The Kentucky Stomp

The 110 lb Woman responds to her attacker's request for an apology:

Mr. Profitt, You have asked that I apologize to you. Perhaps this is not the apology that you are looking for, but I do have some things to say.

I have been called a progressive, a liberal, a professional agitator. You have been called a conservative, a Republican, a member of the Tea Party movement. Fundamentally and most importantly, you and I are both human beings. We are also both American citizens. These two facts, to me, are far more meaningful than the multitude of labels that we carry. And if these two facts are true then it means we are on the same team.

I have not been for one moment angry with you and your actions. Instead I feel thoroughly devastated. It is evident that your physical assault on me is symptomatic of the crisis that this country is struggling through. And it seems that I will heal from my injuries long before this country can work through our separation. Only when we decide let go of our hate, our violence and our aggression will we be able to communicate to each other about the issues that divide us. Right now, we are not communicating, we are stomping on each other. No one can ever win, no one can ever be heard, with violence.

You and I, as fellow citizens, and we, as a country, have a choice. Either we choose to continue the cycle of inflicting violence upon each other, screaming at each other, insulting each other and putting one another down or we and find a way to sit down and start listening to each other. We’ll see how far we get. We are all viciously and vociferously feeding a fire that will only burn us down together. We must reach inside ourselves and make space for each other. We must forgive each other. We must believe in our capacity for transformation. The moment we choose compassion and reconciliation is the moment that we will begin to move toward freedom. There is no other way.

I believe that you should be held accountable for your actions but I also recognize the incredibly negative impact that the consequences must be having on your life, and I wish you all the best as you yourself heal from this. Violence hurts everyone.

A Guy Can Get a Lot Done in Two Years!

"Obama has managed to lose his own standing, take his party down with him, and convince core Democratic constituencies to vote Republican. And it took him only two years."

The Obama Coalition Crack-Up

JENNIFER RUBIN - 10.28.2010 - 7:27 AM

The Obama coalition is breaking up, the New York Times tells us:

Republicans have wiped out the advantage held by Democrats in recent election cycles among women, Catholics, less affluent Americans and independents; all of those groups broke for Mr. Obama in 2008 and for congressional Democrats when they grabbed both chambers from the Republicans four years ago, according to exit polls.

The poll found that a greater proportion of women would choose Republicans over Democrats in House races than at any time since exit polls began tracking the breakdown in 1982.

And for the Times poll, which a savvy Democratic pundit confided to me does indeed historically ”tip Democratic,” the numbers are horrible for the Democrats. Obama’s approval is at 43 percent. And then there is the speaker: “The Democratic House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has clearly emerged as a political liability for her party in the latest Times/CBS poll. Overall, 43 percent of all respondents had an unfavorable opinion of Ms. Pelosi; 15 percent had a favorable opinion, and 40 percent said they had no opinion.” Yowser. No wonder she’s in so many GOP ads.

Other figures evidence the electorate’s rightward shift. Women, who have of late tilted Democratic, are now evenly split between support for Democrats and Republicans. By a margin of 55 to 36 percent, respondents favored smaller government with fewer services over bigger government with more services. Fifty-three percent think Obama does not have a clear plan for creating jobs. Respondents think Republicans are more likely than Democrats to create jobs and reduce the deficit (by a 43 to 32 percent margin).

And oh, by the way, the polling sample — 38 percent Democrat and 27 percent Republican — is more dramatically skewed toward the Democrats than just about any other poll (OK, there’sNewsweek, but not even James Carville takes that seriously).

Obama has managed to lose his own standing, take his party down with him, and convince core Democratic constituencies to vote Republican. And it took him only two years.

Wasn't this about entitlements?

When he who is now FOS talked about hope and change and the Bush years and the rich and all that crap, wasn't it all really about entitlements?
We can twiddle all we wish about gay marriage and religion, but our real problem is that we have committed to much. We are going broke and we don't need more taxes, we need to control spending.

Now Pres. FOS know this, hell even Rich knows this, yet they harp on about taxes and the rich and other inconsequential BS.

Gov. Christie is a hero and an example. He is saying what need to be said and doing what needs to be done.

You liberal folk just don't get the TEA party. Yes O'Donnell will likely lose, but the TEA party is supporting candidates who are willing to take a stand for fiscal sanity. THEY ARE OUT THERE WILLING TO SACRIFICE THEIR ENTITLEMENTS, CALLING FOR FISCAL SANITY.

Medicare and Social Security are nothing but defined benefit plans. They will bankrupt our country. Someone with political courage, something, which as we have seen, is completely absent in the Democratic party, needs to talk like Gov. Christie on the national level. The commission is doomed to failure. The President had his chance. The Bush administration tried to tackle Social Security and was demagogued by the Democrats. The TEA party is our best chance for fiscal survival. Wish them luck...Rich.

The utter hypocrisy of Obamamessiah

We have been treated to the lowest moments delivered by a President of the United States in my lifetime from Barry. His arrogance and vindictiveness even exceed Nixon. I do realize this past Presidential election matched the two worst candidates since arguably Ford vs. Carter which is our fault as Americans. But to elect a man who has so unqualified and so unpresidential is a new low for us as a nation. Barry is by far the most partisan President we have ever seen. He has done more to tear this country apart than any President since the Civil War. The new low was calling anyone who opposes him an "enemy". I he also went on to say who much he hates the filibuster. What a hypocrite. As a Senator he took part in several filibusters. Now because they have been threatened to stymie his socialist agenda filibusters are all of a sudden wrong.

His attacks on the Supreme Court justices over the Citizens United are are also unprecedented. Throwing out unsubstantiated claims that the Chamber of Commerce was using foreign money in ads was laughable if not so hypocritical. This is a man who took untold amounts of money from foreign donors during his Presidential campaign. Now that Corporations can spend their money on political ads it is bad according to Barry. Yet the largest single donor organization of political ad money is the Union that represents governmental employees. 95% of their money spent went to Democrats and what is worse is that this money comes from member dues whose salaries are paid by the taxpayer. Yet their pensions are so badly underfunded that they want government bailouts using more taxpayer money. If it wasn't so logically wrong it would be laughable. If any organization should be banned from spending money on political campaigns it should be organizations that are dependent on taxpayer money who have chronically underfunded pensions. Why aren't these dues mandated to go towards the pensions or their health care like private sector workers?

This is the next big battle in this country that you will see fought over the next few years. It has started in States like New Jersey and will continue as more and more Americans figure out the con game that has been run for decades by the Democrats and their Union co-conspirators. The Governator has done a good job pointing out the unsustainable condition of governmental pensions in California. Illinois has almost as large of a problem. The list goes on with more and more States joining. These defined benefit plans have to end. Every State that is in trouble is using pie in the sky projections of future returns on the money they have under management. Look at France and Greece if you can't smell the coffee yet.

Good thing no one listens to Rich

Remember two years ago when Rich was so full of advice about how the GOP could save themselves from utter ruin? Good thing he was as wrong on this as the unqualified idiots that are running our country into the ground are. The majority of American people have woken up to the fact that an incompetent candidate was elected to the highest office in the land. The arrogant left wing elitists who can't believe this ever increasing tail spin of a plane crash that they are piloting is due to their idiotic solutions to our economic woes go out and blame everyone else in the most petty, speeches I have ever heard in my lifetime. What a bunch of whiners.

I had hoped that these last two years would have finally made Rich realize how wrong Keynesian economics are but I should have known better. That is the problem with leftists. Their egos are tied to the belief that they are smarter than the rest of us and if things don't work out it can't be their fault. Just listen to what the Obamamessiah has been saying. What an arrogant un Presidential piece of work. I have to say I agree with Rich that the comparison of Barry to the Peanut Farmer is a bad one. No one compares to how bad he has been as President. He makes Carter actually look good in comparison. The American people now have a serious case of buyer's remorse. To use Barry's far overworked car analogy. We allowed you to drive the car and all you have done is get in more accidents so we are taking the keys back and not allowing you to drive anymore unless you have front seat supervision.

Can't Keep a Bad Idea Down

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/opinion/27friedman.html?_r=1&hp

Paul is at it again

Edited to prevent nausea.


So Paul opines again. Stupid beyond belief as he is, he thinks...hey we just didn't spend enough of what we don't have. We needed to spend our children's, children's, children's money.


The whole point of the tea party movement is...stay the hell out of the way. Yes, believe it or not, we can function without long term unemployment insurance. The marketplace can decide on an energy policy. The lefties have successfully changed the argument to degree, as in what degree to you need our help? A lot, or do you just want us to take over the whole thing?

By PAUL KRUGMAN


If Democrats do as badly as expected in next week’s elections, pundits will rush to interpret the results as a referendum on ideology. No Paul it will be a referendum on competence.  President Obama moved too far to the left, most will say, even though his actual program — a health care plan very similar to past Republican proposals, a fiscal stimulus that consisted mainly of tax cuts, help for the unemployed and aid to hard-pressed states — was more conservative than his election platform.   So, Paul,  the electorate is just too stupid to understand? 
The real story of this election, is that of an economic policy that failed to deliver. Why? Because it was greatly inadequate to the task. So a couple of trillion just won't do?

If you look back now at the economic forecast originally used to justify the Obama economic plan, what’s striking is that forecast’s optimism about the economy’s ability to heal itself. Really Paul, you dumb ass, the American Economy could not have healed itself without astute central planning?  Let's take a vote on that little subject, oh, we are going to, how do you think things will turn out?  Even without their plan, Obama economists predicted, the unemployment rate would peak at 9 percent, then fall rapidly. Fiscal stimulus was needed only to mitigate the worst — as an “insurance package against catastrophic failure,” as Lawrence Summers, later the administration’s top economist, reportedly (Hey Paul, don't you think a Nobel winner should do enough research to...use documented quotes...what tripe.)  said in a memo to the president-elect.
But economies that have experienced a severe financial crisis generally don’t heal quickly. From the Panic of 1893, to the Swedish crisis of 1992, to Japan’s lost decade, financial crises have consistently been followed by long periods of economic distress. And that has been true even when, as in the case of Sweden, the government moved quickly and decisively to fix the banking system.   So perhaps Paul, using your own logic, government does not help...you whack job!
What we do know is that the inadequacy of the stimulus has been a political catastrophe.  I am so tired of liberal double speak, it was the AMOUNT of the stimulus, the WASTE of the stimulus, the SPENDING OF MONEY WE DO NOT HAVE which caused the political catastrophe.  Without the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: the unemployment rate would probably be close to 12 percent right now if the administration hadn’t passed its plan. But voters respond to facts, not counterfactuals, and the perception is that the administration’s policies have failed.

Is there any hope for a better outcome? Maybe, just maybe, voters will have second thoughts about handing power back to the people who got us into this mess, Paul and Mr. Obama how exactly did conservatives get us into this mess?  and a weaker-than-expected Republican showing at the polls will give Mr. Obama a second chance to turn the economy around.

Why can't the dopes understand that the first begats the second.

From the Boston globe:

But rarely has the political equation and the policy reality diverged so sharply. The three initiatives most commonly under attack — the bank bailout, the federal stimulus plan, and the health reform act — are in no way responsible for the economic woes that are burdening today’s voters.


From the AP (and reality)


France on strike


Weeks of strikes, protests and demonstrations have brought much of France to a standstill as workers, students and others voice their strong opposition to a government proposal to raise the age for a minimum pension from 60 to 62. A quarter of the nation's gas stations were out of fuel, hundreds of flights were canceled, long lines formed at gas stations and train services in many regions were cut in half. Protesters blockaded Marseille's airport, Lady Gaga canceled concerts in Paris and rioting youths attacked police in Lyon. The unpopular bill is edging closer to becoming law as the French Senate is preparing to vote on it today.

Its not Bush's fault any longer....its ours!

"People out there are still hurting very badly, and they are still scared. And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared," Obama said at a Democratic fundraiser Saturday in Boston. "And the country is scared, and they have good reason to be."

The bellweather

California Senate - Boxer vs. Fiorina    RCP Average: Boxer +2.3
10/7/10 -- Fiorina has punched back with advertisements, and has closed the gap somewhat. Boxer remains below 50 percent, but is still well within the danger zone. In addition, some of these polls are seeing an electorate with a higher percentage of Democrats than 2008. This seems unlikely.
Few thought at the beginning of this cycle that the bad economy would cause the state’s voters to turn on the Democrats in 2010, but that appears to be what has happened. Although Senator Barbara Boxer has never been the world’s most popular senator – she won relatively close races in 1992 and 1998 before winning by 20 points in 2004 – she was thought to be reasonably safe after Barack Obama cruised to a 61-37 win in California in 2008.

But Boxer’s liberal voting record – from objecting to the certification of Ohio’s 2004 Electoral College votes to supporting a bill to censure George W. Bush – may be too liberal even for the Golden State. Polling shows the three-term senator only narrowly leading former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiornia. SurveyUSA has shown majorities disapproving of the senator, and polling this cycle has consistently shown her below 50 percent. Tellingly, the SurveyUSA polls have shown Boxer’s biggest weakness coming in the Inland Empire and Central Valley – the areas of the state hardest hit by the subprime meltdown. As of August, there’s a real chance that Boxer will loses this one.

By KEN LANGONE

Although I was glad that you answered a question of mine at the Sept. 20 town-hall meeting you hosted in Washington, D.C., Mr. President, I must say that the event seemed more like a lecture than a dialogue. For more than two years the country has listened to your sharp rhetoric about how American businesses are short-changing workers, fleecing customers, cheating borrowers, and generally "driving the economy into a ditch," to borrow your oft-repeated phrase.

My question to you was why, during a time when investment and dynamism are so critical to our country, was it necessary to vilify the very people who deliver that growth? Instead of offering a straight answer, you informed me that I was part of a "reckless" group that had made "bad decisions" and now required your guidance, if only I'd stop "resisting" it.

I'm sure that kind of argument draws cheers from the partisan faithful. But to my ears it sounded patronizing. Of course, one of the chief conceits of centralized economic planning is that the planners know better than everybody else.

RUSH:  The Republicans are going to win big the House of Representatives. I think that's a given. Even if they don't win the House, they're gonna take away the Democrats supermajority. If they don't win the Senate they're gonna get close to that, but a lot of people think they're gonna win the House. I think -- and I've astutely pointed this out on previous occasions -- I think that's exactly what Obama wants. What does he need for his own reelection? He needs to run against somebody. He needs to have somebody to blame for the mess that he's created. He can't and doesn't want to blame his own party, even now, even now he's out there blaming -- and the media -- blaming the Republicans for all this mess when the Republicans can't stop anything Obama wants to do. Well, it isn't working. The thing here is that if the "blame the Republicans'" technique was working, then the Democrats should be ahead in all of these polls.  But they're not getting away with it the way they used to.

Really, they don't get it.

BLUMENTHAL: A job is created and it can be in a variety of ways, by a variety of people but principally by people and businesses in response to demand for products and services, and the main point about jobs in Connecticut is we can and we should create more of them by creative policies, and that's the kind of approach that I want to bring to Washington.   I have stood up for jobs when they've been at stake. I know about how government can help preserve jobs, and I want programs that provide more capital for small businesses, better tax policies that will promote creation of jobs, stronger intervention by government to make sure that we use the made-in-America policies and buy-America policies to keep jobs here rather than buying products that are manufactured overseas as WWE has done.

They just don't get it.

REID: Insurance companies don't do things out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it out of a profit motive and they have almost destroyed our economy.

Will vs. "O"

Desperation drives politicians to talk about process rather than policy. Obama, who is understandably reluctant to talk about what people are concerned about, the economy, is instead talking about the political process. He is in a terrific lather of insinuation, suggesting that torrents of foreign money are pouring into U.S. campaigns.


He recently said: "Just this week, we learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign corporations. So groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections." It takes a perverse craftsmanship to write something that slippery. Consider:

"Just this week, we learned. . . ." That is a fib. The fact that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- this is what he is talking about but for some reason is reluctant to say so -- receives membership dues from multinational corporations, some of them foreign-owned, is not something Obama suddenly "learned." It is about as secret as the location of the chamber's headquarters, a leisurely three-minute walk from the White House.

"Regularly takes in money from foreign corporations." Obama cites no evidence to refute the chamber's contention that it sequesters such funds -- less than one-twentieth of 1 percent of its budget -- from the money it devotes to political advocacy. The AFL-CIO, which spends heavily in support of Democratic candidates, also receives money from associated labor entities abroad, but Obama has not expressed angst about this.

"So groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections." The "so" is a Nixonian touch. It dishonestly implies what Obama prudently flinches from charging -- that the "huge sums" are foreign money.

The Obama crowd and the Reid machine contest the notion that they are in any way responsible for America's fast-mounting deficits and debt.  They say it was really President Bush's fault. All they did was inherit it. Let's lay that canard to rest once and for all.
John Merline of AOL researched the question of whether the fix we're in is Bush's fault or Obama's fault. He found "the answer is both, but not to an equal degree." The Congressional Budget Office projects spending and revenue 10 years out into the future. Bush's last budget produced very small deficits between 2011 and 2018. The CBO projected a balanced budget in 2012 and again in 2018 on Bush's path.

That, of course, came before we knew how long and deep the recession was going to be. So the CBO now estimates revenues at $2.2 trillion lower over the next eight years. If you want to blame Bush's economic policies for that drop-off in revenue, then fine. But it's not the revenue shortfall that's driving the big deficit and debt under Obama and Reid's watch. It is the wildly uncontrolled spending.



According to the CBO, as reported by Merline:  "Between 2011 and 2018, Obama would spend $4.9 trillion more than Bush had planned. Keep in mind that this extra spending is after the economic stimulus has been almost entirely exhausted.



"In other words, if Obama had simply kept Bush's spending policies in place, federal deficits over the next eight years would be 60 percent lower. In 2018, we'd have a deficit of just $188 billion, instead of the projected $996 billion under Obama's budget." Therefore, Merline concluded, Bush shares in the blame, but "the majority of the blame belongs with Obama for putting the government on a far higher spending path."



And you can't blame Obama for this reckless spending without holding Sen. Reid accountable. He considers the Obama agenda one of his accomplishments. And Harry tells Nevadans that he'll continue to support the Obama agenda. Meanwhile, Nevada leads the league in a host of bad economic stats. From foreclosures to unemployment, we're in an economic hell that's gotten much worse under the Obama/Reid budget plan.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the four-term Texas Republican, hopes it is true that, as has been said, Americans invariably do the right thing -- after exhausting all alternatives. Regarding the fiscal imbalance that is driving the national debt toward 90 percent of GDP, Americans are running out of alternatives.


Deficits are supposed to add $8.5 trillion to the nation's debt in this decade. This is the plan -- based on an assumption of 10 years of 3.4 percent economic growth. This year's second-quarter growth rate was half that.

President Obama established the 18-member National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, on which Hensarling serves. The commission is not, Hensarling thinks, "well designed for success." Two-thirds of its members were appointed by Democrats and any recommendations must be supported by 14 members, meaning a minimum of two Republican appointees.


The commission's co-chairman, Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff to President Clinton, has suggested that the commission should endorse balancing federal revenues (they have averaged 18 percent of GDP over the last 30 years) and outlays at 21 percent of GDP. Spending is now 25 percent and under current law, on reasonable assumptions, will reach 35 percent by 2035.
Hensarling says the commission's deliberations so far have resembled sumo wrestling -- there has been much staring at one another and the problem, "but the moment of contact has not arrived."


The commission's near-term mandate is to propose recommendations designed to balance the budget by 2015 -- excluding debt service. That is no mean exclusion: Interest on the debt is projected to be $739 billion in 2015.  If this is all the commission does, Hensarling says, it may do more harm than good because it will take the focus off the need to address the long-term structural debt caused by the big three entitlements.


Fixing Social Security's approaching insolvency is, Hensarling says, "child's play" compared to dealing with Medicare and Medicaid, the primary drivers of the government's fiscal imbalance. Democrats, however, must pretend that they and Obama have fixed health care. The commission could assure Social Security's solvency for at least another generation by quickly raising the retirement age to 68 and by indexing benefits to inflation rather than wage increases.

The commission's other mandate is to recommend measures "that meaningfully improve the long-run fiscal outlook," including the gap between projected federal revenues and expenditures, particularly regarding entitlement programs. A "road map" to fiscal responsibility written by another commission member, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., does that. But Hensarling is one of only 13 co-sponsors of it. The other 164 House Republicans flinch. They fear, not without reason, that voters' cognitive dissonance makes them ardently in favor of shrinking the deficit and as ardently opposed to measures commensurate with the problem.


But Hensarling says that "judging from my 1/435th of the nation," people have never been more alarmed about deficits.  Today's anxiety is one reason why, when the commission reports in December, the lame-duck session of Congress will contain many zombie members -- politically dead but still ambulatory. Having no political future, they may have the gumption to do difficult things but, having been repudiated, will lack the requisite legitimacy.

Krugman writes

When people ask why the Obama stimulus didn’t accomplish more, one good response is to ask, what stimulus? Leaving aside the cost of financial rescues and safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, federal spending has risen only modestly — and this rise has been largely offset by cutbacks at the state and local level. Many of these cuts were forced by Congress, which has refused to approve adequate aid to the states.

But Mt. Krugman show know but is too stupid to ask...


One reason the stimulus did not work is that...we don't have the money, after running modestly high deficits which were wrong in the first place, now the Obama's administration and Liberal congress is trying to stimulate the economy with our childrens, childrens money.  We don't have the juice Paul.  And the states, more responsible and sensitive (non Liberal ones) are using the borrowed money to pay off the debt.

Now picture bloggers, if a tax holiday had been created during the fiscal crisis.  And folks withour government waste and manipulation a been allowed to keep and invest their money.  Man, we would be in fat city.

But no, now we need to double down on...let's pause here for effect...bridges.  Yes, that is the way our of this mess, help the folks build bridges, that will help with the trade and education deficit, that will help with unemployment over the long term.  That will start the next Microsoft or Google.

What dopes.  They deserve the beating coming their way.

Peggy Noonan

The coming rebellion in the voting booth is not only about the economic impact of spending, debt and deficits on America's future. It's also to some degree about the feared impact of all those things on the character of the American people. There is a real fear that government, with all its layers, its growth, its size, its imperviousness, is changing, or has changed, who we are. And that if we lose who we are, as Americans, we lose everything. This is part of what's driving the sense of political urgency this year, especially within precincts of the tea party.


The most vivid illustration of the fear comes, actually, from another country, Greece, the amount of debt that has so far been unearthed and revealed, coming to "more than a quarter-million dollars for every working Greek." Over decades the Greeks turned their government "into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums" and gave "as many citizens as possible a whack at it." The average government job pays almost three times as much as the average private-sector job. The retirement age for "arduous" jobs, including hairdressers, radio announcers and musicians, is 55 for men and 50 for women. After that, a generous pension. The tax system has disintegrated. It is a welfare state with a cash economy.

 "It is simply assumed . . . that anyone who is working for the government is meant to be bribed. . . . Government officials are assumed to steal." Tax fraud is rampant. Everyone cheats. "It's become a cultural trait,"

"The Greek state was not just corrupt but also corrupting. Once you saw how it worked you could understand a phenomenon which otherwise made no sense at all: the difficulty Greek people have saying a kind word about one another. . . . Everyone is pretty sure everyone is cheating on his taxes, or bribing politicians, or taking bribes, or lying about the value of his real estate. And this total absence of faith in one another is self-reinforcing. The epidemic of lying and cheating and stealing makes any sort of civic life impossible."  Thus can great nations, great cultures, disintegrate, break into little pieces that no longer cohere into a whole.


 State lotteries. Give government the right to reap revenues from the public desire to gamble, and you'll soon have government doing something your humble local bookie never had the temerity to try: convince the people that gambling is a moral good. They promote it insistently on local television, undermining any remaining reserve among our citizens not to play the numbers, not to develop what can become an addiction. Our state government daily promotes what for 2,000 years was understood to be a vice. No bookie ever committed a crime that big.

There is Nothing New Under the Sun

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/nyregion/08zero.html?_r=1&ref=park51

Congress Can't Repeal Economics  By John Stossel
It's raining! I don't like it! Why hasn't Congress passed the Good Weather Act and the Everybody Happy Act?  Sound dumb?
John Stossel RealClearPolitics
Why is it any dumber than a law called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which promised to cover more for less money?

When Obamacare was debated, we free-market advocates insisted that no matter what the president promised, the laws of economics cannot be repealed. Our opponents in effect answered, "Yes, we can."

Well, Obamacare has barely started taking effect, and the evidence is already rolling in. I hate to say we told them so, but ... we told them so. The laws of economics have struck back.

Health insurers Wellpoint, Cigna, Aetna, Humana and CoventryOne will stop writing policies for all children. Why? Because Obamacare requires that they insure already sick children for the same price as well children.

That sounds compassionate, but -- in case Obamacare fanatics haven't noticed -- sick children need more medical care. Insurance is about risk, and already sick children are 100 percent certain to be sick when their coverage begins. So if the government mandates that insurance companies cover sick children at the lower well-children price, insurers will quit the market rather than sandbag their shareholders. This is not callousness -- it's fiduciary responsibility. Insurance companies are not charities. So, thanks to the compassionate Congress and president, parents of sick children will be saved from expensive insurance -- by being unable to obtain any insurance! That's how government compassion works.

Let's do the wave

By JOHN FUND As Election Day draws closer, every major public opinion poll shifts from interviewing registered voters to those whom it identifies as "likely" voters. Gallup, the oldest U.S. polling company, first developed the model it uses for identifying likely voters back in 1950 and its final election polls have proven highly accurate.

Yesterday, Gallup delivered its first 2010 "likely voter" poll and the results floored the political community. In the generic ballot question, which asks which party a voter would favor in a generic House contest, Gallup gave the GOP a 46% to 42% edge. But then Gallup applied two versions of its "likely voter" turnout model. In its "high turnout model," Republicans led Democrats by 53% to 40%. In its "low turnout model," the GOP edge was a stunning 56% to 38%. That kind of margin in favor of Republicans has never been seen in Gallup surveys.

What should worry Democrats most is that the "low turnout model" is typical of recent midterm elections. If the Gallup numbers hold up (and the firm cautions that "the race often tightens in the final month of the campaign"), some word more cataclysmic than "tsunami" would be needed for the Democratic losses.

Quayle was right

Honestly how can anyone not think that this disaster of an economy, the Obama command and control economy is on the right path?  He is the worst ever!

Our friend Terry, who thinks with emotion, speaks out against the corporate man.  Hey Terry, who you going to go to, to get a job?  Ghostbusters?

And Dear Bloggers, please observe, as the failed policies continue...the response...LET'S DOUBLE DOWN!

A couple of things,  the tax increases on the "rich".  Ok Liberal brethern, so who does better with a Billion, Gates or Charlie Rangel?  Honestly how do you not get the logic that private always beats public.

And Old Blumenthal, he, when asked how to create a job, fell over himself, crediting the need for government help.  Really?  Give me the wrestling chick anytime.

And lastly, old Eric, he with the sharp pen, writes that Facists always call Liberals Socialists.  And Mr. Baxter bitches that the TEA party won't pony up with sacrifices as they scream for spending reductions.


Boys, three sitting Republican Senators were thrown out by their own party.  We scream for leadership, yet are burned time after time.   Now we actually have a movement who...WANTS FISCAL SANITY! and you accuse them of racism for a lack of a better objection.  Rand Paul is talking about entitlements, Miller is talkiing about unemployment benefits.  What exactly do you liberals want?

Do you not see the end of your wants will be a entitlement society?  Do you not see that such a society, by definition, will restrict our freedoms?

Democrats and the Health-Reform Albatross By KARL ROVE

By making so many misleading claims, the president created an army of opposition. 'Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Karl Rove, they're all warning you of the horrendous impact if you support this legislation," President Barack Obama said in March about his health reform, but "I am actually confident . . . that it will end up being the smart thing to do politically . . ."  Unfortunately for the president, it turns out ObamaCare is not the wind filling the sails of Democratic candidates and propelling them to victory. Rather it has become a reef on which many of their electoral hopes will founder.

A composite average of the polls show that today 40% of Americans approve the health-care reform legislation while 50% oppose it. Forty-four percent supported it and 47% opposed it when the president signed the measure. And those in many of the polls who indicate they strongly disapprove of the law outnumber strong supporters by 2-to-1.

Americans stubbornly resist this landmark legislation in part because virtually every major claim about its benefits is turning out to be false—and people recoil when misled.

Mr. Obama said health-care reform would not only stop insurance premiums from rising rapidly, but also reduce them $2,500 a year per family. Yet PriceWaterhouseCoopers has found that with health-care reform, premiums are likely to rise 111% over the next decade, compared to a projected increase of 79% if nothing had been done. This just makes sense: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act slathers on mandates, requirements and rules that can only drive up insurance costs.

Mr. Obama also said repeatedly that if you like your current coverage, you can keep it. According to an analysis by John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, that won't be true for between 87 million and 117 million Americans. Either their employer will stop providing insurance, or they'll see benefits go down and co-pays rise as insurers and employers wrestle with the law's mandates.

Seniors are already losing their coverage: Harvard Pilgrim Health announced this week it will stop providing Medicare Advantage to 22,000 customers in New England because of Medicare cuts.

What about Mr. Obama's promise that reform would bend the cost curve, reducing what our nation spends on health care? The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has since found the U.S. will spend an estimated $311 billion more on health care over the next decade than if the bill hadn't passed.

Nor will Mr. Obama be able to keep his pledge never to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. Taxes levied in the new law will fall on people of all income levels who are customers of drug and medical device companies or own an insurance policy.

There's more. The new program is "paid for" with 10 years of Medicare cuts and new taxes, fines and fees that start this year. But the government doesn't actually begin spending money in earnest for four years, and the program isn't fully ramped up for seven years. How sustainable is that?

More and more Americans are (rightly) concluding Mr. Obama's reform is a fiscal disaster of epic proportions. By making so many transparently false claims, Mr. Obama persuaded and energized a large swath of the electorate to oppose health-care reform.

Many opponents are among the 14 million Americans who work in health care and millions more who work for health insurance, drug or medical device companies. Many are not happy with what's coming their way. They are telling friends and family how the bill will negatively impact their jobs and communities. For example, health-insurance brokers are already realizing they are unlikely to have jobs or businesses in the future.
Many business owners are talking to their human resources staff and benefits counselors, making certain employees know what's responsible for the bad news that's coming. The conversations these people are having with neighbors and friends are far more powerful than any presidential speech.
Mr. Obama inadvertently recruited many who now are, as he said during the 2008 campaign, "fired up and ready to go"—this time to defeat his party over his signature domestic achievement. Democrats got the health-care legislation they wanted. Now they're going to get an electoral defeat they won't easily forget.