Posts Tagged ‘obama’
Ben Domenech, a truly gifted thinker and writer, has a great post about Obama’s recess appointment of Donald Berwick to head the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). (Ben also has additional comments here.) After the passage of the Democrats’ health care bill, the director of CMS is like the third most powerful person in the country over your life. So how that person views your health care is pretty important. Read Ben’s post, which includes the video, but I’ve included it here as well.
It just makes you shake your head and wonder how in the world…
The American people can’t say that they weren’t warned about the misinformation that Obama and the Democrats continued to push during the debate over their health care bill.
One warning was that the bill would essentially lead to a government take-over of health care because the government would force employers to change coverage plans they currently provide to their employees.
Obama and the Democrats knew that if the American people thought the government could force coverage changes, they would oppose the bill even more. That is why one of the most repeated claims by Obama was the line, “if you like your current coverage, you can keep it.”
Well, now Obama’s own administration is projecting that a majority of workers will have a change in coverage within the next three years.
This is just one of the big lies about the health care bill that will be exposed in the months and years to come.
It would be useful for us to remember this pattern in future debates - if something is being repeated so often, it must be a lie.
This report from CBS News is worth posting in its entirety. It defines irony.
Press Freedom, Sure. But No Questions.
Posted by Chip Reid
There was some rich irony at the White House today — President Obama signed the Press Freedom Act, and then promptly refused to take any questions.
The new law expands the State Department’s annual human rights reports to include a description of press freedoms in each country. It seemed a good opportunity to showcase press freedom in this country.
Recall that last Friday the president refused to take any questions after delivering his angry statement on the oil spill in the Rose Garden. And he has not held a prime-time White House news conference in many months, despite much pleading from pundits and members of the media.
So after he signed the bill, and as the press “wranglers” began aggressively herding us out of the room, I asked if he still has confidence in BP. He ignored the question so I tried this: “In the interest of press freedom, would you take a couple questions on BP?”
That did elicit a smile, and he told me I was free to ask questions. Someone else shouted, “Will you answer them?”
He said he’s not holding a press conference today as we were escorted out the door.
Chip Reid is CBS News’ chief White House correspondent. You can read more of his posts in Hotsheet here.
Democrats in the Senate are trying to stop a Republican filibuster of the financial services regulatory bill. They think that forcing a vote today, tomorrow, the next day and so on will make Republicans look bad, because EVERYBODY hates Wall Street and should be clamoring for more regulation.
The problem for Democrats is that the American people aren’t stupid. They know a permanent bailout when they see it. The Democrats can claim they are getting tough on Wall Street, but it just doesn’t sell because so much of Wall Street is a part of the Obama Administration now. Goldman Sachs employees gave more money to Obama’s campaign (more than $900,000) than any other private sector employees (only employees from the vast University of California coughed up more dough.)
This is just a partial list of the Goldman Sachs connections: Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Mark Patterson, a former Goldman lobbyist who is chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; and Robert Hormats, the undersecretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs.
On a slightly different note, check out this video from the folks at Americans for Prosperity.
Bart Stupak will announce today that he will not seek reelection in November. After this so-called pro-life Democrat pulled a Judas on the issue of life, and providing the final votes needed to pass Obama’s government takeover of health care. This is what defines cowardice: selling out your principle, and then running away from defending yourself.
His seat is likely to go Republican, increasing the chances of a GOP majority in the House after the November election.
All I can say is good riddance. One less unprincipled Member of Congress to worry about.
Baseball is America’s pastime. Every April, millions of fans all over the country have high hopes that their favorite team will make it to October. Losses are excused as early season jitters, wins are inflated to grandiose predictions. Fans from young kids to old men argue and cajole about who the best teams are and who the best players are. And every baseball fan has a favorite player.
Unless you happen to be Barack Obama. In a stunningly embarrassing moment on TV (video below) during the National’s home opener against the Phillies, Obama talks about being “a Southside kid” and long-time White Sox fan and is then asked who his favorite player was growing up. The stammering becomes awkward as it is obvious he can’t name anyone, and then tries to shift to “I liked a lot of Cubs too.” He completes his verbal gymnastics by saying he grew up in Hawaii and was an A’s fan.
I know it may sound petty, but for crying out loud, you can’t foist yourself as a regular guy from the Southside of Chicago, talking about how big a fan you are of the White Sox – even implying you’re a White Sox kid – and be literally stumped to come up with ONE name of a player. It is offensive to real baseball fans.
Of course, I’m not sure why I’m so fired up about this… this is the same guy who, standing in the heartland of America’s field of dreams (for you non-baseball fans, that’s Iowa), tried to connect to the farmers during his campaign by asking, “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?”
I didn’t even know what arugula was at the time. To make matters worse for him, they don’t grow arugula in any real quantity in Iowa, and there are no Whole Foods stores in the entire state.
This pattern of politicians pretending to be something they’re not when it comes to everyday life is exactly what drives people crazy. Hey, we may disagree on policy, but don’t just make stuff up to make yourself “more real.”
And please, stop being a poser with America’s favorite pastime.
It isn’t exactly “Drill, Baby, Drill” but Obama’s decision to allow some offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico is a step in the right direction. He is also allowing some drilling off Alaska’s shoreline, while shutting off drilling in other areas of Alaska.
This was the second good move by Obama in the last few days. His surprise visit to Afghanistan was not just good, it was great. The troops needed the morale boost and Obama was right to firmly plant the flag on our offensive to root out terrorist in the region.
The President deserves our praise when he does the right thing, and in these two cases, he did.
Now that the health care “reform” bill has been signed into law, details that should have been disclosed and debated before the vote are starting to emerge. Obviously, Nancy Pelosi meant it when she said they’d have to “pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
Amid the flurry speculation and assertions about the bill is to when and if the pre-existing conditions of children will be covered. Such uncertainty is yet another reason why a bill with major implications for everyone in America should never have been drafted in secrecy or have been exempted from standard procedure.
One of the most outrageous revelations is that staffers who work for Members in Leadership or for Committees, the primary authors of the bill itself, may not be required to purchase insurance through the state-run exchanges.
If it’s not good enough for the authors of the bill, why should the American people be stuck with it?
Speaker Pelosi muscled the Democrat health care bill through to passage Sunday night on a 219-212 vote giving President Obama a major legislative victory and very likely sacrificing the political careers of at least 30 House Members and maybe even the Democrat House majority.
While Democrats say the American people are the winners, the real winners are the big insurance and the big drug companies. This bill is yet another big bailout of corporate America.
The insurance companies will receive subsidies to the tune of $400 billion and guaranteed customers because the government will now force nearly every American to buy their product. Drug companies will continue to make record profits because they were given a sweetheart deal that prevents generic drugs from coming to market.
This Wall Street Journal editorial lays out what is in store. It’s not pretty.
This week’s votes don’t end our health-care debates. By making medical care a subsidiary of Washington, they guarantee such debates will never end. And by ramming the vote through Congress on a narrow partisan majority, and against so much popular opposition, Democrats have taken responsibility for what comes next—to insurance premiums, government spending, doctor shortages and the quality of care. They are now the rulers of American medicine.
The process to passage wasn’t pretty either.
While liberal Democrats are fulfilling their dream of a cradle-to-grave entitlement, their swing-district colleagues will pay the electoral price. Those on the fence fell in line out of party loyalty or in response to some bribe, and to show the party could govern. But even then Speaker Nancy Pelosi could only get 85% of her caucus and had to make promises that are sure to prove ephemeral.
Most prominently, she won over Michigan’s Bart Stupak and other anti-abortion Democrats with an executive order from Mr. Obama that will supposedly prevent public funds from subsidizing abortions. The wording of the order seems to do nothing more than the language of the Senate bill that Mr. Stupak had previously said he couldn’t support, and of course such an order can be revoked whenever it is politically convenient to do so.
We have never understood why pro-lifers consider abortion funding more morally significant than the rationing of care for cancer patients or at the end of life that will inevitably result from this bill. But in any case Democratic pro-lifers sold themselves for a song, as they usually do
…
We also can’t mark this day without noting that it couldn’t have happened without the complicity of America’s biggest health-care lobbies, including Big Pharma, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, the Business Roundtable and such individual companies as Wal-Mart. They hope to get more customers, or to reduce their own costs, but in the end they have merely made themselves more vulnerable to the gilded clutches of the political class.
While the passage of ObamaCare marks a liberal triumph, its impact will play out over many years. We fought this bill so vigorously because we have studied government health care in other countries, and the results include much higher taxes, slower economic growth and worse medical care. As for the politics, the first verdict arrives in November.
