Can the GOP Steal Ted Kennedy's Seat?

Er...probably not but there's more hope then we've had since Mary Jo Kopechne was left to die at Chappaquiddick.

Scott Brown is giving the "hand selected" candidate Martha Coakley fits in Massachusetts and today, through internet words of mouth and blogs links he's raised over $800K. He was hoping to break $500K but that was surpassed hours ago.

Here's the link if you want to throw him some shekels.

If we could take this seat, it would definitely put the Dems into a full-on tizzy and Harry Reid would be whirling like a dervish on the Senate floor. Damn, I think I almost pissed my pants just thinking about it.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the Dems who were forced into voting for Obamacare bailed out before it could get final passage because of a GOP upstart taking Kennedy's seat? Think about it; Massachusetts has it's own version of Obamacare and that is the only campaign issue right about now. Imagine if Coakley lost what it would say about socialized medicine.

The Democratic Schism Widens

Republicans have a problem. We are broken into some what disparate groups with differing agendas and aim. However, we all believe in the same goal and that is to regain the House, Senate and eventually the Executive branch.

We have Palinist's who believe in core Reagan principles that have been shown to be quite effective in building a steady majority. We also have the more centrist, elitist sect that resides in the DC bubble and preaches a more moderate view and a softer stand. These are the people who were whispering in Bush's ear that expanding Medicare was a good idea.

The problems on the right are nothing compared to the ever-expanding rift developing on the left.

Health care has exposed what was a hidden breach where hard-leftists and socialists want American remade into a Euro-type state where businesses are either owned by the government or heavily regulated by it. They also want cradle to grave reliance on the government as we see in Sweden.

On the other side we have more centrist, Truman-type Dems who don't want radical changes but paleo-Democratic policies that include a strong defense, social safety nets and strong unions.

This fragile coalition that was united under Obama last year is now in a full-blown war. Here's an example. That's one of many mind you.

My point is that we are seeing pixels spilled by the millions with the more socialistic (and full-on communistic) Dems spewing vitriol at other Dems that was once only saved for George W. Bush. With old Chimpy McHitler out of the picture, they've aimed their sights at those they believe are ideologically impure and in doing so are ripping their party to shreds.

The GOP hasn't had an opportunity like this in two decades or more and if we continue seeing what we currently are we'll have a plethora of pick-ups in November.

Pelosi Is Losing Congress

According to Drudge (see update below), Nancy Pelosi's lack of leadership and Obama's wishy-washy approach to the health care debate have led to the loss of 57 liberal Democratic representatives. Meanwhile, the strong showing of patriotic Americans at the townhall's has forced 44 moderates to reconsider their vote and come out as a no:

At least 44 more moderate Members of the Democrat Caucus have gone on the record in opposition to the current health care bill in the House, a Hill source claims. Likewise, at least 57 liberal Members of the Democrat Caucus have gone on the record saying they will vote against a health care bill without a strong public option.

Unless multiple Democrats flip on their stated position on health care, Speaker Pelosi lacks the votes to pass a bill through the House on the strength of Democrat votes alone.

My congressman is among them in Rep. Adler who knows his victory last year over Chris Myers was simply because of the strong turn-out for Obama. After decades of Republican Jim Saxton, Adler has no choice but to obey his constituents and vote this fiscal monstrosity down.

Obama better give one hell of a speech tonight but those of us who pay attention to what Teleprompter boy says on a regular basis know he doesn't have the power of persuasion in him like the media said he did.

Good news if true and Drudge usually has good sources.

Pic courtesy of Frank J.

Update: Journalist claims that Drudge not relevant anymore because journalists don't find him "captivating" anymore. I'm sure the same is said of the once-proud NY Times by sane people. Wishful thinking by a man who wishes he had 0.0001% of the readers Drudge has.

Yeah, That Whole Socialized Medicine Thing's Working Out Well

France has been held up as the model country that we would want to imitate with our health care system. It seems to be working out real well:

PARIS (Reuters) - The French government is looking at ways to plug a gaping hole in its health care budget and may charge patients more for hospital stays, Budget Minister Eric Woerth said on Monday.

France's health system is largely financed by the state and has been hailed as the best in the world by the World Health Organization. It is also one of the most costly and the government constantly struggles to control spending.

After a 4.4 billion euro ($6.31 billion) shortfall in the health budget in 2008, Woerth said he expected the deficit to hit 10 billion euros this year and 15 billion next, with the economic downturn denting social security contributions.

Read it all, the system sounds, er, sound...or not. They've had a socialized system for decades and it still is in the red while Obama eschews all historical precedent and promises to make it revenue neutral. Oh, okay, I believe him.

Historical precedent showed that FDR's spending policies actually prolonged the recession and Obama followed right in his footsteps. Countries such as Germany who didn't throw money at the recession and essentially into a black hole are coming out of the recession as we speak.

But San Fran Nan and the vile Harry Reid are going to pass it whether you and I want it or not and before you have a chance to know what's in it.

Update: In spite of the full-court press and probably because of the response our elected betters got at townhall meetings, the people ain't buying what Obama's selling.

This should make every single representative who has a "D" after his name think twice:

Obama Plants a Question While Speaking to Our Youth

No big deal except for one little bundle of joy asked The One:

"Why can't the United States have universal health coverage?"

Of course, given that today was the first day of school after a long summer full of fun and given that the child is excited about seeing friends not seen in three months plus the excitement of a new teacher, I'm sure that the little one came up the question all by their lonesome and it couldn't have been a plant.

They didn't show it in my son's school so I don't have to do any deprogramming tonight with four hours of Fox News. That's great because he has homework.

Thursday Night News and Notes

Here's what's news on this night where Michael Vick will play QB for the Eagles and Tim Lincecum faces my Phils.

-Moveon.org jerkoff supporter bites off pinky of 65-year old anti-socialist medicine protester. Thank goodness Obamacare hasn't passed or the old fella would have had to wait three months to get it replaced.

-Obama "Green Jobs Czar" (whatever the hell that is) is a full-blown truther who believes Bush and Cheney were behind 9/11. This has got to be the most America-hatin' administration ever.

-Some dude with no arms is denied check cashing services because he lacks thumbs to provide a thumb print.

-The Brits do have a way with words, don't they?

-The lovely and eloquent Terri writes about events in Honduras and the shameful way the Obama folks have been treating another democracy.

-Our musical interlude this evening has us enjoying the excellent Rainbow with Ritchie Blackmore wailing and Joe Lynn Turner stretching his pipes and sporting painted on pants that were laughable then and remain so. An 80's flashback:

Monday Night News and Notes

I've been busy and this blog has taken a back seat but I'm feeling more full of venom with each passing day and should be back to more regular posting in the near future.

Here's what's news:

-The unions are getting fat, dumb and happy during the early Obama admin. They, being greedy bastards want much, much more.

-Teddy Kennedy and the KGB.

-We in the US can't drill, can't dig and can't do, well, anything because of the onerous environmental lobby in the US who has gained Obama's ear. Canada is stepping in and taking the spoils.

-You see, us idiots who oppose socialized medicine are only against it because Obama hasn't framed his message correctly, not because we see the folly in it or have actually read the bill.

More Great Moments in Socialized Medicine

A look at what America will be under Obamacare?

The British health care system is, as depicted by the Obama administration, excellent and would be a great goal for an American system.

Er, probably not:

Latest figures show that over the past two years there were at least:

63 births in ambulances and 608 in transit to hospitals;

117 births in A&E departments, four in minor injury units and two in medical assessment areas;

115 births on other hospital wards and 36 in other unspecified areas including corridors;

399 in parts of maternity units other than labour beds, including postnatal and antenatal wards and reception areas.

Additionally, overstretched maternity units shut their doors to any more women in labour on 553 occasions last year.

Babies were born in offices, lifts, toilets and a caravan, according to the Freedom of Information data for 2007 and 2008 from 117 out of 147 trusts which provide maternity services.

Let's see, when my kids were born, my wife had her own room that was essentially a five-star hotel room with space for me to rest and the best care imaginable. The atmosphere was as relaxing as one could ever have while experiencing the miracle of birth and the aftercare was top notch. Now granted, you can't compare that to giving birth in an office, elevator or even a bathroom but we Americans are just not as sophisticated as Europeans are; or at least that's what liberals keep telling us.

Great Moments in Socialized Medicine

In what is probably a good example of what Obamacare will be like and why many patriotic Americans are protesting, we have an a great example right here:

A young mother gave birth on a pavement outside a hospital after she was told to make her own way there.

Mother-of-three Carmen Blake called her midwife to ask for an ambulance when she went into labour unexpectedly with her fourth child.

But the 27-year-old claims she was refused an ambulance and told to walk the 100m from her house in Leicester to the city's nearby Royal Infirmary.

The country is against it in every circumstance and they still push and push because it's what is best for us whether we smart enough to know it or not.

Obama's train wreck continues on.

More Great Moments in Socialized Medicine

I was talking with a guy this morning and something came on the news about health care and the Obamacare plan. He said it would be a good idea to have "free" health care. "Free" I said, "it's definitely not going to be free". It occurred to me that a good sized amount of people in this nation are not even remotely tuned into what Obamacare would entail, how it would reduce the standard of care and how much it will actually cost them. It got me thinking that Obama may be able to pull this off with a compliant media abetting him.

We have to make sure that the average citizen understand what he or she would be in store for with socialized medicine. Here's another example of why we have to beat this thing down, burn the bill, piss on the ashes and flush them down the toilet:

Thousands of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers face a lifetime of agony because they are not being treated quickly enough, a report says.

Guidelines state that patients should receive treatment within three months of the first symptoms appearing.

But the average wait is nine months - and GPs are not trained well enough to know what help to offer.

The average wait is three times longer than is recommended. The three month number is insane and with shock Americans who have grown accustomed to calling a doctor and getting in the same day.

Just another preview of Obamacare.

As an aside, the GOP is finally starting to explain just what Obama plans on doing and it ain't pretty.

Update: Here's some of the side effects Obamacare would bring about.

Wednesday Morning News & Notes

Off to work but here's some quick links to must-reads:

--Apparently not quite satisfied with screwing up our economy, Obama looks to destroy the rest of the worlds as well according to this blurb.

--Dumb ass GOP Senator gets in trouble for not keeping it in his pants. Fidelity is dead.

---Drip, drip, drip...Firing scandal gets legs. The BHO administration plays hard ball and looks bad in doing so.

--An inconvenient time for the White House. Why don't those freedom-craving kids just go away?

--The gay constituency isn't too happy with The One.

--The Imus Standard; should Letterman get canned?

--OK, I'll play along. Which countries does socialized medicine work well in?

American Medical Association Slams Obama Health Plan

So far we've had people who've been forced to live under socialized medicine come out against it, businesses come out against it and now the top doctor organization in America slams Obama's plan to nationalize our health care system:

WASHINGTON — As the health care debate heats up, the American Medical Association is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system.

The opposition, which comes as Mr. Obama prepares to address the powerful doctors’ group on Monday in Chicago, could be a major hurdle for advocates of a public insurance plan. The A.M.A., with about 250,000 members, is America’s largest physician organization.

The docs know full-well that under socialized medicine, their pay will decrease, the standards of care will diminish and the government will decide what's best for the patient and not them. A lose-lose-lose situation all around.

These men and women are the best and brightest in the world; people from nations with socialized medicine come here to get treated by them. I think we ought to trust someone with 12 years of schooling in medicine over a guy who got a law degree and served as a community organizer.

If this is what the government wants for us, they better get ready for a serious backlash that will put the democrats in a permanent minority.

Ted Kennedy Cancer in Remission

I find it ironic though that Ted Kennedy has been a hawk on pushing socialized medicine but it free market health care that helped him in this case. In a socialized medicine world akin to Canada or Britain, the average person would never get the care they get in the US. Senator Kennedy was saved by the medical advances we only see in the American system as it's been for generations.

I'm happy for the Senator and wish him well.

Tuesday Night News & Notes

It's been a busy day but everything is sunny for the economy if you just ask Ben Bernanke.

Here's what's going on in the solar system:

-Strong arm tactics more akin to the Corleones than the government of the US. Life in Obamanation continues unabated but a great deal poorer.

-Remember when liberals used to complain we weren't doing enough about Darfur? I've not heard Darfur mentioned in about 106 days or so.

-Don't you love it when those who still believe global warming is man-made try to rationalize away clear concise facts rebutting global warming staring them in the face?

-More great moments in socialized medicine.

-The Obama administration will not release the pix of Air Force One scaring the bejesus out of New Yorkers and Bloomberg unloads on him for it. He will release incendiary pictures of "torture" at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo that will inflame Muslim nations, however.

More Great Moments in Socialized Medicine

Obama and Daschle have a dream; a dream to make the US health care system exactly like those in Canada and Britain. I guess we have this to look forward to then:

The organs of British donors are being given to private patients from overseas - despite a severe shortage of organs for people in this country.

Documents show that 50 livers from British donors were given to patients from Cyprus, Greece and other countries, even though 259 British patients are waiting for a potentially life-saving transplant.

It means British people with incurable liver disease could potentially die waiting for a transplant when suitable organs have been handed to foreigners.

...Freedom of Information requests have revealed that foreigners pay around £75,000 for the operations. This money is shared between the transplant surgeon, who may get around £20,000, and the hospital trust.

More on the socialized medicine debacles the world over can be found here, here here and here...and oh yeah, here.

Another Great Moment in Socialized Medicine

Yeah, that socialized medicine plan pushed by Obama will be a real Godsend, won't it? I mean, it may be a pipe dream, but if we follow the new president, we can have a health care system on the same par as Great Britain:

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Jack Rosser's doctor says taking Pfizer Inc.'s Sutent cancer drug may keep him alive long enough to see his 1-year-old daughter, Emma, enter primary school. The U.K.'s National Health Service says that's not worth the expense.

Rosser, 57, was told the cost of Sutent, 3,140 pounds ($4,650) per treatment for his advanced kidney cancer, was too high for the NHS -- the government agency that funds the nation's health care. The resident of the town of Kingswood, in southwest England, has appealed the decision twice, and next month may find out if his second plea is successful.

``It's immoral,'' Rosser's wife, Jenny, said. ``They are sentencing him to die.''

The NHS, which provides health care to all Britons and is funded by tax revenue, is spending about 100 billion pounds this fiscal year, or more than double what it spent a decade ago, as the cost of treatments increase and the population ages. The higher costs are forcing the NHS to choose between buying expensive drugs for terminal patients and providing more services for a wider number of people.

Now this is something to aspire to: we can have a nation where a group of regulators--government employees, actually--who make the ultimate decision who can live and who will die. A liberal wet dream. Sounds great.

I can just see our future; a future where cancer treatment is not covered but abortions and sex changes are. Infanticide? No problemo. Acquire an STD? Great, come on in and get treated, but don't even ask for that newest drug that is used for diabetes treatment as it's much too expensive.

I imagine the numbers on that chart at right will steadily decrease for Britain.

Man, it should be an interesting (hopefully only) four years, folks.

Update: Here's another cancer drug that will probably cost too much as well. It's a vaccine for skin cancer.

A Reasoned Approach to Abandoning the Bailout

As written by a "Libertarian economist":

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.

In other words, rewarding those who made poor decisions with the ability to make more poor decisions. This is what got us into this mess; banks--with pressure from the government--gave mortgages to those who had no business getting them. Someone making minimum wage has no business buying a $300,000 house yet the Democrats, through Fannie and Freddie, changed the idea of owning a house from a privilege that is earned through hard work and education to a right. Owning a house is not a right.

I'm steadfastly against the bailout at this point after being on the bubble until yesterday. It goes against Conservative principles completely to essentially nationalize private businesses. If Republicans vote to allow a bailout, we will have lost any high ground we may have had on fixing social security, extending the Bush tax cuts and fighting against socialized medicine. You can not be for socialistic policies on one hand and against them on the other. Selective capitalism is a recipe for disaster.

Update: More along these lines in this essay by John Montgomery in The Australian.

Great Moments in Socialized Medicine #88

What could be better than a total thumbs down to socialized medicine such as Obama proposes from those who suffer under it? When it completely embarrasses former Enron advisor and commie medicine supporter Paul Krugman:

PAUL KRUGMAN

And private insurance? That’s the thing, I— Actually, can I just —I wanted to ask a question. And—

JOHN DONVAN [MODERATOR]

Please—please do—

PAUL KRUGMAN

—and I wanted to ask, actually two questions, to the audience. First, how many Canadians, would Canadians in the room please raise your hands. [ONE PERSON APPLAUDS, LAUGHTER]

JOHN DONVAN

We have about seven hands going up—

PAUL KRUGMAN

Okay, not as many as I thought. Okay, of those of you who are not on the panel who are Canadians,, how many of you think you have a terrible health care system. [PAUSE] One, two—
JOHN DONVAN

We see—almost all of the same hands going up. [LAUGHTER]

PAUL KRUGMAN

Bad move on my part. [APPLAUSE]

Awkward for the the second string NY Times columnist to say the least.

Let's Emulate the British Health Care System

Sen. Barack Hussein Obama has pushed for socialized medicine from his early days in Chicago. Amazingly, it's the sole issue I think he's stuck by and not flip-flopped on. Of course, he does what most liberals do and renames it; liberals are now "progressives" and socialized medicine is now "universal health care." but why quibble?

Anyway, he wants us to have a heath care system akin to those of Britain and Canada where you are essentially covered from cradle to grave--however you may have to wait from infancy to retirement years to see a specialist and that specialist may not actually be one.

But what has socialized medicine wrought for these nations that would make it appealing to Americans? Certainly not this:

The cleanliness of most NHS hospitals in England is threatened by frequent invasions of rats, fleas, bedbugs, flies and cockroaches, a report claims.

Figures released by the Conservatives show that 70% of NHS Trusts brought in the pest controllers at least 50 times between January 2006 and March 2008.

Vermin were found in wards, clinics and even operating theatres. A patients' group said the situation was revolting.

But health chiefs played down fears the infestations could lead to disease.

The figures were obtained by the Conservatives under the Freedom of Information Act, with every hospital asked to reveal how often pest controllers had visited over the two-year period in question.

Thank goodness the "health chiefs" played it down.

Yeah, I want to go from nice, clean, sterile hospitals to one where I can watch mice and rats scurry around or even better yet; just before I am put under anesthesia, I can look over and see a few cockroaches running my way.

Just another great moment in socialized medicine and Obama wants it for us here in the good old US of A.