Global human rights dialogue has been debased on her watch. The late Holocaust survivor and human rights crusader Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) told me as much just before he announced that he and U.S. diplomats, who shlepped to Durban to try to forge a compromise, were leaving in protest.

Just days after we left Durban, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were launched. The Homeland Security Department is struggling to contain international terrorism. Global human rights have yet to recover from Robinson’s Durban debacle. What would my dad say if he could see Obama bestow our nation’s highest honor on Robinson? “I guess she meant well.”

Rabbi Cooper is the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He was a spokesman for the Jewish Caucus at the ill-fated Durban Conference.

Read more:

11
Aug
09

Who do you trust?

In Obama we DO NOT trust!

In Obama we DO NOT trust!

11
Aug
09

Obama: Healthcare Critics Should Shut Up

Obama: Healthcare Critics Should Shut Up

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 9:06 AM

By: David Limbaugh

The hubris, arrogance, and deceit of President Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership are breathtaking. In their maniacal frenzy to assume control over every aspect of our lives through socialized medicine, they are behaving like the thuggish autocrats they have proved themselves to be.

The jig is up on their designs, evidenced by the very contents of the health bill they’re promoting. As increasing public awareness has translated into increasing grass-roots opposition to the bill, the Democrats have ratcheted up their bullying tactics and deceit.

Our self-styled bipartisan president is telling his critics to shut up, while his partners in crime, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues, are calling them un-American and Nazis.

Understand this: The people who are showing up in droves with righteous anger befitting a body politic steeped in a unique liberty tradition are exercising the very type of bottom-up citizen protest and government watchdogging our Founding Fathers envisioned. They are not the artificially driven “AstroTurf” phonies the Democrats are depicting them to be. No, such activities are the province of Saul Alinsky/Obama-type “street organizers” and union thugs enlisted by the administration to discredit these legitimate protests.

It wasn’t enough for Pelosi to call us Nazis. She also co-wrote, with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, an Op-Ed in USA Today calling us un-American and projecting her own nefarious tactics onto her opposition.

Pelosi and Hoyer accuse the protesters of engaging in “an ugly campaign . . . not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue.”

They say: “The first fact is that health insurance reform will mean more patient choice. It will allow every American who likes his or her current plan to keep it. And it will free doctors and patients to make the health decisions that make the most sense, not the most profits for insurance companies.”

How can these government propaganda ministers sleep at night? They are the ones misrepresenting the legislation and closing their meetings to genuine dissent.

In the first place, it is not “health insurance reform.” It is an effort to fundamentally transform the entire healthcare industry and how decisions are made. Their recent move to euphemize this monstrosity as “insurance reform” is part of their strategy to demonize insurance companies in their ruthless quest to shove this down our throats.

The bill would not allow Americans to keep their plans. It would crowd out and eventually eliminate private care; enormously reduce choice, as well as the quantity and quality of care; and be a fiscal nightmare, as verified by Congressional Budget Office projections. Worst of all, it would further destroy our liberties.

And by Obama’s own words, it would decrease doctors’ prerogatives over the type of care they provide. He admits he’d control doctors by making their “bundled payments” conditional on their meeting quality standards imposed by an omniscient, omnipotent government, not doctors and their patients.

Pelosi and Hoyer’s most laughable claim is that their plan “will stand up to any and all critics.”

If that’s so, why don’t they tell the truth about what’s in the bill and truly answer legitimate questions and concerns about it instead of resorting to name-calling and intimidation? If that’s so, why is Obama sending out his hired mouthpiece, Linda Douglass, to deny what Obama most clearly said? She protests that his statements promoting a single-payer system were taken out of context and then gives us absolutely no evidence they were. We are just supposed to disbelieve our lying eyes and ears.

It’s also disingenuous to argue that in any event, Obama’s earlier statements are irrelevant because he says he does not favor a single-payer system today and would protect our right to private care. Again, we have the bill itself, which would phase out private care — mandatorily — so the denials are self-evident lies.

Obama isn’t delegating all the dirty work to his surrogates. Our pseudo-cool leader himself has become conspicuously unglued. About opponents of his outlandishly reckless agenda, he said that he doesn’t “want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking;” he wants “them just to get out of the way so [Democrats] can clean up the mess.” He went on, “I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.”

He obviously thinks that he has the unilateral right as president, with 53 percent of the vote, to use our money to impoverish and enslave us and destroy our healthcare and that we have no right even to object. We only get to speak every two years.

Well, this president — with a faux-messianic wind boomeranging in his face — has now met his match: an increasingly informed, vigilant, politically engaged and liberty-loving citizenry. And none too soon.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author, and attorney. His book “Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today’s Democratic Party” was released recently in paperback. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his Web site at http://www.DavidLimbaugh.com.

© 2009 Creator’s Syndicate Inc./08/11/246345.html”>