Come for the culture war … stay for the chicks.
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Notice how the audience doesn’t really no how to react with out the usual Pavlovian cues designed to make conservatives look stupid. Of course, even John Stewart understands that
Child Sex Trafficking Is Not A Partisan Issue.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Audacity of Hos | ||||
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Tags: acorn, hannah giles, jon stewart
Sarah Palin responds via Facebook:
After all the rhetoric is put aside, one principle ran through President Obama’s speech tonight: that increased government involvement in health care can solve its problems.
Many Americans fundamentally disagree with this idea. We know from long experience that the creation of a massive new bureaucracy will not provide us with “more stability and security,” but just the opposite. It’s hard to believe the President when he says that this time he and his team of bureaucrats have finally figured out how to do things right if only we’ll take them at their word.
Our objections to the Democrats’ health care proposals are not mere “bickering” or “games.” They are not an attempt to “score short term political points.” And it’s hard to listen to the President lecture us not to use “scare tactics” when in the next breath he says that “more will die” if his proposals do not pass.
In his speech the President directly responded to concerns I’ve raised about unelected bureaucrats being given power to make decisions affecting life or death health care matters. He called these concerns “bogus,” “irresponsible,” and “a lie” — so much for civility. After all the name-calling, though, what he did not do is respond to the arguments we’ve made, arguments even some of his own supporters have agreed have merit.
In fact, after promising to “make sure that no government bureaucrat …. gets between you and the health care you need,” the President repeated his call for an Independent Medicare Advisory Council — an unelected, largely unaccountable group of bureaucrats charged with containing Medicare costs. He did not disavow his own statement that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost … the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives….” He did not disavow the statements of his health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, and continuing to pay his salary with taxpayer dollars proves a commitment to his beliefs. The President can keep making unsupported assertions, but until he directly responds to the arguments I’ve made, I’m going to call him out too.
It was heartening to hear the President finally recognize that tort reform is an important part of any solution. But this concession shouldn’t lead us to take our eye off the ball: the Democrats’ proposals will not reduce costs, and they will not deliver better health care. It’s this kind of “healthy skepticism of government” that truly reflects a “concern and regard for the plight of others.” We can’t wait to hear the details on that; we look forward to working with you on tort reform.
Finally, President Obama delivered an offhand applause line tonight about the cost of the War on Terror. As we approach the anniversary of the September 11th attacks and honor those who died that day and those who have died since in the War on Terror, in order to secure our freedoms, we need to remember their sacrifices and not demonize them as having had too high a price tag.
Remember, Mr. President, elected officials work for the people. Forcing a conclusion in order to claim a “victory” is not healthy for our country. We hear you say government isn’t always the answer; now hear us — that’s what we’ve been saying all along.
- Sarah Palin
As Predicted: Attack on Ann Romney Begins With Ben Smith
Just as I predicted in my piece the very day the President Obama-inspired attack on Ann Romney blew up in his face, it is Ben Smith’s BuzzFeed Politics that has fired the first shot at Ann Romney.
Smith’s obvious cover is to have a self-identified Mormon do the dirty work, but we all know how that works.
Buzzfeed also attacks Romney’s Mormon faith, so it’s a nice, sweet two-fer for Their Precious One.
The hit-piece is even aimed directly at the candidate’s wife with the title: “Why Ann Stayed Home”
Politically, hiring a Mormon was a brilliant move on Smith’s part. With the David Frum/Kathleen Parker of Mormonism on his team and the corrupt media desperate to find a fig leaf to attack Romney’s faith, I’d bet money Coppins will be leading this charge for all of the MSM before it’s over.
After all, this is what Ben –tanning bed– Smith does. And this is the kind of thing he’ll be doing on steroids with a full staff at his command.
Left wing bloggette, Melissa Lafsky tries to defend her ugly comments after the death of Sen. Teddy Kennedy in a Sep 9 column at mediaite.
In the recent column she laments that the Right-wing Media missed the nuanced point of her previous column suggesting that Mary Jo Kopechne may have felt that that her death by suffocation and subsequent lack of punishment for Kennedy was a fair trade for all the good things that he accomplished since the incident.
The conservative “echo-chamber” then took her words “out of context” and made her a “right-wing talking point.”
The nuanced context to which she is referring is this: Ted Kennedy was great. Really great. In fact, he had “the greatest Senate career in history.” So awesome were his achievements that maybe, just maybe Mary Jo would have felt it was all worth it.
Get it.
Tags: ted kennedy, ugly
How can we ensure that those who need medical care receive it while also reducing health-care costs? The answers offered by Democrats in Washington all rest on one principle: that increased government involvement can solve the problem. I fundamentally disagree.
Common sense tells us that the government’s attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats’ proposals “will provide more stability and security to every American.”
Let’s talk about specifics. In his Times op-ed, the president argues that the Democrats’ proposals “will finally bring skyrocketing health-care costs under control” by “cutting . . . waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies . . . .”
First, ask yourself whether the government that brought us such “waste and inefficiency” and “unwarranted subsidies” in the first place can be believed when it says that this time it will get things right. The nonpartistan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doesn’t think so: Its director, Douglas Elmendorf, told the Senate Budget Committee in July that “in the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”
Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He’s asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . .”
Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats’ proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels?
The response from the left has been predictable. Marc Armbinder offers the customary “good advice” to conservatives regarding Palin: “Ignore her.” She is too stupid to be a part of this serious debate. Its better that we listen to “serious” Republicans. Like Olympia Snowe, no doubt.
There are many Republican, conservative health care spokespeople who have earned the right to speak for their party’s principals, and, truth be told, can recite the talking points (complete with Ronald Reagan quote) better than Palin and her writer can.
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So here’s a challenge to the media: if you want to do justice to conservative ideas and find some balance in your coverage tomorrow, book serious Republicans with original ideas on your programs. If you don’t, Palin is giving herself a voice at your expense and through little effort of her own.By implying, incidentally, that Palin gets help from a speechwriter, I mean to make an observation. Barack Obama didn’t draft his op-ed, either. But, reading Obama, it’s not a leap to believe that the ideas are truly his. Palin has no chops and no experience talking about health care and isn’t participating in this debate; the content of her op-ed piece isn’t original, and the points are points that Republicans make every day.
Dr. Zero from the green room brilliantly defends Sarah against the condescending dismissal from Krauthammer’s recent Town Hall column.
I don’t think “death panel” is an unfair metaphor for the resulting system, and the sense of dread it provokes in the listener is entirely appropriate.
The death panel doesn’t have to take the form of nine robed Sith Lords, stamping your grandmothers’ termination orders with a giant red skull, then handing them to a ghoul in surgical scrubs.
It will be no less deadly if it consists of thousands of faceless government drones in cubicles, processing Quality of Life spreadsheets and crossing out the unlucky Social Security numbers with pink highlighter pens. In fact, my only quibble with Palin’s prediction is that, given the style of the current Administration, it is much more likely that we’ll have a Death Czar. Using the same Noonan-swooning judgment that gave us a tax cheat for Treasury Secretary, Obama will appoint a serial killer to the position. The Death Czar’s first official act will be spending $2 billion in taxpayer dollars to hire a Brazilian company, which will extract organs from Americans after they receive their end-of-life counseling, then ship them overseas for use in foreign patients.
What Palin brings to the health-care debate is the energy, wisdom, and wit to make complex ideas understandable to ordinary people. Let me once again restate my admiration for Charles Krauthammer before saying, with regrettably brutal candor, that Sarah Palin had more impact on the health-care debate with one Facebook note than everything Krauthammer has written in the past year.
Tags: death panels, Palin
From NBCPhilly:
It’s not an excuse most men use to get out of their marriage, but a Lancaster, Pa., man held up a bank to finally be free from his (not so) better half.
Anthony Miller, 39, told a Lancaster County judge his wife abused him so badly that in 2007 he held up an Ephrata Bank with a BB gun so he could go to jail to get away from her, according to Lancaster Online.
“She was very abusive to me,” Miller told Judge Louis Farina. “I was scared. She threatened to commit suicide if I ever left her,” according to the paper.
Miller was so anxious to get caught that he even stayed an extra four minutes inside the bank after he forced the teller to hand over the money.
