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?

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!

Obama’s Election:

Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner
Eating a Christmas Pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said, What a good boy am I

Little Barack Obama
Cursed by his mama’s drama
Given the Affirmative Action pie
He admired himself and learned to lie
He won the election plum
I can win, no matter how dumb

A Wartime President’s Confusion:

I’m the king of the castle,
Get down you dirty rascal.
I don’t care if there is a war
I’m so busy, and generals are a boor
I’ve won a Nobel Peace Prize
What’s war to me, but excuses and lies

Yankee Doodle

Yankee Doodle came to town
Riding on a pony
He stuck a father in his cap
And called it macaroni

Before the American Revolution, the British troops ridiculed the American colonials for their country ways and dress. The Americans had a habit of wearing a feather in their hats and their hair was often unruly. The British troops were required to keep their hair tied at the back in a small pony tail, this pony tail was referred to as macaroni and thus the British regular considered it far superior to an American’s typical hairstyle. Thus the song was written by British troops to embarrass the colonials with their rustic hairstyle and appearance.

At the Cornwallis surrender, the American band played Yankee Doodle while the British soldiers surrendered their rifles, in an effort to add insult to injury.

Barack Obama came to DC town
Riding a train like a foolish clown
Pretending he was Lincoln
Right then, I stopped believe’n

Ring Around The Rosie

Ring-a-round the rosies
A pocketful of posies
Ashes, Ashes
We all fall down

This was a game devised by children to make light of people dieing of the Black Plague, in the early 17th century, during the time while Shakespeare was putting on his plays in the Globe Theater. People who contracted the disease would fall ill suddenly, the first indication was an appearance of red rings with pustules in the center, the person would then become dizzy and walk in a circle and fall over dead. To combat the disease, people carried posies and ashes, if these failed, death at least came very quickly. The streets of London were littered with so many dead that special wagons were hired to haul away the bodies. Children will be children and the game is still played today, but without the ghoulish knowledge of the past.

Ring Around Rosie

Obama leads us on a fool’s game
Trust in me, George, he was so lame
I’ve got him to lay all the blame
With lemmings and fools I play, tis all the same

It’s ring around the Marxist
And you be racist if you resist
now we hold hands and sing Obama’s creed
And if you want to be rich or have a need
You can now be a Socialist indeed

Ring around the rosie
Ashes, ashes and we all fall down

Queen of Hearts:

The Queen of Hearts
She made some tarts
All on a summer’s day;
The knave of Hearts
He stole the tarts,
And took them clean away.

Queen of Hearts, Revised:

Our Queen of Hearts
Came to DC to get a head start
Her husband so wily and dull
Can rewrite history in minute detail
Especially if Bill Ayers ain’t in jail
Stand aside, let a woman throw the bull

1. President Bush was famous for lacking “intellectual curiosity”, while President Obama has been called “the smartest guy ever to become President.” Which one reads more books, Bush or Obama?

2. Bush was often considered to be in the grip of Big Oil. In contrast, Obama was a Harvard educated lawyer. Which industry contributed more than five times as much as the other to politicians: the oil & gas industry or lawyers/law firms?

3. Bush’s Christian faith was at the core of his political identity, and he was considered to be in the grip of the “religious right”, while Obama is considered more open-minded. In fact, Obama has said, “my faith is one that admits some doubt.” Which one refers to Jesus more in public speeches?

4. Bush was criticized for excessive federal spending and running up huge deficits. Bush’s deficit in 2008 was the largest in history. In fact, President Obama said,

“It’s a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they’ve presided over a doubling of the national debt… What I won’t do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place.”

Whose deficit was more than triple the size of the other’s: Bush’s 2008 deficit or Obama’s 2009 deficit?

Meanwhile Senator Gregg reacts to the new CBO estimate:

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee today commented on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) more detailed cost estimate of the manager’s amendment to the House health reform bill.

Senator Gregg stated, “The CBO estimate released last night finally sheds light on the smoke and mirrors game the majority has been playing with the cost of their health care reform proposal. Over the first 10 years, this legislation builds in gross new spending of $1.7 trillion – and most of the new spending doesn’t even start until 2014. Once that spending is fully phased in, the House Democratic bill rings up at more than $3 trillion over ten years.

“Additionally, this bill cuts critical Medicare and Medicaid funding by $628 billion, accounts for nearly $1.2 trillion in tax and fee increases and will explode the scope of government by putting the nation’s health care system in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. The $3 trillion price tag defies common sense – we simply cannot add all this new spending to the government rolls and claim to control the deficit.

“If we continue to pile more and more debt on the next generation, they will never be able to get out from under it. The health care system needs reform, but this massive expansion of government, financed by our children and grandchildren, is the wrong way to proceed.”

And listen…this is what our government believes will be the cost. But look at programs our government has run historically and you find decades of added costs and overruns that our forced onto the taxpayer.

Insanity

This from a CNN poll of all places:

Of course CNN spins away with this headline:

CNN Poll: Public wants Congress to keep working on health care

Puhlease….

…only a quarter say those bills should be passed pretty much as is, with a third suggesting that Congress should make major changes. The poll also indicates that one in four say lawmakers should start from scratch and 15 percent want Congress to stop all work on health care reform.

The survey’s release Friday morning comes one day before the full House of Representatives is expected to hold a floor vote on the Democrats health care reform bill.

“Most of the Democrats interviewed support some form of heath care reform, but the divisions within congressional Democrats are reflected in the party nationwide,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Forty percent of the Democratic rank and file want Congress to approve the proposals that have passed through committee with only minor changes. But an equal number of Democrats nationwide want Congress to make major changes to those proposals before approving them.”

~~~

“Six in ten independents say they oppose Obama’s health care proposals,” says Holland. “That’s a nine point increase since October.”

The Obama shine is fading fast and it won’t save his vision of a socialist utopia. What a difference a year makes eh? Charles Krauthammer:

Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday’s elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.

In the aftermath of last year’s Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics — most prominently, rising minorities and the young — would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed “The Death of Conservatism,” while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.

This was all ridiculous from the beginning. The ‘08 election was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.

Exactly a year later comes the empirical validation of that skepticism. Virginia — presumed harbinger of the new realignment, having gone Democratic in ‘08 for the first time in 44 years — went red again. With a vengeance. Barack Obama had carried it by six points. The Republican gubernatorial candidate won by 17 — a 23-point swing. New Jersey went from plus-15 Democratic in 2008 to minus-four in 2009. A 19-point swing.

~~~

November ‘08 was one shot, one time, never to be replicated. Nor was November ‘09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm — and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.

The irony of 2009 is that the anti-Democratic tide overshot the norm — deeply blue New Jersey, for example, elected a Republican governor for the first time in 12 years — because Democrats so thoroughly misread 2008 and the mandate they assumed it bestowed. Obama saw himself as anointed by a watershed victory to remake American life. Not letting the cup pass from his lips, he declared to Congress only five weeks after his swearing-in his “New Foundation” for America — from remaking the one-sixth of the American economy that is health care to massive government regulation of the economic lifeblood that is energy.

~~~

…Just last month Gallup found that conservatives outnumber liberals by 2 to 1 (40 percent to 20 percent) and even outnumber moderates (at 36 percent). So on Tuesday, the “rump” rebelled.

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

The left will try their best to minimize the damage done but the bluedog Democrats are now on notice….pass fiscally irresponsible bills like ObamaCare and your toast. As for NY-23, a few good articles…first from Roger Simon:

Now I realize that the surprise loser there, Doug Hoffman, ran as a Conservative, not a Republican. But I submit in this case that was a distinction without a significant difference because virtually all the Republican establishment had lined up behind Hoffman by the day of the election.

So why – in what was clearly a Republican year – did Hoffman lose? Well, there are several reasons and, yes, the Democratic victory was narrow, thinner than the five or so percent that went to withdrawn Republican nominee Scozzafava who herself endorsed the Democratic candidate. Still, the 23rd is a safely Republican, even conservative, district. In a year where the GOP racked up a 20% margin in Virginia and coasted easily in Jersey, a state in which Obama romped in ‘08 by 16%, what was the problem?

Well… I might as well say it… social conservatism. America is a fiscally conservative country – now perhaps more than ever, and with much justification – but not a socially conservative one. No, I don’t mean to say it’s socially liberal. It’s not. It’s socially laissez-faire (just as its mostly fiscally laissez-faire). Whether we’re pro-choice, pro-life or whatever we are, most of us want the government out of our bedrooms, just as we want it out of our wallets.

Hoffman’s capital-C Conservative campaign, however, tried to separate itself from the majority parties by making a big deal of the social issues. He was all upset that Scozzafava was pro-gay marriage, seemingly as upset as he was with her support for the stimulus plan. He projected the image of a bluenose in a world that increasingly doesn’t want to hear about these things. Hoffman’s is a selective vision of the nanny state – you can nanny about some things but not about others. I suspect America deeply dislikes nannying about anything.

There is, of course, a message in this for the Republican Party going forward. You can choose to emphasize the social issues or not. Today may show the former is a losing proposition.

Somewhat agree but not completely. A few weeks ago no one knew who Hoffman was. A ton of cash was thrown to the supposed Republican in the race, not to the one who had real conservative idea’s and principals, all this and maybe the social aspect of it played a part. Either way…the NY-23 race exposed a Democrat masquerading as a Republican and sent a message. Don’t be choosing candidates in the backrooms of power, especially when that person doesn’t represent the real party.

The other good post on NY-23 comes from Erick Erickson:

There are two big victories at work in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.

First, the GOP now must recognize it will either lose without conservatives or will win with conservatives. In 2008, many conservatives sat home instead of voting for John McCain. Now, in NY-23, conservatives rallied and destroyed the Republican candidate the establishment chose.

I have said all along that the goal of activists must be to defeat Scozzafava. Doug Hoffman winning would just be gravy. A Hoffman win is not in the cards, but we did exactly what we set out to do — crush the establishment backed GOP candidate.

And make no mistake, despite the Beltway spin, we know for certain based on statements from the local Republican parties, that they chose Scozzafava based on advice from the Washington crowd.

So we have demonstrated to the GOP that it must not take conservatives for granted. The GOP spent $900,000.00 on a Republican who dropped out and endorsed the Democrat. Were we to combine Scozzafava and Hoffman’s votes, Hoffman would have won.

Secondly, and just as importantly, there has all of a sudden been a huge movement among some activists to go the third party route. We see in NY-23 that this is not possible as third parties are not viable.

Third parties lack funding and ability for a host of reasons. Conservatives are going to have to work from within the GOP. The GOP had better pay attention.

For all intents and purposes, NY-23 is a trial run for Florida. And in Florida, the conservative candidate is operating inside the GOP. If John Cornyn and the NRSC do not want to see Florida go the way of NY-23, they better stand down.

Great points, especially the third party point. Just won’t happen. If the Beltway crowd hadn’t of picked a person to represent the Republican party who was more liberal then the Democrat challenger….then Hoffman would of won. Instead the establishment picked Scozzafava and it took a groundswell to get her removed.

But there were other races that are even more indicative of citizens sick of the spending:

The biggest defeat for RINOs in New York wasn’t the pre-election collapse of Dede Scozzafava in the 23rd CD. It was tonight’s stunning victory by conservative Republican Rob Astorino in the race for County Executive of Westchester County—the affluent and heavily taxed suburb just north of NYC, which has been solidly Democratic for more than a decade. Astorino’s victory is a stinging rebuke to the brand of New York Republicanism personified by Assemblywoman Scozzafava, former Gov. (and Westchester native son) George Pataki, and Westchester’s famously liberal former state Sen. Nicky Spano of Yonkers, who had endorsed incumbent Democratic County Executive Andy Spano (no relation) and engineered Andy Spano’s endorsement by the local Conservative party. Astorino, 42, a county legislator who used to co-host a satellite radio show with Cardinal Egan, happens to be pro-life — but going against the trend established by Pataki and other suburban Republicans in the 1990s, he didn’t waver from that position. He knew the pro-choice swing vote in Westchester would be motivated by primarily economic issues. He was right, and has a bright future in statewide politics if he does a good job. An even more stunning Republican showing came in the other big, affluent NYC suburb, Nassau County, where an underfunded Republican named Ed Mangano was — as of midnight — in a dead heat with the charismatic Democratic County Executive Tom Suozzi. Meanwhile, the GOP recaptured control of that county’s legislature. Nassau residents apparently were so fed up with the status quo that they may have returned control of county government to the same discredited GOP machine that nearly drove the county into bankruptcy just eight years ago. In a word, Wow.

And from the Westchester Journal News:

Voters rejected the Democratic incumbent’s bid for a fourth term, opting instead for a candidate who pledged to downsize government and cut the highest county taxes in the nation.

“It’s far surpassing anything we expected,” Astorino said after taking Spano’s concession call at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. “But I think the message resonated. People wanted change and they are going to get it starting in January.”

Astorino’s victory came despite Democrats’ 2-1 margin over Republicans among Westchester’s 538,822 registered voters.

With 87 percent of the votes in, Astorino had 58 percent, Spano 42 percent, according to the unofficial results.

And finally a message to Republicans for 2010:

A Republican Strategist’s Take

I just spoke to a smart one. He argues that the Virginia governor’s race offers more lessons for Republicans than either the New Jersey race (because there was an incumbent on whom it was a referendum) or the New York congressional race (because its circumstances were too odd). One of the lessons he draws is that Republican candidates have to “finish the sentence.” Instead of just saying that we have to keep taxes and spending low, and thus pleasing conservatives, he said, McDonnell explain how these policies would create jobs and “plug the hole in Richmond.” Too many Republican candidates, he says, forget to do that.

He pours cold water on the idea that the elections were a referendum on Obama. “Obama’s numbers in Virginia are not that bad. He’s not upside-down, that’s for sure.” (That is, more people rate him favorably than unfavorably.) “I guarantee you that McDonnell got a lot of votes from people who approve of [the job Obama is doing].” He takes the vote to be a rejection of many of Obama’s policies. But he adds, “I don’t think that Republicans should come away from this and think that all that we have to do in 2010 is run against Obama. McDonnell had a very vigorous policy agenda.”

Not the first time I heard from analysts tonight that the McDonnell campaign is one that should be emulated by Republicans in 2010.

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?

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.

Healthcare for Christmas: Reid under pressure to slow down
-Turns out moderate Dems will not approve healthcare in Senate if there’s a public option

Whip count shows Democrats lack votes on ‘robust’ public option for healthcare
-Hmph…House Democrats don’t like the far left wingers public option either. Something about it being too expensive to give 300million people a min of $1mil in coverage ($30TRILLION). Who does math in Congress anymore anyways?

Abortion divides House Dems in health care debate
-Geesh, is there anything Democrats can agree on re healthcare? Oh yeah…it’s the Republicans fault somehow. That much they can agree on.

Two Democrats buck Rep. Towns, call for Countrywide probe
-Ask a Dem what caused the Great Recession, and they’ll tell you the DNC talking points (presented by NYT, DailyKOS, and MSNBC): Bush tax cuts for the wealthy investors and business leaders who create jobs, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’ll ignore the entire Countrywide, homeloans, AIG mess, but….not all Dems will. They all know the reality, and some want it fixed.

Obama hints Afghan decision may wait
-At least on foreign policy the world loves us, right? Um, not so much. Seems the new strategy Obama started in March…in ain’t working. It’s been a few months since his generals in the field asked for more troops and equipment, and despite his promise to the VFW that he’d always provide…Obama’s still clueless on what to do/how to respond to the simplest question ever. Your general tells you he needs more troops and material or the war is lost. What do you do? You send the guy more troops and matl or you lose. Simple

Iran fails to accept UN uranium enrichment plan
-Damn, that open-hand opens a clenched fist thing sounded so cool too. Yeah, no one believed it for a second, but it sounded great….as great as all the other sizzle sans steak. Now what-just let Israel bomb Iran and start a regional or even world war? How will Keith Olbermann respond to a call for war in Iran based on alleged WMD threats and ties to terror? Will we get a countdown every night saying how many days it’s been since Obama threatened harsh sanctions? Please, stop laughing now people as even the Dems are frustrated w Obama’s incompetence here.

Dems face uphill climb on immigration reform
-Guess changing the subject from healthcare to foreign policy to immigration’s probably not a good idea

White House attacks worry moderate Democrats
-Man, you know you’re having a bad week when Democrats give you grief for complaining about FOX News!

The Dem eats Dem list goes on and on. Yeah, they’ll fill 24hrs on MSNBC w White House ordered distraction about how Republicans are to blame, but anyone who knows that the Dems have a supermajority and the WH and the House…those independent minds ain’t buying it. Dems are running the show, and Dems are fouling it up.

Have a GREAT weekend!

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.