Our health-care system suffers from problems of cost, access and quality, and needs major reform. Tax policy drives employment-based insurance; this begets overinsurance and drives costs upward while creating inequities for the unemployed and self-employed. A regulatory morass limits innovation. And deep flaws in Medicare and Medicaid drive spending without optimizing care.

Speeches and news reports can lead you to believe that proposed congressional legislation would tackle the problems of cost, access and quality. But that’s not true. The various bills do deal with access by expanding Medicaid and mandating subsidized insurance at substantial cost—and thus addresses an important social goal. However, there are no provisions to substantively control the growth of costs or raise the quality of care. So the overall effort will fail to qualify as reform.

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system.

~~~

Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

Meanwhile, another Harvard alumni weighs in:

Joseph Stubbs, President of the American College of Physicians — the second largest doctors’ group in the country — confirms that “the supply of doctors just won’t be there” for the 30 million new patients Barack Obama wants to cover. Noting that the doctor shortage is “already a catastrophic crisis,” Stubbs said that underserved areas in the U.S. currently need almost 17,000 new primary care physicians even before Obama’s proposals are enacted.

In the meantime, according to Bloomberg News, a 2009 survey by Merritt Hawkins and Associates, a recruiting and research firm in Irving, Texas, found that “the average waiting time to see a family-medicine doctor in Boston … is 63 days, the most among the 15 cities” surveyed. By comparison, in Miami, it was only seven days.

The study noted that Boston’s longer wait was “driven in part by the health-care reform initiative” passed in 2006 in Massachusetts upon which the Obama program is modeled. Bloomberg reported that “as many as half of doctors in the state have closed their practices to new patients, forcing many of the newly insured to turn to emergency rooms for care.”

Alan Goroll, a professor at Harvard Medical School said that “the primary lesson of health-care reform in Massachusetts is that you can’t increase the number of insured unless you have a strong primary-care base in place to receive them. Without that foundation … Massachusetts has ended up with higher costs and people going to emergency rooms when they can’t find a doctor.”

And, a study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, part of the federal government’s Health and Human Services Department, found that expanding insurance coverage to an estimated 32 million people who now lack it would create a demand for medical 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.”

Indeed, the report found that the Medicare cuts contained in the House-passed bill are likely to “prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.”

The danger in those years [2011/2012] will be that Ben Bernanke will attempt yet again to refloat the U.S. economy through inflation, buying government debt to fund the deficit and forcing short term rates well below the inflation rate. This danger is exacerbated by the Obama administration’s insouciance about deficits. Ben Bernanke on his own (and his predecessor Alan Greenspan) bears a large share of responsibility for the 2008 crash, but the Bernanke/Obama combination is potentially even more dangerous. If expansionary monetary and fiscal policies are pursued regardless of market signals, the U.S. will head towards Weimar-style trillion-percent inflation. That would make the government’s position easier as its mountain of Treasury debt became worthless, but devastate everybody else’s savings and impoverish the American people as Weimar impoverished 1920s Germany.

As I said, a train wreck. Probability of arrival: close to 100%. Time of arrival: around the end of 2010, or possibly a bit earlier. And at this stage, there’s very little anyone can do about it; the definitive rise of gold above $1,000 marked the point of no return.

Add to this a few more things:
Next January, people will pay more in taxes than they have in years-at a time when most are worse off than they have been in years (ie w greater effect)
Unemployment is expected to remain high, and even rise MORE before midterms in 2010
Democrats blew their one chance at real economic stimulus on political payoffs, and will increasingly be held to account (it’s already started) for is failure to stimulate, create, or save jobs
Democrats losing independent voters
Democrats are incumbents controlling Congress in a midterm election where the party in power will normally lose
Democrats have accomplished very very little (might not even pass healthcare)
Democrats have pushed back deficit control efforts to 2010
Democrats have broken EVERY major 2006 campaign promise that got them control of Congress

…and then there’s natsec issues
Obama/Dems promised to end the war in Iraq, but just before midterms will still have 50-70,000 troops in Iraq (though re-named from “combat brigades” to “security, logistics, and training forces”)
There’s no way that Afghanistan is gonna end or end well in the next 11 months
Iran has been a complete failure and will likely end w an Israeli strike+possible regional war in the next 11 months
And let’s not even start to talk about how Dems will can’t look tough on natsec before the midterms w a KSM trial of the millenium on 24/7cable!

So….what is it Dems are gonna use as a campaign crutch in 2010?

I put myself in mortal danger once as a young man, an experience I reflect upon on a regular basis. It was early December, I had helped several hunters get elk and moose and a couple of grizzly, but the seasons except for moose were over and I needed a moose for my family’s meat supply for the year.

The snow was about a foot deep and the daytime temperature was thirty below. I was riding a horse to cover more ground in the snow. The snow helped disguise the noisy movements a horse makes and with an old wool military trench coat slit high in the back so that it covered my legs and the horse’s ribs providing a lot of heat from the horse.

It was snowing and I was headed back to the ranch house when I saw a three year old bull about a hundred yards away. I slid from the horse and started to get my cold stiff body loosened up and ready to fire. It was a fairly easy shot, my old 8 mm Mauser with a receiver chambered for an ’06 brass barked and I saw the bullet strike home through both lungs missing the heart by several inches. The young bull staggered and began blowing red bubbles through his nostrils, he was slowly bleeding to death. I let him bleed out for a few minutes before risking a killing head shot. The moose head is huge and the brain is small, a misplaced shot could cause the animal to run for miles before giving up the ghost, making recovery much more difficult.

Once the bull showed signs of weakening, I finished him with the head shot.

At this point, the real work of the hunt begins: the internal organs must be evacuated, the blood drained from the body cavity, and the hide must be skinned before it freezes to the body. This animal was probably 6’ 6” at the withers and weighed close to 1500 pounds. I built a fire next to the carcass so that I could warm my hands and cook moose nose and liver for dinner along with some onions I had in my saddlebags. A billy can sat next to the fire to boil water for tea, in a few minutes, I would have a feast suitable for a bush ape and that would be me. Actually the warm food and tea would give my body the strength needed to survive the intense cold that was settling in.

The moose nose was hung over the fire with a forked stick. I was always amazed at how God designed the little things like designing the nose to be impaled through the anatomical features of the nose with a forked stick to facilitate cooking over an open fire. A one pound chunk of liver, a small portion of the massive liver would be roasted directly on the coals and I would cut the onions in half and lay them cut side down directly on the liver for the last two minutes. The tea would be boiling continuously and I would stop to warm myself with the tea now and then.

I had to wash my hands in the snow before eating and they were becoming numb. When the black hide covering the nose split and peeled my gourmet meal was ready. The wind was increasing and I was becoming worried because with the darkness the temperature was dropping much quicker than normal. I dug through the snow and cut some dry grass and vetch, and crushed some small poplar branches for my horse, it wasn’t as good as my meal , but he would have feed in his belly for the ride home.

One of the problems with field butchering is that you must work without gloves so my hands were beginning to suffer from the extreme cold. My knife handle was slippery from the blood and fat from the moose and just before I was finished, the knife slid back in my hand and I cut my index and my middle fingers fairly deep. I washed the hand in clean snow as well as possible and poured tea over the wounds for antiseptic. I then wrapped the fingers in a clean sock and put a leather mitten over the hand and finished the moose using my left hand.

Injuring the hand weakened me, now I was tired, cold, and in pain; in the meantime the temperature was still dropping. That is when the shooting started. It’s not really shooting, it is the trapped sap in the spruce and pine trees splitting the wood in the trunks from the expansion. It sounded like there was a bunch of 30-06 rifles going off all around me, it means that the temperature had dropped to 55 below or colder, my situation had become dire.

There wasn’t enough snow on the ground to make a snow cave and expect insulation from the extreme cold. I didn’t know if the horse and I could survive the ride back to one of the line cabins and that’s when I decided to try something desperate. I placed a two foot stick under the top hind leg to open up the carcass and crawled inside, yes, it was tight but there was enough room for me to get inside. I placed my blanket roll from my saddle over my horse to help protect him through the night. I lined the body cavity of the moose with the moose hide so that the hair side would be against my body. I crawled inside and felt an immediate warmth course through my body. It actually began to warm up in my temporary moose carcass motel. I soon drifted off into a peaceful slumber for several hours.

I awoke in the morning and immediately sensed that something was dreadfully wrong. During the night, I had probably pushed against the hind legs with my feet and the stick that was holding the upper leg up in the air had fallen away so that the hind quarter had fallen down and now had my legs were locked beneath the frozen meat of the hind quarters and I was now entombed in a frozen moose carcass.

I tried to not to panic while I surveyed my situation; I was on my back wrapped in a frozen raw moose hide about three eighths of an inch thick with four to eight inches of thick coarse hair that dulls a knife in minutes, my hands had some movement, my feet were trapped beneath a frozen hind quarter that weighed at least 150 pounds, my shoulders are wide for my 6’ 2” 230 pound frame, so there was no chance of rolling over, my face had 3 or 4 inches of breathing space, my Buck knife, dull from field dressing the moose was on my hip beneath my old Marine issue great coat.

I had two options: I could work methodically to escape or I could wait for hypothermia and die. I decided to try for life.

My immediate goal was to retrieve my knife in its case on my belt. With my right hand that was now very sore from last nights’ accident, I worked my way into the pocket of my great coat, I then began to wear a hole in the pocket with my thumb nail. I was cursing at how the Corps could make some articles so well. When I had a hole large enough to insert my thumb I pulled down hard and ripped the pocket and felt for my knife, alas I found the scabbard and pulled the knife out.

My exertions and heavy breathing while doing these normally simple procedures caused the moose cavity to steam up making it even more uncomfortable; but it would help in a few minutes.

When I tried to pull the knife out of my pocket, the pocket would follow my hand so that I was caught in the South East Asian monkey trap as well. I had to open the knife with one hand and cut my way free of the pocket. Most bush apes open a Buck knife routinely with one hand, but not in a pocket. It worked and I set about destroying my beloved coat from the USMC.

Once my knife hand was free from the pocket, I made a length wise cut to my right, through the moose hide, of course the thick hair was falling everywhere, making it harder to breathe. My moisture laden breath helped thaw the hide enough that I was able to push it towards my feet.

I now could work on the rib cage, I sliced between each rib as far toward the sternum as possible. It was a welcome relief to get fresh air in my cocoon; but there was a heavy snow above me, so ventilation was limited, it was daylight because light was showing through the snow.

After making the slits between each rib, I began cutting through the ribs a few inches from the spine. This was before the saw blade knives and the process was painfully slow. A moose rib is twice the size of the beef ribs you see at the barbeque joints, but it still isn’t large enough for my hand to push the rib through and break it at the sternum, so the first ribs were pushed out two at a time. Now the snow fell in on top of me and it was necessary to keep pushing it out and away since here was several feet of snow above me. The process of cutting through each rib and pushing it up and away was a long and laborious process, but perseverance pays off.

Eventually, I sat up with a great feeling of freedom, even though my feet were still trapped. I reached forward and grabbed the lower leg of the top quarter that had me trapped and leaned back with all my weight and I was free, free at last!

My daylight was disappearing quickly, my saddle horse seemed glad to see me, probably figured I would make sure to get him some good feed. I saddled him and we rode home to the ranch. I would get a good night’s sleep before taking three pack horses to load up the moose the next morning.

Although it was a desperate struggle to get out of that coffin, in the back of my mind I was thinking about the odd grizzly that wakes up and goes for a walk looking for something to eat. The moose and I would have looked like a warm burrito to a hungry grizzly.

Obama is creating his own frozen moose sarcophagus with carefully scripted moves. While he revels in his success and temporary adulation he forgets that he owns these dubious bills. He will no longer be able to blame Bush, he is the one that has created the astronomical and ever increasing debt.

The English have not adopted the trillion dollar term, they are content with the one thousand billion term. Unfortunately, American taxpayers when asked are much more secure with the trillion dollar designation rather than the one thousand billion designation. The naiveté and stupidity of the voting public is facilitating our destruction.

Its true that the average voter doesn’t understand the significance of signing over our sovereignty through treaty negotiations relating to the cap and tax bill, designed so that the United Nations can tax us into oblivion and reward the Marxist dictators and war lords of third world countries with untold hundreds of millions; but eventually they will realize the difference, as their standard of living and ability to buy food slowly erodes away.

We sit around and watch the price of gold reaching record heights without realizing that gold isn’t that high, our dollar is just that low. Hyper inflation is beginning to set in and America is about to find out what the Weimar Republic, Peron’s Argentina, and Zimbabwe have gone through. In Zimbabwe, money is being printed in ten trillion dollar notes.

Even wealthy Liberal Marxists will feel the pinch when their fortunes are reduced to less than 1% of their former value within a few days. Yes Obama the dilettante is creating his own frozen moose cocoon, yet he wouldn’t last 24 hours in the bush, he is destroying himself and the country we love while he crawls into the frozen carcass. Whether it is his intention to destroy this country or some idealistic ghetto concept of Marxism, the result will be the same, destruction of our economy and of our way of life.

There will be no carving an escape from this frozen carcass, this time we will be waiting for the hungry grizzly and mankind’s descent into barbarism for hundreds of years.

Unemployment is now higher in the U.S. than in Europe,  reports the Washington Post.  “The official U.S. unemployment rate, reported last Friday, now stands at 10.2 percent,” compared to “9.7 percent” in Europe.   This is the highest rate in more than 26 years, and marks a huge change from the recent past, in which unemployment was double the American rate in much of Europe.

Unemployment is at 10 percent in France, which refused to adopt a U.S.-style stimulus package, and only 7.6 percent in Germany, which adopted a stimulus package that was smaller relative to its economy than ours was.  (Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated President Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst in the recession.)

A “broader measure of U.S. unemployment,” including discouraged workers, puts U.S. unemployment at 17.5 percent, reports the New York Times.

As the Post notes, “For many on the left, the lament for years has been: Why can’t America be more like Europe? Why can’t rustic Americans be more like sophisticated Europeans? The sentiment has resurfaced in recent months as the health-care debate has raged on — why can’t the American health-care system be more like Europe’s?”

Well, America is now more like Europe when it comes to unemployment.  But not when it comes to social benefits and protections.  The American Left knows how to import Europe’s failures, but not its successes.

And the left is just pining for some more failure:

The massive health-care bill passed by the House on Saturday is a classic example.  It would expand health care coverage somewhat, but not to European levels, and it would vastly increase the costs of our health care system, rather than reducing it to European levels.   It would also increase taxes to “European levels of taxation.”  The health care bill contains politically-correct provisions that Europeans would never put up with, like pork for trial lawyers and racial preferences.  And restrictions on national competition in health insurance, which do not exist in Europe.

In France, doctors don’t need to be paid as much, because competing professions, like lawyers, are paid less.  French law is much more conservative than American law when it comes to lawsuits, including lawsuits against doctors.  There are NO punitive damages, and France discourages lawsuits by making unsuccessful plaintiffs pay the other side’s legal bills.  (Other European countries have specialized health courts, rather than American-style jury trials, to cut lawyers’ bills, speedily compensate the injured, and prevent American-style baseless lawsuits against doctors.)

Come on lefties…..cheer away!

First off, I moved to the DC area in 1999, the same year that Dan Snyder bought the Washington Redskins. Interestingly enough, the job that brought me here was working for Snyder’s old company, Snyder Communications. Also, I never met the man during my time working there, and from the stories I’ve heard about him that’s not a complaint.

For those of you unfamiliar, Snyder immediately became a big news item from the beginning. He was brash, energetic, and has had no problems making bold moves as owner. Whether it was interrupting summer camp by arriving in his helicopter during practices, expanding Fedex Field’s seating while raising ticket prices, and charging admission to summer camp for one season. Also, despite having no background in football, he became heavily involved in the team. Snyder held post-game meetings with his head coaches, brought in a big name personnel man from the 49ers Super Bowl Dynasty (Vinny Cerrato), has chased down and overpaid big name coaches, and has even micro managed to the point of firing several kickers over the course of a season for blown kicks.

And what has Snyder accomplished as owner? From a financial perspective, he’s done quite well. He’s made the Redskins the second most valuable team in football. But outside of financials, the team has been a disaster. That’s not quite accurate – it’s been a picture of consistent mediocrity, never great, and until this season, never truly bad. Cerrato never proved to be the great personnel man he was hoped to be. Along with Snyder, he helped to bring in overpriced and overrated or over the hill players like Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, Brandon Lloyd, and most recently, Albert Haynesworth. Snyder has also gone through a carousel of head coaches, and given his heavy handedness over operations, no competent Head Coach wants to lead the Redskins. This has come to a head this season with the team being led by a man who has no business being a Head Coach in Jim Zorn. As of the writing of this article the Redskins are 2-5, and the fans are in open revolt.

Snyder has always been prickly about criticism. Early on, while most of the local media could not stop fawning over him, one local paper, The Washington Times, wasn’t playing ball. They wrote critical pieces on Snyder, and as a result their reporter was banished to covering the games via a TV set below Fedex Field. As things have gotten worse, Snyder has even taken to censoring fans coming to the games. Now, the man who was once hailed as a bright, fresh face has been exposed as a vain, petty individual who has taken on a job for which he had no qualifications.

Which brings us to President Obama. Everyone knows about his meteoric rise since impressing America at the 2004 Democratic Convention with his amazing ability to read aloud. And in 2008, despite having no real accomplishments nor ever having won an election without relying on underhanded tactics, we elected him as our 44th president.

I don’t need to go into every detail over the train wreck that the Obama presidency has been so far, but to quickly review a few major points:

• Building on the irresponsible spending of the Bush administration that will send our federal budget deficit into the trillions
• Backing a health care bill that will succeed in both ruining the quality of health care while sending costs skyrocketing
• Becoming a laughingstock in his foreign policy to the point where even the Prime Minister of France basically called him a naive twit
• Reread that last one. I never thought I’d see that in my lifetime
• Running historically discredited fiscal policy that will soon send unemployment into the double digit range as America endured under FDR

Obviously there is a lot more, but those are the main points for now. And like Snyder, Obama has had some successes so far. Ironically, both are for things that the people who voted for him were not looking for. First off, Obama has baldly broken his promise to not take national security seriously. Obama is already backing off of an immediate, unconditional surrender in Iraq. If you disagree with this last statement look at it from another angle. If Bin Laden issued a decree for all Al-Queda fighters to leave Iraq by next year how would that be interpreted? Now that Obama is postponing the end of tracking and prosecuting terrorists, he is working to make it up to his base by vacillating on Afghanistan.

The only other major accomplishment of the Obama administration sprang from the law of unintended consequences. Having become so used to the fawning coverage of the press and his own self absorption, it probably never entered Obama’s mind that he could ever face real public opposition to his policies. However, he made the mistake of misinterpreting his lofty “post-partisanship” ideal to mean “shut up and follow my radical left wing agenda”. The Republican party may have been left for dead on the sidelines, but the American people weren’t.

They came out in droves to for the team party protests, and to confront the elected officials at the town hall meetings. And Obama and the media had no idea how to deal with it. With no figurehead to apply the Alinsky demonization tactic, the liberals showed their true contempt for the average American citizen. The left dubbed them “angry mobs”, “unruly” and “astroturfers”, while whining about the level of discourse as they conveniently forgot their own behavior for the last eight years. And of course, the arrogant journalists who condescendingly decry Fox News for its bias (and yes, I know they’re biased.At least they’re honest about their perspective) are oblivious to their own unprofessionalism when they gleefully label the protesters “Tea Baggers”.

To top everything else off, The White House has declared war on Fox News for the crime of being the only major TV news outlet that does not diligently promote the administration’s talking points. This goes hand in hand with Obama attacking Rush Limbaugh earlier this year. The administration probably thought it would help discredit a perceived enemy, when all that it accomplished was giving the opposition some cheap publicity while making themselves look like shallow crybabies. We’ve even gotten to the point where the Attorney General is trying to pressure a DC official to pull an ad critical of Obama’s anti-school choice position.

So here we are today, with two leaders in Washington who came in ready to change the world. Instead, their arrogance and inability to adapt when reality did not meet their rosy visions have left both reeling and looking like two men struggling to do jobs they were never even remotely qualified to take on.

As an Eagles fan I’ve been thoroughly enjoying watching Snyder so ineptly run his franchise. As an American, President Obama’s performance has just been painful to watch.

As Chris Griffin would say, “I need an adult! I need an adult!”

Crossposted from Brother Bobs Blog

The crowd went crazy and the world rejoiced. Finally, the United States was ready to join the community of man.

In what former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton calls our first post-American President, Obama has bestowed instant cachet on the growing ranks of Americans who revel in the thought of being the first in their own social set to be considered cutting edge ‘citizens of the world.’ Especially since joining this community of global citizens confers upon them automatic (albeit, unearned) virtue, along with instant and unassailable moral stature.

For those of you who just aren’t with it, (like Christians, conservatives and a few Republicans) here are the latest, up to the minute, details on how to gain inclusion in this trendy and politically correct group.

To become a ‘citizen of the world,’ you must first and foremost declare your support for the disenfranchised. Preferably in front of a camera in a very public forum. Just pick a group of victims upon whom you will bestow your empathy and support. The only caveat being that they reside in underdeveloped countries ruled by misunderstood men of good will like Uganda, or Cuba, or Somalia, or…well, you get my drift. Oh, and make sure everyone understands that these victims are only victims because of George W. Bush and/or America.

Next, you must ardently advocate the spending of other people’s money in order to help these poor victims. If you’re one of the fortunate ‘non-rich,’ (meaning your income is under $250,000 and/or you receive a government check every month)  then a straight party line vote for the Democrats, frequent letters to the editor and a catchy bumper sticker are strongly recommended.

In addition, you must make yourself available for the occasional photo-op or rally, and vocalize your support for all of Obama’s policies to every-one you know. (T-shirts are a very cool way to do this.)

If you’re unfortunate enough and greedy enough to have an annual income over $250,000, your membership entrance requirements are a bit more stringent. The good news is, you can skip right over victims and concentrate on vital issues like global warming or the evils of capitalism.

For all you rich guys out there, its recommended that you use whatever influence you have to advocate for whichever policy Obama is currently trying to foist on the American public. Bumper stickers won’t do it, guys. You need to atone big time.

Not to worry, just contact DNC.org… and they will give you a list of organizations you should  support. And since you’ve made all that money on the backs of the poor, social justice requires that you give back some of your own money, instead of merely advocating the expenditure of other people’s money.

A list of approved recipient groups will be provided free of charge. It is recommended that you give early and often. ACORN is the most needy cause as of this writing. But whatever group you decide to donate your bucks to, rest assured, Obama is in the process of making those donations tax deductible.

If you happen to be filthy rich and/or an elected official, different rules apply. In order to be considered a citizen of the world, all you have to do is believe (faking belief  is totally OK) in Obama’s vision of utopia. You must believe, or at least profess to believe, that world peace is possible, that the earth is melting, that diplomacy trumps war and that America is the cause of all the world’s problems. Other that that, the only real requirement is a constant and sustained effort to ensure that global governance trumps American sovereignty.

Hat-tip: it wouldn’t hurt if you make known that yours was one of the Swiss bank accounts the Obama administration recently forced the Swiss to disclose. That alone will ensure you are recognized by the right people.

There you have it, fellow comrades. If you have followed the above steps, we want to officially welcome you as a new ‘citizen of the world.’ Take a load off. You are now eligible to engage in global groupthink, which means that you will never again be forced to make any moral, financial or life decisions on your own. More membership perks are already in the works, and you guys will be the first to benefit! Kumbaya

Crossposted from Right Bias

They fail to report on some pretty significant drops in the poll….drops that if it had been swung the other way would of been in big bold letters:

Fifty-four percent of respondents to the latest CNN poll disapprove of Barack Obama’s performance on the economy, a 17-point swing in six weeks. That isn’t the worst of the poll, either; 57% now disapprove of Obama’s performance on health care, a 19-point swing in that same time.

~~~

a 17-point reversal on the economy and a 19-point reversal on health care would be, well, news. One has to wonder why neither get mentioned in a report on the popularity of a president whose central issues are health care and the economy. The rapid disintegration of his popularity on these positions will have enormous implications for Obama’s ability to push his agenda through Congress in both arenas, and also on the midterm elections a year from now if this becomes a trend.

In fact, it’s hard to find an issue where Obama has not lost ground:

• Economy – 46%/54%, was 54%/45%
• Foreign affairs – 51%/47%, was 58%/38%
• Health care – 42%/57%, was 51%/47%
• Afghanistan – 42%/56%, was 49%/46%
• Taxes – 49%/50%, was 52%/42%
• Helping the middle class – 50%/49%, was 67%/32% (six months ago, last time question asked)

His numbers stayed roughly the same on Medicare, with just a rounding difference. Otherwise, Obama has lost serious ground on every issue, mainly over the last six weeks.

17 point and a 19 point swing into the disapproval area and nary a peep in the article. Ed also notes they fail to note the party identification numbers. Quite telling.

Another quite telling note about the poll. His approval rating on nearly every issue has declined but he is still approved of by 54% as a whole?

Bradley effect?

The [Fannie Mae] “seriously delinquent” rate has gone parabolic, increasing by roughly 5% sequentially and just under 300% YoY [year-over-year]. As mere text will simply not do this metric justice, please enjoy this chart of the dataset from Blytic. It tells you all you need to know about the Fed’s containment of the housing problem.

The August seriously delinquent single-family number comprised of a 2.87% non-credit enhanced delinquencies and a very bothersome 11.52%, consisting of credit enhanced loans

~~~

The deterioration of FNM’s book however did not stop it from increasing the size of its book [loans]. In September Fannie’s total book of business hit $3.242 trillion, up from $3.229 trillion in August and $3.079 trillion in the prior year

~~~

This trend should bother you, dear taxpayer, because it is your money on the hook here, which is not only massively mismanaged by Bernanke & Co., LLC, but which sees another $80 billion of free funding every month courtesy of the dollar printing press to onboard even more toxic garbage onto your balance sheet.

And who is paying the price?

“Absent any catastrophic home price decline, FHA will not need to ask Congress and the American taxpayer for extraordinary assistance—we will not need a bailout,” Mr. Stevens said in prepared testimony before a congressional panel on Thursday.

Concerns are growing because the agency’s annual audit, due to be released later this fall, will show that its projected reserves will fall below their federally mandated level. The FHA has a capital cushion of around $30 billion, and it has insured some $725 billion loans. The agency’s annual review estimates the value of its reserves after accounting for estimated losses on loans it has insured.

“It appears destined for a taxpayer bailout in the next 24 to 36 months,” mortgage-industry veteran Edward Pinto said in prepared testimony. He estimated that the agency faces losses of $70 billion on loans it has already made, leaving it short of its current reserves by around $40 billion. That estimate is modeled under the assumption that FHA-backed loans will perform similarly to loans made by Fannie Mae in 2006 to borrowers with low down payments.

But it’s all good to Barney Frank:

If many of the loans turn into pumpkins, that’s OK. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., actually told The New York Times, “I don’t think it’s a bad thing that the bad loans occurred. It was an effort to keep prices from falling too fast.” In other words, soaring defaults are not a bug. They’re a feature.

What can you even say to respond to such idiocy?

There are currently 192 countries making up the United Nations members list. The vast majority of the member nations are dictatorships by any other name. You can dress their leaders in fancy robes and toss an occasional crown on a head, but from Saudi Arabia to Libya and Gambia, their leaders oppress their populations. They loot as much as they can from their economies, while enjoying a comforting credibility rubbing shoulders with other narcissistic misanthropes under the opulent umbrella of the UN General Assembly.

The UN has never been an effective vehicle for achieving real peace and security, although it was intended to achieve exactly that when it replaced the impotent League of Nations. The overwhelming power of the United States has been the major underlying force that has prevented major international wars since WWII. The UN has been an inept bystander to international affairs. America’s power and influence has generated kick-back that has been fomented within the UN where jealousy found broad fertile ground amongst a majority of member nations, including Europeans such as Norway, and Denmark. No need here to extend the list of envious pretenders that easily includes the likes of Russia.

The reaction against the U.S. found new energy when the world found itself in an economic recession, and fingers could be pointed at America for having been too self serving. In slide the opportunists. Beating the newfound drums of climate change fear and catastrophe, they will mutate the upcoming Copenhagen meeting on climate change into a perfect vehicle through which begrudging usurpers will once again attempt elevating the UN to status of world power, “over” the U.S.

We can rest confident that the contemplated Copenhagen Treaty emanating from this meeting will find elements to mirror in the cap-and-trade bill now being promoted by Obama and Congress. This, along with the December 10 Nobel Peace Prize presentation, will lock-in support from Washington for the agreement. Obama and Congress will have unwittingly signed on for the formation of Two disasters. The first will be a UN managed onerous extraction of cash from the United States and Canada for what can only be described as payment of a “climate debt.” The second will be the unprecedented endowment of the UN with sweeping powers over the economies of all nations. The text currently contemplated for signing by the membership will provide this body with incisive absolutism over the economic engines that have fuelled both America’s hegemony, as well as its population’s independence of thought and freedoms.

Keep in mind that many, if not most, of the enlightened leaders of UN member countries are the same ones responsible for crimes against humanity, … their own humanities within their own home borders. This is also a membership heavily populated by misogynistic individuals who believe in the subjugation of women and criminalization of homosexuality, all the while pretending to promote the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

The time has long passed for the UN’s charter to be changed. The UN has no ability or capacity to act as a world peace maker. It could remain as an organization directed toward humanitarian efforts, and provide a meeting place for resolving broad international challenges pertaining to education, population, or agriculture. It cannot, however, be allowed to morph into a world power. The United States, which funds almost one quarter of the UN’s budget, should not allow it. Obama and Congress should refuse signing America on to the Copenhagen agreement, or any version of it. Copenhagen has nothing to do with cleaning up our refuse or CO2.

I should add a Third ensuing disaster if Copenhagen materializes: A weaker America would not be positive for long term prospects of world peace.

Stimulus jobs overstated by thousands
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and MATT APUZZO
Associated Press
Oct 29,2009

WASHINGTON (AP) – An early progress report on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.

The government’s first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

For example:

- A company working with the Federal Communications Commission reported that stimulus money paid for 4,231 jobs, when about 1,000 were produced.

- A Georgia community college reported creating 280 jobs with recovery money, but none was created from stimulus spending.

- A Florida child care center said its stimulus money saved 129 jobs but used the money on raises for existing employees.

There’s no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers in the report. But administration officials seized on the 30,000 figure as evidence that the stimulus program was on its way toward fulfilling the president’s promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

The reporting problem could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.

~~~

…

Here are some of the findings:

- Colorado-based Teletech Government Solutions on a $28.3 million contract with the Federal Communications Commission for creation of a call center, reported creating 4,231 jobs, although 3,000 of those workers were paid for five weeks or less.

“We all felt it was an appropriate way to represent the data at the time” and the reporting error has been corrected, said company president Mariano Tan.

- The Toledo, Ohio-based Koring Group received two FCC contracts, again for call centers. It reported hiring 26 people for each contract, or a total of 52 jobs, but cited the same workers for both contracts. The jobs only lasted about two months.

The FCC spotted the problem. The company’s owner, Steve Holland, acknowledged the actual job count is closer to five and blamed the problem on confusion about the reporting.

The AP’s review identified nearly 600 contracts claiming stimulus money for more than 2,700 jobs that appear to have similar duplicated counts.

Where are the three million plus jobs that Obama promised?

Should we trust the same government officials when they promise health care will cover more people and cost less?

What a laugh!

“We’re trying to do too much at once,” Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”…

Lieberman did say he’s “strongly inclined” to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he’ll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn’t changed first…

“I can’t see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of a government-operated-run insurance company,” Lieberman added. “It’s just asking for trouble – in the end, the taxpayers are going to pay and probably all people will have health insurance are going to see their premiums go up because there’s going to be cost shifting as there has been for Medicare and Medicaid.”

Since that statement came out earlier today the Reid camp…or cheerleaders….have tried to spin it so it doesn’t sound as bad as it really is. I mean how can it be bad if Joe will vote to open floor debate on Reid’s bill? Of course they are leaving out the other vote…the one that closes debate and moves the bill to a vote. Joe says he will NOT vote for that if the public option is there.

Good for him.

RINO Snowe says she won’t vote for the public option either….at least today she is saying it:

Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe says she would vote with fellow Republicans to block the Democratic health care overhaul if changes are not made to the version Majority Leader Harry Reid outlined this week.

Karl at Hot Air thinks all this is leading to is Reid being able to say “I tried…but the evil empire struck me down” to his leftist loons.

Reid apparently does not have 60 votes lined up for the public option, though Reid thinks he will have them after the CBO scores it. This move was supposedly forced by the hardcore liberals in the Senate, though this could still be the kabuki by which Reid sheds responsibility for a later failure to include the public option. Either way, the ball is now in the moderates’ court.

But there is more trouble looming for Reid:

U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., said Tuesday she still can’t support a government-funded insurance option, a day after legislation was unveiled that would give states the choice of whether to participate in the program.

“Creating another government-funded option is not where we’re going. We don’t need to go there,” Lincoln told members of the Arkansas Farm Bureau during a video conference. “A government-funded option is something that I think is not the way to go.”

And Robert Laszewski at Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review doesn’t see 60 votes coming anytime soon and does a good job of describing why:

Reid is reportedly going to include a robust Medicare-like public option with a state opt-out. That means there would be a federal Medicare-like public plan but that a state could opt out. Opting out would mean that both houses of a state’s legislature and its governor would have to agree to opt out. That’s a pretty high hurdle and it is not going to appease the moderate Democrats in the Senate, or any Republicans including Snowe, who oppose a robust public option.

We could have a public option only if a “trigger” occurs. That is Senator Snowe’s general idea. OK, define that trigger. Do you think for one moment a liberal’s definition of a trigger will come close to a moderate’s definition of a trigger? It is the last week in October and we’ve been hearing about a trigger for months. Have you seen a definition of it yet?

Then there is the possible course in the House—a public option that has to negotiate with providers just like a private health plan does—“arms’ length negotiations.” For liberals, how is that different than a co-op and its inability to gain any real kind of traction? For moderate Democrats, it will likely be seen as the “wolf in sheep’s clothes.” Maybe a place to compromise but hardly the robust government plan its proponents are looking for and there is no evidence that this idea will attract those moderate Senate Democrats that don’t like the public option.

Then there is the state opt-in. The idea is that both the state’s legislative branches and the governor would have to agree to opt-in. This could well win moderate Democratic support because very few states would do it and it is attractive to states’ rights moderates who would like to see state experimentation. This is a possible place for compromise but hardly a robust public option.

As I have said many times before, there will not be a robust Medicare-like public option or any form of a thinly veiled Medicare-like public option.

And the GOP has found some a backbone:

But before that issue can be joined on the Senate floor, Reid’s first challenge is to gain 60 votes — the number needed to overcome a filibuster by Republicans — just to bring the bill up, a parliamentary maneuver so routine that a vote is rarely required.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, announced that in this case, members of his party will treat it as though it were “a vote on the merits” of a bill he said would “cut Medicare, raise taxes and increase health insurance premiums.” He suggested Democrats could expect campaign commercials next year on the basis of the vote, and recalled that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was ridiculed in his 2004 presidential campaign for having once said he voted for a bill before he voted against it.

For those leftist Democrats the threat means nothing because they were elected in strong leftist strongholds….but the moderates? I think this threat will be taken seriously and some idiot trying to change the name of “public option” won’t help one iota.

All in all, its good news today.

I suppose she remained unphased by his dazed teleprompter failure (Hat tip: Freedom Eden):

Maybe TotUS grew confused- in HAL 9000 fashion- as to the purpose of the MIT trip:

Elizabeth Williamson reports on President Barack Obama’s remarks in Boston.

President Barack Obama flew to Boston today for a speech at Massachusetts Institute of Technology about energy and the economy, or energy and jobs, or about energy and climate change legislation.

From the beginning, the White House press corps speculated that Obama’s trip to Cambridge was less about energy news than about two high-wattage fund-raisers he was scheduled to attend afterward: one for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, and one in Stamford, Conn., for Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut.

Aboard Air Force One enroute to Boston, reporters asked spokesman Bill Burton what president’s “main energy message” was.

“The president is going to talk about the importance of investing in innovative energy technology, how it can create jobs and help this economy grow in the 21st century,” he said.

“Sounds like the same message that’s been out there for a while,” a reporter said.

“It’s an important message, and the president is going to continue to talk about things that can help grow the economy,” Burton said. “There are few things in this administration that are more important than creating jobs and getting this economy on track.”

Another reporter asked if the president would use the speech to “talk about the need to push forward on energy legislation, climate change legislation, pending in the House and Senate?”

And Burton said no, “This event is more about jobs and the economy, and specifically some of the investments that we’ve made.”

But a few minutes later, Burton corrected himself: “I just read the remarks more closely. The president will, indeed, address comprehensive legislation that helps to make renewable energy a profitable kind of energy in America. He’ll talk about it how can create millions of jobs, combat global warming…I also didn’t mention earlier that Sen. Kerry is on the plane,” referring to Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.).

A reporter ventured: “And so after initially refusing to talk about the energy legislation, he’s…I’m kidding.”

And another reporter: “This means that the speech is largely a push for the climate change legislation….”

Burton: “No, no, I wouldn’t say that. It talks about the importance of investments in order to create jobs in this field of, you know, innovation and finding ways to make clean, renewable energy. But definitely gets into comprehensive energy legislation.”

After a minute or so, he tried again: “He talks about its importance and he’s urging all of us to work hard to get it done.”

Um, okay.

Does this Administration understand anything it’s doing?

During consideration of H.R. 3126, legislation to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee voted to pass an amendment offered by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) that will make ACORN eligible to play a role in setting regulations for financial institutions.

The Waters amendment adds to the CFPA Oversight Board 5 representatives from the fields of “consumer protection, fair lending and civil rights, representatives of depository institutions that primarily serve underserved communities, or representatives of communities that have been significantly impacted by higher-priced mortgages” to join Federal banking regulators in advising the Director on the consistency of proposed regulations, and strategies and policies that the Director should undertake to enforce its rules.

By making representatives of ACORN and other consumer activist organizations eligible to serve on the Oversight Board, the amendment creates a potentially enormous government sanctioned conflict of interest. ACORN-type organizations will have an advisory role on regulating the very financial institutions from which they receive millions of dollars annually in direct corporate contributions and benefit from other financial partnerships and arrangements. These are the same organizations that pressured banks to make subprime mortgage loans and thus bear a major responsibility for the collapse of the housing market.

Oh, Maxine and Barney will argue that they didn’t specifically SAY members of ACORN could serve on the board but the fact remains that with this amendment it doesn’t exclude them either. It allows ACORN to jump aboard and give them power they should never have.

Of course this shouldn’t surprise me coming from Maxine or Barney…seeing as how they both directed TARP funds to banks they have financial ties in. Corrupt beyond belief and now they want another corrupt organization to be including in the process of deciding what kind of rules should be in place in the bank industry.

1. If all the world hated America because of George W Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq….then why was America attacked on Sept 11, 2001; 2yrs before that invasion?
2. Why has Al Queda been trying to exterminate every American for the past 17yrs?
3. Did you want Bush to fail in Iraq, or did you want America to succeed?
4. Given that Osama left Afghanistan in 2001, and Al Queda was largely destroyed in Afghanistan in 2002, how did the Bush Administration “take its eye off the ball [Afghanistan] by invading Iraq” in 2003?
5. What caused the great recession of 2007?
6. How have Democrats ensured that we don’t have another $13 TRILLION dollar Great Recession?
7. If FOX, Hannity, Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, etc are examples of right wing propaganda…then what is an example of left wing propaganda?
8. If Republicans lie, and all politicians are liars, then what are some lies told by Democrats?
9. Since President Obama’s Israel/Palestine talks have failed, and he’s been unable to stop Iran’s nuclear program, and since he’s completely clueless on what to do in Afghanistan…what is PLAN B for keeping Israel from bombing Iran and starting a regional-possibly a world war?
10. Obama’s a quarter of the way done with his presidency. What will history record as his greatest accomplishment?

btw, I could come up with more, but these were my top 10. Anyone who thinks they have one that deserves being on the list, please, please, please feel free to suggest it. I probably won’t add it out of sheer laziness, but I think we’d all love to see em.

The nation’s medical costs will keep spiraling upward even faster than they are now under Democratic legislation pending in the House, a report from government economic experts concluded Wednesday.

Republicans said the report is a warning sign that health care legislation is likely to fall short of President Barack Obama’s goal of “bending the cost curve” by slowing torrid rates of medical inflation.

~~~

Unlike previous estimates that have focused mainly on the legislation’s impact on the federal deficit, the actuaries’ report looked at total costs, public and private, over the next 10 years. It found that the nation’s health care tab would increase somewhat more rapidly with the legislation than if nothing is done. The main reason: Newly insured people will seek medical care.

The nation’s health care tab, now at about $2.5 trillion annually, is projected to approach $4.7 trillion in 2019 without the legislation.

With the legislation, national health care spending would be nearly $4.8 trillion in 2019.

Health care would account for 21.3 percent of the U.S. economy in 2019, slightly more than an estimated share of 20.8 percent of the economy if no bill passes. Economists have warned such increases are unsustainable.

“With the exception of the proposed reductions in Medicare … (the legislation) would not have a significant impact on future health care cost growth rates,” the report said. Moreover, it’s “doubtful” that proposed Medicare cuts will stay in place, the analysts concluded.

~~~

It also cautioned that tens of millions of newly insured people could put a strain on the health care system.

“The additional demand for health services could be difficult to meet initially with existing health provider resources and could lead to price increases, cost-shifting and/or changes in providers’ willingness to treat patients with low-reimbursement health coverage,” the analysts concluded.

We all knew this to be the true months ago…well, those with common sense understood this. This study is just one more that shows the exact same thing, that ObamaCare will in no way reduce the amount of money spent on health care and in fact will worsen the system, worsen the health care product, worsen the service, and worsen our economy.

The public understands this now so Obama and company actually break the law to get it passed:

Senate Finance ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is raising concerns that a Department of Health and Human Services Web site that urges visitors to send an e-mail to President Barack Obama praising his health care reform plan may violate rules against government-funded propaganda.

The Web page is accessed through a “state your support” button featured prominently on the HHS Web site and carries a disclaimer that the Web site is maintained by HHS.

In a letter sent to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Tuesday, Grassley warned that “any possible misuse of appropriated funds by the executive branch to engage in publicity or propaganda in support of an Administration priority is a matter that must be investigated and taken seriously,” noting that in 2005 Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) argued that “the use of official funds for similar activities were ‘underhanded tactics’ and that these tactics ‘are not worthy of our great democracy.’”

It’s propaganda plain and simple.

But now Pelosi and the left think nothing of it.