The 4th of July is a day to celebrate and reflect on many things. One of them is how our forefathers stood up to and defied tyranny. Can we be as brave?

Labels: Patriotism

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 12:01 PM -

You have to admire the duplicity of those House Democrats who tell the folks back home that they are fiscal conservatives and then head off to Washington and turn into Nancy Pelosi lapdogs. Don't they think anyone will notice?

Anyhow, today's case in point is Rep. Steve Driehaus of the first district of Ohio who apparently lost his self-proclaimed "fiscal conservatism" at the banks of the Potomac and voted for every crack brained tax scheme that Nancy told him to vote for. Lacking any backbone sure must make ole Steve a heck of a guy for yoga!

Labels: Deficit Spending, Democrat party, Nancy Pelosi, Steve Driehaus, Tax Increases

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 1:28 AM -

Hugo Chavez's Honduran butt boy President Zelaya overreached himself with an illegal referendum that would enshrine himself as Presidente For Life (just like Chavez in Venezuela) and he was removed from office. Now Hugo is blustering, the Cubans are whining and all decent people are happy, right? Well, the decent folks may be happy but not our sleazy Secretary of State - Honduras Defends Its Democracy: Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton object:

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.
...
It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya's next move will be. It's not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating "the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter" and said it "should be condemned by all." Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya's foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. "We won't go backwards," one sign said. "We want to live in peace, freedom and development."

As do we all. Why is this administration on the side of the totalitarians?

Labels: Hillary Clinton, Honduras, Hugo Chavez, Mel Zelaya

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 12:46 PM -

Guess what!  it turns out that Obamacare is really about the taxpayers providing better funding for illegal aliens health care. (We're already paying for them, of course, but Obamacare would provide full health care insurance for illegals.) But it's even better than that - they want to limit treatment of elderly citizens so that there is enough money to give illegal aliens high quality care.  Let's listen as the folks from La Raza and the "Children's Defense Fund"  plot Obamacare propaganda strategy with a rep of US Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ):

... they started the conference out by saying "America does not need health care reform, but Latino immigrants need health care reform."
And someone from Menendez' office [Ed.: Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ] promised that he would make sure that "the useless barriers of citizenship would not be in this bill" and that he would make sure that they would use keywords like "streamline"...

... Yes [they said they would get free health care for illegal aliens], these are my notes, Mark. They actually got up and said "Latino children need health care more than whites". And then they would say things like "you must go out into your communities, use words like 'streamline', use phrases like 'all workers' and 'all families'," because they said -- and I quote -- "If the American people find out that this bill is about giving health care to non-citizens, they will rise up against it."

... One of the quotes they said was, "We want to make sure we take care of barriers like verification, but we can streamline programs to the more affluent" and, quote, "Useless treatments for the elderly can be gone because we don't need to spend money for people who are going to die anyway."

...And they also said that 75% of the children who will be picked up in this will be non-citizens and that 44% of the uninsured are non-citizens and they can't possibly allow the American people to know this."

Such a deal - we install a massive bureaucracy, pay 1.5 trillion additional dollars in taxes, and ration healthcare to the elderly so that everyone who sneaks across the border gets great medical care. Why not cut down on wear and tear on the Border patrol and just pay for all medical care for everyone in the world. I'm sure the US taxpayers would mind too much.

Labels: Illegal aliens, Obamacare, Socialized Medicine

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 5:13 PM -

Barack Obama certainly has quite a plan to solve the nonexistent healthcare problem. Major features:

Massive tax increases and benefit cuts:

Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said.

Democrats will work on the bill’s details next week as they struggle through “what kind of heartburn” it will cause to agree on how to pay for revamping the health-care system, Rangel, a New York Democrat, said today.

Even getting "Chuckles" Rangel to cough up all the taxes he has been evading isn't going to fill this black hole.

Asked whether the cost of a health-care overhaul would be more than $1 trillion over a decade, Rangel said, “the answer is yes.” Some Senate Republicans, including Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, say the costs will likely exceed $1.5 trillion.
...
Rangel said Democrats are still considering options for tax increases that might be in the bill, including a possible end to the income tax exclusion for employer-paid health benefits.

That's certainly a a bummer, but don't worry if you are a union member, Since your leadership has Barack Obama in their collective hip pocket, you won't be affected:

Mr. Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman who is helping lead the Obama health effort, is still deciding what to include in the bill. But his far bigger headache remains how to pay for this blowout. He and other Democrats have been inching toward the taboo benefits-tax, putting them on a collision course with liberal special interests like unions. Mr. Baucus's newest solution? A union payoff.
...
Mr. Baucus officially floated his plans for a tax this week, only with a surprising twist: His levy will not apply to union plans, at least for the duration of existing contracts. In other words, Mr. Baucus intends to tax the health-care benefits only of those who didn't spend a fortune electing Democrats to office.

And the second class citizens can pound sand, I guess. Still, we'll all be in the same manure pile when it comes to rationing of healthcare which Obama's flying monkey bloggers are already trying to turn into a benefit:

Democratic blogger Ezra Klein appears to be positioning Dem health care reforms as a way to cut costs, on the grounds that a reformed system will be able to make "hard choices" and "rational" coverage decisions, by which Klein seems to mean "not providing" treatments that are unproven or too expensive--when "a person's life, or health, is not worth the price." Matthew Yglesias' recent post seems to be saying the same thing, though clarity isn't its strong suit. (He must have left it on Journolist.)  

Isn't it an epic mistake to try to sell Democratic health care reform on this basis? Possible sales pitch: "Our plan will deny you unnecessary treatments!" Or maybe just "Republicans say 'yes.' Democrats say 'no'!" Is that really why the middle class will sign on to a revolutionary multi-trillion dollar shift in spending--so the government can decide their life or health "is not worth the price"?  I mean, how could it lose?

Even better, of course, is the observation that it's mostly old folks that need medical care and so what Obama and his pals are proposing is really, "Let the Boomers Die!"  Why not just give each one of the Baby Boomers an expiration date? That would sure solve the money problem.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrat party, Scams, Socialized Medicine

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 1:19 PM -

Obama and his flying monkeys love to prattle on about the supposed hordes of Americans who lack health insurance, but the numbers just plain don't support that claim as any number of dispassionate observers have remarked although you won't see it in the MSM. I had been meaning to write about it, but Doug Ross provides a post by "Mister R" that does it better than I could - The '47 million' lie:

During her campaign for President, Hillary Clinton admitted in questioning that, of the 47 million, at least 25 percent could afford health insurance but choose not to purchase it (those with a household income of more than $75,000 a year). I believe the number to be slightly higher, closer to 30 percent, but let's use Clinton's number. That's 12 million.

Let's count illegal aliens. Believe it or not, illegals are counted in this number, however, statistical models vary and have ranged from 5 to 12 million. Let's take the middle. 8 million.

Then there are those who are already eligible for government programs but not participating. That number is estimated at 12 to 16 million. Let's take 12 million.

[snip - hit the link for the rest]

Add the numbers up and you get 38 million. That leaves 9 million without coverage (although they really do have coverage since the federal government, along with the states, administer Medicaid and charity care).

So the real number of [nominally] uninsured is 8-10 million. There are 300 million Americans.

So we want to break the system because 1 out of 30 people cannot afford coverage. That's absurd.

That it is patently absurd is proved by Team Obama belatedly trotting out claims that Obamacare is really about saving money for consumers. Since Barack has no plans to rein in his trial lawyer supporters who grotesquely inflate all aspects of US healthcare costs, adding a layer of government bureaucracy is only going to save money by rationing medical care just like they do in other countries with socialized medicine.

(posters from Michelle Malkin's Obamacare poster contest)

Labels: Barack Obama, Obamacare, Scams, Socialized Medicine

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 1:10 AM -

I wish I was a Guantanamo inmate:

But whoa! Who wants to spend the rest of their lives in Asskicker, Missouri, or Boredom, Illinois, when you can open a dive school in Palau?

Yesterday it emerged that 17 Chinese muslims were being sent to the Pacific islands, somewhat near the Philippines. Palau was until the 1990s tied to the United States, and the latest move had absolutely nothing to do with the renegotiation of a $200 million US assistance package.

Now it turns out that another load of inmates are being sent for "resettlement" to Bermuda. There they can also open a dive shop, play golf, eat rum cake and get stuck into the sherry pepper sauce, possibly the greatest cooking ingredient known to man or woman. Goodness knows what the Bermudans are currently negotiating with the administration.

You have to hand it to Obama, not too many folks would have figured out such a clever plan for what to do with terrorists.

Labels: Barack Obama, Gitmo, Islamic terrorists

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 3:02 PM -