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Still Support ObamaCare? Read The Bill.

Matt Margolis

Yesterday on Twitter I said that no one who has actually read the Obamacare bill could honestly support it.I also explained that that is why he wanted to rush it through. Naturally, a few Obamabots on Twitter responded claiming they have read it and support it nonetheless. Oh really?

Granted, if you believe the government should have unlimited power with regards to the health care of Americans, sure, perhaps you may love the love the idea of a government committee rationing health care, issuing a national ID healthcard, and loads of other things that most Americans would think would be impossible to consider in the land of the free..

Domestic Divapalooza went through the bill herself earlier this month, picking out some devilish details. If you still support ObamaCare, by all means, say, for the record, that these things, explicitly mandated in the text of the bill, are things you support.

Otherwise, don’t pretend that you’ve actually read the bill, understood it all, and still love it to death.

Obama Strikes Backroom Deal with "Big Pharma"

Mark Noonan1 Comment

And, hey, its not me saying it – its HuffPo:

A memo obtained by the Huffington Post confirms that the White House and the pharmaceutical lobby secretly agreed to precisely the sort of wide-ranging deal that both parties have been denying over the past week.

The memo, which according to a knowledgeable health care lobbyist was prepared by a person directly involved in the negotiations, lists exactly what the White House gave up, and what it got in return.

It says the White House agreed to oppose any congressional efforts to use the government’s leverage to bargain for lower drug prices or import drugs from Canada — and also agreed not to pursue Medicare rebates or shift some drugs from Medicare Part B to Medicare Part D, which would cost Big Pharma billions in reduced reimbursements.

In exchange, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) agreed to cut $80 billion in projected costs to taxpayers and senior citizens over ten years. Or, as the memo says: “Commitment of up to $80 billion, but not more than $80 billion.”

The most transparent government, ever? Hope and change? Is this what you liberals voted for? And isn’t this just the sort of thing you (falsely) have accused our side of doing for years? Small wonder, now, that PhRMA is funding pro-Obamacare efforts.

You on the left should simply be ashamed of yourselves for being so easily taken in by a this outgrowth of Chicago’s gutter politics.

How Do We Show Mercy to Terrorists?

Mark Noonan

Which, of course, is the question about we should show mercy to the merciless:

Britain dismissed suggestions of a link between the Lockerbie bomber’s release and energy deals with Libya on Saturday, and the head of the U.S. FBI said the move gave comfort to terrorists.

London and Washington have condemned the ‘hero’s welcome’ given to Abdel Basset al-Megrahi on his return to Libya after being freed from a life sentence in a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds because he is dying of cancer.

‘The idea that the British government … would sit down and somehow barter over the freedom or the life of this Libyan prisoner and make it all part of some business deal … it’s not only wrong, it’s completely implausible and actually quite offensive,’ said British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson.

In Washington, FBI director Robert Mueller released an angry letter he sent to Scottish minister Kenny MacAskill, who ordered the release, calling it inexplicable and detrimental to justice.

‘Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law. Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world,’ Mueller wrote in the letter posted on the FBI’s website.

But the man does appear to be dying – and thus poses no threat, in himself, to anyone else. But when we take a mass murderer and release him, does this not encourage the worst that no matter what we say, our most fierce justice is subject to change? What to do?

Never lose sight of the need for mercy – but this Libyan should not have been allowed to have such a heroes welcome. Better had Britain just quietly removed him from prison and either placed him in a civil hospital or quietly, even without the Libyan government having advance notice, deposited him on the coast of Libya with a note of explanation. There are ways to show that our justice is tempered with mercy without having to allow terrorists to claim they scored one off us.

Weekly Recap (2009-08-22)

Matt Margolis

Why We Can't Normalize Relations With Castro's Cuba

Mark Noonan

Because we already have relations with enough savage, inhuman governments and we don’t need any more:

A church leader from a fast growing independent Church movement in Cuba is being accused of criminal activity by the Government just one month after a Pastor from the same group was sentenced to six years in prison.

This follows the recent detention at least sixty pastors and leaders in May and June.

Alexi Perez has been in prison for over a month accused of illicit economic activity. Although the original charges against him have been dropped, he now faces a new charge of illegally receiving construction materials.

Observers note this new charge is the same as that reportedly made against a prominent human rights activist; Dr. Darsi Ferrer Ramirez.

Alexi Perez oversees a group of around 100 church members (out of a total of 800), at the Apostolic Evangelical Church in San Jose de las Lajas in Havana Province.

In July, Pastor Omar Gude Perez, again from the Apostolic Movement, was sentenced to six years in prison. He had spent fourteen months in jail without trial prior to sentencing, and the charges against him had been changed on two occasions.

Around sixty other pastors and leaders from the Apostolic Movement have reported being temporarily detained and threatened on charges of “social dangerousness” in two sweeps between May and June this year.

Any government which charges people with “social dangerousness” is not a government we wish to have relations with. At least, its not if we have a government at all in tune with core, American principles. Naturally, the Obama Administration – as well as the usual suspects in Hollywood and on the left in general – are eager for the day of normalization…so that we can, also, pour out US funds to subsidize Castro’s inhuman horror.

No, never – until Castro and his hateful regime are gone, we must not have normal, diplomatic relations. Further more, we should seek means by which we can progressively downgrade our relations with other inhuman tyrannies. Free people must band together, not shake hands with barbarians.

Phrase of the Day

Mark Noonan

Beware collectivist solution:

…I think that habit of dealing with men in the mass, not merely on abnormal occasions, as in a war or a strike, but in normal circumstances and as a part of ordinary social speech, is a very bad way of trying to understand the human animal. There are only a few animals, and they are not human animals, who can be best judged or best employed in packs or herds. Some may compare the workers of a Communist state to a pack of wolves; I should very strongly suspect that they bear more resemblance to a flock of sheep. But neither of these animals can be said to have a very complex or entertaining type of mentality; few of us would be eager to listen, even if we could, to the flowing and continuous reminiscences of a sheep; and St. Francis seems to have been the only man who was ever on intimate terms with a wolf. It is precisely because man is the most interesting of the creatures that he finds his proper place among those creatures who dig a domestic hole or hang up an individual nest; and the disgrace of our society is not when he has not a hive or an ant hill; but when, among so many nests and holes, he has no where to lay his head. – G K Chesterton

Free men and women owning their own homes – that is to be our goal, now and forever. Because only if we are such, will we be free men and women.

State and Local Unemployment Hit Records

Mark Noonan

Here in Las Vegas, its 13.1% an all-time high; in California, 11.9%, a post-WWII record; in New York, 9.6%, a 12-year high.

Obama and his Democrats can take their “green shoots”, “stimulus” and “hope and change” and shove ’em. We don’t want bail-outs for failed banks and businesses, we want an economy where people can work to build their dreams.

UPDATE: Bernanke and the Stimulators claim to have saved the world. Mish’s explains that they are, well, insane.

UPDATE II: Steyn notes that never in the course of history has so much been borrowed from so many to benefit so few.

The Failure of Obama's Home Loan Modification Program

Mark Noonan

The Baseline Scenario has an excellent run-down on the mechanics of what went wrong – months after we geared up to modify loans the fact is that delinquencies and foreclosures are rising.

There are various things going wrong here – banks are looking out for themselves, especially the servicing banks as opposed to the note holders; note holders are wary of going in to a modification because it might just be better to let the house go short sale/foreclosure and get the bird in the hand rather than two in the bush; the people who are running the modification show at the banks are not experienced and may not have proper underwriting skills (if this is the case, I nominate my friend who blogs under the name of Nevada Pundit as National Home Mortgage Underwriting Czar – he does actually know what he’s doing and it’d be a cool gig for him) – but, for me, the largest, single obstacle to this is the fact that we’re not admitting that not only have home values dropped, but that they’re not going to come back to what they were in 2005 – at least, not for 10 to 20 years (and my view is that in real terms, they never will). We need to reorganize America’s housing industry as it is undergoing national bankruptcy.

I’ve talked about this (well, by now it should be characterized as “yammered on endlessly”) – we need to find means of number-crunching the home values and figuring out, within 15% or so, what their real value is, and then applying that value to the mortgage. It’ll be hard, it’ll hurt – but it must be done as its the only way we can provide a floor underneath our home values and bring in a bit of price stability which will convince the millions of currently negative-equity home owners to stay in their home. Among all my friends – and there are a lot of them – I can only count two whom I know are probably certain to have positive-equity in their homes. One because she bought a long time ago and didn’t go in for serial refinances during the boom, the other because I’m pretty sure she bought it outright, or at least with 50%+ down. As long as we trundle along letting banks try to finesse themselves out of their mortgage jam, we’ll get nowhere – and foreclosures will continue to rise until a point is reached where major banks are, once again, faced with bankruptcy.

It is time to think anew and act anew – we can’t just sit here, Micawber-like, and hope that something turns up. Time for a bit of courage – and a bit of real hope and real change.