Saturday, August 22, 2009

Ann Coulter : Liberal Lies About National Health Care: First in a Series - Townhall.com

Liberal Lies About National Health Care: First in a Series
by Ann Coulter

(1) National health care will punish the insurance companies.

You want to punish insurance companies? Make them compete.

As Adam Smith observed, whenever two businessmen meet, 'the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.' That's why we need a third, fourth and 45th competing insurance company that will undercut them by offering better service at a lower price.

Tiny little France and Germany have more competition among health insurers than the U.S. does right now. Amazingly, both of these socialist countries have less state regulation of health insurance than we do, and you can buy health insurance across regional lines -- unlike in the U.S., where a federal law allows states to ban interstate commerce in health insurance.

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Thursday, August 20, 2009

Obamacare Ad Wars

While supporters of the health-care bill focus on politics, opponents focus on policy.
by Libby Sternberg
08/20/2009 12:00:00 AM

President Obama made an unfortunate stumble in his August 11 town hall meeting on health care reform. 'FedEx and UPS are doing just fine,' he said, attempting to allay fears that a public option would drive private insurers out of the market. 'It's the Post Office that's always having problems.'

That's precisely what Americans fear, though--that any government-run program would simply eat up tax dollars while they stood in long lines for service. Inadvertently, the president captured Americans' views about health care reform.

Polls suggest that people are reasonably content with their health care coverage now--even with all its imperfections. They might want to see costs lowered or access increased, but they're deeply skeptical of a Post Office approach to those problems.

This is what supporters of health care reform don't seem to get--that Americans are concerned about the policy itself. Supporters of reform seem more concerned about the politics, casting aspersions on town hall participants, saying they're 'Astroturf' and not grassroots, or 'un-American' for speaking out loudly.

This focus on politics over policy continues in the video ads aired on television and the web. These ads offer an illustration of what opponents are concerned about and how feckless supporters are by focusing on politics over policy. Here's a quick round-up of some ads pro and con:

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About that Saudi Rehabilitation Program - The Weekly Standard

About that Saudi Rehabilitation Program

The Obama administration is, according to the Washington Post, still discussing the possibility of sending at least some (it is not clear how many) of the 98 Yemeni detainees held at Gitmo to Saudi Arabia. The administration has previously floated the idea of having the Yemenis reeducated in the Saudis’ rehabilitation program for jihadists. The only real question is: Why?

At least three problems come immediately to mind.

First, the Saudis have rejected previous overtures in this vein on multiple occasions. This likely indicates that the Saudis themselves don’t think this is such a good idea. And the administration will almost certainly have to spend some of its political capital to convince them otherwise. The United States regularly tries to get the Saudis to do more with respect to shutting down terrorism and extremism financing. Asking the Saudis to watch over citizens of another country, when their cooperation on so many other related matters is uneven, is a bit of a stretch.

Second, the Saudi rehabilitation program is clearly not as effective as was initially claimed. Earlier this year, the Saudis reported that 11 of the Kingdom’s 85 most wanted terrorists were former Gitmo detainees who were “rehabilitated” in the program. (One has since reentered Saudi custody.) One of these 11 is now a prominent leader of al Qaeda’s arm on the Arabian Peninsula. That same al Qaeda branch is the chief reason the Obama administration does not want to send the Yemenis back to their home country. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is particularly strong in Yemen. Besides the 11 former Gitmo detainees, dozens of other terrorists placed on Saudi Arabia’s most wanted list had also been “rehabilitated.”

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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

President Obama Finances Offshore Drilling in Brazil - WSJ.com

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a 'preliminary commitment' letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire."

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Monday, August 17, 2009

Obama Czar Favors “Planetary Regime”

AIM Report By Cliff Kincaid August 17, 2009

Holdren cannot wiggle out of responsibility for these statements because he does not specifically attribute them to anyone else in particular. Does Obama's science adviser advocate compulsory abortions and putting chemicals into the water supply to sexually sterilize human beings? Some well-known conservative bloggers and columnists have repeated this information, based on revelations on a website strangely called Zombietime. But an analysis by Accuracy in Media has determined that some of the most sensational charges against Dr. John P. Holdren fall short of the mark. Still, he has a lot to answer for, including his curious belief in a 'Planetary Regime' to manage the world.
That Holdren endorsed the concept of a 'planetary regime' is shocking, considering that he is now a top White House official. In fairness, however, it doesn't seem much different from Pope Benedict XVI's endorsement of a 'World Political Authority,' which was included in his recent encyclical. Devotion to some form of world government seems popular in religious and government circles these days, especially in the age of Obama.

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