Bill would reduce senior care. Medicare cuts approved by House may affect access to providers.
A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health-care system — would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday. The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether. [The most informed most active voting bloc in this country is now put on notice. The Obama administration in cahoots with Congressional Democrats have every intention of reducing and or eliminating your Medicare healthcare coverage wherever they think they can get away with it…ed]
Study suggests costs rise under health care bill
Overall spending on health care would rise as a result of legislation approved a week ago by the House, and billions of dollars in projected savings contained in the measure will be difficult to maintain, according to a report by a top official at the agency that oversees Medicare. The legislation would expand insurance coverage to an estimated 32 million people who now lack it, according to the report, creating a demand for services that “could be difficult to meet initially … and could lead to price-increases, cost-shifting and/or changes in providers’ willingness to treat patients with low-reimbursement health coverage.” The analysis was issued by Richard Foster, the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which is part of the Health and Human Services Department. [The Democrats are NEVER concerned about cost except when it comes to the military protecting our country. All these creeps care about is CONTROL over the population and that is precisely what ObamaCare is all about…ed]
Barack Obama bowed to Japanese emperor as ‘protocol’
A senior administration official said President Barack Obama was simply observing protocol when he bowed to Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko upon arriving at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on Saturday. “I think that those who try to politicize those things are just way, way, way off base,” the official said. “He observes protocol. But I don’t think anybody who was in Japan – who saw his speech and the reaction to it, certainly those who witnesses his bilateral meetings there – would say anything other than that he enhanced both the position and the status of the U.S., relative to Japan. [Allow me to run this unnamed “senior administration official’s” comment that Obama banging his head on the floor in front of the Japanese Emperor was a matter of protocol up the freakin’ BS flag pole…ed]
No president has traveled more than Barack Obama in his first year — his current trip to Asia is his eighth. The first seven took him nowhere. In the afterglow of each, his prestige declined as his results proved ephemeral. His first trip, to Ottawa — a fly-in fly-out, same day affair without pomp and circumstance or announcements of substance — was among his best for doing the least harm. Trip Two, to Europe to convince his counterparts to spend spend spend their way out of the economic recession, began poorly for him when Europe’s leaders flatly refused. Trip Two ended spectacularly in Istanbul, at the Turkish Grand National Assembly, with a high-profile speech that reached out to a pivotal Muslim country. [Obama’s mission is not to maintain or increase the prestige of our country before the world, it is to rip it to shreds and he is doing a spectacular job of it wherever he goes. Maybe he can just go be president of some European country that has never had a half black figurehead?…ed]
Obama will visit ‘haunting grounds’
US PRESIDENT Barack Obama said Friday he would visit some of his old ‘haunting grounds’ in Indonesia during a visit next year to the nation where he spent part of his childhood and is hugely popular. The verbal slip drew laughs as Mr Obama spoke during an appearance with Indonesian President President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono after the two leaders met on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit in Singapore. (SNIP) The childhood connection and his knowledge of a few words of the Indonesian language have made him massively popular in the country of 234 million people, 90 per cent of whom are Muslim. [So Obama is going back to his old “haunting” grounds huh? Gee I thought the smartest guy in the world never said stupid stuff like this? And it’s little wonder he is so popular in his former ‘haunts’ after all it is 90% muslim…ed]
Administration Lowers Bar for Success in Afghanistan War, Seeks Exit Strategy
Top Obama administration officials took pains to lower the bar for success in Afghanistan Sunday, stressing that the administration is seeking an exit strategy and holds “no illusions” that it will transform the country into a functional modern democracy. The ongoing rhetorical tweaking of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan comes as the president weighs whether to send more troops to the war zone. It was thought that officials were leaning toward sending more than 30,000 U.S. forces, but Obama rejected all troop-level proposals last week, sending strategists back to the drawing board. [Hang onto your hats kids, here’s the beginning of the cut ‘n run from the administration who’s bar for competence is set so low ants can casually step right over it…ed]
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What stops mass murderers? A gun
Early in the morning of Dec. 5, 1999, off-duty Las Vegas police officer Dennis Devitte was one of the customers at Mr. D’s Sportsbar & Grill, at Rainbow and Oakey boulevards, where he and some pals had gone to hear the band Pigs in a Blanket. A little after 1 a.m., three armed robbers charged through the back door with guns drawn and their faces covered with T-shirts or bandanas. “I’d only been in the bar a short time and was talking to friends,” Mr. Devitte later told an interviewer for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “I saw a ruckus at the end of the bar. “One of the gunmen went right by me and shot a man in a wheelchair, hitting him in the shoulder,” Mr. Devitte recalled. “I only had my small .25-caliber off-duty gun, which isn’t very accurate, so I knew I had to get really close before I could start shooting. Otherwise I might hit someone else.” (SNIP) There are two reasons no innocent parties died at Mr. D’s that night. One, beyond any question, was the selfless courage of Dennis Devitte. The second reason? One of Emilio Rodriguez’s intended victims had a gun. [Maybe now some of the folks sitting on the fence about the right of American citizens to own firearms will understand the famous saying “you’ll have to pry mine from my cold, dead hands.”]
Copenhagen climate change agreement is impossible
The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December has been billed as the world’s last chance to stop global warming. But negotiations soon broke down because the US refused to sign up to targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The deadlock has forced world leaders at a summit in Singapore to step in and admit that any deal this year will be little more than a “political agreement”. However they insisted that a legally-binding treaty will be thrashed out by the end of 2010 and even suggested a timetable and deadline to ensure negotiations stay on track. [There goes Al Gore’s woody. It looks like this transferring wealth from productive countries to third world crapholes scam cloaked in climate change hysteria is having a little trouble. Cool…ed]
Gore heckled at climate speech
Former Vice President Al Gore’s global-warming speech Saturday night at Mizner Park drew about a thousand attendees, as well as more than 200 loud protesters. Stationed outside the Mizner Park Amphitheater, the protesters jeered at Gore as he took the podium and at those walking into the open-air venue to listen to the speech. “This is the most dangerous crisis we’ve ever faced,” Gore said of climate change. He spoke over a chorus of boos from protesters, who were monitored by at least a dozen uniformed city police officers. [The climate change crisis caused by human activity around the planet has Al Gore so concerned he spends $30,000 a year on utility bills at his 10,000 square foot Tennessee mansion that only he and his wife live in. Next to Obama this clown is the biggest fraud trolling the globe…ed]
No love for Michael Moore’s latest
It’s a little early to issue a death certificate for the career of Michael Moore — but his latest film, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” has grossed just $14 million in seven weeks of release. It’s his poorest showing since “The Big One” (about “protecting the Earth from the scum of corporate America,” he claimed) bombed in 1998, grossing just $720,074. [I’ll bet anyone a large beer this stupid flick from this fat useless slob was required watching for the entire White House staff…ed]
Judges could free detainees moved to U.S.
When it comes to keeping Guantanamo inmates locked up indefinitely in the United States, the problem really isn’t the jails, some lawyers say—it’s the judges and the law. While some Americans fear that Guantanamo prisoners brought to U.S. prisons might break out, a far more likely possibility is that some of the terror suspects will simply walk out at some point in the future on the order of a federal judge. (SNIP) Critics are warning that prosecutions are inherently unpredictable and that bringing prisoners onto U.S. soil dramatically improves their chances of being released here some day. [Interestingly Obama is pushing an aggressive campaign to seat a whole bunch of new federal judges while he still holds the office and has an overwhelming majority in both houses of Congress…ed]
Young conservative activist Hannah Giles speaks in Santa Barbara
Hannah Giles was in the middle of her guerrilla warfare lecture this weekend at the young conservatives leadership conference when a man in the audience interrupted her. “We love you!” he cried out. The crowd erupted in applause and whistles. “Aw,” Giles said into the microphone. “I love you guys too.” At age 20, Giles is a rock star of conservative activism. She shot onto the national scene in September after posing as a prostitute at ACORN offices around the country, where she secretly videotaped employees who appeared to give her advice on tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. Outrage over the recordings led Congress to cut federal funding for the community organizing group. [A young conservative lady draws an adoring crowd in Santa Barbara of all places. With all those angry bitter leftists in that area I sure hope she had a well armed security detail…ed]
Con jobs. When will Obama stop lying about the stimulus?
Bad is good. Quagmire is progress. And jobs destroyed are jobs “created or saved,” says the Obama administration. A political columnist points out that “one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language.” The writer was George Orwell, adding that “political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Wind power turns out to be central to Obamathink in more ways than one. The chosen one promised that the power of wind would bring jobs, and so it did: Joe Biden’s. Obama said wind would be a surprisingly potent energy source, and so it is: It fuels the White House spin machine. But does anyone think the West Wing wind has any “appearance of solidity”? [As time goes by more and more people who thought Obama was the next coming of Mohamed back on November 4, 2008 are realizing the guy was nothing but a major league con job on the American people all along…ed]
The New York State Board of Elections was unable to present a “clear decision” to the House of Representatives in the NY-23 Congressional Special Election. John Conklin, Communications Director for the Board of Elections, said that the board could not even have declared an unofficial winner in the race had Doug Hoffman not conceded on Election Night. The letter that was sent to the Clerk of the House of Representatives by the Board of Elections and entered into House record on Nov. 6th shows that only 3,026 votes separated the candidates according to the unofficial results submitted. Rep. Charles B. Rangel, as the most senior member of New York’s Congressional Delegation, put forth Bill Owens for swearing-in to the 111th Congress. In doing so, he indicated that “His Certificate of Election has not arrived, but there is no contest, and no question has been raised with regard to his election.” [Why is this important? Because the Democrats hurriedly swore this clown in as a Congressman so he could vote for Nancy Pelosi’s ObamaCare bill and it only passed the House by TWO votes…ed]
Acorn: Once on the Federal Dole, Always on the Federal Dole
You’ve got to say one thing about Acorn: it has chutzpah. After all, these are the folks who once sued to avoid paying the minimum wage to their own workers. These are the people who turned the Community Reinvestment Act into a classic shakedown operation, scoring numerous corporate pay-offs in order to lift Acorn’s objections to bank mergers. And, of course, these are the activists who freely dispensed advice on how to run brothels with underage, illegal immigrants while concealing the proceeds. Still, they are upset that Congress cut off their money. I mean, who doesn’t get a government check these days!? How insulting! [Oh please. ACORN has so many different tangled up hard to trace entities feeding at the government trough that we’ll NEVER be able to cut this criminal enterprise off…ed]
The Republican landslide in Virginia and the stunning upset in New Jersey were not the only bad news for the left in the last few months. The Social Democrats in the September German elections for the Bundestag did worse than in any election since the Second World War. Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats lost some support as well, but the market-oriented Free Democrats made major gains, and a center-right coalition now governs Germany with a majority of seats in the Bundestag. Polling data one month after the German general election indicates that Germans continue to oppose a left-of-center government. [Liberalism is an insipid mental disease and the entire planet is waking up to that fact…ed]
The AT Readers’ Complete Lexicon of Political Speech
Numerous AT readers suggested additions to a recently posted partial lexicon of political speech. We’ll call it “complete” for now, but there are, no doubt, still some oft used terms missing. Contributing AT readers are noted [in brackets]. [This list of definitions will surely come in very handy for those who have just stumbled upon the parallel universe Democrats live in…ed]
Why does he hate us? Barack Obama’s America-effacing presidency
On the morning after the deadliest instance of Islamist terrorism in the United States since 9/11, President Obama warned the American public not to “jump to conclusions” about the motives that impelled Nidal Hasan’s rampage of mass murder at Fort Hood. By the time Obama issued this warning, it had already been reported that Hasan yelled “Allahu akbar” before he opened fire.This assertion of the supremacy of Allah is invoked by Islamic terrorists worldwide before they kill. It was also known that Hasan’s fellow participants in an Army program on public health had complained to military authorities about Hasan’s anti-American propaganda.Hasan had made a presentation that justified suicide bombing and argued that the war on terror is a war against Islam. Yet no conclusions were warranted, as far as Obama was concerned.”We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing,” our “philosopher in chief” intoned. [Too late Obama, I’ve already jumped to my well founded conclusion that Hasan is indeed a muslim terrorist who hates my country and needs to hang from the end of a rope for what he did to nearly 50 innocent Americans…ed]
Quote of the day.
Americans know something without a name is undermining the nation, turning the mind mushy when it comes to separating truth from falsehood and right from wrong.
-Charlton Heston